Original language: German
Dear Imelda,
Dear Barbara,
Dear friends,
Dear guests,
I am very pleased to be here today, and it is a tremendous honor for me to deliver the laudatory speech for Imelda Marrufo Nava.
Imelda Marrufo Nava is what one must call a heroine of the international women’s movement. Barbara has already explained why the jury of the Anne Klein Women’s Award is honoring her here today. Imelda Marrufo not only advocates for women’s rights in Mexico—and here especially in her hometown in northern Mexico, the border city of Ciudad Juárez—but she is also willing to risk her own life for these rights, for the safety and dignity of women.
She is willing to put herself—her very life—in danger, and she does so because she has a vision: the vision of an end to violence in her homeland and of recognition of the dignity of the many hundreds of women who have already fallen victim to this violence in Juárez. Imelda Marrufo accepts that she herself repeatedly becomes a target of the perpetrators, who so far have been able to rely on one thing above all else: silence. The silence of the victims and their families, who mostly remain silent out of fear, and the silence of the investigative authorities and the judiciary—some of whom profit from the crimes and the illicit trade along the border with the U.S. and whom the people themselves barely trust.
Imelda Marrufo has been living in an environment where it takes courage to speak out about what is happening for more than two decades now. In a country where, since 2006, an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people have died during the Mexican government’s “War on Drugs” against drug cartels—a country where disappearances, violent deaths, and murders are part of everyday life in some regions, and where people sometimes trust criminal organizations more than state institutions—especially as these groups have increasingly taken on tasks that the Mexican state has neglected.
In such a country, violence against women does not seem to many to be the most important or the most pressing problem. And talking about violence against women disrupts the established power and social structures in which women are not viewed as equals. For the disregard of widespread violence against women also reflects the widespread disregard for women, especially in Mexico’s conflict zones. When women are raped, kidnapped, tortured, abused, and simply discarded like trash on a massive scale, once they have been “used up”—whether for sexual gratification or to “settle” criminal deals—then human dignity, which must be indivisible for women as well, is trampled underfoot. This is the scandal behind the incomprehensible tragedy of femicide in northern Mexico, but also in other regions of the country, as well as across the entire continent.
Violence against women—including murders and rapes—remains, unfortunately, a major issue throughout the world. The indivisibility of human dignity has not yet become a true and complete reality anywhere, not even here in Europe, as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights has just found. Even in supposedly safe Europe, one in three women between the ages of 15 and 74 has already been a victim of violence—that is a staggering total of 62 million women, a figure that is almost beyond comprehension. This shows that gender-based violence remains a structural problem stemming from the existing power imbalance between men and women, and that there is still much work to be done for global feminism—as will be evident again tomorrow at numerous events and demonstrations marking International Women’s Day.
However, the situation in Imelda Marrufo’s hometown is cruelly unique. The violence and the murders of women in Juárez have reached an unprecedented scale. And this is precisely what Imelda is fighting against with all her might and through her “Mesa de las Mujeres”: Together with her fellow activists, she works to draw attention to and gain recognition for the murders and violence against women by speaking out about these murders, documenting them, and giving a voice to the victims’ families.
Imelda Marrufo refuses to accept that more and more women are disappearing in her hometown, that they are being killed, and that their murderers go unpunished. Nor will she accept that the police, the judiciary, and often society itself show no interest in who the victims were or who committed the crimes.
As a law student in Juárez in the early 1990s, she began working with others to document the murders of women, thereby giving the victims a face and a story. During this time, the number of murders of women in Juárez began to rise dramatically. The victims are primarily young women who are drawn from all over Mexico to the manufacturing plants in the border city near the U.S., where they are exploited as cheap and unprotected labor.
So it is primarily women who have no voice—neither in their new home of Juárez nor as migrants and labor slaves in Mexico. Women whom no one cares about.
Until crime becomes increasingly rampant and severe, until drug and smuggling gangs take the entire city in their grip, and women from Juárez itself are increasingly affected as well. During this time, Imelda also felt threatened; she once said, “That’s when I began to understand what gender-based violence means.” But unlike others, she channels her fear into a commitment to women’s rights, and she channels the threat into strength: She realized that women in this situation had only one chance if they joined forces and fought together against violence and indifference.
