Who protects the women of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua?
It is 10.15 on the night of 19 February 2001. People living near waste ground close to a maquila (an assembly plant) in Ciudad Juárez dial 060, the number of the municipal police emergency services, to inform them that an apparently naked young woman is being beaten and raped by two men in a car. No patrol car is dispatched in response to the first call. Following a second call, a police unit is sent out but does not arrive until 11.25pm, too late to intervene. The car has already left. Four days earlier, the mother of Lilia Alejandra García reported her 17-year-old daughter missing to the Unidad de Atención a Víctimas de Delitos Sexuales y Contra de la Familia, Unit for the Care of Victims of Sexual Offences and Offences against the Family. Lilia Alejandra, the mother of a baby and a three-year old boy, was working at a maquila called Servicios Plásticos y Ensambles. At 7.30pm on the previous night, her colleagues saw her walking towards an unlit area of waste ground near the factory.
