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August
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At least 274 women from the grimy industrial city separated from Texas by the Rio Grande have been violently killed over the past nine years.
Their bones have been found bleached in the desert scrub, or their mutilated bodies http://www.amnestyusa.org/women/juarez/i/muertas_480.jpgtossed into sewage ditches to decompose. The body of the latest victim, a female factory worker, was found on a desolate hill just two weeks ago.
As well as a serial killer, whose victims were all physically alike, women's groups believe there are other predators in Juárez. Many of the women are young factory workers picked off from among the hundreds of thousands who make their way home to shanty towns from late shifts at the assembly plants of foreign companies, called maquiladoras. Police recently called one Mexican housewife in to watch a videotape they had seized during a raid. Did she recognise the victim shown in the grainy footage? The woman was devastated to watch the teenager being sexually tortured and executed in a "snuff film"; it was her missing daughter. Local newspapers reported that copies could be bought on the black market for $5000 (£3,500).
But even this disturbing case has failed to shock officials in a city of 1.3 million people, rife with rival drug gangs and revenge slayings
The funeral of another victim, Lourdes Ivette Lucero Campos, was the unlikely scene for an outpouring of political protest. As relatives grieved for the doctor whose body had been found in a ditch, the priest lambasted Mexican leaders: "When are they going to do something? We care only if they do something to halt this. We can barely hold back our anger and fury."
