Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C.

Last updated • 4 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C. ("May Our Daughters Return Home, Civil Association") is a non-profit organization composed of mothers, family members, and friends of victims of the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. The mothers claim that their cases have gone unsolved in some cases for over 12 years. Their hope is to get the murderers of their daughters arrested and hopefully convicted.

Contents

Founding and purpose

The organization was co-founded by Norma Andrade, mother of Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade, who was kidnapped on February 14, 2001, and found dead 10 days later. The other founder of NHRC is Marisela Ortiz Rivera, Lilia's high school teacher turned activist. Many of the victims have been found to be poor working mothers employed in factories in Ciudad Juárez, which is located in the northwestern Mexican state of Chihuahua, and is located across the Rio Grande from the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas. Since 1993, female bodies have been found in the city of Juárez, and most of the cases remain unsolved. The group's mission is to put pressure on the Mexican government to fight impunity, solve the murders and counter-act the prevalence of femicide.

Reception and danger

Norma Andrade was shot at 5 times in an attempt to silence her. As prominent advocate and President and co-founder of NHRC, her and other women live in danger in Ciudad Juarez. The group is controversial as some politicians want the outrage and discourse to die down but the women continue to disappear, year after year. NHRC is an intersectional feminist group in Mexico that is the voice for the problematic subject that is the "Women of Juárez." The group says they will not stop fighting for the respect and dignity of the disappeared and murdered in Ciudad Juárez also known as Feminicidios. The group is composed of mothers of the victims of Femicide and continues to fight together and advocate for The Women of Juárez. [1]

Prevalence of femicide

According to Amnesty International, as of February 2005 more than 600 bodies had been found and over 800 women were still missing. [2] In November 2005, BBC News reported Mexico's human rights ombudsman Luis Raúl González Pérez as saying that 28 women had been murdered so far in 2005. [3]

In the media

Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa group was worked with filmmaker Zulma Aguiar on a Juárez Documentary titled "Juarez Mothers Fight Femicide," which was filmed in 2005. [4]

In January 2010, UK Television News program Channel 4 News broadcast a report from Ciudad Juárez in which a young girl told how she had been abducted by a gang of men and forced into prostitution. She told the program's reporter Nick Martin how she had witnessed girls being murdered by the gang and how children were abducted and sold to order to American citizens. [5] The report was recognized by the Foreign Press Association as TV News Story of the Year in 2010 and prompted US Immigration & Customs Enforcement to launch a cross border investigation into the women's claims. [6]

Femicide in Mexican law

In Mexico, femicide is typified in the Federal Penal Code in Article 325, from June 14, 2012, to the letter, defines this crime as:

"ARTICLE 325.- The crime of femicide is committed by one who deprives a woman of life for gender reasons. Gender reasons are considered to exist when any of the following circumstances exist:

  1. The victim presents signs of sexual violence of any kind;
  2. The victim has been inflicted with infamous injuries or mutilations or degrading, before or after the deprivation of life or acts of necrophilia;
  3. There are antecedents or data of any type of violence in the family environment, work or school, of the active subject against the victim;
  4. There has been a sentimental, affective or emotional relationship between the asset and the victim trust;
  5. There are data that establish that there were threats related to the event criminal, harassment or injury of the active subject against the victim; The victim has been held incommunicado, whatever the time prior to the deprivation of life;
  6. The victim's body is exposed or displayed in a public place. Whoever commits the crime of femicide will be imposed from forty to sixty years of prison and five hundred to a thousand days fine. In addition to the sanctions described in this article, the active subject will lose all rights in relation to the victim, including inheritance rights. In the event that femicide is not accredited, the homicide rules will apply. To the public servant who maliciously or negligently retards or hinders the Attorney or administration of justice will be sentenced to three to eight years and a fine of five hundred to fifteen hundred days, in addition, he will be dismissed and disqualified from three to ten years to perform another job, position or commission public.

