CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) -- Women in this tough border city came
                 together after dozens of their daughters, sisters and friends were raped and
                 killed, their bodies thrown in the desert. Years later, most of the 60 murders
                 remain unsolved.

                 Three dozen women's groups formed in the wake of the killings in Ciudad Juarez,
                 across from El Paso, Texas. These groups won a rare victory Tuesday when state
                 legislators reversed a law that would have shortened sentences for rapists judged to
                 have been provoked by their victims.

                 The Chihuahua legislature overturned the law -- which gave some rapists a lighter
                 sentences than cattle thieves -- after coming under pressure from the public and
                 outraged women's groups.

                 "We know for sure they are changing it because the pressure was humungous,"
                 said Victoria Caraveo, director of Women for Juarez.

                 Women in Chihuahua had appealed to the media and feminists across Mexico to
                 oppose the law, staged street protests, and even taken the fight to the floor of
                 Congress.

                 Mexico's Congress had threatened to intervene if the Chihuahua state congress did
                 not revamp the recently approved penal code, which cut the minimum sentence
                 from four years to one if the offender could prove that the victim had provoked the
                 attack. Those caught rustling cattle in this northern ranching state face six to 12
                 years in jail.

                 Defenders of the law say women sometimes charge their boyfriends with rape
                 rather than admit to their parents that they are having sex.

                 Jorge Ramirez Marin, a national congressional leader of the Institutional
                 Revolutionary Party, which dominates the Chihuahua state congress, said the law
                 was misunderstood.

                 But "of course, there are those who think that a woman can't even be touched with
                 a rose petal," he said.

                 But feminists said the law would let rapists argue that they attacked their victims
                 because they were scantily dressed or had smiled at them.

                 Lawmakers agreed to remove the clause Tuesday. They also scrapped a second
                 provision that had lowered the minimum rape sentence from four years to six
                 months if the victim was penetrated with an object.

                 Under the new law, set to go into effect next week, rapists face six to 20 years in
                 prison.

                 Rene Medrano, spokesman for the Chihuahua congress, said legislators
                 unanimously approved the changes because of "pressure from the citizens."

                 While police have not solved most of the 60 murders of female factory workers in
                 Ciudad Juarez, the killings led to the creation of a solid women's movement as
                 women banded together to protect themselves.

                 "United we can transform the world," Esther Chavez sai d in a statement Tuesday.
                 Chavez opened the city's first women's shelter and rape crisis center in response to
                 the series of killings.

                 But families of the victims say much still needs to be done.

                 Paula Flores, who became a leading activist after her 17-year-old daughter was
                 raped and killed in 1997, did not participate in the recent fight. Her daughter's killer
                 has still not been found.

                 "I now put my faith in God, because in the justice system I don't have any," said
                 Flores, 44, in her home, filled with her daughter's photos, clothes and trinkets. "I
                 prefer now to visit my daughter's grave rather than waste time going to the
                 prosecutor's office."

                  Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.