Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:03:05 -0600
From: fnsnews@nmsu.edu
Subject: Legislator Raises Alarm about Sonora Femicides
Sonora News State Lawmaker Calls Femicides an Emergency

A Sonora state legislator has called on her state government to declare a state of emergency due to the rise of women's murders. Patricio Patino Fierro, a deputy for the Party of the Democratic Revolution in the Sonora State Congress and a member of the lawmaking body's women's commission, urged all three branches of government this week to agree on a joint plan to address the phenomenon of femicide as soon as possible. Patino requested that state officials be trained to handle the violence, and the general public be educated about it. “Public servants need to be trained to attend to these type of situations,” Patino said.  

To much fanfare, the state attorney general's office teamed up with other government agencies and representatives of the Sonora-based non-governmental group Citizens for Non-Violence to form an anti-femicide commission last fall. But statistics quoted by Citizens for Non-violence report at least 22 women murdered so far in Sonora this year. According to the group, 123 women were murdered in Sonora during the last five years,Patricia Alonso Ramirez, the group's director, recently criticized state law enforcement authorities for not taking the crimes seriously. Alonso contended that high officials were “hiding” the violence in order to not scare away investors.  

“The severe problem of mistreatment of women continues to be a non-priority for the current government,” maintained Alonso. She scored the state attorney general's office for having a specialized investigative unit dedicated to stolen automobiles but not one for women's murders. The activist questioned figures from the state attorney general's office that 77.68 percent of women's murder cases had been resolved.   “The majority of the guilty parties are on the streets, without the legal authorities doing anything to stop the wave of violence against women,” Alonso said.  

On the legal front, Deputy Patino proposed the formation of a special legislative commission to take up the femicide issue and put new laws on the books that have a gender perspective. Domestic violence is considered the leading cause of women's homicides in Sonora , but suspected narco-executions and Juarez style rape-murders are registered on the crime rolls too. Murders have been reported in San Luis Rio Colorado , Nogales , Agua Prieta, Hermosillo ,and other localities in the border state.

Sources: cimacnoticias.com, July 26, 2005. La Cronica, July 25, 2005.
Article by Luis Gonzalez. La Jornada, July 17, 2005.
Article by Cristobal Garcia Bernal. Notimex, November 15, 2004.
Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line,
U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces , New Mexico
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