The wounds we inflict today will become the scars of tomorrow.
Ciudad Juárez, Mexico— At the beginning of 2025, it wasn’t an earthquake. It wasn’t a gunshot. It was something quieter that shattered Ciudad Juárez this year: the betrayal of its children.
It all began in daycares that, until just a few months ago, seemed like safe spaces: colorful drawings, children’s songs, tiny backpacks hanging from small hooks. Spaces meant for care. For play. For life. But behind that cheerful façade, something darker moved in silence.
Mi Mundo de Colores (My World of Colors), the name at the entrance of one of the centers.
Today, for dozens of families, those colors are forever stained. Medical and psychological evaluations of over a hundred children unearthed a nightmare: sexual abuse that left invisible marks, scars on small bodies, and memories too painful to name.
Rosa Iveth V.G., one of the caregivers, was arrested and charged with aggravated sexual assault.
Along with her, other workers from different daycares were arrested: Lourdes Z.M., Teresa Johana T.E., and later three more whose names barely appear in official documents.
The numbers hurt:
– 34 investigation files from Mi Mundo de Colores.
– 15 from Guardería Loon (Loon Daycare).
– 2 from Niñito Jesús (Little Jesus).
Behind every number, there is a child, a family, a life torn apart, and more cases still unfolding.
The Estancia de Bienestar y Desarrollo Infantil (Center for Child Well-being and Development, EBDI) No. 32, part of the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (Institute for Social Security and Services for State Workers, ISSSTE), a federal institution created to protect, closed its doors under pressure from parents.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office for Women and the Family (FEM) opened more than 19 investigation files at this center alone; two were sent to the Federal Attorney General’s Office. The magnitude of the damage goes beyond local records. And yet, to this day, no arrests have been made. Only confused parents, harmed children, and an institutional silence that hurts more than any half-hearted answer.
That this could happen inside a federal childcare facility is not just alarming, it is profoundly grave.
Because if even the institutions created to protect our children cannot guarantee their safety, what hope is left?
What kind of future can we build if even the supposed refuges for childhood turn into traps?
Since January, the FEM has opened 71 investigation files related to abuses across different daycares.
Medical and psychological evaluations have been carried out on 218 children; in 71 cases, signs of abuse were found. And still, the actions we see are late, insufficient, painfully reactive.
Parents, clutching investigation files as if holding wounded children, formed the Justice Colors Movement.
On April 6, they marched, raised banners, and stood before cameras to shout what this country usually only whispers: justice and protection for children.
Meanwhile, in the homes of Ciudad Juárez, mothers and fathers gather the shattered pieces of lost childhoods. They try, as best they can, to explain the inexplicable, and the children, some too young even to say their full names carry in their memory a wound they still do not know how to name.
And then the questions catch up to us:
What kind of society are we building when we allow abuse to happen within the walls that were supposed to protect?
In a city where wounds are often hidden beneath layers of habit, we know that if we do not demand justice, if we do not demand real change, if we do not raise our voices, the story will repeat itself. On other colorful walls, in other lullabies, among other tiny backpacks.
It’s essential to remember: when we choose silence, when we decide to look the other way, we reveal whose side we’re truly on: The side of fear, the side of forgetting, the side of those who believe they can cause harm without consequence.
Demanding justice now, refusing to let these crimes be forgotten or minimized, is not just for the children who could not defend themselves. It’s for all those who are still to come.
Every time we fail to demand justice, every time we normalize pain, we bury not only today’s childhood, but tomorrow’s hope. Every silence we don’t break is an invitation for the monster under the bed to reach us, to reach your children, or someone else’s.
Today, we know that even the places meant to protect can betray, but we also know that the only way to prevent it from happening again is to speak, to name it, to refuse to stay silent.
Because silence, too, can be a form of violence.
