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The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border
Despite the fact that Juarez is a Mexican border city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, most Americans are unaware that for more than twelve years this city has been the center of an epidemic of horrific crimes against women and girls, consisting of kidnappings, rape, mutilation, and murder, with most of the victims conforming to a specific young, slender, and poor, fueling the premise that the murders are not random. Indeed, there has been much speculation that the killer or killers are American citizens. While some leading members of the American media have reported on the situation, prompting the U.S. government to send in top criminal profilers from the FBI, little real information about this international atrocity has emerged. According to Amnesty International, as of 2006 more than 400 bodies have been recovered, with hundreds still missing. As for who is behind the murders themselves, the answer remains unknown, although many have argued that the killings have become a sort of blood sport, due to the lawlessness of the city itself. Among the theories being considered are illegal trafficking in human organs, ritualistic satanic sacrifices, copycat killers, and a conspiracy between members of the powerful Juárez drug cartel and some corrupt Mexican officials who have turned a blind eye to the felonies, all the while lining their pockets with money drenched in blood. Despite numerous arrests over the last ten years, the murders continue to occur, with the killers growing bolder, dumping bodies in the city itself rather than on the outskirts of town, as was initially the case, indicating a possible growing and most alarming alliance of silence and cover-up by Mexican politicians. The Daughters of Juárez promises to be the first eye-opening, authoritative nonfiction work of its kind to examine the brutal killings and draw attention to these atrocities on the border. The end result will shock readers and become required reading on the subject for years to come.
351 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 27, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 187 reviews
March 27, 2017
i went to juarez this past february with charles. we met a local and paid him to show us the city. here’s some of what we saw:
- whole parts of town in which ‘houses’ were cardboard, wood, and corrugated tin held together by found nails and bottlecaps.
- tanks and guys with AK47s outside police stations: in the first 5 weeks of 2008 the juarez drug cartel had already killed 22 cops, so the army was called in.
- guys openly selling cocaine out of fruitstands.
- whorehouses filled with (extremely) underage children.
- coyotes waiting at busstops to sneak those who have come in from the interior of the country into el paso.
- poles and posts throughout the city plastered with hundreds of crosses and pictures of young girls.
the crosses and pictures are a tribute to the young women killed in the juarez ‘femicide’. the official number of murdered women from ’93 – ’08 is around 500. the true number is much higher. hundreds and hundreds of young women (ranging in age from 10 – 29) raped (vaginally and anally), tortured, and then killed (breasts chewed or cut off, beaten, stabbed, set on fire, strangled). this has been happening for 15 years.
three stars for this book in that it lacks a depth and heft i kinda feel the subject demands--but it’s a pretty vital and necessary book. and a good look at all of it: the maquiladoras (the factories, overwhelmingly American owned, at which most of the women work), the narcotraffickers, the extreme corruption of the police and government (the police, by the way, are the biggest suspects in the murders), the extreme chauvinism intrinsic to mexican society, torture, NAFTA, etc. -
- whole parts of town in which ‘houses’ were cardboard, wood, and corrugated tin held together by found nails and bottlecaps.
- tanks and guys with AK47s outside police stations: in the first 5 weeks of 2008 the juarez drug cartel had already killed 22 cops, so the army was called in.
- guys openly selling cocaine out of fruitstands.
- whorehouses filled with (extremely) underage children.
- coyotes waiting at busstops to sneak those who have come in from the interior of the country into el paso.
- poles and posts throughout the city plastered with hundreds of crosses and pictures of young girls.
the crosses and pictures are a tribute to the young women killed in the juarez ‘femicide’. the official number of murdered women from ’93 – ’08 is around 500. the true number is much higher. hundreds and hundreds of young women (ranging in age from 10 – 29) raped (vaginally and anally), tortured, and then killed (breasts chewed or cut off, beaten, stabbed, set on fire, strangled). this has been happening for 15 years.
three stars for this book in that it lacks a depth and heft i kinda feel the subject demands--but it’s a pretty vital and necessary book. and a good look at all of it: the maquiladoras (the factories, overwhelmingly American owned, at which most of the women work), the narcotraffickers, the extreme corruption of the police and government (the police, by the way, are the biggest suspects in the murders), the extreme chauvinism intrinsic to mexican society, torture, NAFTA, etc. -
February 23, 2011
A very intense and infuriating book. I couldn't help but feel disbelief at the all the corruption in Mexico on all levels of the government: municipal, state, and federal. Since the killings in 1993, over 430 women have been raped, tortured, and murdered in the city of Juarez. Many of these women, found strewn all around the city's deserts and even some within the city, were poor women who worked at maquiladoras (mostly U.S factories) for extremely low wages. Their devotion to their jobs was extreme; they would walk miles of unpaved road to get to the nearest bus stop, often at odd hours like midnight or 4am. These women, working for $3-$5 A DAY, have no other choice but to continue putting their lives at risks, just to be able to help their families make ends meet.
The story follows the countless murders, false accusations, numerous examples of falsified documents, corruption within the city and state police officers, and the complete and utter ineptitude and ignorance of police officials and other state officials. From the poor warden to the attorney general to the district attorney to the "criminologists", there is lack of organization within the Mexican criminal justice force.
One thing to note: since the NAFTA agreement, U.S factories have monopolized Juarez and various parts of Mexico for cheap labor. These companies don't pay taxes for the city (so many parts of Juarez have no electricity, roads, garbage disposal, or even sewage systems) , disregard worker's unions, and completely disregard the danger their female workers are exposed to....and yet some people still maintain their blind patriotism and the naive idea that the United States is the best country in the world.
Writing this review is pretty difficult, this books is so dense and filled with mind-blowing examples of how awful this world can be. I wish more could be done to help these families and that, one day, their daughters will have justice. Sadly, these horrible events continue to this day and many all over the world are deaf to the cries of these poor families.
I applaud Teresa Rodriguez for writing this book and for doing her part to expand awareness on the events occurring in Mexico. Her degree of research and devotion to the correct organization of events, making sure no political occurrence or murder was not recorded, was astounding.
The story follows the countless murders, false accusations, numerous examples of falsified documents, corruption within the city and state police officers, and the complete and utter ineptitude and ignorance of police officials and other state officials. From the poor warden to the attorney general to the district attorney to the "criminologists", there is lack of organization within the Mexican criminal justice force.
One thing to note: since the NAFTA agreement, U.S factories have monopolized Juarez and various parts of Mexico for cheap labor. These companies don't pay taxes for the city (so many parts of Juarez have no electricity, roads, garbage disposal, or even sewage systems) , disregard worker's unions, and completely disregard the danger their female workers are exposed to....and yet some people still maintain their blind patriotism and the naive idea that the United States is the best country in the world.
