VIOLENCE IS THE NORM
Since 2006, a bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels has raged, claiming the lives of 300,000 people.
Every year, 3,000 women are murdered. That's 10 a day, or one every two-and-a-half hours.
An estimated 24,000 women and girls are missing.
"Although the escalation of violence against women and girls in Mexico has reached critical levels, it has been normalised for so long that it risks being made invisible."
Warning: Article contains graphic content.
It's Saturday morning on a quiet residential street in the city of Tijuana a short distance from the US-Mexico border. I'm responding to a tip-off there's been a shooting in a flat above a supermarket. The police are gathered in the street outside but are reluctant to provide further details.
Police tape is strung across the entrance to the flat, which is up a steep flight of stairs. All we know is that the body of a woman is still in the apartment and the area is an active crime scene. This city has one of the highest murder rates in the world and there's a sense of weary acceptance about this latest act of violence.
A small crowd gathers as the body is brought out. "We don't take notice anymore, the city doesn't stop, we still go to work," an eyewitness says, explaining the collective nonchalance of the bystanders.
It's only when I manage to grab the coroner on her way out that I grasp the full horror of the shooting.
The victim is aged between 70 and 75, the coroner says, confirming she believes the death is linked to the drug cartels.
Even for a city as violent as this, the execution of a woman in her seventies is a shocking escalation.
But this is the reality in Mexico today. And things only appear to be getting worse. Videos of brutal killings circulate on social media - often put out as a warning to others. Women with their breasts cut off, their limbs severed and their heads put on car bonnets, are shockingly common.
In 2022 of the 3,754 women killed in Mexico, fewer than a thousand (947) 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.
No women 鈥� not mothers, not daughters, not sisters, not even grandmothers - are safe from an epidemic of brutality that threatens the very fabric of society.
THE CITY OF GOD
On the outskirts of Tijuana lies the largest refugee centre in Mexico. Nearly 380,000 Mexicans have fled their homes over the past 15 years and the crisis is worsening every day.
Here, in the Ciudad de Dios (the City of God), they pray for those who leave the sanctuary of the church to start a new life on the other side of the long border wall, which runs like a scar across the horizon.
The church is run by Pastor Gustavo Banda Aceves. He is casually dressed in a black shirt and grey tracksuit jacket, his dark hair and moustache are neatly groomed and beads of sweat dot his forehead.
Pastor Gustavo
Pastor Gustavo
The population has grown to such an extent that the refugees are in the middle of extending it themselves. They're creating a bigger, more permanent cooking area and an open-plan seated dining space.
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.
Scores of small stalls fan out around the main church building with refugees selling goods ranging from food and beverages to toys and clothes.
Volunteers turn up with donations including female sanitary pads and nappies. There's an almost family-like atmosphere, with children roaming freely and adults chatting or making vats of food. But behind this scene of apparent domesticity, there's an undercurrent of fear.
The women and children here are not fleeing some cataclysmic natural disaster - this is man-made.
"There's a war here in Mexico, people are fighting each other and they鈥檙e dying."
The pastor describes how the cartels often send women videos showing their husbands being murdered and then having their heads and fingers cut off. "They're not only doing this with their husbands but also with small children," he adds.
Every single one of the women here has witnessed some form of the brutality described by the pastor.
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.
"They shot him over there by the bridge and left him wrapped up and covered in a plastic bag."
Many of the shelter's residents are too traumatised to talk openly about their suffering. But Yasmine, a young woman with a pink headscarf wrapped around her head, is determined we hear her story.
She begins by recounting how a gang broke into her house, robbed her family and then kidnapped her for a week, subjecting her to "awful torture".
She show us photographs of the angry purple bruises that covered her skin when she was released - a result of brutal beatings by the cartel members.
Yasmin was kidnapped by cartel members
Yasmin was kidnapped by cartel members
"They were always armed with pistols," says Yasmin, her words punctuated by sobs. "They wore masks too, they didn't want us to see their faces. When we wanted water, they got angry. I said I wanted to go to the bathroom and they said 'you'd better go right there on the spot'."
