“Not one more”

Dresses hung on pink crosses cover the Norlin Quad, serving as a memorial and wake-up call to the violence against women taking place in the Mexican city of Juarez. The installation is part of Phi Lambda Chis 8th annual Campaign for the Woman of Juarez," a four day event that aims at raising awareness of and support for ending femicide in Mexico. (CU Independent/Adam Milner)

Eight years have passed since Irma Monreal’s daughter disappeared in a Mexican city so close to the U.S. that people cross its international border like a street.

“My daughter was working—she’d been working for two weeks as a domestic worker in a household,” Monreal said. “We were preparing her 15th birthday party, and she wanted to help with the cost for her party. She asked me to let her work to raise money. On Oct. 29, 2001, at four in the evening, the time she would normally leave work, she disappeared.”

Monreal, 48, reported her daughter, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, missing the following day, but said that the authorities told her that it was common for girls her age to run away, usually with boyfriends. They told her they could only file a report 72 hours after a disappearance.

“I told them that wasn’t true, that something had happened to my daughter, because she did not have a boyfriend or friends she would go out with,” Monreal said. “So they did not report her as missing.”

Nine days later, the body of her daughter was discovered in a field alongside the remains of seven other women.

Monreal’s story was told alongside others at Wednesday night’s presentation at Phi Lambda Chi’s 8th annual “Campaign for the Woman of Juarez.” This year’s slogan “Ni Una Mas,” or, “Not another one,” referenced the topic.

Dresses hung on pink crosses cover the Norlin Quad, serving as a memorial and wake-up call to the violence against women taking place in the Mexican city of Juarez. The installation is part of Phi Lambda Chis 8th annual Campaign for the Woman of Juarez," a four day event that aims at raising awareness of and support for ending femicide in Mexico. (CU Independent/Lauren Walter)

New Mexico State University’s Professor of Criminology Cynthia Bejarano said that Juarez has witnessed hundreds of women’s murders since 1993.

Bejarano said that anywhere from 400 to 4,000 women have disappeared in Juarez since 1993.

“The main reason why we are here is to talk about the femicide, which has been the brutal murder of women, abductions since 1993,” Bejarano said.

Funded by the Cultural Events Board, the night’s presentation featured mothers Monreal and Paula Bonilla Flores, who spoke before students and community members.

Melina Somoza, a 22-year-old ethnic studies and Spanish major and president of Lambda Chi at CU, said she’s began planning for the event since July.

“The sorority has been doing this event for the past eight years,” Somoza said. “It started out really small; we would have just one speaker, and so throughout the years it’s gotten bigger and bigger, and this is one of the years where it’s gotten the biggest.”

Somoza said the sorority aims “to bring awareness to the campus community about what’s happening [in Juarez].”

Somoza said it is important for CU students, and the U.S. in general, to understand the situation.

“The murders are very much tied to the U.S., even though they are happening mostly in Juarez, they are now happening on the U.S. side too and it has to do with U.S.-Mexico relations, like NAFTA and all the economic of it are why those factories are in Juarez, and why the women are coming out at 4 in the morning,” Somoza said.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Esteban L. Hernandez at Esteban.hernandez@colorado.edu.