I continue to gather more information on the killings of vulnerable,
voiceless peoples by bigots or other such thugs. It is not a happy read,
but very important. I plea with all people of consicence to please DO
NOT FORGET THE SILENCED ONES OF THE U.S. and other countries of the AMERIKKKAS!
Keep them in your hearts and pay attention whenever you are where such people
are under assault. Please, it must be done if we are to stop genocide anywhere else.
July 20, 2004
swaneagle harijan
Serial Torture Murders From Chihuahua to Edmonton,
Guatemala to Alaska: American Death Squads and
Connecting the Genocidal Dots
Living in the United States forces dwellers to either
face the horrors of what is being done to crush all
humanity impeding profit or to participate in the
myriad facets of complicity. The most privileged
people on the planet perch on remnants of dreams
reduced to the hideous nightmare of looming total
global annihilation. Each must heed the call of
conscience. The roots of war infect planetary
society. Iraq is the acceleration of 500 hundred
years of the blueprint of domination taking us to the
final brink. What follows is the torture slaughter
carried out by social petty tyrants confident in the
disposability of their victims in a climate of
spreading patriarchal fundamentalist genocide never
known on such a massive scale. Such killers do the
dirty work of those in power. It can and must be
halted.
The torture murders of thousands of marginalized
women, Indigenous peoples, homeless, immigrants,
homosexuals and others on the increasingly populated
fringes is but an indicater of what faces most of us.
6,000 serial murders occur annually in the U.S.,
leading the world in such killings. Predominantly
done by white males, this phenomenon is spreading,
especially in South Africa and the former Soviet
Union. The American Death Squads are here and they
are us. Racism, sexism, classism, elitism and
violence are essential to colonialism. The
institutionalization of military corporate agenda
along with alienation, destruction of culture,
families and community and the stark absence of trust
sew up the success of war culture. Dwindling privilege
still keeps too many far removed from the desperation
creeping ever closer. Time is short...
On the evening of October 16, 2003 i saw a deeply
disturbing report on a Mexican News channel about the
murders of Immigrants near San Diego along the Mexican
border. Several men had been beaten and killed, one
of whom had been in the U.S. as an agricultural worker
for 30 years. A swastika was sprayed on a wall of the
shanty camp where they had lived.
These murders occurred in an area where Tom Metzger,
of White Aryan Resistance, had called for bigots to
shine headlights along the Rio Grande at night
exposing the vulnerable people coming across the
border back in the early 90's. Anti-racists stood
facing the bigots holding mirrors. Sadly, much more
than mirrors are needed...
The news report went on to cover the situation of
serial killings of young women in Ciudad Juarez and
Chihuahua whose numbers climb past 380, with 400 to
1000 more missing. Amnesty International has recently
put the numbers of murders at 401. 2 more bodies of
young women have been found, one in April and the
other in May 2004. It has been revealed that several
of the victims have had their organs surgically
removed, indicating the involvement of a doctor.
Several bodies found have their entire insides
missing. Some victims were allegedly killed during
the filming of notorious snuff films - pornography
that mixes in simulated or real killing.
These murders of young women began in 1993 when NAFTA
(North American Free Trade Agreement) ushered in
multi-national corporate factories (maquilas) close to
the border where El Paso and Juarez meet on the
opposing banks of the Rio Grande.
A Mexican Mother, Maria Esperanza Hernandez, and her
19 year old daughter, Maria del Carmen Castillo
Hernandez, both "undocumented workers, were beaten to
death on February 1, 2004 in Fremont, California.
When a resident came out to investigate the noise
early in the morning, he saw a tall white man with a
club over the bodies who fled in a car with 3 other
white men. The weapon was left with the bloodied
bodies of the women. Police have called this a
possible hate crime. This crime has received very
little coverage and virtually nothing from alternative
media.
Anti Immigration websites are common and a disturbing
development is the passing out of the first 6
printings of Deception Dollars at Peace and Justice
rallies and marches. These "911 Conspiracy Dollars"
display many websites on half a dozen different
printings. Many of the sites, such as
www.infowars.org, feature anti-immigrant, homophobic,
anti-feminist and pro-gun articles. One site,
"American Free Press", formerly known as "The
Spotlight", is outright white supremacist. Links
often lead to hateful diatribes against immigrants and
have been attributed to influencing attacks and
killings that increase along the U.S./Mexican border
by vigilante militia types.
