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Action Party under the governorship of Francisco Barrio Terrazas. Barrio was in office when the killings in Juárez first began in 1993, and his administration had been charged with looking into the murders. Now, in 1995, Barrio's six-year term was nearing completion and members of Mexico's opposing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), led by Patricio Martínez, were campaigning hard to overtake the governorship in elections scheduled for later that year. The PRI party held the presidency and had been in power in Mexico for more than seventy years.
     
     
To attract support for the local PAN candidate, members of the regional headquarters had been hosting a series of dances. A woman had come to the Pérez house some months earlier to invite Olga Alicia to accompany her to the social gatherings. She would act as Olga's chaperone.
     
     
The story was eerily familiar. Ramona Morales spoke of a local woman who chaperoned young neighborhood girls to local dances. Silvia had wanted desperately to go with her in the days before she disappeared, but their night on the town was canceled when one of the woman's daughters misbehaved and everyone got punished.
     
     
At first Olga had refused to go the PAN dances. She wasn't interested in going out. She was serious about her studies and was about to begin classes at a prestigious local university, where she had been granted a partial scholarship. But Irma had insisted that her daughter have a little fun and pushed her to go out.
     
     
August 10, a Thursday, was supposed to have been a short workday for Olga. At the request of her mother, she was quitting the job at the shoe store to seek employment closer to home. But she had agreed to come in for several hours on her day off to help her boss train some new employees. Olga told her mother that she would be home by six. When Olga did not show up, Irma went out looking for her.
     
     
People in the neighborhood said that Olga was among a group of youths at the political headquarters on Avenida 16 de Septiembre, where a rally was going on. Irma knew that her daughter was interested in a young, junior member of the political party. She'd met the young man at a PAN-sponsored dance.
     
     
Since attending that first dance, Olga and the chaperone had become regulars at the social gatherings.
     
     
Officers laughed at Irma Pérez when she went to police headquarters that Sunday to file the missing persons report.
     
     
"How old is your daughter?" one of the uniformed officers asked.
     
     
"Twenty," Irma responded, furious when the officer glanced at his coworker and started to snicker.
     
     
"She'll be back," the two chuckled in unison. "She's probably running around with some boy."
     
     
Irma was horrified at their jokes— and at the way the police had dismissed her. To them, her daughter's disappearance was just another domestic case that would eventually resolve itself.
     
     
Determined to get help, Irma found a legal aide adviser named Rogelio Loya to accompany her back to headquarters. It was clear to her that authorities paid attention only when someone with clout was representing the family of the missing person.
     
     
Still, Irma was so frustrated she wanted to scream at the officers to get them to do something to find Olga Alicia. She asked her sister to try to locate the phone numbers of the families of the other missing girls. But when she dialed the families, she learned that most had found their daughters— deceased. "Yes, I found mine, but she is dead," one mother told her.
     
     
"Yes, I found my daughter recently, but only her body," said another.
     
     
Uncertain what else to do, Irma sought help from the young people at the PAN headquarters who had been friendly with her daughter. But the group was not cooperative. The political community shunned Olga, pushing her away when she tried to learn more about her daughter's involvement.
     
     
While members of PAN