ustxtxb_obs_2004_03_26_50_00030-00000_000.pdf

AFTERWORD Waiting for VDag STORY AND PHOTOS BY PAKITA OITZ In the city of Chihuahua, a group of women whose daughters have disappeared meet that her son, David Meza, has been wrongly imprisoned for the murder of one of the young women. If you were to ask her to design a special hell for the killers of young women in Ciudad Juarez and the city of Chihuahua, Ester Luna wouldn’t miss a beat. She knows exactly what such a place would look like \(or to be more precise, where the killers and their accomplices were forced to listen forever to deep, agonizing criesthe cries of mothers whose daughters have been murdered. Six years ago, Luna’s 15-year-old daughter, Brenda Alfaro, disappeared in Juarez. After living in limbo for years, searching for answers from government officials who either ignored her or responded with false information, Luna eventually found out that Brenda had been murdered. She still doesn’t know who killed her. On February 14V-DayLuna was one of several thousand people who gathered in Juarez to demand an end to the wave of violence that has targeted young women in northern Mexico. From the Lerdo bridge, which unites El Paso with Juarez, a flood of people walked across to Mexico, echoing the cries of Ester Luna, “Ni una Inas!” V-Day”V” for violence, valentine, and vaginawas organized by Amnesty International and author Eve Ensler, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues. The event was designed as a global protest of violence against women, but nowhere did it attract the attention it did in Juarez, where V-Day culminated with the performance of Ensler’s play with a binational cast that included Hollywood actresses Jane Fonda, Sally Field, and Christine Lahti. “I try to imagine what it would feel like to lose a daughter and not be heard, and to be treated as if your daughter’s life wasn’t important,” said Fonda. “To be threatened by the authorities when you look for answers. “I’m rich, famous, white, and I have a daughter and granddaughter,” she added. “If they died or disappeared, I know that the authorities would work hard to find them or to look for their kidnappers.” “We live between two countries,” said Hilda Solis, a Democratic congresswoman from Los Angeles, who has introduced House Resolution 466, calling for the establishment of a multinational DNA database in the state of Chihuahua. “I myself am of Mexican origin and we feel these deaths as if they were our own.” Esther Chavez Cano began tracking 30 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3/26/04