Also under suspicion is a computer school located in downtown Chihuahua called ECCO, where at least six of the young women attended classes.
The school hires young, good-looking men to approach young women like Neyra and offer them scholarships to study at the school. They then make an appointment to visit the woman's home, where they compile information on their schedules and whereabouts in order to place them in a course. Since its representatives approached many of the missing women at one time or another, ECCO is widely suspected of being involved in their disappearance � forcing the school to change its name to ERA. The school has 36 branches in 10 states in Mexico, and the branch located in Ciudad Juarez is also under suspicion. But despite the seemingly obvious connection, ERA remains open and is not under police investigation.
Aside from blatant corruption, department policy of the Mexican police makes the prospects of recovering the women nearly nonexistent. Officials do not have to file a report before 48 hours, and even then, they are not required to look for the girls since their disappearance isn't a crime until it can be proven that they were kidnapped. In some cases, officers have turned up as late as 26 days after the disappearance to get descriptions of the girls.
Emily Price AlterNet August 6, 2003
