250 Murders Prompt Mexico Anti-Violence Campaign
Women's Enews
Run Date: 12/21/01
By Laurence Pantin
WEnews correspondent
During the past eight years, the bodies of an estimated 250 young Mexican women, all poor, most under age 19, were dumped near the Texas border. Advocates say the unsolved murder cases illustrate an acceptance of violence against women.
MEXICO CITY (WOMENSENEWS)--Women's groups, human rights organizations and unions have launched a national anti-violence campaign in response to the murders of an estimated 250 women over eight years in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Tex. The campaign's leaders condemn what they call inadequate police investigation into the deaths and demand the federal government step in.
The national campaign involving 300 organizations is called "Stop the Impunity: No More Killings!"
Because Mexico is sensitive to international pressure, the campaign is planning an international lobbying effort, with the help of Amnesty International. Advocates also have received the support of Eve Ensler, creator of "The Vagina Monologues," a one-woman play about all aspects of women's sexuality, and of the international V-Day anti-violence campaign. The proceeds from the play's performance in Mexico will go to the rape crisis center Casa Amiga to help defray the costs of caskets for recent murder victims.
"All these deaths do not only affect Juarez people. They affect the whole Mexican citizenship, and women in particular," said Lidia Alpizar, general coordinator of Elige ("Choose") Network of Young People in Favor of Sexual and Reproductive Rights. She addressed a news conference here last Friday at the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights.
The campaign arose after the bodies of eight more women were found last month in a farming field in Cuidad Juarez in the state of Chihuahua. The women, all of them very young, were raped and strangled before being dumped in a field, their hands tied behind their backs.
It is not known exactly how many women were murdered in Ciudad Juarez since 1993, when the first bodies were found, given the flawed police investigation, according to local and national women rights' groups. Yet, current estimates, based on statements and press reports, place the number of bodies found at more than 250.
Most of these women were raped and/or beaten before being killed. About 90 of them were found mutilated or tortured, suggesting that some of the crimes could be serial murders.
Most Victims Were Under 19, Students and Workers
The victims were young: 65 percent of them between 15 and 24 and most of them under age 19. Most were students or workers in small commercial businesses or in "maquiladoras," foreign-owned assembly plants. Most of them were poor and lived in the marginal sections of the city. Many were not from Ciudad Juarez, but went there from other Mexican states or other countries in search of work.
The motives for the murders are obscure. Theories include drug or organ trafficking or the use of the women in the filming of so-called snuff movies that feature the sexual assault and murder of women.
The campaign is insisting that federal authorities start investigating the unsolved cases, said Ximena Andion, coordinator of the complaints division of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights.
President Vicente Fox has announced that the attorney general's office would take part in the investigation, but advocates were skeptical, saying they hoped the government was making a serious commitment, not just responding briefly to public outrage.
The campaign's leadership is also asking that Marta Altoguirre, the rapporteur for women's rights of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, visit Mexico and issue recommendations on the situation of women in Ciudad Juarez. In addition, the campaign's leadership plans to ask the court to review some of the unsolved cases.
The lack of serious investigation into the murders by the local police regarding was documented in a 1998 report from the National Human Rights Commission based on a look at files produced by the police after each murder. The report said the files were missing crucial information and many did not contain pictures of the corpse that could lead to identification. The police had been unable to identify some victims and had misidentified others, the report said.
One Man Convicted, 12 Jailed As Investigations Continue
Perhaps as a direct result of poor police work, only one man was sentenced for murdering a woman in Ciudad Juarez. Women say the other cases remain unsolved; police say only 55 murders are unsolved. Another 12 suspects are currently in jail, awaiting trial on murder charges. Some of them have been imprisoned since 1996. Two were arrested after the recent discovery of the eight bodies. In some cases, the police are said to lack proof of jailed men's guilt but they remain jailed while the investigation continues. In other cases, the suspects recanted after making confessions, claiming that they were tortured and forced to confess, according to Julia Perez, a spokesperson for Milenio Feminista, a network of 250 feminist organizations.
