The desperation and fear of the families who know when their daughters leave the house but not when or if they will return, together with more than 300 murders and around 600 disappearances don't seem to be enough of a motive to act to stop these crimes.
My daughter
abducted, tortured, bitten, beaten, crushed
burned, cuffed, raped, strangled
without pity
without heart
without soul
by stony-heart
by empty-soul
by devil-hand
My daughter
discarded like a throwaway, non reusable product
treated like trash
like garbage.
My daughter
despised, defamed, disgraced,
calumnied
in her virtue
vilely, falsely,
by cowards
Those in power
without heart to feel
without ears to hear
without eyes to see
without soul to seek
JUSTICE!!!
for my daughter
Eugenia Muñoz
Marisela Ortiz Rivera, teacher ad psychologist, is one of the founders of the association Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa, - an organisation made up of the family and friends of the young murdered and disappeared women. The activists of Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa work to ensure that public opinion sustains the denouncing of the phenomenon of "femicide". Marisela has been battling for years against the culture of silence and the coruption of the institutions. Her life changed when her best pupil, Alejandra, was abducted in February 2001 and never found again. With the girl's mother, she had the strength to do what no one else in Ciudad Juarey had dared speak out. She founded Nuestras Hijas de regreso a casa ("Bring our daughters back home"), an association of women united by grief, by desperation, by the thirst for justice for crimes almost always unsolved and unpunished.
Last year , Marisela was in Padua where the Women in Black and the women of the Pandora Centre interviewed her:
Where does a woman find the courage to confront what you have, threats, attempts to kill you, bullying, and carry on in spite of everything? How do you live with the fear?
It's not a decision that I took in at any one time. I believe it's a long process. It's something I learned from all I've experienced in these years. I think you must have the strength when you have these examples before you: a group of mothers who have lost their daughters in such a tragic way, who live without sleep and are always thinking of what their daughters suffered, and who despite this pain struggle to keep going, to be there for their children, to seek justice and to try to prevent other mothers from suffering this terrible pain. So, when these examples are there for you, you can't do anything other than carry on. For me it is a great commitment, the admiration and respect that I have for these women makes me carry on, and besides I have a family who have always supported me. Sure, it was hard at first. As I said, it's a process that isn't complete from in a single day.
Fear has always existed and there's no simple way of overcoming it. Knowing each day that you could lose your life at the hands of people without scruples is a terrible thing. I believe I will never overcome the fear, but still I've learned what to do with it. At first it was a fear that paralised me, a fear that could have made me draw back to do other things: my own life, my children, my family, but now I've decided to continue with the fear and I've said that even with fear we can go on.
Fear cannot make me hide under the bed. Fear must not make me fold my arms. I must confront the situation to make myself braver and so that the people who threaten me don't see my weakness.
The complete interview (in Italian) together with:
- Micaela from Women of Sand by Humberto Robles
- Juarez for the Vagina Monologues of Eve Ensler
- A short file on Marisela Ortiz
- A short bibliography
Costs 3 Euro and can be bought from
Centro Culturale Pandora
Donne in Nero
Via Tripoli 3
35100 PADOVA
e-mail orvivia@gmail.com
http://centropandora.splinder.com/
http://retedidonne.wordpress.com/