When the authorities came looking for her, the gang responded with their trademark brutality.
"We were told to stay quiet and not make any noise, because the national guard was passing.
"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.
"They choked him and slashed his throat. Then they grabbed his head and pushed it, as if playing with a ball. Then they started on the arms, with the knife."
She stops talking, puts her head in her hands and weeps. She shaved her head after her ordeal - a visual cleansing of everything she's endured.
Yasmin and her children are now in limbo. Like all the women here, she is too terrified to return home. For them, the refugee camp is the final stop on a journey they pray will deliver them to safety. These women flee to Tijuana - the world's busiest border crossing - because of its proximity to the United States.
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.
LIVES WITH NO VALUE
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.
"We've worked with women that have been burned, mutilated, gang raped and sold multiple times. These women are so terrified they won't leave the shelter they're staying in - they feel as soon as they step outside they could die," she says.
Nicole Ramos, a human rights lawyer
Nicole Ramos, a human rights lawyer
The extreme brutality inflicted on women like Yasmin is not the only type of violence Mexican women have to endure.
Many in the refugee camps are fleeing extreme domestic abuse at the hands of their partners - a crime that is all too common in a society that often treats women with contempt.
"Women in many circles are not viewed as persons of value," Nicole explains. "They are viewed as property under the ownership of other persons, whether that's organised crime, their father or their spouse. Women's lives are not valued here."
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.
"He told me if I left, he would get the kids. I couldn't leave them," she says, the fear audible in her voice.
"Until one day, my partner grabbed a knife. My son, Ian, threw himself at him and shouted at him to drop the knife."
Ian, her 10-year-old son, takes up the story. "I told him to drop the knife," he says, his voice soft and eerily matter of fact. "After I grabbed the knife and threw it away, he just stood there, still.
"I'm not afraid of him," he says of his father, "I'm not afraid of anything. I was brought up to respect women. That's how I'm going to bring up my own children.
"I want to go to the US to get an education and be safe."
Maria talks to Sky News' Alex Crawford
Maria talks to Sky News' Alex Crawford
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.
Maria's brother, who already lives in the US, is waiting for her to ring so he can race to San Diego and pick her and the children up. We are waiting at the border too, hoping to film the happy reunion. The hours go by and there's no news from Maria. Then a heart-breaking message arrives.
"We've been turned down. We've been sent back to Mexico."
We find Maria and the children sitting on the pavement near the border crossing, sobbing their hearts out. "They just said Mexico wasn't at war and we should go back. We never even got a chance to tell them our story," she says, bitterly.
She has no idea where she'll sleep tonight. Her spot in the church refugee camp is already taken. She arranges to stay overnight with a friend who's living rough nearby. By morning, she's on the run again with her children. This time, they'll try the illegal route across a different section of the same border. She believes their lives depend on making it to the US.
It's like this for so many here 鈥� desperate situations driving them to desperate measures. Mexico is not technically at war but for many it's like living in the middle of a never-ending conflict.
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.
As I return to the streets of Tijuana, I begin to get more of a sense of just how hostile that world can be.
A DOUBLE MURDER
The border city of Tijuana is one of the most violent in the world.
It is a magnet for both Mexican and international criminal gangs who battle to control the multi-billion dollar businesses of drugs and people trafficking.
In the first six months of 2023, there have been more than 900 murders.
We go back to the city's northern quarter just a few metres from the border, and we're soon on our way to investigate reports of a double homicide.
Police tape cordons off the entrance to the house. Jennifer, the young woman who lives in the house where the murders took place, says she heard a noise outside.
"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.
"I just told my oldest daughter not to look, because I couldn't even open the door. They were right there. I was like, 'just don't look'."
Jennifer is newly widowed
Jennifer is newly widowed
Jennifer is still in shock and struggling to process what has just happened. In a few short seconds, a seemingly random act of violence has left her a widow and her young family without a father. Her female friends arrive at the scene and throw their arms around her. There's little else they can do.
