My great-aunt, Esther Chávez Cano, was the first to stand up to the gruesome violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which is located in the north of Mexico and borders El Paso, Texas. She orchestrated the fight against femicide when she began gathering newspaper clippings in 1993 about the multiple women found dead in the desert surrounding the city. These numbers represent Mexico’s killing fields.
In 1999, Chávez Cano used my father’s childhood home to create history by establishing her non-profit organization “Casa Amiga Esther Chávez Cano,” which was Ciudad Juárez’s first rape crisis center. Years later the organization moved to Paseos de Las Torres in Ciudad Juárez, where it remains.
“Casa Amiga” provides intervention services for women and children that experience domestic and familiar abuse. The organization provides legal assistance, medical and psychological treatment, safe houses and therapy and rehabilitation for abusers.
I met my great-aunt when I was three years old at her home in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. It saddens me to say that I do not remember the encounter, but I do have the photos, and I treasure them dearly. Esther Chávez Cano died of cancer on Christmas day in 2009. I grew up with the powerful stories of how she fought for women. I did not understand the magnitude of what her work entailed until this past year when I researched femicide in Mexico for an article for my journalism class. It was during that time that I felt I understood and got to know my great-aunt. (https://fieldstonnews.com/home/2022/01/in-mexico-feminicide-is-at-an-all-time-high-while-investigations-are-at-an-all-time-low-each-cross-is-a-case-a-pain/)
As a toddler, I did not know how influential the woman I was crawling over was. I could not ask her the questions that I have now. There are so many questions that I wish I could ask her, so many stories that I wish she could tell me. I don’t have her anymore, but I do have her book Esther Chávez Cano: Construyendo Caminos y Esperanzas published by Cátedra Unesco de Derechos Humanos UNAM-México, Academia Mexicana Derechos Humanos and Casa Amiga. I do have her legacy, which I hope to continue throughout this independent study on femicide in Mexico. I hope that I am making her proud.
I wish that this article was a sit-down interview with my great-aunt, who we call “La Tia Güera,” which translates to ‘the blonde aunt,’ but I will try to do her legacy justice in this article through the book that she wrote and the people that had the honor of knowing her.
My father, Enrique Chávez-Arvizo, a professor of philosophy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is extremely proud to be Chávez Cano’s nephew. They had an extremely close relationship and loved each other dearly. “Tía Güera was my favorite aunt. She was intelligent, articulate and urbane,” he said.
My father “will never forget the time” when Chávez Cano told him, “‘Quiqui, you have me writing letters every week on behalf of prisoners conscience for Amnesty International. I might as well go write for the local newspaper.’” And so she did, “at the Diario of Juárez she had her own column where she incessantly advocated for the rights of women.”
“I love how she was always with the men. She was the only female I ever saw socializing with the men instead of being in the kitchen with the women,” Chávez-Arvizo remembered. Chávez Cano refused to succumb to the machismo culture in Mexican society. Chávez-Arvizo smiled as he recalled how his aunt would sit with her brother and his friends on holidays and gatherings and outdrink them, curse with them and not serve them. Three things that were unbecoming of a Mexican woman in that time.
“She taught me that a city that buries its women would soon be burying its sons and that’s exactly what happened in my native city of Ciudad Juárez. The violence is no longer limited to targeting women. It’s targeting the population at large,” Chávez-Arvizo said.
At my grandmother’s funeral my father recited a eulogy that was written in honor of Bertolt Brecht, but he believes it applies for his aunt as well. “There are women who fight one day and they are good. There are others who fight for one year, and they are better. There are those who fight for many years, and they are very good. But there are those who struggle all their lives: They are the essential ones.”
Chávez-Arvizo often reminds me how dangerous it was for my great-aunt to create and work at Casa Amiga because of the husbands, boyfriends and fathers that would come banging on the doors demanding that their women be returned to them. She wrote of her experience with Casa Amiga’s receptionist, María Luisa.
Chávez Cano opens her book with a chilling anecdote of María Luisa Carsoli who was murdered on the steps of Casa Amiga’s original location on December 21, 2001. The following quotes were translated from Spanish to English. “It’s a sad memory, imprinted with her blood in my memory and in my heart,” she wrote.
