Monday, May 26, 2008
On Mexico’s Cold Femicide Trail ‘the Dead Don't Talk’
By Kent Paterson
Norma Ledezma won't let up in her quest to find out who killed her 16-year-old daughter. But more than six years after Paloma Angelica Escobar Ledezma's body was discovered not far from state police headquarters outside Chihuahua City, in Mexico, Ledezma's mission isn't getting any easier. In a recent phone interview, Ledezma said key police officials who were involved in the "investigation” of Paloma's March 2002 rape-murder died within the past year. Ledezma, coordinator of the Chihuahua City-based Justice for Our Daughters organization, named two former Chihuahua State Judicial Police commanders, Juan Jose Mayorga Solis and Gloria Cobos, as the now-deceased law enforcement officials who were responsible for mishandling Paloma's still-unsolved case.
"The dead don't talk. If they are dead, the investigations are closed," Ledezma said. "This complicates it for us, but it makes it easier for the authorities to say, 'This person is dead.'"
According to the Chihuahua City resident, death certificates show that Mayorga passed away in June 2007 and Cobos in May 2007. Diabetes was considered the cause of death for both individuals, Ledezma added.
Placed above Mayorga and Cobos in the police hierarchy was former Chihuahua State Judicial Police chief Vicente Gonzalez, who succumbed of a heart attack earlier this year, according to relatives quoted in the Mexican press. Gonzalez reportedly suffered from diabetes, too. The passings of Gonzalez and company throw more dust on a trail of femicide that stretches from Ciudad Juarez to Chihuahua City. Similar to many other victims in both cities, Paloma attended the ECCO computer school and was last reported seen at the privately-owned institution. Despite concrete leads, no credible arrests were ever made in any of the ECCO or other cases handled by Mayorga and Cobos. Indeed, a pattern of fabricating scapegoats emerged in several investigations.
In the Escobar affair, Cobos was quickly exposed planting evidence on an ex-boy friend of the murder victim in an unsuccessful attempt to frame the young man. Caught in the act, the police commander was then officially drummed off the force and charged with making false statements by the Chihuahua State Attorney General's Office (PGJE), the same agency for which she worked. After making bail, Cobos cryptically threatened law enforcement officials with spilling the beans if she received any further trouble, according to a 2003 report by Ledezma's group. The PGJE later informed the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that Cobos served 11 months in prison for her misdeeds in the Escobar episode.
Prior to Paloma's murder, Cobos was the field investigator in several other cases of disappeared or murdered young women in Chihuahua City. Not a single case assigned to Cobos was cleared up, according to Ledezma.
Ulises Perzabal, a former Chihuahua City resident who was once accused along with his US born wife Cynthia Kiecker of one the Chihuahua City murders, remembered meeting Cobos. Now living in the United States, Perzabal recalled an encounter with Cobos two years before he and his wife were charged in the March 2003 murder of 16-year-old Viviana Rayas. According to Perzabal, Cobos and her men showed up at a small café and bookstore he and Kiecker were running in downtown Chihuahua City in 2001. Cobos let it be known that the artistic couple was not welcome in a business zone that was favored for urban redevelopment by Governor Patricio Martinez, he said. A man Perzabal described as a state police officer later showed up at a new store Perzabal and Kiekcer started, the Templo Mayor, carrying a purported note from Governor Martinez that warned Perzabal to hightail it out of Dodge.
Digging in their heels, the Chihuahua City couple, whose artistic and political leanings elicited rejection from some conservative quarters, soon had another interesting visitor on their hands. A veteran police official who was brought out of retirement to oversee the PGJE's field investigations of the Chihuahua City femicides during 2002-2003, Juan Jose Mayorga came to his new post with a reputation as a policeman whose career reportedly dated back to the days of the so-called White Brigade and the Mexican government's campaign against dissidents and suspected leftist guerrillas in the 1970s. The use of torture and forced disappearance were hallmarks of the Dirty War. At first, Mayorga entered the Templo Mayor store as an apparent customer, Perzabal said, but later returned asking the merchant about disappeared women.