Writing this review is pretty difficult, this books is so dense and filled with mind-blowing examples of how awful this world can be. I wish more could be done to help these families and that, one day, their daughters will have justice. Sadly, these horrible events continue to this day and many all over the world are deaf to the cries of these poor families.
I applaud Teresa Rodriguez for writing this book and for doing her part to expand awareness on the events occurring in Mexico. Her degree of research and devotion to the correct organization of events, making sure no political occurrence or murder was not recorded, was astounding.
September 20, 2012
I know that there is some debate about the use of the term femicide and some people were upset that Rodriguez just focused on the killings of women, instead of the vast amount of murder. However, if you have read 2666, you should read this. Rodriguez is a reporter for Univision and while she feels passionately about the subject, she does step back. She presents infromation, when she debates about conclusions she quotes from experts and does NOT put forward her own take. She limits the debate to those in the know.
March 18, 2023
Subtitle: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border.
Beginning in 1993, the residents of Juárez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, became aware of a disturbing frequency of murders of young women. The women were mostly young, slender, and with long hair. They disappeared in broad daylight, from bus stops or while walking home from their jobs in factories or downtown shops. Their bodies were typically found in the surrounding desert, usually days or weeks after they disappeared, with the result that there was little evidence remaining. And yet the families claimed that authorities took the murders too lightly.
Investigators bungled or just ignored standard procedures, failed to collect and secure (or just lost or destroyed) key evidence, and relied on torture of random suspects to secure “confessions” and clear the dockets. The continued murders attracted international attention, but despite heightened scrutiny the crimes and lack of prosecution continued.
Journalist Teresa Rodríguez was a reporter for Univision and spent considerable time in the area interviewing families, suspects, prosecutors and police officials (when allowed to). This is her report of the time up to about 2005. It’s well researched and the story is presented in a manner that is easy to absorb, however distressing the subject.
Some estimate that at least 350 women were murdered between 1993 and 2005. It seems that the machismo culture put little value on these women. But Rodríguez makes it clear that there was considerable corruption and/or ineptitude among authorities. The most disturbing thing to me is that the book leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
Beginning in 1993, the residents of Juárez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, became aware of a disturbing frequency of murders of young women. The women were mostly young, slender, and with long hair. They disappeared in broad daylight, from bus stops or while walking home from their jobs in factories or downtown shops. Their bodies were typically found in the surrounding desert, usually days or weeks after they disappeared, with the result that there was little evidence remaining. And yet the families claimed that authorities took the murders too lightly.
Investigators bungled or just ignored standard procedures, failed to collect and secure (or just lost or destroyed) key evidence, and relied on torture of random suspects to secure “confessions” and clear the dockets. The continued murders attracted international attention, but despite heightened scrutiny the crimes and lack of prosecution continued.
Journalist Teresa Rodríguez was a reporter for Univision and spent considerable time in the area interviewing families, suspects, prosecutors and police officials (when allowed to). This is her report of the time up to about 2005. It’s well researched and the story is presented in a manner that is easy to absorb, however distressing the subject.
Some estimate that at least 350 women were murdered between 1993 and 2005. It seems that the machismo culture put little value on these women. But Rodríguez makes it clear that there was considerable corruption and/or ineptitude among authorities. The most disturbing thing to me is that the book leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
September 27, 2007
I just finished Daughters of Juarez, by Teresa Rodriguez, which I didn’t want to read and didn’t want to like. I can’t really say I liked it, and it isn’t particularly well-written or easy to read, but it is an eye-opener about something that we, educated individuals with resources, take for granted, human rights, and which is almost nonexistent for the poor, disenfranchised individuals in any country, but particularly in countries where poverty is pervasive. I finished it feeling like an Ostrich that just pulled her head out of the sand, and a little scared, not scared of being raped and killed in Mexico, but rather of a civilization that allows human rights abuses to run rampant.
November 11, 2022
True account of unmitigated crime against impoverished women who have no rights, no voice and no authority. This tells of the brutal murders of women and children beginning in the 1990s in Juarez. With rampant corruption from the president of Mexico himself to the local police, any plea for justice is futile. What happens in a society where there is no justice? Disintegration & destruction. Following NAFTA, Mexico opened its borders to US companies offering cheap labor. Zero taxes were paid and there was nothing offered to these cities (ex: Juarez) to fund an adequate infrastructure (toilets, non-cardboard homes, a police force, etc.). The reprehensible torture & subsequent murder of each victim was ignored in the most vile way possible by the government allegedly set up to protect its own people.
I recently listened to a podcast of women disappearing in cities in Mexico, only to be found dead days later. Misogyny still abounds.
I think my next read will be fiction. This was a hard read.
Quote: "The names and faces have changed, but the stories are sadly the same"
"'If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people'" - Virginia Woolf (157)
I recently listened to a podcast of women disappearing in cities in Mexico, only to be found dead days later. Misogyny still abounds.
I think my next read will be fiction. This was a hard read.
Quote: "The names and faces have changed, but the stories are sadly the same"
"'If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people'" - Virginia Woolf (157)
February 13, 2015
I was going to write a blog post reviewing this book, but this is such a complicated and expansive issue, I just didn't even think I'd be able to do it justice. I'm surprised at some of the lower ratings here from other reviewers--most of the other books out there talking about Juarez seem to be more technical reports, or looking at things from a drug perspective only. At least this book attempted to talk about the women, and honor their memories, and document some of what has happened. Delving into such a big issue is going to be confusing, and exhausting. It isn't going to read like an easily digestible true crime narrative. This book took me almost a year to read, maybe more, because sometimes I just had to put it aside. I have the privilege of putting this aside--my heart goes out to the people who don't, who live it every day.
February 2, 2012
Well, after reading this I never want to visit Juarez Mexico. This is pretty depressing. The that people that effected are helpless and the people that could help seem uninterested. Unlike other true crime books, there isn't a concrete villain or villains, just a lot of speculation and a lot of dead girls. Conditions that people live in this part of \ Mexico seem shocking, but I'm living in Bangkok Thailand right now, there seems to be many similarities. Perhaps what is shocking is so many North Americans seem blind to the plight of others than their selves.
July 10, 2019
Es una desgracia ser mujer.
