Neighbors warn that frost is entering Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Temperatures in the border city in winter reach below zero. And in one of its few green places an African giraffe tries to survive. Benito arrived in Juárez on May 3, in a wagon without a roof, as if he were a circus animal. They took him to the Central Park, a public space that depends on the State Government and that does not have the status of a zoo. In a fenced dirt enclosure, with a small umbrella and a hut without doors, the animal has endured the extreme heat and now the cold. A citizen group, called Save Benito, has been pressuring the state and federal governments for eight months to get the giraffe out of there. They have filed an amparo and requested precautionary measures to try to protect him. At the moment, the process of his transfer remains blocked in the Federal Attorney General's Office for Environmental Protection (Profepa). Meanwhile, in Juárez the frosts continue to arrive.
Benito's eyelashes are freezing, as is his saliva, which is now coming out thickly from his mouth. That's what the activists who visit him every day say. They stand guard in front of the fence, checking if his feeding schedules are being followed, if a veterinarian arrives to check his physical condition. Perla de la Rosa and Gloria Carrillo answer the phone in front of Benito and say no to everything. That those responsible for Parque Central do not guarantee food like the one that Giraffe needs, that he eats carrots in bad condition, that the person who should check him does not even have a ramp, so the most that can be checked on Benito is his thighs, because The animal measures five meters.
One night this week, after an urgent request from the group, park staff arrived to allow Benito to enter his construction, which still had no doors: “The giraffe was not being protected at night, he stayed outside until 9:30 p.m. when a councilor came, He found that he was outside, and a worker arrived, untrained in dealing with animals. He yelled at him, yelled at him: 'Come on Benito!', and with a rag he started to scare him into getting in. That is the level of training in this park,” says De la Rosa.
Infections and compulsive disorders
In the indirect protection, in defense of the human right to a healthy environment, which the group has presented and to which this newspaper has had access, some of the damages that Benito is suffering are exposed: “Modification of fur color; weightloss; compulsive disorder; skin infections (from contact with feces); stomach infections due to improper feeding (spoiled food); stomach infections due to improper feeding by park users, due to the omission of not having caregivers or a specialized veterinarian.” Among the compulsive disorders, the activists detect that he licks the bars and walls of his booth, and that when there is very loud music in the park he walks around his space without stopping. They see him stressed, damaged and in danger.
Regarding this, Profepa – which has not responded to this newspaper's questions – stated in a statement that “due to the lack of surveillance and medical attention to the specimen, the non-compliance with the corresponding Management Plan since the expansion was not built , the park was summoned to the park and the specimen was secured as a precaution. The federal authority assures that the park was “ordered” to take a series of measures “that it did not take.” The first was a “barn-type expansion in the stable where the giraffe was located”, it also had to “make adjustments to the specimen's shelter, through the construction of concrete walls and columns, leveling the ground and placing sanitary, metal and heating installations, these so that the specimen could be sheltered in the cold season.” Óscar Ibáñez, spokesperson for the State Government in Juárez, assures EL PAÍS that the heating is already working. He also points out that Profepa gave permission for Benito to be in the Central Park and also made several visits in which “everything has been complied with.”
It is not the first time that Ciudad Juárez has a giraffe. For more than 20 years he lived in that same Modesto place. The animal died in July 2022 from a heart attack and his shadow is, at the same time, the reason that Benito arrived and also the reason for him to leave. On the one hand, the Government of PAN member María Eugenia Campos affirms that the people in Juárez were very sorry for Modesto's departure and because he “was missed”, the Executive accepted that there would be a new giraffe. Official documents indicate that Benito – who was not yet called Benito – arrived as a donation from the Fiesta Safari zoo in Culiacán (Sinaloa) on May 3, 2023.
Activist María Ruiz, from Save Benito, points out that she is still guilty of not having done anything for Modesto, who suffered in a cold space without others of his kind, for more than two decades. “He survived by instinct, he had a terrible quality of life. In 2011 we had a terrible frost and he lost part of his tail and ears due to necrosis. When Modesto died we felt sadness as Juarenses, but also relief that at least the animal was no longer suffering. I thought no one would think of bringing another giraffe back here,” the woman told this newspaper by phone.
Mexico against animal abuse
The Government and animal rights agree on something: from Modesto to Benito the only thing that has changed is the awareness of animal abuse. In Mexico there is no exact data on this scourge. The organization Anima Naturalis points out that the country registers the highest number of cases of abuse in all of Latin America, with more than 60,000 animals dying due to violence each year. In recent years, scenes of extreme violence have worsened while groups of animal activists, led especially by women, try to make space for the passivity of the majority of the population in the face of animal suffering.
The Juárez activists began collecting signatures from practically the first day Benito arrived. Then they organized, presented t
he protection and turned Benito into a symbol of animal suffering on social networks. They have managed to make enough noise for even President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to speak this week in his morning conference about Benito. The president has asked to unblock the procedures so that the giraffe can get out of the cold on the border before anything else happens to it.
But it doesn't seem so simple in the midst of a bureaucratic battle. Faced with the desperate request of the activists, Profepa tries to cover its back: “Arrangements are being made to be able to transfer the specimen, which cannot be done from one day to the next.” Meanwhile, she demands, “the park must carry out all the actions required to guarantee her physical integrity, her health and the dignified and respectful treatment that corresponds to her.”
As if Benito were a thrown weapon, the state government and the federal agency attack each other. The first says that before Christmas he began to look for options to transfer him, that he obtained approval for the Africam Safari park, in Puebla, and that it is Profepa who is blocking his exit; The attorney general's office says that those responsible for the park have never even requested “that the transfer of the specimen is necessary”: “Not only did it not comply with the adjustments that it stated it would make, but it also pretends to ignore that the transfer must protect and preserve the life and the dignity of the specimen.”
In the last chapter of the case, a federal judge has granted the suspension that the group requested and has ordered that “the steps be taken to carry out Benito's transfer to Africam Safari in the shortest possible time.” Meanwhile, in Juárez the frosts continue to hit.
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