International Caravan of Justice pleads for student support

On Sunday October 24, the International Caravan of Justice, in conjunction with Amnesty International, came to campus to urge UNCG students to help support their cause in regards to the violent crimes against women in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. In Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, an alarming four hundred and thirty-eight women have been victims of rape and murder, not to mention over a hundred women who remain missing. Astonishingly, the authorities there have decided to take a lackadaisical approach in attempting to squelch the violence against women in the region, oftentimes completely ignoring specific cases as a whole. According to Legislative Coordinator for the Mexico Solidarity Network, Marcrina Cardenas de Alarcon, "The government pretends to give a solution. They arrest random men, but not the murderers." Alarcon continued to express her disdain for the government, explaining that authorities refuse to take responsibility for the crimes men are committing against women. "Mothers report their daughters missing and the government won't investigate. Instead, they blame the mothers or the daughters themselves," she emphasized. "They try to convince families that their daughters have simply run away, but that is not the case." Following Alcaron's opening comments, Soledad Aguilar, a mother whose daughter and granddaughter were kidnapped recounted her stories to shocked UNCG students. Aguilar's daughter Cecilia went missing nine years ago when she was taking her twenty-four day old daughter to the pediatrician. When Cecilia failed to return, Aguilar reported her daughter and granddaughter's disappearance to the local authorities. However, the authorities failed to act on Aguilar's report and her daughter was found dead on the banks of the Juarez River some time later. "In Juarez, there is no justice. All the mothers are in the same position," she said. "We find our daughters by chance, because there is never an investigation. Authorities laugh at us and don't take us seriously. They mishandle evidence; they don't follow through with witnesses. They don't do anything." Following Aguilar's moving story, a lawyer for women and families in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Lucha Castro, took a moment to explain her view on the devastating situation in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. "The fact is, Soledad's story is the story of hundreds of women murdered and missing. No one is looking for these women. Their kidnappings and murders are not seen as crimes in Chihuahua." Castro continued to show the audience examples of haphazard police reports, often times containing no more than one to two pages, pictures of random women not involved with the specific report, and mislabeled information. Castro expressed her frustration, stating, "Look at the care these investigators put into these reports and investigations. The fact is they don't put any care into them at all. They don't care about these women." As a whole the women urged UNCG students to contact their local congressmen or legislators and ask for support in regards to the crimes women are being exposed to in Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. To close the event, Marcrina Cardenas de Alarcon requested two things of UNCG students. "I ask you to do two things for us. Please, number one, don't forget us. And I ask you for support. I ask you to demand that these crimes be stopped. It's up to us to fix this problem as a whole." For more information, students are urged to visit www.amnesty.org.