Femicides/Femicidios

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Facts (who, what, when, where, why?)

Imagery (excerpts, responses, images)

READING PURPOSE: Highlight facts in yellow and imagery in orange.

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To Work and Die in Juarez

Scores of young women workers have been murdered in
this tough Mexican-border factory city. Now a grassroots
women's movement is seeking answers -- and justice.
By Evelyn Nieves
| Mother Jones, May/June 2002 Issue (abridged)
Early last fall, authorities in the gray-brown factory city
of Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso,
Texas, were prepared to declare a triumph. For nine
months, no women's bodies had been found dumped in
a field or ditch or along the side of a road. Officials were
ready to say that Ciudad Juarez's eight-year series of
rape-murders was finally over.
True, about two dozen women were still missing, their
photos and descriptions ("tan skin, long brown hair")
taped to the windows of the discount stores along
Avenida Juarez, downtown's main drag. But there were
no bodies. No proof the women hadn't simply up and
left. There was certainly no hard evidence to investigate,
despite the warnings from women's rights groups that
the young women who had vanished fit the profile of
scores of others who have been raped, mutilated, and
tossed like garbage throughout Ciudad Juarez since
1993.
Then, on November 6, a construction worker stumbled
onto the body of a slim, long-haired young woman in a
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ditch between two major intersections. Hours later,

police searching the ditch found the skeletal remains of
two more young women. The next day, bulldozers
uncovered five more. Police quickly arrested two
suspects, drivers for the factory buses that shuttle
workers between the city's shantytown colonias and its
sprawling industrial district. Authorities soon announced
that the drivers had confessed to 11 murders of women
over the previous 15 months. But after years of false
starts and dubious arrests, few in Ciudad Juarez -including the families of the victims -- were willing to
believe that police had caught the real killers.
A week later, another body -- another slim, long-haired
young woman, dead less than a day -- was found tossed
in the middle of a street in a quiet residential
neighborhood. And a week after that, another one.
And so Mexico's fourth-largest city retains its nickname
as "the capital of murdered women." The city of 1.5
million, where an acrid haze of factory smoke and car
exhaust hangs in the air, is known for having one of the
highest crime rates in Mexico; in 2001 alone, drug
traffickers were blamed for more than 60 executionstyle murders. But Juarez is most notorious as a place
that draws tens of thousands of young women from
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small, poor towns to take $55-a-week jobs in assembly

plants, known as maquiladoras, operated by some of the
wealthiest corporations in the world -- companies like
General Electric, Alcoa, and DuPont. More than 60
percent of maquiladora workers are women and girls,
many as young as 13 or 14
But while the murders have scarred Ciudad Juarez and
exposed its law-enforcement officials as either
incompetent or corrupt, they have also sparked the
creation of more than a dozen women's rights groups in
the city. Born of desperation and outrage, many of the
groups are made up largely of housewives, mothers, and
grandmothers, some of them relatives and friends of the
murdered. Most have few means and little time, given
the demands of tending to their families
On the surface, it does seem that little has changed in
Juarez in response to the killings. Women still wait for
the rickety green factory buses well before the sun is up,
on lonely, unlit corners where no one would see them if
they were dragged into a car and driven away, never to
be seen alive again. The owners of the more than 300
factories that have flocked here in search of low tariffs
and cheap labor have said little on the subject of the
abductions, rapes, and murders. Though companies
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have vowed to improve security in the city's industrial

areas, there has been no coordinated campaign to protect the young women workers -- even though the eight
bodies found in November were discovered in a field
directly across the road from the office of the foreign
companies' trade organization, Asociacin de
Maquiladoras.
Nor have the plants changed policies that may be
endangering their employees. Workers are still turned
away at many factories if they are as little as three
minutes late, leaving them to return home alone and
vulnerable -- as was the case with several of the women
who were later found dead. Workers still begin and end
their late-night shifts with no police or security patrols in
sight.
Throughout Ciudad Juarez, fear is palpable. Crosses and
messages of remembrance have been nailed to
signposts all over town, a constant reminder of the
dead. Billboards and bus advertisements warn: "Be
careful -- watch for your life."

Juarez
-Tori Amos

Dropped off the edge again down in Juarez

"Don't even bat an eye if the eagle cries", the Rasta man says
Just 'cause the desert likes your girls flesh
And no angel came, no angel came
I don't think you even know what you think you just said
So go on, spill your seed shake your gun to the Rasta man's head
Across the desert she must be blessed
And no angel came, no angel came, no angel came
There's a time to keep it up, a time to keep it in
The Indian is told, the Cowboy is his friend
A time to keep it up, a time to keep it in
The Indian is told, Cowboy is his friend
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You know that I can breathe, even when I cheat

Should, should've, should've been over for me
No angel came, no angel came
No angel came, no angel came
No angel came, no angel came
No angel came, no angel came

Invalid Litter Dept.

