Mexico: Argentine Forensics Speak Out on Disappeared Women

The Argentine Forensic Anthropologist Team (EAAF), a civil organisation that has assisted with victim identification for massacres in several countries, has spoken out about its work on disappeared women in Ciudad Juarez.

The EAAF, originally hired to conduct research in 2005, has been working to match the remains of missing women with collected DNA samples from more than 195 people who have reported the disappearance of relatives as far back as 1993.

In response to the recent discovery of 50 unidentified remains that have been stored at a local morgue for more than a year, the EAAF has addressed the political failures to stem the chronic problem of disappearing women in Ciudad Juarez.

In a report published in 2010, a special prosecutor in Ciudad Juarez listed 379 women murdered and 4,456 missing between 1993 and 2005. Figures from NGOs in the area, as well as from the EAAF, suggest that these numbers are in fact higher.

“It was not an easy job,” said Sofía Egaña, member of the EAAF, whose future in the area is now uncertain after two years of escalating disputes with the city government.

In many cases, investigations have been complicated by incomplete court records and physical remains, or delays in processing bodies stored indefinitely in morgues.

“It seems that they have not spent these years pursuing claims,” Egaña said. “There is an alarming lack of institutional memory.”

In particular, the Office of Chihuahua, which originally hired the EAAF in 2005, claims the civil organisation did not provide a full forensic report of its investigation in 2011. The office also says it does not know why the 50 bodies in question have remained in a morgue for this length of time.

The EAAF denies the office’s claim about its reports, citing one for each of the past two years, and has countered by pointing out that the persistence of the underlying problem remains as though time has stopped.

“Again mothers are protesting, and again there is a demand as if nothing happened in the past,” Egaña said. “Yes, there was an effort.”

Local civil organisations say that in the first two months of this year, at least 26 women have been reported missing in Ciudad Juarez.

08 March 2012

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/currentaffairs/newsfromlatinamerica/mexico-argentine-forensics-speak-out-on-disappeared-women/