Many activists are attracted to the Deception Dollars due
to the focus of what happebned on 9/11. Few ever bother
looking at the web sites, yet pass the "dollars" out anyway.
As one who has been aware of the activities of the extreme racist right,
i suspected something the first time i saw one. I did check
the sites out and was horrified. In my efforts to address
this with the woman who prints than and those who are supporting
the so-called researchers, i have been discouraged.
Justification for relying on known bigots for information is
given as the "importance of exposing the 9/11 conspiracy"
regardless of who the source is. Alex Jones and ex-FBI agent
Ted Gunderson are among speakers who have a long history in the
racist militia/Christian Patriot/Gun Show movement.
David Icke, who is often linked to sites, has made inroads
among the activist "left" and new agers even tho he has
associated with holocaust denier, David Irving, and Combat 18,
a violent British neo nazi group. Icke claims the fraudulent
"Protocols of the Elders of Zion", fabricated to discredit
Russian revolutionaries by portraying them as dupes of the Jews,
is an actual expose of a real secret plot to rule the world.
Icke also denounces feminists and homosexuals in his writings.
Several months ago while i was home in eastern
Washington, i heard a story on CBC (Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation) radio about the
disappearance of 100 Indigenous women from Alberta
whose bodies were being discovered in a dumping ground
in southeastern Edmonton. This report went on to
describe the dozens of bodies of prostitutes found
buried on the pig farm of a man on trial for their
murders, Robert Pickton, charged with the deaths of 15
and as many as 67. The disappearance of at least 8
more Indigenous young women on a lonely stretch of
highway north of Vancouver, B.C. was also mentioned.
When doing research on the murdered women in the
Alberta region, i came across a website "500
Murdered/Missing Indigenous Women in Western Canada".
The scope of what is going on defies description and
illustrates how horror grows when privileged people
play ostrich and fail to act when atrocity occurs. A
Canadian article stated that the sexual abuse in
residential schools, notorious for their exploitation
of indigenous children, laid the groundwork for the
murders due to inaction on the part of authorities and
the racism of police towards victims and their
families. The site included serial murders of
indigenous women in Alaska, many unsolved as well. It
stresses the outrage expressed when bodies are
initially discovered only to immediately diminish once
it is revealed that the victims are Aboriginal.
Murders of Indigenous men in Saskatoon by RCMP have
come to light over the past year. The sport of
driving men far outside the city limits in sub zero
weather leaving them to die was interrupted when one
survived the long walk back to tell his story. The
capture of Mathew Stonechild, a 19 year old Cree, by
police before his frozen body was found in Saskatoon's
outskirts has brought unusual attention. Tho nearly a
decade later, it is serving as a catalyst for the
ignored fates of others.
Over the past 5 years, i have been collecting articles
about the murders of Indigenous people in border
towns of New Mexico, Arizona, South Dakota, Nebraska
and Alaska. I first heard about these more recent
serial murders in late summer of 1999 while i was
camped with my young daughter on hill above Pauline
Whitesinger's cornfield at Big Mountain, Arizona. I
had a short wave radio hanging from the Juniper tree
above my outdoor kitchen. It was a report on 8
unsolved killings in Rapid City, South Dakota and 2 in
White Clay, Nebraska being protested by Lakota people
and supporters. Several days later, i found an
article in the Navajo Hopi Observer about 9 unsolved
murders of Indians in Winslow, Arizona. The scope of
what is going on here is staggering.
In bordertowns surrounding the Navajo Reservation,
unsolved serial murders of Indigenous people continue.
Farmington, New Mexico has been called the most racist
city in the United States. Several Indian Country
Today articles describe the callous torture murders
and the police who treat victims families with
disdain. Tho 2 men have been convicted in some of the
murders, countless others remain unsolved.
When Pauline Whitesinger, another nonIndian friend and
i were in Farmington back in 1997, i was able to talk
to the wife of a medicine man (both Dine) who told me
how homeless Indians have hot grease thrown upon them
by restaurant workers. She said it was no better than
in 1973 when 3 white teenagers were charged in the
torture killings of 3 Navajos. The light sentences
that they received brought thousands of angry, yet
peaceful, Dine peoples and their supporters out of the
hills into the streets where they were met with billy
clubbing police shooting rubber bullets and tear gas.
The genocide lives on...