August 9, 2007
The Daughters of Juarez, by Teresa Rodriguez (with Diana Montané and Lisa Pulitzer), chronicles a series of horrific murders of young women (and teens) in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over the last fourteen years, the law enforcement/governmental response to them, and the myriad theories as to the perpetrator(s). Over this period, a good part of 400 poor women were raped, tortured and killed, then dumped in desert areas and vacant lots around the city. The book details a rich tapestry of police and governmental brutality, corruption, blatant sexual discrimination, disregard for public safety, and just plain incompetence.
Although many suspects have been charged and held, it is doubtful that any of the murders can ever be considered legitimately solved because of this pervasive and persistent institutional dysfunction. In fact, one can say that this is a glaring example of how not to run a criminal justice system. It’s heartbreaking to consider that the families of these slain women will never see justice done. Additionally, it must have been so frustrating for those in Mexican law enforcement and government who made efforts to run effective investigations, only to be stymied at every turn by the very system they should have been able to trust, forced out of their jobs because they wouldn’t falsify results or analyses, or even physically threatened.
Daughters is definitely a compelling, true tale and Rodriguez does a service to those affected by these horrors by airing them for everyone to examine. The book, however, suffers from a lack of organization: Rodriguez bounces around dates, people and events so much so that it’s hard to keep them all straight. Also, she makes a point of maudlin over-description of the women and their families so as to make them more sympathetic. This in my mind is unnecessary; most people will find the extreme violence to which these women were subjected and the grief (on multiple levels) that their loved ones were forced to endure to be inconceivably horrible – no matter who the reader is. I also think Rodriguez could have used some citations to support what must have been years of research and investigation. In the end, I would recommend this book as a real eye-opener, but with these reservations.
Although many suspects have been charged and held, it is doubtful that any of the murders can ever be considered legitimately solved because of this pervasive and persistent institutional dysfunction. In fact, one can say that this is a glaring example of how not to run a criminal justice system. It’s heartbreaking to consider that the families of these slain women will never see justice done. Additionally, it must have been so frustrating for those in Mexican law enforcement and government who made efforts to run effective investigations, only to be stymied at every turn by the very system they should have been able to trust, forced out of their jobs because they wouldn’t falsify results or analyses, or even physically threatened.
Daughters is definitely a compelling, true tale and Rodriguez does a service to those affected by these horrors by airing them for everyone to examine. The book, however, suffers from a lack of organization: Rodriguez bounces around dates, people and events so much so that it’s hard to keep them all straight. Also, she makes a point of maudlin over-description of the women and their families so as to make them more sympathetic. This in my mind is unnecessary; most people will find the extreme violence to which these women were subjected and the grief (on multiple levels) that their loved ones were forced to endure to be inconceivably horrible – no matter who the reader is. I also think Rodriguez could have used some citations to support what must have been years of research and investigation. In the end, I would recommend this book as a real eye-opener, but with these reservations.
July 30, 2009
This book is chronology of the events that happened in Ciadad Juarez, Mexico, from 1993 until now. A killer or killers have been terrorizing this large, impoverished, hard-working community. Between 1993 and today, there have been over 300 murders of children, teenage, and young-adult women. The bodies have been carelessly dumped, with signs of torture, rape, and mutilation. The Mexican community is outraged that the government doesn't have the requisite police force, or the man power to launch a big investigation. This story tells the accounts of several families and their frustrating journey for justice.
This book was a sufficient account, but I found it hard to follow since the story jumped around so much and there were lot and LOTS of names. The last 50 pages I skimmed because the information was so redundant, I didn't feel the need to waste my time.
Ultimately, the crimes have not been solved, even with the help of U.S. law enforcement. This dark time in Mexico's history will surely last a lifetime.
This book was a sufficient account, but I found it hard to follow since the story jumped around so much and there were lot and LOTS of names. The last 50 pages I skimmed because the information was so redundant, I didn't feel the need to waste my time.
Ultimately, the crimes have not been solved, even with the help of U.S. law enforcement. This dark time in Mexico's history will surely last a lifetime.
June 12, 2015
I had to slog through this book. It's a horrible book about upwards to 400 young women in Mexico that have been savagely beaten, raped, mutilated, tortured and killed. Some buried in small graves, some just left in the open. This has been going on for YEARS. The incompetence of the Mexican police department, the corruption is as sick and depraved as the killings themselves. This book was SO poorly written I almost put it down. It was written like one long paragraph in a newspaper article. BORING. Without any emotions, it was so heavy on time, place, names...basically read like a who, what where story, with incredible repetition. So confusing. So utterly without any passionate. I gave it three stars for even addressing the topic. I found fascinating the history and make-up of Cui Juarez fascinating, depressing and angry.
June 13, 2017
Bercerita tentang tindak kejahatan terhadap perempuan-perempuan di kota Juarez Meksiko. Mereka diperkosa dan dibunuh dengan kejam. Membaca perlakuan terhadap korban membuat merinding. Tubuh-tubuh gadis malang itu itu dibuang dan ditemukan dengan kondisi yang menyedihkan. Gadis-gadis yang diculik saat pulang bekerja. Mereka yang tetap berangkat kerja meski jiwanya terancam karena terpaksa harus bekerja.
Asal muasalnya adalah kemiskinan dan korupsi yang merajalela. Bahkan pihak kepolisian tak mampu mendatangkan rasa aman. Pengaduan kehilangan anggota keluarga tidak dianggap serius, kesalahan bahkan ditimpakan pada korban yang dituduh salah pergaulan atau orang tua yang tidak mampu menjaga dan mendidik anaknya dengan baik. Saat jatuh korban, penegak hukum juga tidak melakukan tindakan yang berarti.
Asal muasalnya adalah kemiskinan dan korupsi yang merajalela. Bahkan pihak kepolisian tak mampu mendatangkan rasa aman. Pengaduan kehilangan anggota keluarga tidak dianggap serius, kesalahan bahkan ditimpakan pada korban yang dituduh salah pergaulan atau orang tua yang tidak mampu menjaga dan mendidik anaknya dengan baik. Saat jatuh korban, penegak hukum juga tidak melakukan tindakan yang berarti.
October 13, 2008
I felt absolutely powerless as I read this book in the park--where I had a clear view of La Ciudad Juarez from the bench. The things that were most shocking were not the murders, as the commentary on the government and culture of a country that shares so much with our own. It is absolutely horrifying that the attitudes towards women and crimes against women that exist in Mexico do so in this day and age.
The main complaint that I have heard about this book was that the writing style was over-the-top, but the author is a reporter on a Spanish television news station, and that voice is pretty authentic to her style, and the style of the station. I had no problem with it, but those who have little experience with Latin news may be bothered by it a bit.