"I'm five months pregnant and I have my girls. I don't know right now, I really don't know anything," she says, fighting back tears.
Her devastating loss is a reminder that murder statistics only ever count the dead but the suffering of those who are left to go on living is impossible to measure.
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 鈥� 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.
There is an old Tijuana saying: "If you call a drug dealer - they'll ring your doorbell 10 minutes later. Call the pizza delivery guys and you'll be eating a margherita within half an hour. But call the cops and you are still waiting two hours later for them to show up."
Item 1 of 3
THE MAYOR
The overall responsibility for protecting the citizens of this murderous city lies with the mayor. Montserrat Ramirez Caballero is the first woman to hold this position and it comes at great personal risk. When we meet, she is wearing a bright, printed dress and boots with her long black hair smoothed down her back.
"I want them to see that someone in a skirt can do the job."
Montserrat Ramirez Caballero
Montserrat Ramirez Caballero
She was elected 18 months ago promising to "bring the security that the people of Tijuana" expect from their politicians. But with 20 murders in the last two days alone, it seems she faces an almost impossible task.
"The big problem here is the guns," says Montserrat. "This month I got 150 guns off the street," she says, but the supply is swiftly replenished. "The guns come all the time, every day."
The streets of this city are not safe for a woman who has received death threats. But the mayor insists on doing business as usual. For every public engagement she is accompanied by a specialist team of armed bodyguards who travel everywhere in a convoy of bulletproof vehicles.
The mayor visits a salon in Tijuana's red-light district
The mayor visits a salon in Tijuana's red-light district
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.
Many of them - like Montserrat herself - are originally migrants from poverty-stricken southern Mexico. "It keeps me in touch with my people," she says. "I want them to know I am one of them and I'm listening to them."
Montserrat's tough upbringing is part of what makes her so determined to bring change. "My father was beating my mum a lot," she says. Her mother eventually fled their hometown of Oaxaca and came to Tijuana. "I try to explain to [the women in the red light district], that it's possible to cut the cycle of violence."
Although the mayor faces an almost insurmountable task to keep the streets safe, her achievement in getting to the top in such a traditionally macho society is itself a cause for celebration.
THE DISAPPEARED
But it doesn't take long for my sense of optimism to evaporate. Driving back into the city we're waylaid by a group of demonstrators.
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 Disappeared") - the missing victims of the endless drug wars.
They are all wearing t-shirts and holding posters with the faces of their loved ones printed on them. Their voices join together in despair as they process through the city streets.
Thousands of people have vanished, never to be seen again. Sometimes neighbours see them being hauled off by men with guns. Or witnesses talk of them being pulled into vehicles. Or they're waved off by friends after a night out but never reach home.
They leave behind parents or lovers who engage in a never-ending search trying to find closure, even if it is a corpse or part of one.
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.
We join the annual pilgrimage of a group who've lost their children or partners. Their travelling coach is guarded with an army escort and police motorbikes nearby.
They have a list of locations they want to search where bones, or cadavers, have been discovered in the past. These addresses are supplied to them 鈥� mostly through third parties 鈥� by the cartels and there's a worry they may be lured to places and attacked.
At one location, there is a "spotter" high on a hill who is wearing a balaclava. He seems to monitor all the group's movements. A nervousness sets in. They climb hastily back into their coach and drive away. The armed soldiers escorting them shout at us not to film their faces.
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.
The families want the police to search for more clues or evidence 鈥� and they put on a display of doing just that, maybe for our benefit, maybe for the benefit of the families - but the likelihood is they will never discover what happened to the two former inhabitants of this blood-splattered beach hut.
Police cordon off a blood-splattered beach hut
Police cordon off a blood-splattered beach hut
The coach is full of relatives desperate for answers. Olga Castillo Estrada has been searching for her daughter Selena, 23, for about three years now. She vanished with her boyfriend in March 2020.