María Luisa’s husband, Ricardo Medina Acosta, would leave her flowers at Casa Amiga. Then he started to wait outside the exit. He escalated and approached the staff for help to get closer to his wife, and then he insisted that she and him start couples therapy to save their marriage. The center brought in an outside psychologist to talk with her husband and give the center his opinion. “The answer was blunt,” she explained, Acosta “is a dangerous individual, keep him away from her and the Center.”
One night Chávez Cano received a call. “Esther now I know that Ricardo is going to kill me,” María Luisa told her in tears. The violence from her husband was so horrific that her daughter begged her father to please not kill her mother. Acosta had boarded up the windows to lock María Luisa inside. She managed to escape but had to leave her young kids behind. “I had to escape,” she told Chávez Cano
Immediately, Chávez Cano brought María Luisa to stay at her house. “Her desperation and her sadness were enormous.” A few weeks later, her husband found her. She went to a different safe house but then chose not to live her life in fear. María Luisa decided that she had to confront Acosta, divorce him, and regain custody of her kids
Soon after, Chávez Cano heard the news that Acosta had murdered María Luisa, and her world stopped. “I felt something break inside me.” Like all victims of femicide, María Luisa deserved to live, “She would have been saved, like other women have since 2003, that have a place where they can learn about their rights, beginning with the right to life.” Chávez Cano struggled to accept that she could not save María Luisa.
Chávez Cano arrived at Casa Amiga to see her employee Lourdes Hernández and her young son Francisco in shambles. She hugged them as they sobbed and repeated “Ricardo killed her.” Hernández was no match for Acosta’s fury. “Help me,” María Luisa begged her, “that he doesn’t kill me.” Hernández begged for Acosta not to hurt María. She ran to a nearby torterílla for help, but the worker said that he was busy. Hernández pushed Acosta and screamed for help, but Ricardo slammed her against a wall, and that’s when Acosta took out the knife. María did not stand a chance. Francisco harrowingly recounted the moment that María Luisa died, “the tip of the knife exited through María Luisa’s back” he cried.
Casa Amiga was in chaos. Local, state and federal authorities arrived at the scene. Chávez Cano had to try to comfort herself, her staff and María Luisa’s loved ones while simultaneously dealing with the authorities. She organized a conference that she said had a strong impact.
“This death is not forgotten, it lives not only in the hearts of those who loved her, but in that of a part of society, so heartbroken and damaged by femicide and the insecurity that lives on our border,” she wrote.
Acosta was detained for two months after he attempted to rob a residence. He also faced a twelve-year prison sentence but was released. At the end of María Luisa’s section, Chávez Cano explained that there would soon be more murderers on the loose, because men, such as Acosta, consider themselves the owners of their wives and children. The physical, sexual and emotional abuse that María Luisa endured is indescribable, Chávez Cano stated.
Chávez Cano knew in her soul that María Luisa’s husband held a deep hatred for her. She often pondered that if she had been at the center, her dead body would have laid alongside María Luisa.
“Descansa en paz, querida María Luisa. Siempre estarás en nuestro corazón,” which translates to, “Rest in peace, my beloved María Luisa. You’ll always be in our hearts.” Chávez Cano carried María Luisa’s story with her always and Casa Amiga continues to carry the memory of María Luisa. She will never be forgotten.
Chávez Cano moved from Mexico City to Ciudad Juárez in 1982. She reflected that “To arrive from the capital to this city was a very strong blow. Ciudad Juárez impacted me for being a city of women.” Ciudad Juárez is upheld by the shoulders of Mexican women, without them, the city would hardly run. For a city that depends on the labor of its women, it is incomprehensible that the men dispose of women like tissues.
In 1993, Chávez Cano started to make lists of the young and poor women who were murdered solely for being women. She gathered their pictures which she found in their mother’s houses, on poles labeled ‘MISSING,’ and more. She described their pictures as “demanding justice to be able to rest in peace.” Her personal notes, news clippings, photos and documents were archived by the University of New Mexico and are on display.