A young Navajo musician, Corey Allison, said in June
of 2001, that he was in school with young men who were
virulently racist, one whom released a shopping cart
from a motorcycle traveling at high speed killing a
Navajo. His music is permeated with the memories of
Navajos beaten and murdered by the young people he
went to school with. "Racism breeding ignorance and
ignorance breeding racism." White teenagers beat
Indigenous teenagers with baseballs bats. A Navajo
woman was pummeled to death with a sledgehammer by 2
men on the edge of Farmington.
One young woman, Ramona Tewangoitewa, lost her brother
Pernell, a cosmology student, several years ago. In
the summer of 2000, she organized a vigil in a park in
Farmington with the families of 10 victims. She told
me over the phone that officials are aware of the
connections with white supremacist groups, but wish to
keep it under wraps. 2 white men, Leslie Engh and
Robert Fry, were convicted in 2000 of the murders of
two Dine people and have also been charged in 2 more
killings. One gang they belonged to called itself KKK
"Krazy Kowboy Killers". Ramona last saw her brother
at the bar where one of the convicted men worked as a
bouncer and the other frequented. Parnell's
incinerated car was found at the site where he went to
party, but never his body. Police told her he is
still considered missing.
Since the enactment of Public Law 93-531 in 1974,
calling for the forced relocation of nearly 18,000
traditional Dine (Navajo) and 100 Hopi, nearly half of
the 16,000 people already relocated have died. Many
have been murdered, others die of broken hearts and
still others by suicide. This is all in the name of
corporate driven "progress" freeing the land to expand
Peabody Coal Company's massive strip mine. Coal is fed
into a 273 mile long slurry line, built by Becktel,
along with 3 million gallons of water daily sucked
from the Black Mesa Aquifer to the world's largest
coal fired power plant, the Mohave Generating
Station in Laughlin, Nevada. This monstrosity is the
source of electricity to Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las
Vegas, as well as the worst emitter of green house
gases on the planet. The use of precious water has
drained the aquifer and dried ancient springs used
by both Hopi and Dine peoples. Sinkholes are appearing
and families must travel many miles to fill water barrels.
Then there are the murders of prostitutes all over the
U.S., largely unsolved, from Seattle to Spokane, from
Baton Rouge and New Orleans to Columbus, Ohio and
Westchester County, New York. The numbers of murdered
women, mostly Indigenous, along a truckers route thru
Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Mississippi have grown
to 11.
The men arrested in Spokane and Seattle were each
questioned by police and released years before being
apprehended, charged and convicted. More women were
consequently killed illustrating the lax action on the
part of police typical of murders affecting human
beings devalued due to circumstances, poverty or lack
of status. As the economic situation worsens in the
U.S., people are driven to do the most demeaning acts
for the sake of a few bucks. Those who have more hold
on with fear responding to media driven scapegoating
and criminalizing of the most marginalized and
vulnerable peoples. Police states have the way paved
due to apathy and compassion fatigue.
Robert Yates, convicted of the serial murders of
prostitutes in Spokane was in the Army for 30 years.
John Eric Armstrong was convicted of up to 300
killings of prostitutes all over the world as he
traveled with the Navy. Gary Ridgeway, convicted
Green River Killer, carried his bible everywhere with
him during his trial. At one time he told police he
had been doing them a favor by killing the women.
When Berkeley Women In Black vigiled in front of the
Mexican Consulate February 13, 2004 along with the
Mourning Mother Puppets, we succeeded in bringing some
attention to the situation in Ciudad Juarez. We were
joined by sex workers striving to decriminalize
prostitution due to the dangers that economically
stressed women face. When predators strike or when
women want to get out of the sex trade to find more
acceptable work, they are handicapped by the
illegitimacy of their jobs. Reporting serial rapers
or killers becomes difficult. Given that prostitution
is among the top three money makers on the earth along
with weapons and drugs, it makes no sense to vilify
people forced into an economic system directly tied
into the war machine.
Prostitution is spreading rapidly as is homelessness
and drug addiction. Unprecedented numbers of families
face dire poverty creating a refugee class not seen
since the massacres of whole Indigenous communities
forced thousands to flee on foot or the migrations of
jobless during the depression. The average age of of
a homeless person is said to be 9 years. Up to a third
of all homeless people are Veterans, some missing both
legs or other limbs. Elderly people walk all night
long carting possessions searching for a safe, warm
spot to rest. In 2003, 38 homeless people died on the
streets of Seattle. 40% of them were murdered. So
far in 2004, 15 homeless have died with over half
murdered. Seattle Women In Black vigil each time
another person dies on the streets.