The continued murders and the lack of effective prosecutions have created a climate of impunity, according to Alpizar of the youth organization for sexual and reproductive freedom. As an illustration, she said that these days a common warning from a man to his girlfriend in Ciudad Juarez is that she'd better do what he wishes, otherwise he will "dump her at Lomas del Poleo," one of the sites where corpses were found.
Another consequence of the unsolved cases is that women rights' groups do not have the information necessary to better focus their prevention campaigns on the most vulnerable women, said Victoria Caraveo, spokesperson for the Coordinating Group of Non-Governmental Organizations for Women's Rights.
Still, prevention efforts are underway.
At the same time the national campaign was launched here, organizations in Ciudad Juarez started a 50-hour prevention program called "Light and Justice for Women in our City." Residents lighted candles to show their support of the fight against violence towards women.
But what a prevention campaign cannot do so easily is change the city's economic and socio-cultural context that, according to Alpizar, contributes to the climate of extreme violence against women.
In a City of Immigrants, Many Work in Foreign-Owned Plants
Ciudad Juarez is city of immigrants, a city of very poor people, crowded with people trying to cross into the United States, explained Alpizar in a recent interview. The government's response to the need for economic development has been to assist the growth of maquiladoras. "It's an answer that violates all the individual's social and economic rights," she said.
There are many more victims than those whose bodies were discovered, added Caraveo, of the Coordinating Group of Non-Governmental Organizations for Women's Rights. The murdered women were the first casualties, but their suffering families' are additional victims, she added, saying that the crimes hurt the entire community because they generate fear and anguish among many women and their relatives, to the point of psychosis in some cases.
But the situation in Ciudad Juarez is only the tip of the iceberg of the violence towards women in Mexico, said Alpizar.
"Juarez is simply one of the saddest and most tragic examples of the violence that we women live in Mexico," she said.
More than 100 women were murdered in Mexico City this year, and 36 in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, according to Perez, of Milenio Feminista.
And thousands of women are "desaparecidas," or missing, Perez said in an interview. The state of Chihuahua counts about 400 "desaparecidas," while the state of Chiapas has about 300 and Guerrero, 150.
These numbers--which do not take into account the everyday domestic violence that many women suffer--and the lack of investigation and prosecution demonstrate the misogyny of the Mexican system justice, according to Perez.
"The judge is the first one who thinks: 'Well, she was seeking it,'" she said.
"If from the people who have to give justice, the message is that women are the guilty ones, it's really serious, because it's like giving men carte blanche, saying, 'It doesn't matter if you kill a woman.' "
Only 11 of 32 States Make Domestic Violence a Crime
The laws also fail to protect women, according to Perez. Only 9 out of 32 states have specific laws protecting children and women against domestic violence, and only 11 states have changed their 17th-century civil and penal codes to make domestic violence a crime. In the remaining states, beating wives or children is not considered a crime.
And, in a worrisome trend, legislators in some states are trying to rescind laws that were passed to protect women.
"Beyond the individual culprits of these murders, there is a state responsibility, because of the state's neglect, that fostered violence," said Andion of the Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights. "Tolerating this violence is also, according to international conventions, a form of wielding violence."
Laurence Pantin is a journalist based in Mexico City.
For more information:
Comision Mexicana de Defensa y Promocion de los Derechos Humanos A.D.(Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights): http://www.laneta.apc.org/cmdpdh
Casa Amiga: http://www.casa-amiga.org/
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/763/context/archive
viernes, 21 de diciembre de 2001
domingo, 17 de junio de 2001
En Inglés - Sobre las campañas para un sueldo de vida en Nueva York
Living Wage Campaign Focuses on New York
Women's Enews
Run Date: 06/17/01
By Laurence Pantin
WEnews correspondent
Living wage campaigns are spreading with success in 60 cities and 70 others are in range. The premise: The federal minimum wage is equivalent to less than $10,000 annually and is not sufficient for families to pay for rent, food and medical care.