[7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ciudad Juárez</span> City in Chihuahua, Mexico

Ciudad Juárez, commonly referred to as just Juárez, is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It was known until 1888 as El Paso del Norte. It is the seat of the Juárez Municipality with an estimated population of 2.5 million people. Juárez lies on the Rio Grande river, south of El Paso, Texas, United States. Together with the surrounding areas, the cities form El Paso–Juárez, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border, with a combined population of over 3.4 million people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicides in Ciudad Juárez</span> Murder of females in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

More than 500 women were killed between 1993 and 2011 in Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico. The murders of women and girls received international attention primarily due to perceived government inaction in preventing the violence and bringing perpetrators to justice. A narcofosa containing the remains of women killed in 2011 and 2012 was found in Madera Municipality, Chihuahua, in December 2016.

Abdul Latif Sharif, first name also spelled Abdel, was an Egyptian-born Mexican chemist and chief suspect in the Juárez killings, a decade-long murder spree that began in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez in the early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide</span> Murder of women or girls because of their sex

Femicide or feminicide is a term for the murdering of women, often because of their gender. Femicide can be perpetrated by either sex but is more often committed by men. This is most likely due to unequal power between men and women as well as harmful gender roles, stereotypes, or social norms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norma Andrade</span> Mexican activist

Norma Esther Andrade is one of the founding members of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C., a Mexican non-profit association of mothers whose daughters have been victims of female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. Her daughter, Lilia Alejandra García Andrade, disappeared on February 14, 2001. On February 21, Lilia Alejandra's body was found wrapped in a blanket. On her body were signs of physical and sexual assault.

<i>Bordertown</i> (2007 film) 2007 American crime drama movie directed by Gregory Nava

Bordertown is a 2007 American crime drama film written and directed by Gregory Nava, and starring Jennifer Lopez, Martin Sheen, Maya Zapata, Sônia Braga and Antonio Banderas. This is the second film which featured the collaboration between Nava and Lopez, following the 1997's biopic film Selena.

Human rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susana Chávez</span> Mexican poet and human rights activist (1974–2011)

Susana Chávez Castillo was a Mexican poet and human rights activist who was born and lived most of her life in her hometown of Ciudad Juárez.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marisela Escobedo Ortiz</span> Murdered Mexican social activist

Marisela Escobedo Ortiz was a Mexican social activist from Juarez, Chihuahua, who was assassinated while protesting the 2008 murder of her daughter.

Campo Algodonero in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is the memorial site for hundreds of women who have died during the past two decades. The Algodonero became an important site after eight women were found dead in 2001. This memorial site was recently created after the verdict of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the State of Mexico in regards to the case of the Algodonero field where eight women were found dead. The memorial site includes a statue of a woman, made by Veronica Leiton, and multiple pink crosses that represent the women who were found. Campo Algodonero serves as a standing symbol of memory that dwells in the lives of all of the victims’ families who refuse to stay quiet and who are constantly in the middle of controversy.

<i>Desert Blood</i> 2005 novel by Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders is a 2005 mystery thriller by author Alicia Gaspar de Alba based on the violence, kidnapping and femicides that occurred in Ciudad Juarez in 1998.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergio González Rodríguez</span> Mexican journalist (1950-2017)

Sergio González Rodríguez was a Mexican journalist and writer who was best known for his works on the femicides in Ciudad Juárez from the 1990s to the 2000s, such as Huesos en el desierto and The Femicide Machine. González Rodríguez was a writer who worked in many literary genres, producing literary journalism or crónicas[es], novels, essays, and screenplays for documentaries. His writing was recognized with several awards in Mexico and Spain.

Alejandro Máynez is a Mexican alleged serial killer and fugitive. Along with Ana Benavides and Melchor Máynez, he killed at least two women in Ciudad Juárez, but he is believed to be responsible for 50 victims in all. His murders are organized and motivated by sexual compulsion, committed as part of a group.

