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January 14,
2005 On Friday, December 17, 2004 US-citizen Cynthia Kiecker and her Mexican husband Ulises Perzábal were found innocent of the murder of 16-year-old Viviana Rayas. Rayas was murdered in Chihuahua City in May 2003, according to Chihuahua law enforcement. Throughout their ordeal Kiecker and Perzábal stated that they were tortured for days until they falsely confessed to murdering Rayas. During the trial alleged witnesses reversed statements against the two saying that they were also tortured or coerced into make false, incriminating statements. Kiecker and Perzábal’s case received international attention and became an embarrassment for the Fox administration. In June 2004, while in Minnesota on a trade mission, President Fox told US Senator Norm Coleman that the murder charges would most likely be dropped against Kiecker and Perzábal. Then, approximately a week later, the Mexican embassy reversed the president’s statement saying that the charges would continue and that it was charges against the police officers accused of torturing Kiecker and Perzábal that were being dropped. According to Carol Kiecker, Cynthia’s mother, her
daughter and son-in-law left Mexico as soon as possible after their not
guilty verdict. To insure
their safety they were whisked to El Paso by US consular officials in a
bullet-proof vehicle that was accompanied by Mexican federal police
vehicles and another vehicle with three US FBI agents. Kiecker and Perzábal have said that they will live
in Minnesota—Kiecker’s home state—and will not be returning to
Mexico for years. According
to both Cynthia and Carol Kiecker, the family plans to join the
struggle for justice being waged by others that have been unjustly
incarcerated and by the families of the serial-killing victims in Ciudad
Juárez and Chihuahua City. Cirilo Rayas, the father of Viviana, says that he
will not be quiet until there is justice for his daughter, according to an
article in the Chihuahua newspaper El Pueblo. He plans to meet with
the state attorney general to discuss his daughters case, he said. According to a December 18, 2004 article in the Chicago Tribune the Mexican Secretary of the Interior criticized prosecutors noting that “"to blame the innocent only foments impunity, and that only benefits the guilty." Chihuahua prosecutors have said that they plan to appeal the acquittal. Sources: December 16,
2004 So far this year Ciudad Juárez has added 20,000 jobs, says Carlos Salas of the Cd. Juárez office of the federal Secretaría de Economía (Secretariat of Economics, SE). Of the new jobs, 15,000 were in the maquiladora industry and the rest were in other parts of the economy. The employment figures are from the Mexican Social Security Institute. According to Asociación de Maquiladoras (Maquiladora Association) statistics reported in the Cd. Juárez newspaper El Diario, the city's maquiladora industry currently employs 220,000 people. In 2000, before the economic recession in the US, there were 260,000 maquiladora jobs in Cd. Juárez. By 2002, that figure had fallen to 190,000. In 2003 there were approximately 200,000 maquiladora jobs in the border city of 1.2 million people. Salas also stated that Chihuahua will export $12 billion in goods in 2004. The maquiladora industry is responsible for 96% of this amount. Cd. Juárez produces 80% of the state's manufacturing output, Chihuahua City is responsible for 12% and the other 8% comes from the other parts of the state. Salas says that the number of maquiladora jobs in Cd. Juárez will easily increase in 2005. With companies such as Electrolux, Lexmark and Foxconn set to open new facilities or expand existing ones, the city will add jobs next year. A national maquiladora association, the Consejo Nacional de la Industria Maquiladora de la Exportación (CNIME), says that over the past three years Mexico has generated 118,000 maquiladora jobs. This represents nearly 50% of the 240,000 jobs that were lost during the US recession. Source: El Diario, December 16, 2004. Article by Gabriel Simental. December 8, 2004 Cinthia Irasema Ramos' dream was to become a nurse, her father said at her funeral. Found dead on a sidewalk in central Ciudad Juárez on December 3, 2004, the 21 year old woman's life was cut short near the bar where she worked. Police have yet to make an arrest in the case although family member's believe Ramos' boyfriend may have been involved. On November 2, 2004, Martha Lizbeth Hernández, age 16, was murdered and raped . José Luis Montes, a carpenter, confessed to the crimes saying that he was drunk and had been using cocaine prior to killing Hernández. Montes was spotted by city police while allegedly
raping Hernández who he had apparently already choked to death. He
tried to flee the scene but was apprehended by police. Law Enforcement Investigated The federal investigation of the Cd. Juárez femicides led by María López Urbina has been criticized as "garbage" by organizations that represent victims' families, particularly because the investigation has not led to any new arrests. However, another part of the investigation is aimed at identifying state law enforcement officials that were negligent in properly investigating the crimes. One of those Chihuahua officials named by López's investigation is Zulema Bolívar García who was the special investigator into the femicides between July 2001 and March 2002. In mid-November 2004 Bolívar testified to López's investigation that in November 2001 it was the Chihuahua Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General at that time, Arturo González Rascón and José Manuel Ortega Aceves, that steered her investigation of the eight bodies that were found in a Cd. Juárez cotton field in that month. Bolívar also stated that it was Ortega Aceves who framed two bus drivers for the crime, Javier García Uribe and Gustavo González Meza. Although former Attorney General González Rascón is no longer active in state law enforcement, Ortega Aceves is the current director of the legal department of the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office. Patricia González Rodríguez, the current state attorney general who was appointed by the state's new governor, José Reyes Baeza, to clean up Chihuahua law enforcement, has said that she can not investigate Ortega Aceves or take other action against him unless Bolívar testifies against him at the state level. So far, Bolívar has only made statements to the federal investigation. For one of the bus drivers, Bolívar's statements offer no hope: Gustavo González Meza died in jail under suspicious circumstances. García Uribe, the other driver, was recently sentenced to 50 years in prison for his role in the death of the eight women found in November 2001. Sources: |