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--For Rhonda Brathwaite, 29, a home care worker and a single mother, a living wage would mean she would earn $10 an hour, instead of $7.14. That increase of $2.86 translates into $6,520 a year, and that means she could pay her rent and bills on time, put better food on the table and take better care of her 7-year-old daughter, Sade.
"Some people usually pay their rent instead of buying groceries," Brathwaite said in an interview after a June living wage rally by Local 1199, New York's Health and Human Service Union of the Service Employees International Union. "And they definitely cannot pay rent and groceries on that type of income."
Anything less than a living wage, argue advocates, is poverty.
The desire to enable paid workers such as Brathwaite to support their families, pay their bills on time and eat adequately every day is what moved labor unions, community associations and religious groups to launch a campaign in New York City, urging the city council to pass a law requiring city contractors and companies receiving city subsidies to pay their workers a living wage of at least $10 an hour, or $20,800 a year. The state and federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. The federal poverty level for a family of four is $17,650 annually or $9.70 an hour for a 35-hour work week, 52 weeks a year.
Living wage bills have already passed in more than 60 cities and counties, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The latest two bills were passed in Santa Monica, Calif., on May 23 and in Suffolk County on Long Island, N.Y., on June 5. Living wage campaigns are also underway in more than 70 cities and counties nationwide, including Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.
Nationwide, living wages apply only to firms doing business with or receiving subsidies from cities, counties or other entities that pass wage legislation.
New York City's four Democratic mayoral candidates have pledged their support and more than 60 candidates for the 51-member city council say they would support it if it came before them. The advocates say they are optimistic about passage.
However, the legislation has yet to be introduced and therefore the business community has not yet weighed in with its views.
Over the years, efforts to significantly increase the federal minimum wage--the last increase was in 1996--have faltered because businesses say it is too expensive and will raise the cost of doing business, resulting in lost jobs, higher prices and failed enterprises.
Pending Bill Would Raise Wages for 100,000 New York Workers
However, a bill raising the federal minimum wage to $6.15 to $6.50 has a good chance of success, according to Jen Kern, director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. A similar law raising the New York State minimum wage by $1.50 is also now being considered by the labor committee of the State Senate.
If the Living Wage law is passed in New York City, 100,000 workers for companies receiving city subsidies and contracts, as well as some city employees, would received a substantial increase in pay, according to Deirdre Schifeling, organizing director at the Working Families Party.
Relatively few city workers earn less than $10 an hour, said Paul Sonn, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and principal author of the New York City living wage law. However, the law would apply to employees well beyond the city payroll..
Schifeling and others estimate women represent a disproportionate share--at least three-quarters--of those 100,000 New York workers in the service sector and in other low-paying jobs that could be affected. However, James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, estimates women could represent as much as 85 percent of the people benefiting from a living wage in New York.
New York's Living Wage of $10 Based on Family of Four, With Two Earners
The New York Living Wage Coalition determined $10-an-hour to be a living wage based on what it says a family of four, with two wage earners, needs to make ends meet without public assistance.
Although living wage bills have passed elsewhere since 1994, the campaign in New York City, the nation's economic capital, would apply to many more workers than any other living wage law adopted or proposed.
"We talk about sweatshops all the time, about how people are demoralized, and how people are underpaid," Ninfa Vassalo, director of Local 389 of District Council 1707, which represents city-contracted home care workers. "But this is what the city runs--a sweatshop."
"That's why we need a living wage for our workers," she said in an interview. "We really do."
New York has passed progressive legislation in the past. As early as in 1961, Mayor Robert Wagner signed into law the equivalent of living wage legislation, requiring city contractors and subcontractors to pay employees $1.50 an hour, instead of the $1 minimum wage of the time.