Imelda Marrufo had the courage needed to free herself from the passivity of the victim role. “Have the courage to use your own understanding!” She has lived her life ever since according to this key phrase from Kant’s Enlightenment.
After completing her studies, she gave up her job at a law firm, because in Juárez, people earn their living either in factories or through cross-border trade. But commercial law was not what interested Imelda Marrufo. Instead, she began supporting women’s projects in Juárez, raising funds for organizations, building networks, and organizing campaigns to draw attention to women’s issues.
This led to the creation in 2001—following the discovery of the bodies of eight murdered women on the outskirts of Juárez—of the network “Mesa de Mujeres de Juárez,” the Women’s Table of Juárez. The network currently brings together 10 women’s organizations, and Imelda Marrufo coordinates it in her courageous, passionate, and strong-willed manner.
In addition to documenting the femicides, the women submit petitions to the authorities and engage in extensive public advocacy. For example, wherever women go missing in the city, pink crosses appear, becoming a symbol of the fight against violence against women.
The women in the network also organize psychological support for the victims’ family members and accompany them when they demand clarification and criminal investigations from the authorities.
A major achievement of the “Mesa de Mujeres” network—and thus of Imelda herself—is that—as Barbara already mentioned—in March 2002, they were able to submit a report to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José (Costa Rica) in March 2002, in which they had compiled facts regarding femicide in Juárez—and on this basis, the Mexican state was found guilty by the Court in 2009 of failing to adequately protect the women of Ciudad Juárez.
However, this is still far from putting an end to the indifference and impunity surrounding the many women who have been abducted, tortured, and killed in Mexico, and the criminal offense of “femicide,” as demanded by the “Mesa de Mujeres,” does not yet officially exist in Mexican law. However, much has been achieved in terms of raising awareness of gender-based violence against women, and the ruling serves as a sign that the state, too, bears responsibility.
Meanwhile, the women of the “Mesa de Mujeres” are, of course, continuing their work: Their campaign “Ni una muerta más” (No More Dead Women) continues unabated.
Dear friends, if you’re driving through Berlin right now, the beauty of Mexico smiles at you from every advertising column, every tram and bus shelter, and every billboard. Stunning photos of the beaches in Cancún and Los Cabos, the Mayan fortress in Tulum, the pyramid of Cholula, and the hip vibe of Mexico City. As the guest country at the International Tourism Fair currently taking place in Berlin, Mexico aims to once again become a dream destination for winter-weary Northern Europeans. But the fact that our first thoughts about Mexico don’t turn to its beauty—its breathtaking landscapes and nature, its diverse culture, its wonderful people, and its rich history dating back to the Aztec and Maya eras—but instead immediately go to violence, crime, drug cartels, and gang wars—is a tragedy that almost makes me feel ashamed.
For this wonderful country and its people deserve for the international community to give more serious thought to how to address the global problem of drug trafficking and poverty-driven migration, to the responsibility that countries like the U.S. or even Europe bear for Mexico’s major problems, and to whether it is truly the right solution to to build walls and, through military force and prohibition, hold an entire country hostage to a failed policy.
This is precisely why what Imelda Marrufo is achieving through her courage and together with the women of the “Mesa de Mujeres” is so important. They are the ones who are making Mexico a place worth living in again—even for women—and thus transforming it into the wonderful paradise that is currently being presented to us here in Berlin.
It therefore fills me with great respect that I finally had the opportunity today to meet Imelda Marrufo Nava in person and that I am able to be here as this strong feminist—who is a great role model for all of us—receives this important award today. Anne Klein, too, would certainly have seen her as a more than worthy award recipient.
I congratulate Imelda with all my heart on this award and hope that she will never run out of courage, strength, and passion for women’s rights! And I hope—for myself and for all women worldwide—that this award will protect Imelda and the women of “Mesa de Mujeres” and that the killings in Mexico will finally come to an end!
Thank you very much for your attention!
