“They just covered them with sand and rocks…”
Femicide in Juárez in 2019
On Tuesday, July 23, 2019, a teenage boy had not heard from his mother or sister, and went looking for them, entering a small house in the southeastern part of Juárez. He found a scene of horror, his mother in one room and his sister in front of the television, both of their heads bashed in with a hammer, both dead. Rosa Verónica Ruiz Flores was 34, and her daughter Merary only 12.
This is what gender violence looks like at its worst. The daughter was not the partner’s, and he was jealous that Rosa continued to receive money from her ex-partner to support their daughter. Rosa was a hard-working woman who would do anything for her children, and she thought her future would be brighter with this man, despite the rumors that he had previously killed someone in a drug deal. She had worked in the informal economy selling makeup, and had also worked formally in a maquiladora. There was not enough money to survive on as a single parent.
***
I started working in Juárez in 2001, when it was at the center of a morbid media focus that lasted years, in the wake of a series of femicides whose brutality startled. The common denominator linking the cases — then as now — was almost complete impunity. Families who demanded an investigation or asserted their rights were further harassed by authorities. Suspects who were questioned and arrested similarly suffered at the hands of the police. So many films, protests, and documentaries later, Juárez gained a reputation as a place where you could get away with murder.
Much of this was eclipsed by the violence after the outbreak of a drug war for control of the Juárez plaza in 2008–2012. My neighbor Viridiana González lives across the street from me; her family is from Juárez and her brother was murdered there in 2010. I have watched her grow up into an older sister (and now babysitter) to my children. Viri’s sister-in-law, her brother’s widow, was Rosa’s sister. On that Tuesday in July, Viri described a shattering of her peace, just weeks before she was looking forward to starting high school.
“I found out about Tuesday morning. My mom told me she had bad news and I was scared at first. I thought it was something about my dad, because he wasn’t there. She told me that they had been killed and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. My mom turned on the news, and it came out, and that’s where I started tearing up, because I thought it was a bad joke and it turns out it wasn’t. Part of my world of being a teenager broke. Very shocking, to be honest.”
Viri had taken care of Merary and played with her since Merary was about five years old and felt close to her. She always called her “Itzi”, a nickname that she doesn’t remember how she came up with.
“She was funny, she was always playing around, she was really nice and smart, she was sweet, she always texted me when I was in El Paso to make sure I was okay, she would always take care of my sobrinos (nieces and nephews). She was so innocent, she was a really big sunshine and everyone loved her. She used to play with her brother, and even when he avoided her, she would make sure he was okay. She cared a lot about people. She had this big sense of just taking care of others and she always helped her mom with everything she could.”
Rosa and Merary were two of 19 women killed in the month of July 2019 alone. There were 137 murders in the city that month, according to the Fiscalía (Attorney General’s Office). There were three perfunctory mentions in the paper of record, El Diario, regarding the case.
The surviving family has no faith in the Juárez police. Even though they filed a report, they had no hope of an investigation because they did not have solid “proof” that the partner had killed them. Viri’s sister-in-law is afraid to leave the house now, and they are afraid that the man, who has not been seen since, will come back and exact revenge on the rest of the family.
***
Viri left for Juárez the morning she found out about the murders, and did not return for nearly a week. They slept in the car because the house was so crowded with people for the velorio (wake). I asked her about the burial and the trip to the cemetery.
“It was a long drive, about an hour away from the house where we were in to the cemetery, everybody they got everything and put some kind of sign knowing there was a funeral so they would let people pass. Everything at the graveyard was centered around the coffins. It was sad since they killed them so fast, without a warning, it happened so fast, they didn’t have time to prepare things, so they just put the coffins on top of each other, and it was sad because they didn’t bury them like they were supposed to. They deserved more than being buried like that. They just covered them with sand and rocks, and everybody put flowers on them. It was a sad day because the sun was high, her parents were sad and crying and they were trying to stop the brother from getting into the grave. I don’t blame him. When they finally controlled the brother — I guess they wanted the moment to end — they put rocks and sand on top of them, and put in all the flowers. Everybody was singing, remembering the moment they had with them. I visited my brother’s grave, but just for a little bit, because everybody wanted to leave.”
I asked Viri what she thought could come of these tragedies. “Nobody in the world should be killed by anybody, it might not seem like it, but we are all humans, we are all the same, it’s like water and rain, we may look different or seem different, but we’re more alike than anybody thinks, so we shouldn’t be killing others because it is like killing ourselves.”
The precarious economic and social position that so many women find themselves in has been normalized across Latin America, and is a major cause of migration from Central America. Even as femicide became a new statutory offense in Mexico in 2012, still approximately 10 women are killed each day in Mexico. In mid-August women took to the streets in Mexico City to protest gender violence, following the rape of a 17-year-old girl by four police officers. While the so-called “Glitter Revolution” attempted to focus on policy changes, media attention instead covered minor incidents of vandalism during the protests. There was a short-lived mood of rage, which the media portrayed as an unacceptable response from women.
As of today, the end of September 2019, 1,170 people have been murdered in Juárez — the equivalent of 53 Walmart mass shootings- yet with no vigils, no victims’ funds, and no slogans. The level of violence, reading the names of victims in the newspaper listed with just colonia, age, gender and sometimes manner of death, is mind-numbing.
When we see other’s pain up close though, we need to realize the pain of any one family is multiplied and crisscrossed, woven into the fabric of the city, unspoken yet acknowledged in the warmth and kindness of Juarenses. There is collective trauma that hangs over the city like a shroud.
Watching this little girl, the same little five-year-old with pigtails and a wide smile, recount facts and memories that would be difficult for a much older woman to process, is hard for me. She asked me to write something about them, that they are not just forgotten. That they lived. That they loved and were loved. That their spirits remain with us for even a short while longer.