The main complaint that I have heard about this book was that the writing style was over-the-top, but the author is a reporter on a Spanish television news station, and that voice is pretty authentic to her style, and the style of the station. I had no problem with it, but those who have little experience with Latin news may be bothered by it a bit.
March 15, 2011
This is between a 3-4 for me. There is sensationalist writing, peppered with cliche, which I find off putting. I disagree with some reviewers that there are overwhelming organizational problems. It seems to me that the organization of the book might have been quite calculated to speak to a reader, quite profoundly, whether she reads one chapter, three or the entire book. It's a difficult book, frequently quite gruesome--but a terribly important witness to all the women killed in Juarez (Chihuahua) since 1993. It's mind-blowing how very little has been accomplished in terms of finding some semblance of justice--so much ineptitude and corruption.
This is the book that finally made me sit down and write a piece about Juarez.
This is the book that finally made me sit down and write a piece about Juarez.
May 5, 2007
Amazing. A very engaging crime story, while sickeningly real. I was always interested in the femicides that have been taking place in Ciudad Juarez, but I knew very little about them. This book is a great introduction.
May 16, 2007
Great book. Shows frustration that the family of these victims go through with the justice system. Great read!!!
January 3, 2022
Me tardé como 7 siglos en terminar esto, pero lo hice. La verdad fue una lectura lenta porque sentí que el libro no tenía una estructura muy buena. No iba en sentido cronológico per se, se saltaba fechas y luego regresaba a ellas, o volvía a recordar sucesos que acababan de suceder, falta de edición.
La otra, es que siendo de México, mcuhas de las cosas que explicaba, ya las conozco, el sistema político sobre todo. Esto no puedo culparlo dado que el libro puede ser leído por quien sea, pero creo que la explicación era muy por la ligera.
Por último, no sabía que era este libro, es un libro sobre datos duros o romantizado con historia? Saltaba de uno a otro, de repente era una descripción de como alguien lloraba y la desesperación y luego un capítulo de estadística?
Sí se nota que hay un gran trabajo de investigación detrás del libro, pero considero que faltó aterrizarlo para que fuera más sencillo de cosnumir.
La otra, es que siendo de México, mcuhas de las cosas que explicaba, ya las conozco, el sistema político sobre todo. Esto no puedo culparlo dado que el libro puede ser leído por quien sea, pero creo que la explicación era muy por la ligera.
Por último, no sabía que era este libro, es un libro sobre datos duros o romantizado con historia? Saltaba de uno a otro, de repente era una descripción de como alguien lloraba y la desesperación y luego un capítulo de estadística?
Sí se nota que hay un gran trabajo de investigación detrás del libro, pero considero que faltó aterrizarlo para que fuera más sencillo de cosnumir.
May 23, 2022
Super interesting and educational on the topic. Absolutely heartbreaking in the case of the young women though.
June 14, 2023
Teresa Rodriguez’s The Daughters of Juárez is an essential journalistic account detailing the femicides in Ciudad Juárez, in which 500+ women have been murdered from 1993-2006. Rodriguez provides a very intimate and on the ground account of Ciudad Juàrez and the high level of police incompetence and corruption surrounding the femicides.
Admittedly, at times the text reads as if it was written by a journalist undergrad, lots of overdescription and a bizarre choice of adjectives that seem like Rodriguez and co. were just trying to add an overbearing level of description in their sentences. And of course, it does work at times, but other times it feels like needless padding. But it is highly readable and doesn’t ever steer away from presenting a factual driven account of the information Rodriguez and co gained from testimonies and interviews.
The text feels most accomplished in the mostly rigorous organisation of material, it draws together lots of interviews and accounts of the femicides from 93-06. It gives special attention to the victim’s families and the women’s activists attempting to find justice for the murdered women. It gives a good sense of the Ciudad Juárez as a place and the maquiladoras that surround it; especially detailing the juxtaposition of first world factory luxuries (air conditioned work place, hot showers, lunches and dinners provided for workers, changing rooms, and so on) with the squalor and extreme poverty many of the factory women had to live in. What really is striking (although not surprising) is just how many of the factories are owned and directed by US capital. Rodriguez makes sure to mention in her descriptions each of the companies and their places within the US, a product of NAFTA and the movement of factories to Mexico where many of these companies could get labour for dirt cheap and thus extract more surplus-value, as it goes.
A question that runs through the entirety of the text, and perhaps the femicides themselves, is: “What was going on behind the scenes? Was there a cover-up or just complete incompetence? Or was it both?” p. 156
The text almost seems repetitious because it’s absolutely ridiculous just how much the local and state police departments and governments were terrible at investigating the murders at all. Rodriguez’s question wonders just how much of the botched investigations is incompetence and how much cover-up. It’s certainly both, but what it more astounding is just how coordinated the effort to cover-up the murders is by all levels of Mexican governance. Not even the PAN president, Vicente Fox, could do anything about the femicides, no matter how much attention he may have given them. The text becomes almost a De Sadean nightmare, The 120 Days playing out in a horrifying reality as powerful elites and corrupt policemen are able to make this border town akin to a playground. It’s absolutely atrocious — but certainly no one was believing that cops would do anything to truly solve the problem when they themselves are a part of it. The repetition itself only makes the crimes more shocking given the fact that, as criminologist Oscar Maynez points out, there were so many ways that officials could have investigated and figured out how to track the criminals doing the killings. I mean, they got so bold as to start dumping bodies in the heart of Ciudad Juárez. Yet, although Rodriguez maintains an air of objectivity and therefore never attempts to go beyond the facts as she sees them presented to her, it is undoubtedly the conditions of Ciudad Juárez that created a vacuum of impunity that allowed all of these killers to murder 500+ women and continually do so with little to no consequence whatsoever. She remains within a position that doesn’t attempt to go beyond the fact that corruption is undeniably present within the police and government of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua. Yet, I would argue it is that the institutions themselves are extremely decayed and corrupt — reforms wouldn’t necessarily change the ways in which police are able to go above the law and grant themselves impunity. They would always find ways around it. Especially when it becomes apparent in the narrative that the drug cartels, which Rodriguez fails to bring more attention to, have a lot to do with the femicides.
