IPS 29 November 2019
They were not looking for war, but it found them anyway: Yosmireli and Griselda, two and four years old, died by bullets to their heads from soldiers' guns. Their mother, aunt and seven-year-old brother Joniel were also killed, on a rural road in northwest Mexico. (1221 Words) - By Daniela Pastrana
Women and children from the village where the Esparza family was murdered demand justice outside the schoolhouse. Photo: Mónica González /IPS
Griselda Galaviz, their mother, and Gloria Alicia Esparza, their
aunt, were schoolteachers in a remote village in the state of
Sinaloa on the Pacific coast. They were driving in the family's
beat-up pickup truck when soldiers stationed at a checkpoint opened
fire on the vehicle.
The only survivors were two other teachers and Adán Esparza, the
husband, brother and father of the five victims.
The Jul. 1, 2007 killings became the first known case of civilians
gunned down by soldiers in the "war" on drug trafficking declared
by the government of conservative Felipe Calderón, which tipped the
country into a spiral of violence.
According to government statistics, 30,000 people have died in
drug-related killings since the army was enlisted in the war on
drug cartels when Calderón took office four years ago.
But that figure does not include an undetermined number of widows,
orphans, maimed victims, and people who have been forced to leave
their homes or flee into exile.
The militarisation of the war on drugs has had many impacts on
Mexico's population of 108 million.
One very clear effect is "the invisibility of violence against
women," David Peña of the National Association of Democratic
Lawyers told IPS. His organisation brought the case of three young
women (the "Cotton Field case") killed in Ciudad Juárez, on the
U.S. border, to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which
held the Mexican state responsible for the killings.
"The number of deaths is so great that there is no differentiation
between male and female victims. Worse yet, there is no
specification of motives in the murders," he said.
"If a girl is found dead on the street and the body shows signs of
violence, whether she has a bullet wound, is tied up, or there is a
dead man next to her, her death is recorded in the category of
'organised crime'," Peña said.
Ciudad Juárez, notorious worldwide for hundreds of unsolved
murders of young women committed since 1993, is one example of this
phenomenon.
In the last three years, more women have been murdered in that
city -- nearly 600 -- than in the previous 13 years, for which the
official total was 575. And 288 women have already been killed so
far this year.
"By recording the cases in the catch-all category of organised
crime, the victims' families no longer have access to the case file
and cannot pressure the authorities to solve the crime," Peña
said.
He added that in the last four years, the progress made by civil
society on the human rights front has been "rolled back."
The phenomenon is nationwide. An April report by the Special
Commission on Femicides (a term coined for misogynist or
gender-related murders of women) in the lower house of Congress
states that there have been 1,756 murders of women in 18 of
Mexico's 31 states since 2007. Of that total, only three percent
have led to court sentences.
"There are either no records or insufficient records," said
commission chair Teresa Incháustegui, a lawmaker of the left-wing
Party of the Democratic Revolution.
"But the problem is not just the murders of women, or the increase
in the number of killings," Sara Lovera, a pioneer in journalism
with a gender focus in Mexico, told IPS. "History shows that
whenever there is a war, women are victims.
"The presence of troops on the streets increases the vulnerability
of women, puts them at risk, and generates fear. And above all, the
military are not held accountable for their abuses," she
said.
Lovera cited the example of Castaños, a town in the northern state
of Coahuila, where 13 exotic dancers were raped in a night club by
a group of soldiers in July 2006. The majority of the troops
involved are still free, she pointed out.
Mexico is the most recent case in Latin America of the link
between militarisation of law enforcement and gender violence, the
focus of the 16 days of activism against sexist violence that will
begin Thursday Nov. 25, the International Day for the Elimination
of Violence against Women.
"In any circumstance where the army actively participates, women
become spoils of war, and are more vulnerable to attack," said
Blanca Rico, executive director of Semillas, a non-governmental
organisation that supports women's rights in Mexico through
grant-making and technical assistance to women's groups.
The problem, she said, is that on the part of the state there are
no mechanisms for support or reparations for damages. And even
non-governmental organisations are finding it necessary to
reformulate their goals, in order to take into consideration a
situation that the government will not acknowledge.
"It is a phenomenon that has completely gotten out of hand," Rico
said. "Human rights defenders have never been a central focus of
Semillas, because what is happening today had not happened before:
a shocking rise in threats, which are now constant, with all of
them feeling harassed and threatened now."
"Collateral damages" of the violence that has become generalised
in the country are still not quantifiable, but they have many
faces, experts say.
For example, there are the cases of women in prison on charges of
being "the women of narcos," without evidence that they actually
took part in any criminal activities. Or an increase in
prostitution in areas where troops have been posted.
"It's the use and abuse of women," Lovera said. "Something that
used to happen in very specific regions where there was a military
presence, but has now expanded."
The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised the government's
proposal for the reform of the military justice system and special
courts, calling Tuesday for the exclusion of sex crimes and human
rights violations from the jurisdiction of the military
courts.
Mexico's 1933 military justice code says the special courts have
jurisdiction when crimes against military discipline -- a category
that ranges from insubordination to rape -- are committed by
serving armed forces personnel while on duty. It does not
differentiate crimes committed by troops against civilians, as it
was designed for a situation of war.
The case of the Esparza family is one illustration. When the
murders of the teachers and the children occurred, the women in the
village of Sinaloa de Leyva, where the women taught school, took
advantage of the presence of journalists who were there to cover
the killings to speak out and call on the government to clarify the
murders.
But more than three years later, the family has not received any
public apology or even a condolence message. There is no official
information available on the military trial against the 19 soldiers
involved in the massacre.
The "evidence indicates that the soldiers opened fire without
justification" on the car in which the five victims and three
survivors were driving, says the report "Uniform Impunity"
published by Human Rights Watch in 2009.
Originally published by Inter Press Service. © www.streetnewsservice.org