This was increased in 1972 to match the inflation rate, but subsequent bills were not approved. This precursor living wage would be worth about $11 today, if updated and adjusted to keep pace with inflation, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Paul Sonn, associate counsel at the center is the principal author of the proposed law.
No Comment From Manhattan Chamber of Commerce Chief
Nancy Ploeger, executive director of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, declined to comment on the living wage campaign, saying she was not aware of it. Bruce Brodoff, spokesman for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, declined to answer questions for this article. The United States Chamber of Commerce did not return several phone calls.
But if other cities' experiences are any indication, New York City businesses are likely to strongly oppose a living wage. Businesses usually contend that forcing them to pay a living wage will so increase their costs that they will have to cut jobs, relocate or go out of business. They argue that these unintended consequences of the law would outweigh the intended consequence--raising workers' living standard.
Some experts disagree with this assessment, however. Recent research by Robert Pollin at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has found that the cost increase for businesses in living wage cities is fairly low--on the order of 1 percent to 2 percent of their total cost. Pollin is co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the university.
Supporters say a living wage law could even help businesses. Parrott, chief economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, found that city contractors tend to face high rates of turnover, particularly for low-paid positions. Since studies show that raising wages will improve employees' retention and productivity, savings in the hiring and training of workers will largely offset the increase cost for these businesses, Parrott said.
In addition, a living wage could benefit community life because spending will rise in the low-income communities where contract workers will get higher wages, he said.
For example, Betty Shells, 56, is a Bronx-based home care worker for a health agency with a city contract. She currently is paid $7.44 an hour and supports herself and her husband, a member of the Teamster Union who is currently unemployed. A living wage of $10 an hour, she said, would mean she could pay more than three bills with one paycheck. If the living wage law is passed, for Betty Shells and others like her it will be "like a different day," she said.
Laurence Pantin is a journalist based in New York. She recently received an award from the Foreign Press Association to cover labor issues in Mexico and other international topics.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/586/context/archive
Women's Enews
Run Date: 06/17/01
By Laurence Pantin
WEnews correspondent
Living wage campaigns are spreading with success in 60 cities and 70 others are in range. The premise: The federal minimum wage is equivalent to less than $10,000 annually and is not sufficient for families to pay for rent, food and medical care.
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--For Rhonda Brathwaite, 29, a home care worker and a single mother, a living wage would mean she would earn $10 an hour, instead of $7.14. That increase of $2.86 translates into $6,520 a year, and that means she could pay her rent and bills on time, put better food on the table and take better care of her 7-year-old daughter, Sade.
"Some people usually pay their rent instead of buying groceries," Brathwaite said in an interview after a June living wage rally by Local 1199, New York's Health and Human Service Union of the Service Employees International Union. "And they definitely cannot pay rent and groceries on that type of income."
Anything less than a living wage, argue advocates, is poverty.
The desire to enable paid workers such as Brathwaite to support their families, pay their bills on time and eat adequately every day is what moved labor unions, community associations and religious groups to launch a campaign in New York City, urging the city council to pass a law requiring city contractors and companies receiving city subsidies to pay their workers a living wage of at least $10 an hour, or $20,800 a year. The state and federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. The federal poverty level for a family of four is $17,650 annually or $9.70 an hour for a 35-hour work week, 52 weeks a year.
Living wage bills have already passed in more than 60 cities and counties, including Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. The latest two bills were passed in Santa Monica, Calif., on May 23 and in Suffolk County on Long Island, N.Y., on June 5. Living wage campaigns are also underway in more than 70 cities and counties nationwide, including Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.
Nationwide, living wages apply only to firms doing business with or receiving subsidies from cities, counties or other entities that pass wage legislation.
New York City's four Democratic mayoral candidates have pledged their support and more than 60 candidates for the 51-member city council say they would support it if it came before them. The advocates say they are optimistic about passage.
However, the legislation has yet to be introduced and therefore the business community has not yet weighed in with its views.