Or say, with the mention of US capital and the maquiladora culture — with many women migrating to Ciudad Juárez and searching for work there was a trend toward disintegration of the traditional family unit. Within the femicides there exists a certain propulsion of masculine aggression that devalues women once they step outside of the domestic sphere into the labour force. There is a shocking murder described wherein a woman was “tossed amid trash on the outskirts of the city” (p.262). Such descriptions abound where the murdered women are deposited, at first in the desert outskirts of the city, and soon they slowly start being placed within the city, such as the cotton field murders. This juxtaposition of things that hold no value, trash, arid desert land, and the women’s bodies being found burnt and mutilated symbolically suggests the status of women in Ciudad Juárez where they are denigrated to having no value outside the domestic sphere. Yet, Rodriguez doesn’t attempt to read into any of these things, the relations of women’s status within Mexican society, the machismo culture, NAFTA and US capital, the maquilas. She does sprinkle some thought here and there, but it’s all restrained and kept mostly away from the presentation of the facts. I don’t know, I see it as good and bad — it provides a detailed portrait that lets those who have actually experienced the long and frustrating injustices speak and have a voice, but I feel like Rodriguez also doesn’t necessarily provide the highest level of detail that would give the best portrait of Ciudad Juárez.
To me, it’s Rodriguez’s unwillingness to add any sort of her own response and theorising that detracts a lot from the text. It’s a compelling and very readable narrative that does a good job at providing very concrete and concise details, giving voice to the victims and their suffering families, as well as providing glimpses of the activists who were on the ground trying to make change like Esther Chávez and Guillermina González. But a lot of the depth it lacks stems from it refusing to go into a larger analysis and argument concerning the conditions of Ciudad Juárez and how that allowed the femicides to take place. This text is good at establishing an overview of the femicides, with a lot of details about select murders, major events such as the eight bodies found in the cotton fields in 2001, and lots of recorded instances of police brutality and forced confessions such as Los Rebeldes and Los Toltecas, the bus drivers Javier García Uribe and Gustavo González Meza, and so on, however it is lacking in any real analysis of any of the narrative it creates. And perhaps that’s my fault — I don’t really read much journalistic stuff as such, and maybe the point is to narrativise the information that Rodriguez collected into a coherent, easy to present manner that would make digestible the complex portrait of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Which, it does do that very well, if at times missing some higher level of detail that I think would compliment the portrait it is creating.
I think one would do well to pair this with the work of Sergio González Rodríguez. I know most of his investigative work is still only in Spanish, but a smaller theory type journalistic work, The Femicide Machine, really provides a great theoretical understanding of a lot of the information that Rodriguez provides in The Daughters of Juárez. I felt that when reading Sergio González, there felt like a more intimate understanding of the city and the femicides that I was missing — his analysis is more theoretical, impersonal, and rather looks at a large web of socioeconomic conditions that would enable the femicides to take place. Whereas Rodriguez’s account is based upon the voices and portraits of the victims and their families. In a way, these two texts compliment one’s understanding — with the idea of the femicide machine in place, with Rodriguez’s work one can gain a more closer understanding of just how this machine works. Both works together provide a macro and micro portrait of Ciudad Juárez, Sergio Rodríguez detailing the socioeconomic conditions of the femicides, and Teresa Rodriguez providing a narrative of the events from 1993 - 2006. And I do think Sergio Rodríguez’s complex account of Ciudad Juárez certainly diga at the heart of the matter a little more than Teresa Rodriguez’s. But again, I do want to reiterate the importance in giving voices to those who actually experienced what happened in Ciudad Juárez.
I do think this is a very important work, despite some of my hesitancy with its writing and the information it presents. It is important in trying to give a voice to the victims and their families and detailing the high level of corruption within local and state government. Despite the shortcomings I have with Rodriguez, this is highly recommended for learning about the femicides in Ciudad Juárez.
Admittedly, at times the text reads as if it was written by a journalist undergrad, lots of overdescription and a bizarre choice of adjectives that seem like Rodriguez and co. were just trying to add an overbearing level of description in their sentences. And of course, it does work at times, but other times it feels like needless padding. But it is highly readable and doesn’t ever steer away from presenting a factual driven account of the information Rodriguez and co gained from testimonies and interviews.
The text feels most accomplished in the mostly rigorous organisation of material, it draws together lots of interviews and accounts of the femicides from 93-06. It gives special attention to the victim’s families and the women’s activists attempting to find justice for the murdered women. It gives a good sense of the Ciudad Juárez as a place and the maquiladoras that surround it; especially detailing the juxtaposition of first world factory luxuries (air conditioned work place, hot showers, lunches and dinners provided for workers, changing rooms, and so on) with the squalor and extreme poverty many of the factory women had to live in. What really is striking (although not surprising) is just how many of the factories are owned and directed by US capital. Rodriguez makes sure to mention in her descriptions each of the companies and their places within the US, a product of NAFTA and the movement of factories to Mexico where many of these companies could get labour for dirt cheap and thus extract more surplus-value, as it goes.
A question that runs through the entirety of the text, and perhaps the femicides themselves, is: “What was going on behind the scenes? Was there a cover-up or just complete incompetence? Or was it both?” p. 156
The text almost seems repetitious because it’s absolutely ridiculous just how much the local and state police departments and governments were terrible at investigating the murders at all. Rodriguez’s question wonders just how much of the botched investigations is incompetence and how much cover-up. It’s certainly both, but what it more astounding is just how coordinated the effort to cover-up the murders is by all levels of Mexican governance. Not even the PAN president, Vicente Fox, could do anything about the femicides, no matter how much attention he may have given them. The text becomes almost a De Sadean nightmare, The 120 Days playing out in a horrifying reality as powerful elites and corrupt policemen are able to make this border town akin to a playground. It’s absolutely atrocious — but certainly no one was believing that cops would do anything to truly solve the problem when they themselves are a part of it. The repetition itself only makes the crimes more shocking given the fact that, as criminologist Oscar Maynez points out, there were so many ways that officials could have investigated and figured out how to track the criminals doing the killings. I mean, they got so bold as to start dumping bodies in the heart of Ciudad Juárez. Yet, although Rodriguez maintains an air of objectivity and therefore never attempts to go beyond the facts as she sees them presented to her, it is undoubtedly the conditions of Ciudad Juárez that created a vacuum of impunity that allowed all of these killers to murder 500+ women and continually do so with little to no consequence whatsoever. She remains within a position that doesn’t attempt to go beyond the fact that corruption is undeniably present within the police and government of Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua. Yet, I would argue it is that the institutions themselves are extremely decayed and corrupt — reforms wouldn’t necessarily change the ways in which police are able to go above the law and grant themselves impunity. They would always find ways around it. Especially when it becomes apparent in the narrative that the drug cartels, which Rodriguez fails to bring more attention to, have a lot to do with the femicides.