Chávez Cano saw different spectrums of violence. In the back of her mind, she saw the drunk who threw hot tamales at his wife’s face and burned her, and she remembered the father and grandfather who beat a two-year-old. The men feel powerful when they commit these atrocities, when they encourage their partner to commit suicide, abuse drugs, or he gets his power from raping and beating his kids, she writes. It’s a power struggle.
These memories ran circles in her mind, which she claimed is why she wrote the book. Chávez Cano needed to call attention to the facts. Juárez is a battle filed, she explained, it is full of terror, shame, and humiliation that leads children to find solace in alcohol, drugs, gangs and later sends them to the cemetery.
Through her book, Chávez Cano wanted to portray the strength, bravery, and energy of the women who have escaped and survived their partner’s prison of horror. After surviving tremendous abuse, these women were able to regain their faith in humanity. Chávez Cano wanted the world to know that these women were and still are heroes. The victims of brutal rapes and murders are a wound in this country that cannot heal, she maintains. She called femicide “A demand without fulfillment.”
According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, the term ‘femicide’ was first jused by John Corry in 1801 in his book A Satirical View of London at the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century, where he used ‘femicide’ to refer to the murder of a woman. The term was reintroduced publicly in 1976 by Diana Russel who advocated against the violence of women.
Chávez Cano has a section in her book titled “When the institutions don’t respond, it’s institutional violence,” where she calls attention to the mistreatment of victims. The police continually threaten women with prison if they file a false report, they victim blame women for getting raped based off of their clothing, and they advise women who are brave enough to report domestic violence, not to.
The police will blame rape victims if they did not defend themselves and go so far as to defend the rapist. Generally, the authorities allow twenty-four hours to pass after the perpetrator was caught committing the crime and then rarely exercise the arrest warrant.
Journalists frequently asked Chávez Cano what specifically made her start to count the number of femicides and dedicate herself to the cause, but she never had an answer. “I cannot answer this question, maybe because there were many circumstances that led me to involve myself in this terrible problem and all the families who suffered the disappearance and death of a loved one.”
I spoke to the director of Casa Amiga Esther Chávez Cano, Lidia Cordero Cabrera. Cordero Cabrera has worked at the organization since she was 19 in 2001. Chávez Cano made sure that Cordero Cabrera finished university. She assured me that my great-aunt is never forgotten among her and her colleagues. They feel Chávez Cano’s energy as they fight tirelessly for the women of Mexico. The following conversation has been translated from Spanish to English.
Chávez Cano always finds a way to pop up, Cordero Cabrera said with a smile. Recently, Cordero Cabrera was at a reunion with women that Casa Amiga had helped. One of the survivors shared her story. She called Casa Amiga for help and refuge and was instructed to go to the center, but—when she arrived—the doors were locked, and no one was there. She sat on the curb in tears and disbelief that yet another center was sending her back to a life of violence. She called Casa Amiga again and spoke to a woman, my great-aunt, who assured her that help was on the way. Help arrived and the woman was able to escape her violent home.
At the reunion, my great-aunt was brought up by the colleagues of Cordero Cabrera. Everyone used the past tense in reference to Chávez Cano, since she passed away, and the woman was in disbelief. She did not know that my great-aunt had died. She burst into tears to grieve the woman that had saved her life.
Cordero Cabrera had the chance to work with Chávez Cano before her untimely death in 2009. She said that meeting Chávez Cano was a “before and after” in her life. She described Chávez Cano as “an extremely strong woman, but at the same time, very tender and maternal in the sense of her support and understanding.” Cordero reaffirmed that “it was a before and after. First this integral support, and then to discover feminism and what has to do with it, and to discover the fight for women’s rights.”
Cordero said that she got to know Chávez Cano more closely after the murder of María Luisa. Cordero was a volunteer for Casa Amiga at the time and had already witnessed how Chávez Cano had opened doors for the movement and for women, but that day, she met a truly “impressive Esther.” Chávez Cano moved “heaven and earth to fight for justice for María Luisa,” she reflected. “To see her point out all the inequalities, the discrimination, but at the same time, to unite with other women to demand the fight,” was unbelievable to witness, Cordero said.
