Former nun helps Mexico 'femicide' victims recover

It is not just public violence against women that The Ants must contend with. Sarlat says almost every woman here has suffered some type of physical or sexual abuse.

It is a crisis that dogs Mexico, but one that is perhaps heightened in Anapra, where rural women suddenly found themselves with financial independence, a situation that turned gender roles upside down.

That is exactly what happened in Gomez's family, which migrated here from rural Mexico.

"When I started bringing money home, I brought problems to our marriage," says Gomez, who married as a teen and never had independence apart from her father or husband. "My husband wanted to control me."

But instead of returning to traditional patterns, The Ants push for more independence through microenterprises.

Microbusiness solutions

The group has helped women set up a small day-care center and restaurant, as well as a small business delivering prepared meals to entire families when women are working in factory jobs and don't have time to cook.

When the men disagree, The Ants invite them to therapy. Few have shown up. But some have, including domestic abusers seeking recovery, says Sarlat.

Their work is not always successful. Three years ago, during their first microenterprise project, they set up a van service to transport women to the nearest supermarket, seven kilometers away. But the drivers of the traditional routes intimidated the women, first verbally, and once by surrounding the vehicle and scratching it. The women gave up the project.

"Through all of this," Sarlat says, "our hardest task is to teach them that they are not victims. They are used to feeling like victims; we want to show them their potential, that we women can work together and have our own money, that we are worth something and are dignified."

Sarlat spent more than 20 years as a nun, mostly in front of classrooms at Catholic schools for upper class kids. When she was sent to Ciudad Juárez, teaching wealthy children there, it was the neighborhood across town that kept calling her – in Anapra, where there was no running water, no telephone service, a shantytown where migrants from across Mexico poured in daily. She and her colleague Elvia Villescas left the church, enrolled in psychology training, and started The Ants.

"They are like an oasis in the middle of the desert," says Emilienne de León Aulina, the executive director of a Mexico City-based organization called Semillas, or Seeds, which gave The Ants a grant to launch their project. Semillas is also fighting for legal justice for the women who have died or disappeared in Ciudad Juárez. "They are true catalysts of change because what they are doing is changing the behavior of people."

Sarlat downplays her work, but women like Angela Aurora Reyes don't. Ms. Reyes, who moved to Ciudad Juárez 12 years ago, says that violence among women is so commonplace that they don't even realize it's a problem. "We have lived like this our whole lives," she says. "We all have the same story."

She visited the new community center three years ago not for herself, but to get help for her daughter, who is disabled. But it opened up a new world – first of pain and then of healing.

Now she is taking adult education courses in gender, violence, and women's rights at the local university, and imparting those lessons in workshops she runs in women's homes throughout the neighborhood. "We have learned," she says, "we do not need to live like this."

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