-At the Drive in
intravenously polite it was the walkie-talkies
that had knocked the pins down
as their shoes gripped the dirt floor
in the silhouette of dying
dancing on corpses' ashes
yeah, they had plans for him
they has spun the last of the pimps
polyester, satin nailed jewelry lips
while the guillotine just laughed again
dancing on the corpses' ashes
paramedics fell into the wound
like a rehired scab at a barehanded plant
an anesthetic penance beneath
the hail of contraband
they had been defected and excommunicated
and all the pulses were subverted
and they made sure the obituaries
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showed pictures of smoke stacks

a vivid dissection that mocked
the strut of vivisection
semi-automatic colonies
and a silencing that still walks the streets
in the company of wolves
was a stretcher made of
cobblestone curfews
the federales performed
their custodial customs quite well
callous heels
numbed in travel
endless maps made
by their scalpels
on my way
nails broke and fell
into the
wishing well

Las Mujeres de Juarez

- Los Tigres del Norte
Humillante y abusiva,
La intocable impunidad,
Los huesos en el desierto,
Muestran la cruda verdad
Las muertas de Ciudad Jurez,
Son vergenza nacional.

Humiliating and abusive

the untouchable exemption from punishment
The bones in the desert
show the raw truth
The deaths in Ciudad Juarez are a national
embarrassment

Mujeres trabajadoras,
Pasto de maquiladoras,
Cumplidoras y eficientes,
Mano de obra sin igual,
Lo que exportan las empresas,
No lo checa el aduanal.

Women workers
cogs in the maquiladoras
Complying and efficient
Laborers without comparison
What their companies export
Customs & immigration does not check

Vergonzosos comentarios,
Se escuchan por todo el mundo,
La respuesta es muy sencilla,
Jurez sabe la verdad,
Ya se nos quit lo macho,
O nos falta dignidad.

Shameful comments
are heard throughout the world
the answer is simple
Juarez knows the truth
Our masculinity taken away
Our dignity is lacking

"La mujer es bendicin,

Y el milagro de la fe,

The woman is a blessing

and a miracle of faith
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La fuente de la creacin,
Pari al zar y pari al rey,
Y hasta al mismo Jesucristo,
Lo dio a luz una mujer,
Es momento ciudadanos,
De cumplir nuestro deber,
Si la ley no lo resuelve,
Lo debemos resolver,
Castigando a los cobardes,
Que ultrajan a la mujer."

The fountain of creation

who gave birth to the tsar and gave birth to the kings
and even gave birth to Jesus Christ
gave birth to to the woman
It is time for us citizens
to fulfill our responsibilities
if the law doesnt resolve it
we have to resolve it
Punish the cowards
That offend women

Llantos, lamentos y rezos,

Se escuchan en el lugar,
De las madres angustiadas,
Que al cielo imploran piedad,
Que les devuelvan los restos,
Y poderlos sepultar.

Cries, laments, prayers

Are heard in the place
Mothers anguish
That implore the heavens for mercy
To get the remains back
to bury their dead

El gran polica del mundo,

Tambin nos quiso ayudar,
Pero las leyes aztecas,
No quisieron aceptar,
Tal vez no les convena,
Que esto se llegue a aclarar.

The great police of the world

also wanted to help us
but the Aztec laws
did not allow it
Maybe it didnt benefit them
for this situation to be cleared up

Que hay varias, miles de muertas,

En panteones clandestinos,
Muchas desaparecidas,
Que me resisto a creer,
Es el reclamo del pueblo,
Que lo averige la ley.

There are so many, thousands dead

The clandestine mass graves
So many disappeared
Its hard for me to believe.
The town calls for justice from the law.

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"Where Do They Go?"

-The Misfits
My baby moves to Juarez
Down across the line
And then she never called
Remains theyll never mind
No one can be trusted
Chaos by design
Camouflage the killers
Of these femicides
Where do they go?
Where do the girls go?
I just dont know
Where do the girls go?
Baby, I just dont know
Oh no no
I wasnt there for my girl
When she needed me
If I had treat her better
She wouldnt leave
Four hundred lives its taken
Others never found
Dont let her move to Juarez
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Dont be that proud

Where do they go?
Where do the girls go?
I just dont know
Where do the girls go?
I just dont know
I just dont know
Baby I dont know
I just dont know

Excerpt from The Memory of Her Face

-Eve Ensler
Juarez.
Each woman is dark, particular, young.
Each woman has brown eyes, each woman is gone.
There is one girl missing for ten months.
She was seventeen when they took her away
She worked in the maquiladora
She stamped thousands of coupons of products
She would never afford
Four dollars a day.
They paid her and bused her to the desert
It must have been on the way to the bus
They took her
It must have been dark outside
It must have lasted until morning
Whatever they did to her
It went on and on
You can tell from the others
Who showed up without hands or nipples
It must have gone on and on
When she finally reappeared
She was bone
No cute mole above her right eye, no
smile, no wavy black hair.
Bone she came back as bone
She and the others
All beautiful
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All beginning
All faces
All gone
300 faces gone
300 noses
300 chins
300 dark penetrating eyes
300 smiles
300 hungry mouths
About to speak
About to tell
About to scream
Gone
Now
Bone.

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