“Feminicide” addressed by relatives of missing, murdered women
Women bound together by tragedy reached across borders to join forces last week.
The Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice hosted a press conference on Jan. 7 featuring relatives of the West Mesa and Ciudad Juarez victims to publicize the issue of “feminicide.”
Irma Monreal, the mother of cotton field murder victim Esmeralda Herrera, said the unsolved murders of women should not be overlooked.
“I would like to ask you personally to not look at this as a very far away problem,” she said. “I felt that I would never go through this. I never thought that I would be a victim, but now it happened, and it is real. It has started, and you should not allow it to continue.”
Jayne Barela, mother of missing Albuquerque woman, Jamie, said she vividly remembers the last moments with her daughter.
“Her cousin came to pick her up, and they said they would be right back, but she never came back. I know to this day what my daughter was wearing,” she said. “Nobody knows what a mother really feels like in this situation.”
The mothers from Juarez, Monreal and Paula Flores Bonilla, said they were appalled when they learned of the bodies found on Albuquerque’s West Mesa.
“It was very shocking to know, reading the newspapers in Juarez about the 11 women’s remains found on the West Mesa here last year,” Bonilla said. “We should not permit these kinds of situations.”
Monreal said the two homicide investigations were handled, and perhaps mishandled, similarly, in Albuquerque and Juarez.
“I am here to ask the community of Albuquerque to ask the government to not allow to happen here what happens in Juarez,” she said. “Not to allow to have your women killed. Because in Juarez it is very easy for any person to kill a woman because they know the Mexican authorities will not do anything to stop it.”
The investigation of the West Mesa murders has been inadequate, Barela said.
“We have a lot of questions that have not been answered, and the authorities just swept it under the rug,” she said. “If it was their daughter, they would have already found them.”
City councilman Ray Garduño said he shared the frustration with the unsolved West Mesa murders.
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“I am disgusted, and, in some ways, ashamed to be a part of the system, because as a society we have a sense that if someone expendable disappears that nobody will care,” he said. “If it had been coeds from folks who had stature, money, whatever else society thinks is important, more investigation would have been put forward.”
The fight to eradicate “feminicide” is in full swing Monreal said, and it will not be over until the issue is recognized.
“This is simply a search for justice. (We’re) mothers in movement searching for justice for our daughters. We want to be here in solidarity with these women so it doesn’t continue happening,” she said. “When they brought me the remains of my daughter, that was not where it ended for me — it’s where it began and this is a movement that is happening all over.”
Bonilla created the Fundación María Sagrario in memory of her daughter to help prevent other mothers from being subjected to the grief she has endured.
“Our main objective is the development of the community,” she said. “The University of Mexico City has helped and supported us to put a public library, and in my neighborhood there is a child care center for children of the community.”
The women who attended said they found solace by meeting with one another and took away considerable strength and motivation to continue in the fight for justice.
“The main thing we want to achieve is we don’t want these crimes to continue anywhere,” Monreal said. “We need to continue the fight we started, don’t stay quiet, keep commemorating, and keep coming together. It doesn’t seem possible or right that these cases should be unsolved for so long.”
The responsibility of addressing the issue ultimately falls onto the community of Albuquerque, and the community of the nation, Garduño said.
“Its one of those things we need to talk about and we need to talk about loud,” he said. “The mothers have enough to deal with. It is now our turn. We need to help.”
*“We’re different colors, but we all cry the same; we all bleed the same. We were all brought up to respect each other, and that is what we should be doing, not killing one another’s children.”
~Jayne Barela, mother of a missing Albuquerque woman*