(169 homeless died in San Francisco in 2002, but
no indication of how many murdered.) On June 4 of
this year, airman Corey Marques Jasmin, 20, allegedly
robbed an adult bookstore, then shot to death 2 homeless
women, Otilia Carrington and Rickshella Harrison with a
rifle in Fairfied. Their bodies were found a mile apart.
Displaced women hide rather than risk rape and mothers struggle
to protect children from predators. What does this say about
the North American continent?
Serial killings of homosexuals continue unsolved as
well in Albequerque, New Mexico, Atlanta, Georgia and
other communities. The recent killing of a
transgender teen from Fremont, California is in line
with the philosophy that also condones the killing of
abortion providers. Numerous transvestites and
transgendered people have been killed in the vicinity
of San Diego, CA and Tijuana, Baja California.
The killing of a Dine homosexual hardly left the
awareness of the reservation.
Most alarming is the situation in Ciudad Juarez due to
sheer numbers, attacks against families trying to
investigate, abuse of families and suspects by police,
failure of officials to act, that is spreading to the
city of Chihuahua as well. Several websites detail the
conditions of the bodies when discovered. Mutilation,
dismemberment, rape, plastic bags over the heads are
among the techniques these young women endured before
death. Some were alive for days as they inched toward
death at the hands of their abductors. Often, the
skeletal remains are suddenly found with several
arranged neatly side by side with a pair flip flops by
the remains indicating the identity.
Much of what is described is horridly similar to
techniques used by death squad graduates from the
School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
One can't help but wonder if these lurid crimes are
not an indicator of the spreading philosophy of
death and torture known to be inculcated at the SOA.
Not one suspect apprehended has been convicted due to
the sloppiness, if not outright complicity, of police.
Most suspects were tortured into confessing, then
released. One Egyptian man was jailed, yet 7
more women were killed during that time. Tho he has a
history of violent sexual assaults against women in
the United States, he was eventually released due to
lack of evidence. Police have been involved in
torturing prisoners, then showing them photos of a
woman being raped and mutilated. Wealthy drug lords
are increasingly suspected. Some believe it is a
cross border crime. The strangled body of a 13 year
old girl found behind a Castro Valley Carrow's in
May of 2003 is now believed to have come from Ciudad
Juarez. Given what is happening all over North America,
it would not be surprising if such
killers were not part of the racist sanctioning of
such behavior that comes from the United States
Military and it's part in the training and arming of
the Mexican Military and paramilitaries.
Many bigoted militia leaders i have talked to were
Special Forces in Vietnam, trained killers with
nowhere to fit. The emergence of such a vigilante
mindset along the border, masked and armed,
"defending" America from invasion by desperate
economic refugees simply seeking work to feed their
families, is an omen of what is about to explode
across the land. As in Hitler's Germany, it was the most
undesired, the untouchables, so to speak, that were
eliminated first. The homeless, the homosexuals, the
prostitutes, the mentally ill.
NAFTA was the force setting up the dynamics along
the border with the development of the maquiladoras.
The noxious pollution dumped by factories into the Rio
Grand that caused the births of over 30 brainless
babies in the early 90's has been eclipsed with
murders largely ignored until the past year or so.
How corporations collaborate with death squads must be
addressed. Many of the maquiladora workers killed
were beginning to organize for improving conditions
little better than slavery. CENECO, Mallinckrodt
Medical, Morteres Electicos, Electomex, LEAR 173,
Admeco, FASCO, Venusa are some of the companies that
murdered women were working for at the time of their
deaths. Aloca, GE, DuPont, Ford, GMC, Thomson, RCA,
Honeywell, 3M, Amway, Walmart, TDK and Kenwood are
among the American businesses using mostly young
women workers without addressing safety and security
issues. The workers are expendable.
In December of 2003, Jane Fonda brought attention to
the rape, mutilations and murders of 700 Guatemalan
women occurring since 2001. In a June 6,
2004 Guardian, UK, article, the rape, torture murders
of over 400 women in Guatemala City is described as
"brutality so extreme that it goes beyond ordinary
crime". The situation is likened to Ciudad Juarez.
Nearly 6 times that number of men have been killed,
but they are not tortured like the women are. A
teenage girl was found after being raped, beaten,
stabbed, tied with barb wire and then finally killed
by a severe blow to the back of her head. Police are
suspected in some of the murders.
