Men det har noe å gjøre med fenomener som
arbeidsløshet, kulturell usikkerhet, forarmelse og
rolletap for de som før hadde sin faste rolle som
familieforsørgere. I kulturer med eldgamle machotrekk
(som de fleste) er disse forhold en farlig blanding.
Hva uttrykker "Hells Angels"? I et samfunn hvor det
ikke lenger er bruk for mannens tradisjonelle
kvaliteter og heller ikke utvikles noe alternativ
ennsi noen kultur er vi dømt til å oppleve voksende
desperasjon. Man kan ikke frata mennesker deres (i
egne øyne) eksistensberettigelse og verdighet uten at
det kommer reaksjoner, først fra dem som er mest
presset.
"Ms Chavez says that with the influx of young women,
middle-aged men have become almost unemployable in
Juárez. The factories prefer girls who work for less
money and don't demand benefits such as health care
or union membership."
Men det er fint for en monden overklasse å rose seg
av sin "modernitet" på trygg avstand av de virkelige
problemene, mens de kan håne den plebs den selv
dømmer til et liv i total utsiktsløshet. Men hånen og
meningsløsheten får følger: den skaper et fascistisk
potensiale som den selvsamme "moderne" overklassen
ikke vil være sen til å benytte seg av når den tid
kommer...ja det foregår allerede.
Karsten Johansen
www.independent.co.uk
As death toll reaches 274, Mexican women fear macho
murder is becoming a way of life
By Jan McGirk in Mexico City
09 February 2002
It is remarkably easy to disappear in Ciudad Juárez.
At least 274 women from the grimy industrial city
separated from Texas by the Rio Grande have been
violently killed over the past nine years.
Their bones have been found bleached in the desert
scrub, or their mutilated bodies tossed into sewage
ditches to decompose. The body of the latest victim,
a female factory worker, was found on a desolate hill
just two weeks ago.
But as the number of victims continues to climb,
anger is growing at the failure of the country's
leaders to order a serious investigation into a
crimewave some campaigners blame on a macho culture
that makes it acceptable to hate and murder women.
As well as a serial killer, whose victims were all
physically alike, women's groups believe there are
other predators in Juárez. Many of the women are
young factory workers picked off from among the
hundreds of thousands who make their way home to
shanty towns from late shifts at the assembly plants
of foreign companies, called maquiladoras.
Police recently called one Mexican housewife in to
watch a videotape they had seized during a raid. Did
she recognise the victim shown in the grainy footage?
The woman was devastated to watch the teenager being
sexually tortured and executed in a "snuff film"; it
was her missing daughter. Local newspapers reported
that copies could be bought on the black market for
$5000 (£3,500).
But even this disturbing case has failed to shock
officials in a city of 1.3 million people, rife with
rival drug gangs and revenge slayings.
The funeral of another victim, Lourdes Ivette Lucero
Campos, was the unlikely scene for an outpouring of
political protest. As relatives grieved for the
doctor whose body had been found in a ditch, the
priest lambasted Mexican leaders: "When are they
going to do something? We care only if they do
something to halt this. We can barely hold back our
anger and fury."
A dozen advocacy groups have raised complaints about
the incompetence or collusion of local police.
Investigators seem to prefer extracting confessions
through torture than gathering forensic evidence
which might solve crimes.
In Juárez the young women are so plentiful, so
anonymous, and so transient, that it took years for
any pattern of disappearances to be noticed. After
all, Mexicans frequently vanish without a word across
the Rio Grande to seek their fortune in the US. The
slain bodies add up year after year, even though they
don't seem to count for much. Nearly 80 of the
victims, each one slim, with coppery skin and long
black hair, bear a striking resemblance to each
other. These lookalikes, aged from 13 to 30, were all
raped, strangled, then ritually mutilated, all
presumably by the same killer.
