'Impunity has consequences': the women lost to Mexico's drug war
'Impunity has consequences': the women lost to Mexico's drug war
At least 50 women disappeared in the Veracruz capital of Xalapa over three nights in 2011 – just some of the thousands of victims in the 10-year battle against drug trafficking
Composite of Women who have gone missing in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
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An official investigation has found that many of the women worked as high-class escorts or hostesses contracted for political events. Composite: Handouts
Lizbeth Amores dropped off her son at her mother’s house before heading to a house party with her friend Verenice Guevara. They were last seen at a bar popular with local gangsters.
The following night, María de Jesús Marthen was among a dozen or so young women invited to a private party at a ranch about an hour east of the city centre. On her way to the event, Marthen messaged her boyfriend, pleading for help. The next night, Karla Saldaña and her friend Luisa Quintana went out for tacos. They were spotted leaving a bar in an unknown vehicle. None of them were ever seen again, but they were not the only women to vanish: over the space of three nights in November 2011, at least 50 women disappeared in similar circumstances from Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state, which had been convulsed by cartel violence and political volatility.
Most of the missing women were in their 20s and came from modest families. Some were single mothers, some full-time sex workers, others were students and wannabe beauty queens. According to documents from the official investigation seen by the Guardian, many of them worked as high-class escorts or hostesses contracted for political events – as well as more exclusive parties attended by government officials and leaders of the feared Zetas drug cartel.
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Most of the victims have been men, but women also have been tortured, trafficked and targeted for particular brutality, with almost total impunity. Official records indicate almost 7,000 women and girls have disappeared since 2007. But activists say the reality is much worse. The government register of the missing includes 164 women from Veracruz, yet a local monitoring group has documented almost 500 cases of girls and women who have vanished in the past three years alone.
Rupert Knox, Amnesty International’s lead investigator in Mexico until 2015, said: “In this climate of corruption and impunity – where security policies are determined by links between criminal networks, party politics and business interests – opportunities for targeting women and girls are closely connected with the knowledge that no one will do anything serious to protect them.” Between 2007 and 2015, almost *********20,000 women *********were murdered – a 49% increase on the previous decade, according to the National Statistics Institute (INEGI). In Veracruz, an oil-rich state on the Gulf coast with a population of eight million, 168 women have been killed this year.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/08/mexico-drug-war-cartels-women-killed