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Mexico City, May 9 (EFE).- American actress Jane Fonda and Mexican star Salma Hayek on Tuesday staged a performance here of "The Vagina Monologues" by U.S. playwright Eve Ensler as a way of seeking justice for women slain in the northern Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez.
The performance will take place during the celebration Tuesday of "V-Day" (End of Violence against Women Day) promoted by Ensler, and on this occasion will benefit the Casa Amiga Crisis Center for its work in aiding families of women who met violent deaths in Ciudad Juarez.
At a press conference Monday night, the actresses and the playwright expressed indignation for the almost 400 killings committed since 1993 which the authorities still have not solved.
Ensler said that in Iceland several women in Parliament once put on the play and called themselves "friends of the vagina."
"I wish the president of Mexico (Vicente Fox) would do the same, and I'm not joking," Ensler said.
The writer said that when national leaders "understand that women are their main natural resource and the fundamental energy of life itself, women will be valued and respected."
For her part, Jane Fonda, who once put on this play in Ciudad Juarez, in Feb. 2004, together with U.S. actresses Sally Fields and Christine Lahti, said that she realized then "how corruption runs throughout Chihuahua state, including among the police."
The actress said she finds it hard to believe that these crimes have been going on for 10 years and that the murderers are still at large.
She also said that the United States has a great deal of responsibility in all that went on in this Mexican town on the 3,200-kilometer (1,988-mile) border shared by the two North American countries.
Mexico's Salma Hayek said that she was taking part in the play "in solidarity, to raise awareness among those in the governments responsible and, above all, among those who commit these monstrous crimes."
Eve Ensler added that the situation in Juarez will be cleared up "when Mexicans no longer tolerate these killings, and then the government will at last do something."
Finally, Hayek said that while women are not a priority, "governments will go on selling and mutilating women living in poverty."
Despite everything she was hopeful that the performance of "The Vagina Monologues" will help "fire up the Mexican people to say: 'Not one (woman) more!'"
Most of the victims in Ciudad Juarez have been young women from poor families who worked in the assembly plants known as "maquiladoras" that sprung up around the city to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Many were sexually assaulted before they died.
The failure of local and Chihuahua state authorities to solve the crimes forced the federal government to step in, but so far with little to show for its efforts.
International organizations have taken up the cause of the victims of the murder spree in Juarez, which has also been the subject of several documentary films. EFE
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