“It was the day that I saw her in all of her splendor of demand, of fight, indignation, sadness, anger for what had occurred at the doors of Casa Amiga, but also to [see her] talk about the fight with other women, to unite with other women and raise her voice for other women.” For Cordero, that day affirmed for her that she wanted to keep doing what Chávez Cano did “for a very long time.”
To put it simply, “She was a life example,” Cordero stated. Chávez Cano “was a woman who marked history” but in addition to her impact on history, she impacted the lives of many women. “We continue to remember her, her lessons, the words that she used, and what she said.” Cordero explained that Chávez Cano was a woman who did what she said. She could stand in front of the authorities and tell her truth, “as small as she was, she had an impressive force,” Cordero joked.
When Chávez Cano walked into a room, Cordero described how the room would stop and eagerly listen to her. They listened to what she had to say and internalized the force in which she said it.
“Personally, in my life as a woman and as an activist, she was an unconditional support and an example of life. As a feminist, she also created the path for us after her to follow.” Chávez Cano taught Cordero so much. She was so committed to her work, so organized, and so diligent.
Chávez Cano founded the women’s rights activist group Ocho de Marzo. With her friend Judith Galarza, she wrote that they initiated a fight without an end: the fight for the rights of women and the arrest of the murderers of women. “Thus was born the first feminist group, whose name was copied from that of Chihuahua: Grupo Ocho de Marzo.”
She credited Mónica Alicia Juárez and women like her for the existence of the feminist group. On March 8, 2022, Mexico’s 2022 feminist meetings began at Cotton Field Memorial. Mónica Alicia Juárez gave a panel on “Abortion, controversy that persists.” Without their support, Chávez Cano said, the group would not exist. She labeled Cecilia Pego, Ivonne Ramos, Alpha Escobedo, Laura Jiménez and Paula Villarreal as crucial members of the organization.
Before starting Casa Amiga and becoming the renowned human rights activist that she was, Chávez Cano was a journalist for a Mexican paper El Diario. In one of her articles from September 13, 1995 she wrote, “This most conflictive city needs an agency to attend to sexual crimes, run exclusively by women—a dream and struggle of the 8th of March organization—an agency that will help the victims of violence to present their cases without suffering new aggressions from doctors and police who much too frequently consider the victim guilty.” She established the agency that she dreamed of.
“We must understand that rape is an act of murderous aggression, born in self-hatred and carried out in an abhorrent manner, its root causes unknown to the man who commits the crime. And we distance ourselves from a sense of culpability and add to the damage caused to so many women,” she reported.
Esther Chávez Cano received countless awards and recognition for her human rights work. In 2008, Mexican President Felipe Calderón awarded Chávez Cano with Mexico’s most prestigious human rights award: The National Human Rights award. The award is given by the Mexican Government through its National Human Rights Commission to people who have fought diligently in the defense of human rights. Other recipients include Isabel Miranda de Wallace who investigated her son’s kidnapping and got the kidnappers arrested, Jaime Pérez Calzada a lawyer who defends the human rights of people with disabilities, and more.
“Although it seems incredible,” Chávez Cano reflected on the award, “I had not previously perceived the importance of this award and that I had to live this impactful experience to realize it.”
Chávez Cano considered it a “high honor” that the 2008 National Human Rights Award recognized more than her person “in the effort that, for more than three decades, I have undertaken with many other people in favor of the fundamental rights of human beings, particularly those of women and children, in the limited scenario of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.”
Below is a map from a site named Los Femicidios in Mexico that shows the number of femicides throughout the country from January 2016 to July 2021.
My great-aunt fought diligently for the women of Mexico. It is the great honor of my life to be her niece and to continue her work. I will spend the rest of this semester raising awareness on the issue of femicide through articles posted to the Fieldston News.
So very interesting and inspiring! And heartbreaking.
I am humbled and inspired by your great-aunt work.
It would definitely be amazing to continue her legacy.