“Most of the victims were young women from poor families who worked in the assembly plants, known as ‘maquiladoras,’ that sprung up around the city to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Many were sexually assaulted before they died.”- Hispanically Speaking News, 2/4/2012
In the course of fighting social injustice, Mexican activist Norma Andrade has been shot, stabbed and left for dead more than once. Her daughter, Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade, was kidnapped and brutalized before being murdered in 2001, prompting the controversial advocate to co-found, “Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa,” or “May Our Daughters Return Home.”
Since then, Andrade’s other daughter, Malu Garcia, the director of the group, has been forced to take haven in safer undisclosed surroundings. Yet through it all, Norma Andrade forges ahead in her campaign for justice. It’s as though she’s invincible.
The missing
On the other side of the U.S. border, across from El Paso, Texas, hundreds of working women have been slain over the last decade in and around the manufacturing town of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Evidence indicates many were tortured before being killed. One of those victims was Norma Andrade’s daughter, Lilia. Numerous others remain unaccounted for.
Outraged and heartbroken, the death of Andrade’s daughter did not stifle her. She rallied with grief stricken others who felt a similar pain. The Associated Press article, “Mexico Activist in Juarez Women Killings Wounded,” published February 3, 2012, explains:
“Andrade founded an organization of relatives of women who have gone missing or been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. Her 17-year-old daughter was tortured, raped and killed in 2001.”
That organization is “May Our Daughters Return Home.”
It’s “femicide”
Many of the missing, as well as the identified, are women who were employed at industrial sites, known as “maquiladoras,” or assembly plants. These facilities are typically located along border towns heavily controlled by the drug cartels where fatalities grow unchecked on a daily basis. Innocent victims are frequently caught in the middle of the deadly violence.
In December 2011, the United Nations issued a press release, using an exacting phrase for the atrocities being committed near the “maquiladoras”:
“Ms. Norma Andrade began work as an advocate for women’s human rights, in particular, demanding justice for victims of femicide in the State of Chihuahua.”
The invincible
Since becoming an unrelenting crusader for the victims of “femicide,” Norma Andrade has struck a chord that’s loud and clear. She’s recently been physically assailed, in Ciudad Juarez and now elsewhere. A hispanicallyspeaking.com item dated February 4, 2012, “Mexican Human Rights Activist’s Norma Andrade Face Slashed by Attacker,” describes some of the disturbing details:
“An unknown assailant attacked Andrade at around 8:00 a.m. Friday while she was walking her granddaughter to school, a spokesman for the Mexico City District Attorney’s Office told Efe, adding that she is receiving treatment for a five-centimeter (two-inch) gash in her cheek.”
The same piece states, “The aggression occurred two months after an attacker shot the founder of the ‘May Our Daughters Return Home’ non-governmental group multiple times in the violence-wracked northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.”
Andrade, who was hospitalized for the February assault, is expected to fight on with a vengeance.
The country’s federal Government Secretariat, President Felipe Calderon, Amnesty International and Mexico City’s District Attorney, among others, have all come out against the violence being committed by the drug cartels, akin to that which took the life of Nora Andrade’s daughter; however, nothing has been done to stop it.
Women like Andrade, who are not afraid of confrontation, are the only ones who have had any effect in Mexico. Without more people like her, sadly, it looks as though in the future, when Norma Andrade is no longer able to carry on, the Mexican drug cartels will still be there.