A neighbour has told Olga and Selena's father, Alvaro, that gunmen took Selena and her boyfriend away from their apartment in a car. Olga cries at the thought of what might be happening to her daughter now. She cannot bring herself to accept she might be dead, but she also can't bear to think what she might be going through if she's alive.
Olga shows me her daughter's school photos. "She was a very good student," she says proudly. Selena's bedroom is left the way it was before she moved out, her clothes still in the wardrobe.
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 like I hear my daughter crying every day," Olga says breaking into sobs.
"I feel that they're hurting her. It's torture for me but I try to seem strong for my other daughter."
Alvaro and Olga, parents of missing Selena
Alvaro and Olga, parents of missing Selena
Olga and Alvaro are deeply religious. They pray for their daughter's safety every night at 8pm, timed to coincide with the other families who do the same for their loved ones. It is a heart-rending scene watching these devastated parents on their knees praying for their daughter's salvation.
Even though thousands have gone missing, the families are furious at the authorities for doing so little.
I join in with Selena's parents as they embark on another search. Today, they are part of a group looking through the barren hills above the city.
Any hint of a lead generates a flurry of fearful anticipation. It's been reported over the radio that a body has been dumped in a nearby storm drain. But it's a false alarm - the remains here are animal - not human.
Disheartened but still determined, Alvaro explains what motivates him to keep searching.
"It's sad to come back empty-handed but if we don't find our daughter, at least we might find someone else, and let other people have a rest from searching."
"Let no one be the next"
"Let no one be the next"
The number of people whose lives have been claimed by the bloody war between Mexican authorities and the drug cartels that has raged since 2006.
Each year 3,000 women are murdered. That's 10 a day.
The death toll is staggering, but so is the number of women and girls who remain missing leaving unanswered questions for their families and friends.
Women and girls are driven from their homes by the brutal cartels, Pastor Gustavo Banda Aceves says.
The death toll is staggering, but so is the number of women and girls who remain missing leaving unanswered questions for their families and friends.
Each year 3,000 women are murdered. That's 10 a day.
The death toll is staggering, but so is the number of women and girls who remain missing leaving unanswered questions for their families and friends.
THE SEX TRADE
Tijuana is a complex cocktail of contradictions. Mexico's drug war means it has one of the highest homicide rates in the world but the city is still a popular tourist resort, with stalls selling ponchos, sombreros and mariachi bands playing in the streets. Thousands of visitors cross the border every night.
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.
After drugs, sex is the second biggest money spinner in the city. Tijuana's red light district is one of the largest in the whole of the Americas. Prostitution is legal but many of the women here are at the mercy of violent pimps.
Rows of young women in mini skirts and thigh-high boots or heels lean on the walls of the many 'gentlemen clubs' and bars in the red-light district. It's a sign of how women are typically viewed in this testosterone-fuelled society.
"We are commodities," a woman says, "bought and sold like cars".
Some of the sex workers look like young girls - one dressed in a short skirt, high heels and wearing red lipstick, looks like she hasn't yet reached puberty. Another is heavily pregnant.
The life of a sex worker is a precarious one 鈥� usually caught between the control of a pimp and potentially dangerous customers who could be connected to the cartels, as well as working in clubs which could also be controlled by the cartels.
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.
Vee Guzman used to be a sex worker. She started as a pole dancer in one of the clubs in the red-light district. Like many, her decision was made out of desperation. "When I first started working here, it was because we were behind on rent by about $900 (拢705), I had just had a baby and there wasn't any other alternative," she recalls.
Vee shares her story
Vee shares her story
As well as dancing for the customers, Vee started to charge them for sex. At first she said she enjoyed the lifestyle and the money she made, but then her pimp started to assault her for not handing over her earnings.
"It was beating after beating. It was crazy and eventually, that got to me. He just attacked me and would hit me with his bare fist."
Vee says she felt too scared to escape even after one of her co-workers was brutally murdered.
