The family of Esmeralda Castillo Rincon He has been traveling the country for 13 years in his search. However, the authorities still do not have anything clear in the investigation and to top it off, a prosecutor advised them to accept that she is dead. “and with that”.
These words are just a sample of the many obstacles faced by families of missing persons o victims of femicide and for this reason —among many others— cases often go unpunished.
A prosecutor’s response to Esmeralda Castillo’s father
“There is no point in continuing with the disappearance case, since it is obvious that Esmeralda is dead”said the Specialized Prosecutor for Attention to Women Victims of Crime based on Gender and the Family (FEM) of Juarez City, during a meeting with Esmeralda’s family on Friday, January 28.
There, Diana Esther Morales not only did he revictimize the next of kin, but he also tried to shut down all efforts to find an answer to the disappearance of Esmeralda, who was last seen in May 2009, when she was 14 years old.
They demand an apology
Mr. Castillo and his family were not alone. During and after this meeting, the prosecutor was confronted so that she would realize the magnitude of her words, the insensitivity, lack of public service, the conditioning and the violation of “international standards on enforced disappearance” —which, in fact, obliges the authorities to make a greater commitment in the cases of women and girls.
This last point was made by Karen Michel Salas and David Peña, advisors to the Action Group for Human Rights and Social Justice —who obtained a conviction from the IACHR (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights) in the case of worthy ochoa.
On the most important side of this story, Mr. José Luis Castillo, who is recognized by all the girls, women and people who join demonstrations against gender violence in CDMX and other cities, responded with these words:
“If you say that she is dead and that I have to accept it, just like that, tell me how she died? What was the cause and manner of her death? And where are the other remains of her?
Esmeralda’s disappearance
Esmeralda disappeared on May 19, 2009 in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Despite the passage of time, the authorities have not given any response indicating what happened to the teenager.
Precisely for this reason, an appointment was scheduled between the FEM and the Castillo family and the prosecutor was asked to present a new investigation scheme, since the only evidence is a bone fragment of the tibia that could be from the body of Emerald.
This fragment was found in the Navajo Creekin Valle de Juárez, widely known by the authorities for being a kind of pit where the bodies of adolescents and women kidnapped by organized crime between 2009 and 2012 were dumped.
Now the objective is that the focus of the investigation does not take the disappearance of Esmeralda as an isolated case and that the Prosecutor’s Office investigate the Arroyo del Navajo and open the perspective —although the authorities have also been left behind in this because the family has been living for more than two years requesting it.