Over the years, efforts to significantly increase the federal minimum wage--the last increase was in 1996--have faltered because businesses say it is too expensive and will raise the cost of doing business, resulting in lost jobs, higher prices and failed enterprises.
Pending Bill Would Raise Wages for 100,000 New York Workers
However, a bill raising the federal minimum wage to $6.15 to $6.50 has a good chance of success, according to Jen Kern, director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. A similar law raising the New York State minimum wage by $1.50 is also now being considered by the labor committee of the State Senate.
If the Living Wage law is passed in New York City, 100,000 workers for companies receiving city subsidies and contracts, as well as some city employees, would received a substantial increase in pay, according to Deirdre Schifeling, organizing director at the Working Families Party.
Relatively few city workers earn less than $10 an hour, said Paul Sonn, associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and principal author of the New York City living wage law. However, the law would apply to employees well beyond the city payroll..
Schifeling and others estimate women represent a disproportionate share--at least three-quarters--of those 100,000 New York workers in the service sector and in other low-paying jobs that could be affected. However, James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute, estimates women could represent as much as 85 percent of the people benefiting from a living wage in New York.
New York's Living Wage of $10 Based on Family of Four, With Two Earners
The New York Living Wage Coalition determined $10-an-hour to be a living wage based on what it says a family of four, with two wage earners, needs to make ends meet without public assistance.
Although living wage bills have passed elsewhere since 1994, the campaign in New York City, the nation's economic capital, would apply to many more workers than any other living wage law adopted or proposed.
"We talk about sweatshops all the time, about how people are demoralized, and how people are underpaid," Ninfa Vassalo, director of Local 389 of District Council 1707, which represents city-contracted home care workers. "But this is what the city runs--a sweatshop."
"That's why we need a living wage for our workers," she said in an interview. "We really do."
New York has passed progressive legislation in the past. As early as in 1961, Mayor Robert Wagner signed into law the equivalent of living wage legislation, requiring city contractors and subcontractors to pay employees $1.50 an hour, instead of the $1 minimum wage of the time.
This was increased in 1972 to match the inflation rate, but subsequent bills were not approved. This precursor living wage would be worth about $11 today, if updated and adjusted to keep pace with inflation, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Paul Sonn, associate counsel at the center is the principal author of the proposed law.
No Comment From Manhattan Chamber of Commerce Chief
Nancy Ploeger, executive director of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, declined to comment on the living wage campaign, saying she was not aware of it. Bruce Brodoff, spokesman for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, declined to answer questions for this article. The United States Chamber of Commerce did not return several phone calls.
But if other cities' experiences are any indication, New York City businesses are likely to strongly oppose a living wage. Businesses usually contend that forcing them to pay a living wage will so increase their costs that they will have to cut jobs, relocate or go out of business. They argue that these unintended consequences of the law would outweigh the intended consequence--raising workers' living standard.
Some experts disagree with this assessment, however. Recent research by Robert Pollin at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has found that the cost increase for businesses in living wage cities is fairly low--on the order of 1 percent to 2 percent of their total cost. Pollin is co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the university.
Supporters say a living wage law could even help businesses. Parrott, chief economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, found that city contractors tend to face high rates of turnover, particularly for low-paid positions. Since studies show that raising wages will improve employees' retention and productivity, savings in the hiring and training of workers will largely offset the increase cost for these businesses, Parrott said.
In addition, a living wage could benefit community life because spending will rise in the low-income communities where contract workers will get higher wages, he said.
For example, Betty Shells, 56, is a Bronx-based home care worker for a health agency with a city contract. She currently is paid $7.44 an hour and supports herself and her husband, a member of the Teamster Union who is currently unemployed. A living wage of $10 an hour, she said, would mean she could pay more than three bills with one paycheck. If the living wage law is passed, for Betty Shells and others like her it will be "like a different day," she said.
Laurence Pantin is a journalist based in New York. She recently received an award from the Foreign Press Association to cover labor issues in Mexico and other international topics.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/586/context/archive
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