Colombia receives the largest military budget
from the U. S. second only to Israel. Hundreds of
people have been selectively massacred in the name of
the so-called drug war. On May 19 and 20, 2004, 12
farmers had their throats slit by paramilitaries and
were dropped off at different places along a road in
Arauca. This region is particularly impacted due to
the presence of an oil pipeline. Women facing dire
poverty are forced into prostitution and also are
raped, tortured and murdered. 75% of refugees are
women and children, here and globally. 90% of
casualties in "war" are also women and children.
The world has been collectively horrified by the
exposure of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Those aware of conditions in prisons, on reservations,
in ghettos are already familiar with the cruelty and
militaristic sadism of police, INS, Border Patrol,
prison guards in the U.S. The Department of Interior,
which is "in charge" of American Indian reservations
was also in charge of Abu Ghraib and other prisons in
Iraq. This history of torture rides hand in hand with
colonialism, invasion, occupation, rape, pillage and
slaughter. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Bush
Inquisition, the horrific nature of domination thrives
on fear, division and lack of unity.
The circumstances surrounding the murders of the
young women of Ciudad Juarez and serial murders
elsewhere must be utilized to educate activists and
citizens everywhere impacted by the killing policies
of corporate globalization. The murderous racism of
the U.S. government and it's military must be halted
and dismantled. The partnership between murderers and
colonialism must be terminated for all time.
Activists must integrate addressing the failure of
ending genocide in the Americas into ending genocide
elsewhere. We can never hope to stop war if we cannot
incorporate the failures that plague us here. Peace
camps utilizing white skin privilege must be
established everywhere such serial murders occur to
first and foremost put an end to one more death. The
killers must be apprehended and the roots of why such
atrocity thrives must be destroyed.
How soldiers, paramilitaries, special forces become
maniacal brutes is familiar to survivors of domestic
violence. Children who witness their mothers being
beaten often grow up to be either victims or
perpetrators themselves. Now there are millions of
dispossessed children that are recruited into forces
like the Taliban as well as the notorious CIA trained
Kaibeles of Guatemala and Chiapas, whose hallmark is
the hacking open of the bellies of pregnant women and
shooting or bashing the fetus. U.S. soldiers
returning from Afghanistan have murdered their wives
and one woman soldier killed her husband. Wives of
soldiers tell that their husbands come home changed
forever, withdrawn, easily angered, and too often,
violent.
Everywhere U.S. military bases are established,
prostitution emerges, followed by under reported
murders of women. This has spread to all forms of
militarization world wide.
What is it going to take before the genocidal dots are
connected? These serial rapes and killings, also
occurring in the Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Iraq,
Afghanistan, the Balkans, and elsewhere on the planet,
are indicators of what awaits those of us who can act,
but refuse to see how far advanced fascism is at this
point.
May the deaths of these many women and men who have
been so brutally killed outrage and motivate us to
work for authentic peace and justice. We owe it to
those who have died and to the coming generations. We
cannot afford to do less.
In peaceful struggle, frontlinemom
Sources:
"The Broken Circle" by Rodney Barker (Torture murders
of Dine(Navajo)
"Harvest of Women" by Diane Washington Valdez
(Killings in Juarez)
"Indian Country Today" Brenda Norrell Articles are
always excellent resources. (Torture murders of Native
Americans)
"Navajo Hopi Observer"
"Gallup Independent"
"Spokesman Review"
"Seattle Times"
"San Frnacisco Chronicle"
"The Guardian" (San Francisco)
"Left Turn" Mexico Solidarity Network Article, Dec/Jan
2004
"Guardian, UK" June 6, 2004
"Senorita Extraviada" Documentary film by Lourdes
Portillo
Internet Resources:
Feminist Peace Network
Mujeres Libres Discussion List
"Columbia Journalism Review" John Burnett May 9,
2004
500 Murdered/Missing Aboriginal Women
Amnesty International
Native American Women and Violence
Democracy Now
Free Speech Radio News June 8, 2004
Personal thanks to Ramona Tewangoitewa, Roberta
Blackgoat, Danny Blackgoat, Pauline Whitesinger, LisaNa
Red Bear, Stella Runnels, Cleo Red Bear, Dorinda Moreno,
Michael Novick, Ed O'Neill, Jane Welford, Gerald Sanders
and Amy Frazee.
Special appreciation to my daughter for all her
patience while i worked on this piece.
Donations appreciated. Keep below poverty level
frontlinemoms and their children in food, clothing and
shelter!