In June 2003, Perzabal and Kiecker were suddenly arrested and charged with the killing of 16-year-old Viviana Rayas. Publicly connecting the crime to a Satanic-like ritual, the PGJE claimed the couple made voluntary confessions. But the two distraught suspects soon told a different story to the press: Chihuahua state policemen used electric shocks and other forms of torture to extract false murder confessions. The couple's account was found credible by investigators from the US Department of State and Guadalupe Morfin, President Fox's special femicide commissioner from 2003 to 2006. The PGJE produced no real evidence to prove its allegations, and a Chihuahua judge acquitted Kiecker and Perzabal of the Rayas murder in December 2004.
Perzabal identified Mayorga as the man who supervised the torture session that produced the "confessions" in the Rayas murder. In a virtual replay of Kiekcer-Perzabal, Mayorga was involved in the 2003 detention and torture of David Meza Argueta. Accused of killing his cousin Neyra Azucena Cervantes, a 19-year-old Chihuahua City computer school student and store clerk, Meza was finally acquitted of the charges but only after spending almost three years in prison.
During the nearly 18 months he spent in a Chihuahua City prison awaiting trial, Perzabal met "hundreds" of prisoners who blamed Mayorga, Cobos and other PGJE officers for torturing them, he added. A 2004 report by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission recommended that criminal charges be filed against Mayorga for the 2002 arrest and torture of Daniel Armando Torres Felix in Chihuahua City.
"Everyone accused Mayorga, Cobos, Saenz (Rocio) and all the ones who tortured me and David," said Perzabal, recalling his conversations with fellow inmates. Ironically, Mayorga, who was eventually charged with abuse of authority, reportedly died in the same Chihuahua prison where his alleged torture victims were housed.
The deaths of Mayorga, Cobos and Gonzalez came at a time when the femicides were getting serious international scrutiny in the Organization of American States and the European Union. A report from the IACHR on the Paloma Escobar case is expected out this year. The findings will likely urge the federal Mexican government to finally deliver justice for Norma Ledezma's daughter. If the Mexican government does not comply with the recommendations, the matter could wind up in the Inter-American Court for Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica, which has the power to issue mandatory orders to member states including Mexico. Already, three cases of femicide victims from Ciudad Juarez are pending in the Costa Rica-based court. The legal developments are shaping up as an important test of Mexico's compliance to international treaties and agreements.
Mario Alberto Solorzano, an attorney for the Mexico City-based Mexican Commission for the Defense and Promotion of Human Rights who is assisting Paloma's family in the IACHR, said the commissioners were struck by the similarities between the Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua femicides. The upcoming IACHR report indicates that the Mexican government did not provide satisfactory answers to the IACHR's inquiries about Paloma's slaying, Solorzano said. Stressing that trying and punishing officials for obstruction of justice is a "central part" of ending impunity in the femicides, Solorzano acknowledged that the possibilities for obtaining justice are waning with the passage of time.
"The people inside the institution charged with investigating, who in some way had an opportunity to give testimony about what went on with the commissions of the crimes or with the investigations, are dying or transferred to other offices," Solorzano lamented.
Although three important police officials are dead, Perzabal contended that other living authorities or ex-authorities with more decision-making authority than Vicente Gonzalez and his underlings were ultimately the ones responsible for the tortures, frame-ups and suspected cover-ups that characterized the femicide saga. Perhaps worse yet, the examples of law-breaking officials going unpunished sow fertile ground for similar abuses in the future, he added. Appealing to the global community, Perzabal urged an international "people's trial" of former Governor Martinez and other high officials of his administration. "They should be tried," he insisted.
For her part, Norma Ledezma vowed to continue pursuing justice for Paloma, the young woman who Chihuahua City human rights activist Lucha Castro has called the symbol of the "broken wings of our movement." In Spanish "paloma" means dove.
"God gave me this strength to continue. I owe it to my daughter," Ledezma said. "I want to know the truth. I want to know who hurt her."
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