Or say, with the mention of US capital and the maquiladora culture — with many women migrating to Ciudad Juárez and searching for work there was a trend toward disintegration of the traditional family unit. Within the femicides there exists a certain propulsion of masculine aggression that devalues women once they step outside of the domestic sphere into the labour force. There is a shocking murder described wherein a woman was “tossed amid trash on the outskirts of the city” (p.262). Such descriptions abound where the murdered women are deposited, at first in the desert outskirts of the city, and soon they slowly start being placed within the city, such as the cotton field murders. This juxtaposition of things that hold no value, trash, arid desert land, and the women’s bodies being found burnt and mutilated symbolically suggests the status of women in Ciudad Juárez where they are denigrated to having no value outside the domestic sphere. Yet, Rodriguez doesn’t attempt to read into any of these things, the relations of women’s status within Mexican society, the machismo culture, NAFTA and US capital, the maquilas. She does sprinkle some thought here and there, but it’s all restrained and kept mostly away from the presentation of the facts. I don’t know, I see it as good and bad — it provides a detailed portrait that lets those who have actually experienced the long and frustrating injustices speak and have a voice, but I feel like Rodriguez also doesn’t necessarily provide the highest level of detail that would give the best portrait of Ciudad Juárez.
To me, it’s Rodriguez’s unwillingness to add any sort of her own response and theorising that detracts a lot from the text. It’s a compelling and very readable narrative that does a good job at providing very concrete and concise details, giving voice to the victims and their suffering families, as well as providing glimpses of the activists who were on the ground trying to make change like Esther Chávez and Guillermina González. But a lot of the depth it lacks stems from it refusing to go into a larger analysis and argument concerning the conditions of Ciudad Juárez and how that allowed the femicides to take place. This text is good at establishing an overview of the femicides, with a lot of details about select murders, major events such as the eight bodies found in the cotton fields in 2001, and lots of recorded instances of police brutality and forced confessions such as Los Rebeldes and Los Toltecas, the bus drivers Javier García Uribe and Gustavo González Meza, and so on, however it is lacking in any real analysis of any of the narrative it creates. And perhaps that’s my fault — I don’t really read much journalistic stuff as such, and maybe the point is to narrativise the information that Rodriguez collected into a coherent, easy to present manner that would make digestible the complex portrait of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Which, it does do that very well, if at times missing some higher level of detail that I think would compliment the portrait it is creating.
I think one would do well to pair this with the work of Sergio González Rodríguez. I know most of his investigative work is still only in Spanish, but a smaller theory type journalistic work, The Femicide Machine, really provides a great theoretical understanding of a lot of the information that Rodriguez provides in The Daughters of Juárez. I felt that when reading Sergio González, there felt like a more intimate understanding of the city and the femicides that I was missing — his analysis is more theoretical, impersonal, and rather looks at a large web of socioeconomic conditions that would enable the femicides to take place. Whereas Rodriguez’s account is based upon the voices and portraits of the victims and their families. In a way, these two texts compliment one’s understanding — with the idea of the femicide machine in place, with Rodriguez’s work one can gain a more closer understanding of just how this machine works. Both works together provide a macro and micro portrait of Ciudad Juárez, Sergio Rodríguez detailing the socioeconomic conditions of the femicides, and Teresa Rodriguez providing a narrative of the events from 1993 - 2006. And I do think Sergio Rodríguez’s complex account of Ciudad Juárez certainly diga at the heart of the matter a little more than Teresa Rodriguez’s. But again, I do want to reiterate the importance in giving voices to those who actually experienced what happened in Ciudad Juárez.
I do think this is a very important work, despite some of my hesitancy with its writing and the information it presents. It is important in trying to give a voice to the victims and their families and detailing the high level of corruption within local and state government. Despite the shortcomings I have with Rodriguez, this is highly recommended for learning about the femicides in Ciudad Juárez.
September 16, 2018
This book, published in 2007, is about the skyrocketing rate of murder against women in Ciudad Juarez starting in 1993 and the horrific corruption in the police, the government, and the judiciary that caused/enabled/obfuscated the murders.
It's not a great book. It's not Rodriguez's fault that her topic is open-ended (there hadn't been, as of 2007, a single conviction in any of the murders that wasn't dubious at best) or that it is mind-bogglingly complicated. However, the same things can be said of Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark, which I'm listening to right now and which has the added burden of being UNFINISHED and yet is excellent. Rodriguez doesn't seem to have a strong enough sense of where she wants her story to be, with the victims' families, with the police corruption, with the overarching problem of violence against women being judged unimportant by the men in power. And, yes, her story can be all of those things, but it takes some serious chops to make that kind of shift in scale from micro to macro work, and Rodriguez is an okay writer, but not the kind of powerhouse she'd need to be to pull it off. Perhaps what was lacking was the person of the author. Both McNamara and Ann Rule (whose Green River Running Red is another extremely complicated story being told on multiple levels) include themselves in the story. This isn't always necessary, or even desirable, but it gives the reader a yardstick, a little human figure to scale that keeps the horrifying numbers from receding into that muffled middle ground between the personal and the historical. And Rodriguez's numbers ARE horrifying--even more horrifying is that nobody really knows what the numbers ARE. Maybe it's that Rodriguez, after her Preface and Introduction, both of which promise a kind of sensibility that the book itself does not have, effaces her subject-position, which makes it feel, to me, like the book doesn't have any backbone--not in the sense of courage, but in the sense of a structure to hang its bones on.
It's not a great book. It's not Rodriguez's fault that her topic is open-ended (there hadn't been, as of 2007, a single conviction in any of the murders that wasn't dubious at best) or that it is mind-bogglingly complicated. However, the same things can be said of Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone in the Dark, which I'm listening to right now and which has the added burden of being UNFINISHED and yet is excellent. Rodriguez doesn't seem to have a strong enough sense of where she wants her story to be, with the victims' families, with the police corruption, with the overarching problem of violence against women being judged unimportant by the men in power. And, yes, her story can be all of those things, but it takes some serious chops to make that kind of shift in scale from micro to macro work, and Rodriguez is an okay writer, but not the kind of powerhouse she'd need to be to pull it off. Perhaps what was lacking was the person of the author. Both McNamara and Ann Rule (whose Green River Running Red is another extremely complicated story being told on multiple levels) include themselves in the story. This isn't always necessary, or even desirable, but it gives the reader a yardstick, a little human figure to scale that keeps the horrifying numbers from receding into that muffled middle ground between the personal and the historical. And Rodriguez's numbers ARE horrifying--even more horrifying is that nobody really knows what the numbers ARE. Maybe it's that Rodriguez, after her Preface and Introduction, both of which promise a kind of sensibility that the book itself does not have, effaces her subject-position, which makes it feel, to me, like the book doesn't have any backbone--not in the sense of courage, but in the sense of a structure to hang its bones on.