An Egyptian chemical engineer, Abel Latif Sharif,
confessed to committing five early murders of women
and was convicted of one case in 1999. Several bus
drivers, believed to be hired by this Egyptian, were
locked up for harming the factory girls they
transport to Juárez shantytowns. But it turns out
police tortured most of them into confessing, and
there has been no let-up in the gruesome killing
spree. Nine more bodies were found at the end of last
year.
Claudia Gonzalez's parents searched the badlands near
the city limits for weeks, but found no trace of her.
A passerby chanced across Claudia's body, alongside
half-a-dozen other corpses, dumped bruised and
half-clad in a vacant lot last November. It was a
casual mass grave, opposite the headquarters of the
maquiladora industry trade association which hired so
many of the victims.
Esther Chavez, who founded the women's rape
counselling centre, Casa Amiga, suggests this was a
deliberate message: the killer was taunting women who
demanded action. Death threats have not deterred
them, and so the bodies are flaunted in their midst.
Big billboards, displaying a sample photograph of a
slender brunette, the serial killer's favoured prey,
are now erected around Juárez and warn that a killer
is on the loose. Yet the unschooled village girls,
desperate to work at the plants for a dollar an hour,
keep arriving.
On lamp posts in the city centre, more than 800 black
crosses are painted on vivid pink backgrounds in
memory of the young Juárez martyrs. Gullermina
González, whose 17-year-old sister, Sagrario, was
murdered in 1998, daubs more crosses each day, and
sees them as a warning as well as a memorial.
"I believe that the simple fact of being a woman here
is a grave danger," she said somberly. "But we have
to work." Ms Gonzalez runs Voices Without Echo, a
self-help group for bereaved families.
Chihuahua state's former governor, Francisco Barrio,
who now serves as President Vicente Fox's
anti-corruption czar, shrugs off the number of women
slain in Ciudad Juárez. The murder rate is not
abnormal for a city of its size, he said.
Margarita Torres, a shiftworker, said: "We get no
information about how to act against these crimes.
The police only recommend that if you are attacked
sexually, you should make yourself vomit, so that the
aggressor is likely to feel disgusted and run away."
Drawing attention to the kilIings continues to be
considered bad form by some of the city's élite.
Adverse publicity risks further damaging the
reputation of Ciudad Juárez and could scare away
investors.
After Amnesty International entered the campaign,
there was concern that Mexico might appear callous. A
year after taking office, President Fox finally
appointed some new federal investigators, who plan to
ask FBI officials in Texas for cross-border
co-operation. An FBI profiler, Robert K Ressler, who
once worked as a Hollywood consultant for the film,
The Silence of the Lambs, has described Juárez as a
"serial killer's amusement park". Roving perverts can
cross the border without a passport and kill for
kicks, selecting their prey amongst thousands of
unescorted women with little chance of being caught.
Esther Chavez derides this as "something out of the
movies" She's convinced that this crimewave is is a
murderous macho backlash. "All the city survives on
women's work, because 70 per cent of the active
population is female" she says. "The maquiladoras
have transformed the life and traditional role of
women in Mexican society. From stay-at-home wives,
they've gone on to become workers; from the
guardianship of their father, brother or husband they
now answer only to the supervisor."
It rankles the machos to see young girls earning
their own money, and treating themselves to trendy
clothes. On weekends, they sample the nightlife and
flirt with gringo tourists. Away from the rigid
scrutiny of their families, they have new-found
freedom.
Ms Chavez says that with the influx of young women,
middle-aged men have become almost unemployable in
Juárez. The factories prefer girls who work for less
money and don't demand benefits such as health care
or union membership. The 300 companies that
manufacture car parts or electrical goods often treat
their hirelings as expendable. So, it appears, does
Mexican society.
______________________________________________________________________________
ifrance.com, l'email gratuit le plus complet de l'Internet !
vos emails depuis un navigateur, en POP3, sur Minitel, sur le WAP...
http://www.ifrance.com/_reloc/email.emailif
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 11-07-02 MET DST