In Tijuana, AlexCrawfordSky is at the scene of a shooting that killed a woman in her 70s. Tijuana has one of the highest murder rates in the world. 📺 Watch 'Women at War' on Sky News and Sky Documentaries from 3 July. Read more here:
Since 2006, a bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels has raged, claiming the lives of 300,000 people.An estimated 24,000 women and girls are missing.
It's only when I manage to grab the coroner on her way out that I grasp the full horror of the shooting. In 2022 of the 3,754 women killed in Mexico, fewer than a thousand were investigated as femicides - killings of women due to their gender. Even taking into account the unreported killings - the trend is still dramatically upwards with femicides increasing by 137% between 2015 and 2021.
They already have a medical centre, a small school building including a playground, a smaller, mostly open-air kitchen and a laundry area. The plan, says Pastor Gustavo, is for it to house about 2,000 people. Isabel is in her twenties. She asks us to protect her identity as she is terrified of being tracked down by the cartel who murdered her brother."They shot him in the head and body nine times," she says.Isabel
"They took a guy and killed him in the bathroom, then for the second guy they told me to take part, but I didn't want to," she says, her voice breaking. Every day, hundreds of thousands of journeys are made between the two countries. For the women in the camp, crossing the border - either legally or illegally - is their last hope. Nicole Ramos knows all about the desperation of women trying to flee the country. She's a human rights lawyer who handles thousands of visa applications a year for women seeking to escape on humanitarian grounds. She has spent time in the US, and her voice has an American lilt to it.
Maria, a young mother with two children, knows what it's like to live in a world where her life has no value. Every day she was terrorised by narco gangs in her neighbourhood, and every night she was beaten and threatened by her partner. After seven months of trying, Maria secures a US visa appointment on the border. She is excited and full of hope. The church community prays for her family's safety as they pack up and head out to their midday appointment.
Visiting the camp, I was shocked not just at the extremity of the violence against the women but the way it seems to be regarded as part of everyday life. At least the camp is a place of sanctuary, however temporary, from an increasingly hostile world. "Three people were coming in the door. I walked to unlock it and as I was going to open it, I heard gunshots and then they were both on the floor."Jennifer reveals that the victims are her husband and her brother-in-law who were gunned down in front of her two young daughters, aged 10 and two.
The violence in Tijuana is so bad that the city is constantly monitored by a combination of the local police, the national guard and the army. There's also serious corruption. The cartels seem to have infiltrated almost every section of society – the police, the drug enforcement, the offices of countless towns and cities across the country. The police intransigence, or apparent compliance with the narco lords, is a constant complaint.
She gets her hair and make-up done most days by transgender artists and sex workers in the city's dangerous red-light district. The salon is popular with the working girls of Tijuana's booming sex trade. Marches such as these are a common sight across the whole of Mexico. They are made up of groups of grief-stricken relatives - invariably women - protesting that not enough is being done to help them find"Los Desaparecidos" - the missing victims of the endless drug wars.
Both males and females have disappeared but it is the figures for the women that are growing alarmingly - their numbers have tripled in the last six years. At another search on the beach in Rosarito, just south of Tijuana, they find blood on the floor of a shed and bits of clothing a daughter recognises as her father's. The police cordon off the area as bemused beachgoers walk by, barely stopping to ask questions.
Her mother has placed an open bible on the bunk bed she used to share with her elder sister. There are t-shirts on the top bunk with Selena's picture, her name and the date she disappeared on them. The two of them wear the t-shirts to prompt witnesses, keep their daughter's name alive and feel closer to her."I feel that they're hurting her. It's torture for me but I try to seem strong for my other daughter."Olga and Alvaro are deeply religious.
Here they are catered to by luxury hotels, hundreds of bars and nightclubs and an army of drug dealers. And there's another multi-million dollar industry that attracts the tourists - the sex trade. A denial of sexual favours, a resistance to certain sexual acts or maybe even a lap dance that's not liked, can all end up with the sex worker being beaten or killed.
Today, Vee is drug and alcohol-free and working a regular job to support her young family but she is under no illusions about how lucky she is to have escaped. "His mummy was forced into sexual exploitation when she was 10. Her uncle was grooming her to the point that he was bringing men to the house to have sex with her."After all the horror, Alma's determined to give these young girls a fresh start in life. But she has to stay vigilant. The threat from sexual predators and even organised criminals is ever present. We've been sworn to secrecy about the location.
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