"I saw the pictures. She was decapitated, her limbs cut off. I heard they even skinned her face. I guess she did something wrong," she says with a shrug. That mentality is everywhere among these women. They end up believing it must be their fault if they're abused or killed.
To escape the increasing horror of her life, Vee turned to drink and drugs. "You just lose yourself. You give a little part of yourself to every man you have sex with," she says.
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.
"My heart goes out to the girls who are still in the industry - I don't know how they do it day in and day out. There are girls that go out and don't come back."
But there is at least one person prepared to take on the sex industry and protect the interests of the most vulnerable.
A few weeks before we arrived in Mexico, Mayor Monsterrat Cabellero made a move against Adelita's, one of the city's biggest sex clubs. In a joint operation with the federal government, she put it out of business because it was exploiting underage girls.
It was a bold move that risked making her powerful enemies. But Monserrat is defiant. "I don't care who the owner is," she says. "I don't feel scared because I have a responsibility to prevent [the exploitation of underage girls] and talk about these people."
As always when I talk to the mayor of this troubled city, I come away with mixed feelings.
I'm inspired by her determination to help her people. But now, I'm also beginning to worry about her safety.
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A SAFE HAVEN
Just outside of Tijuana, sits one of the few places I can be sure that young women are free from harm.
This is La Casa del Jardin, a safehouse for the victims of physical and emotional violence.
It's run by Alma Tucker, who for the past 30 years has been fighting against people trafficking and the sexual abuse of minors.
She cradles a young infant in her arms as we talk.
Alma Tucker
Alma Tucker
"We're so blessed to have this baby in this house," says Alma.
"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.
"We have our own school on campus," says Alma. "They don't go to regular school because many of them testify against those who hurt them."
Watching these girls being given the freedom to learn, to grow and be allowed to be children without facing physical and mental abuse is uplifting.
But despite Alma's natural optimism and pride in the girls' progress, she is deeply concerned about what is happening in her country. She steers me away from the others to share the enormity of the task she faces in combating the child sex trade.
"There's a lot of money in this industry. Why? Because one drug you sell once, but a human, you can sell it 10, 20, 25 times a day.
"It makes me angry and wish I had the power to do more but I can't do more than I'm doing. I'm praying to God to give me strength."
The girls celebrate being children again by dancing - grateful that this woman has the guts and humanity to fight for their rights. We watch together, clapping and smiling as the girls in her shelter perform a routine.
Alma's house might be a haven of happiness but as I travel back into the city, I am faced with constant reminders that in this violent society the safety of women is never guaranteed. Migration figures have reached an all-time high but the greater the numbers, the greater the backlash against those desperate to flee.
A BRUSH WITH DEATH
A few days after we leave Tijuana, my worst fears about the mayor's safety become all too real. Early one morning, during rush hour - her convoy is ambushed in an attack that bears all the hallmarks of a cartel hit squad.
News of the shooting reaches me while I am covering the war in Ukraine and it is some time before I can get through to the mayor in Tijuana.
I finally manage to speak to Monserrat in a video call. She is upbeat despite her close brush with death.
Sky's Alex Crawford speaks to Tijuana's mayor from Ukraine
Sky's Alex Crawford speaks to Tijuana's mayor from Ukraine
"I'm a lucky person. I hope nothing happens to me and my family but I'm still going to work hard. We are not at war like Ukraine but we have a war with these cartels. I want to bring freedom to my country."
Montserrat's determination stems from the knowledge that if Mexico's narco war doesn't end, and if men are allowed to get away with abuse and exploitation at every level of society - then the future for millions of women here is almost too horrific to contemplate.
CREDITS
Correspondent: Alex Crawford
Cameraman: Jake Britton
Producers: Chris Cunningham, Olivia McGhie and Jordi Lebrija
Photography: Chris Cunningham
Documentary Director: Toby Sculthorp
Editor: Serena KutchinAG百家乐在线官网
Shorthand Producer: Michael Drummond