January 22, 2023
"... I wondered if this Mexican visionary ever fathomed that his beloved city would become such an abyss of murder and injustice. Perhaps that's why some swear that they've seen Benito Juarez weep."
Author Teresa Rodriguez
The daughters of Juarez is a story that documents the feminicides, or femicides, shortened, from it's beginning in the early nineties to the date of publication, 2007. The book documents the obvious cover ups of the murders of young women and young girls, some as young as 10 years old, that are violent and sexual in nature, most often with evidenceof torture. Bodies are found in the desert on the outskirts of Juarez, and sometimes right in the downtown, in an empty field, and when parents go to municipal police to report their daughters missing, the police are indifferent, making fun of them, blaming it on the victims, and refusing to investigate. Moreover, crime scenes are deliberately Corrupted, and any DNA evidence that is gathered is corrupted, and/or lost.
In Mexico, drug cartels own the government: politicians, and federal, state, and municipal police. If they don't cooperate, they are assassinated. Cartel operatives sell young women to wealthy men all over the world, who come to Juarez, looking for a "good time," knowing that impunity reigns. Girls and young women are kidnapped off the street, often waiting for buses, or walking the long distances they must to get to their jobs in factories. Families are attracted to Juarez from all over Mexico coming for the plentiful jobs and the factories that are owned by millionaires and billionaires in the United States. Jobs are hard to get in other parts of Mexico, and they don't know what lies ahead of them in Juarez.
However, the government Produces a face of concern, to the United Nations, to amnesty International, to government officials in the United States, And won't speak the truth, for fear of their lives. instead, they choose scapegoats from among their population, and it's obvious to all concerned that they are used for a cover up. Lives are ruined, families and neighborhoods are terrorized, And innocent man languish in jail. Lawyers who try to represent them are gunned down, or must leave the case.
The United States very much enabled this devastation. Nafta, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton on December 8th and took effect on January 1st 1994, text breaks enjoyed by the maquiladora industry with no longer be confined to the border area. Available throughout Mexico, the US government and Mexican government alike
"anticipated that the provision would entice manufacturers to leave the overstressed border area and expand into mexico's interior. "
instead of that, the maquiladores of the northern area Increased Employment. At the same time, there was no planning for how greatly the number of workers would be multiplied. Because companies from outside of Mexico had no taxes to pay, the workers, whose wages were already low, had to fend for themselves. this included roofs over their heads, child care, and Disposal of garbage. families set up camps wherever they could. They crammed into single rooms, made out of scrap wood and cardboard. Their floors were dirt, there was no plumbing, sewage, or electricity. No one picked up garbage so it was dumped wherever. And the housing was only to be reached on foot. Because the factories ran 24 hours A-day, young girls who worked in these companies often had to walk at night, through desert terrain with no lights to see their way. This made it easy for Employees of drug cartels and their police cohorts to kidnap these girls.
It was easy for whoever owned "the plaza" to employ the police. Pay for policemen was the lowest of all municipal jobs. Their only requirements for employment were an elementary school education, and no investigative knowledge was required. Naturally, many police would accept bribes To help pay the bills or they took the job to earn the extra money that came easily from assisting los carteles.
Oscar Maynez Grijalva was a young criminologist with the Chihuahua state Attorney General's office. He noticed a pattern of similarities among the homicides early on when he joined the agency. His idea was to use 2 cases he found in state police files that were similar, and whose victims shared identical physical characteristics and had been raped and killed in a very methodical fashion, to train new police recruits. he wrote a 3 page report, including a psychological profile of The perp, with an argument that this could be a serial killer on the loose in Juarez Remember, this was early on in the occurrence of the femicides.
Maynez was blown away when state police Academy chief Jorge Ostos thanked him for his work, but did not put the report into use. When Maynez found more murders in the mid nineties that followed the same pattern described in his report , he was told to falsify his findings on a wide variety of the cases. He at first thought that the investigators were just trying to find the easy way out. He realized later that the officers were told by their bosses who to target for investigations no matter what evidence was produced.
Maynez was only one of the many professionals, doctors and politicians and criminologists, who were employed to investigate evidence and circumstances in the femicides, whose findings were later then ignored by the government. This was obviously done to show parents of the victims, and officials from North of the border, that something was being done in investigations.
One of the scapegoats that Mexican officials chose to blame the murders on, was named Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, a middle-aged Egyptian engineer who Had crossed the border to Juarez, trying to escape the prosecution of crimes he had committed North of the border. After committing crimes involving young women in sexual assault, He was held in jail and blamed for many of the murders, despite no evidence linking him to them, and ended up dying in a prison hospital years and years later. I didn't feel sorry for him though, because he had ruined the lives of young women in Florida and Texas, sexually assaulting them.
Because of its publication date of 2007, this book seems dated, but at the time, I'm sure it was eye-opening.
Author Teresa Rodriguez
The daughters of Juarez is a story that documents the feminicides, or femicides, shortened, from it's beginning in the early nineties to the date of publication, 2007. The book documents the obvious cover ups of the murders of young women and young girls, some as young as 10 years old, that are violent and sexual in nature, most often with evidenceof torture. Bodies are found in the desert on the outskirts of Juarez, and sometimes right in the downtown, in an empty field, and when parents go to municipal police to report their daughters missing, the police are indifferent, making fun of them, blaming it on the victims, and refusing to investigate. Moreover, crime scenes are deliberately Corrupted, and any DNA evidence that is gathered is corrupted, and/or lost.
In Mexico, drug cartels own the government: politicians, and federal, state, and municipal police. If they don't cooperate, they are assassinated. Cartel operatives sell young women to wealthy men all over the world, who come to Juarez, looking for a "good time," knowing that impunity reigns. Girls and young women are kidnapped off the street, often waiting for buses, or walking the long distances they must to get to their jobs in factories. Families are attracted to Juarez from all over Mexico coming for the plentiful jobs and the factories that are owned by millionaires and billionaires in the United States. Jobs are hard to get in other parts of Mexico, and they don't know what lies ahead of them in Juarez.
However, the government Produces a face of concern, to the United Nations, to amnesty International, to government officials in the United States, And won't speak the truth, for fear of their lives. instead, they choose scapegoats from among their population, and it's obvious to all concerned that they are used for a cover up. Lives are ruined, families and neighborhoods are terrorized, And innocent man languish in jail. Lawyers who try to represent them are gunned down, or must leave the case.