Violence against women in Mexico includes different forms of gender-based violence. It may consist of emotional, physical, sexual, and/or mental abuse. The United Nations (UN) has rated Mexico as one of the most violent countries for women in the world. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico (INEGI), 66.1 percent of all women ages 15 and older have experienced some kind of violence in their lives. Forty-nine percent have suffered from emotional violence; 29 percent have suffered from emotional-patrimonial violence or discrimination; 34 percent from physical violence; and 41.3 percent of women have suffered from sexual violence. Of the women who were assaulted in some form from 2015 to 2018, 93.7 percent did not seek help or report their attacks to authorities.

Pedro Padilla Flores, also known as The Rio Bravo Assassin among many other aliases, is a Mexican serial killer who was convicted of killing three women in Ciudad Juárez but is suspected of murdering up to 27 more, some of whom were underage. He was captured and sentenced to prison time for three murders in 1986, but he escaped in 1990 and, after remaining a fugitive from justice, was recaptured in New Mexico and deported back to Ciudad Juárez. On January 24, 2014, ICE agents delivered Padilla to agents from the Mexican Ministerial Police. Currently, he is one of the main suspects in the unsolved femicides in Ciudad Juárez. He was a disorganized, sedentary, hedonistic murderer motivated by sexual compulsion and predatory behaviour.

The Ciudad Juárez Rebels is the self-imposed name of a group of Mexican serial killers who were active between 1995 and 1996 in Ciudad Juárez, and are responsible for several feminicides in the city. The group was led by Sergio Armendáriz Diaz and Juan Contreras Jurado. Three other members of the group were sentenced in 2005: Carlos Barriento Vidales, Gerardo Fernández Molina and Romel Omar Ceniceros Garcia.

The Feminicides of the cotton field is the media name for murders committed by two Mexican serial killers, Edgar Ernesto Álvarez Cruz and José Francisco Granados de la Paz. Both were active between 1993 and 2003, in the city of Ciudad Juárez. According to his own statements, Granados kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered at least 8-10 young women, but according to the Attorney General of the State of Chihuahua they murdered at least 14 women. This corresponded to the 8 corpses found in cotton fields in the city's outskirts and 6 more found in Mount Cerro Negro, also adjacent to the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Isabel Cabanillas</span> Mexican artist and activist

Isabel Cabanillas de la Torre was a Mexican artist, and activist with Mesa de Mujeres. She was also a member of Hijas de su Maquilera Madre an anti-capitalist feminist collective from Ciudad Juárez, with which she protested against femicides in the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide in Latin America</span>

Femicide, broadly defined as the murder of a woman motivated by gender, is a prevalent issue in Latin America. In 2016, 14 of the top 25 nations with the highest global femicide rates were Latin American or Caribbean states. In 2021, 4,445 women were recorded victims of femicide in the region, translating to the gender-based murder of about one woman every two hours in Latin America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Femicide in Mexico</span> Murders of women

Mexico has one of the world's highest femicide rates, with as many as 3% of murder victims being classified as femicides. In 2021, approximately 1,000 femicides took place, out of 34,000 total murder victims. Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, has one of the highest rates of femicide within the country. As of 2023, Colima State in Mexico has the highest rate of femicide, with over 4 out of every 100,000 women were murdered because of their gender. Morelos state and Campeche state were the following in terms of highest rates of femicide by 2023.

References

  1. The Femicides Continue 2020
  2. Amnesty International, Mexico: Justice fails in Ciudad Juárez and the city of Chihuahua 28 February 2005.
  3. BBC News, No end to women murders in Mexico 23 November 2005.
  4. Juarez Short Film duration 9 minutes 4 seconds
  5. Channel 4 News, "Missing in Mexico - Maria's Story" January 2010
  6. "The Foreign Press Association | index". www.foreign-press.org.uk. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
  7. CNDH Study