The United States very much enabled this devastation. Nafta, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton on December 8th and took effect on January 1st 1994, text breaks enjoyed by the maquiladora industry with no longer be confined to the border area. Available throughout Mexico, the US government and Mexican government alike
"anticipated that the provision would entice manufacturers to leave the overstressed border area and expand into mexico's interior. "
instead of that, the maquiladores of the northern area Increased Employment. At the same time, there was no planning for how greatly the number of workers would be multiplied. Because companies from outside of Mexico had no taxes to pay, the workers, whose wages were already low, had to fend for themselves. this included roofs over their heads, child care, and Disposal of garbage. families set up camps wherever they could. They crammed into single rooms, made out of scrap wood and cardboard. Their floors were dirt, there was no plumbing, sewage, or electricity. No one picked up garbage so it was dumped wherever. And the housing was only to be reached on foot. Because the factories ran 24 hours A-day, young girls who worked in these companies often had to walk at night, through desert terrain with no lights to see their way. This made it easy for Employees of drug cartels and their police cohorts to kidnap these girls.
It was easy for whoever owned "the plaza" to employ the police. Pay for policemen was the lowest of all municipal jobs. Their only requirements for employment were an elementary school education, and no investigative knowledge was required. Naturally, many police would accept bribes To help pay the bills or they took the job to earn the extra money that came easily from assisting los carteles.
Oscar Maynez Grijalva was a young criminologist with the Chihuahua state Attorney General's office. He noticed a pattern of similarities among the homicides early on when he joined the agency. His idea was to use 2 cases he found in state police files that were similar, and whose victims shared identical physical characteristics and had been raped and killed in a very methodical fashion, to train new police recruits. he wrote a 3 page report, including a psychological profile of The perp, with an argument that this could be a serial killer on the loose in Juarez Remember, this was early on in the occurrence of the femicides.
Maynez was blown away when state police Academy chief Jorge Ostos thanked him for his work, but did not put the report into use. When Maynez found more murders in the mid nineties that followed the same pattern described in his report , he was told to falsify his findings on a wide variety of the cases. He at first thought that the investigators were just trying to find the easy way out. He realized later that the officers were told by their bosses who to target for investigations no matter what evidence was produced.
Maynez was only one of the many professionals, doctors and politicians and criminologists, who were employed to investigate evidence and circumstances in the femicides, whose findings were later then ignored by the government. This was obviously done to show parents of the victims, and officials from North of the border, that something was being done in investigations.
One of the scapegoats that Mexican officials chose to blame the murders on, was named Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif, a middle-aged Egyptian engineer who Had crossed the border to Juarez, trying to escape the prosecution of crimes he had committed North of the border. After committing crimes involving young women in sexual assault, He was held in jail and blamed for many of the murders, despite no evidence linking him to them, and ended up dying in a prison hospital years and years later. I didn't feel sorry for him though, because he had ruined the lives of young women in Florida and Texas, sexually assaulting them.
Because of its publication date of 2007, this book seems dated, but at the time, I'm sure it was eye-opening.
March 13, 2013
Un relato espantoso y inquietante del reinado del terror en Ciudad Juárez. Desde el año 1993, se han descubierto más de 400 cadáveres, la mayoría muyeres de la clase obrera. Rodríguez investiga la serie de asesinatos y describe el contexto en que ocurría y sigue ocurriendo: la influencia de la industrias que explotan la fuerza laboral, el narcotráfico, la falta de consideración para las mujeres y sus derechos, y la incompetencia y corrupción de los autoridades y la policía. Rodríguez describe los crimenes horribles y las respuestas deficientes, además de la historias conmovedoras de las familias de las víctimas y los activistas que demandan que el gobierno resuelva los asesinatos y pare la violencia. La historia se limite en parte por la multitud de peronajes que a veces puede hacer que el lector se confunda o pierda la atención en las víctimas y sus familias, pero la mayoría del relato es apasionante y exige la atención de la gente en los dos lados de la frontera.
Read
April 16, 2018It's hard to "enjoy" something like this. It's a set of events many don't even know about (I didn't!), but we should. It's a story we need to be told. It was published years ago, and I don't know if these crimes are still happening, but I have to imagine they still are. Why would they stop? Who is going to stop them? The rich women with tons of power and clout? uhh... Sigh.
Corrupt government. Those who are expected to protect - not protecting. Anyone who would be surprised at such a notion hasn't been paying attention. Still.
A co-worker asked me what I was reading. I said only, "It's an account of women in Juarez who were murdered -"
And he interrupted "Oh, they must have been prostitutes dating cartel members."
We used to be friends.
Corrupt government. Those who are expected to protect - not protecting. Anyone who would be surprised at such a notion hasn't been paying attention. Still.
A co-worker asked me what I was reading. I said only, "It's an account of women in Juarez who were murdered -"
And he interrupted "Oh, they must have been prostitutes dating cartel members."
We used to be friends.
August 14, 2016
A fascinating read, despite the writing occassionally bordering on awful (in the very introduction the killer is compared to a coyote stalking his prey), cloying ("bleeding and broken heart of the city" - make it stop) or repetitive (how many times do we need to be told that most of the victims had long hair and "plump lips"?). Was still pretty easy to follow despite its flaws and incredibly informative for just a 300-page book. Scene-setting was good and certain pages haunted me well after I finished them (literally had nightmares related to this book). I'm giving it four stars until I learn there are better-written books about Juarez...
September 22, 2012
Two-and-a-half stars. The Juarez femicides are an important story but this book does not offer a satisfactory narrative about them.
For a fuller & more varied perspective I recommend reading Alma Guillermoprieto's three essays below:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...
Read
August 2, 2011How very sad that at the end of the day so much engery was spent in perpetuating lies about the many scapaegoats, and no realy time and energy on getting justice for the families of these gilrs. Never can I imagine the pain these familes have lived through. They will continue to be in my heart.
January 23, 2016
Reading this book is like being in a nightmare. It leaves the impression of this endless stream of dead girls and an army of moronic police whose best option -- in their minds -- is to grab random citizens off the street and torture confessions out of them. One more reason to be glad I live in the USA.
July 18, 2017
It is awful to give this book one star because the topic deserves more. Unfortunately, the story of the women in Juarez is poorly structured, poorly written, lacks good storytelling, and has no documentation. I am happy I was able to learn the story. I just wish that the hundreds of victims could have been honored with a better book.
March 23, 2020
Es un libro bueno? En realidad no, la escritura a veces es confusa y a veces un poco fragmentada. Pero es un libro necesario con un recuento detallado de diversas aristas que cruzan el caso de los feminicidios en Juárez.
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