Juarez

Each and Her

mandy — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

It can be easy and convenient to forget facts learned and impressions made about our southern neighbor, Mexico. Because I like to think of myself as conscious and conscientious of both international news and poetry, I was surprised by my recent discovery of Each and Her by Valerie Martínez. A widely anthologized poet and former poet laureate of Santa Fe, Martínez has been recognized for a career’s worth of community outreach and education, and even for translating Uruguayan poetry.

On the back cover of Each and Her, Martínez’s mentor, Joy Harjo, admires the poet's elegance, metaphor, and noble purpose: “They were roses, those tender girls broken against the edge of the border between Mexico and the U.S. They were our sisters, our daughters, our nieces, granddaughters; they are us… There can be no more silence. These poems make an opening in the pathway for justice.”

I must agree; this is one of the most lovely and thought provoking elegies I have read in a while. Martínez bestows a quiet honor on the lives of nearly 500 victims (since 1993). She does this by encompassing their names in her larger meditations on the cultivation of roses, and on representations of cultures that value (or devalue) those who are vulnerable, female, and poor.

Each and Her is, essentially, a book-length poem; there are seventy-two numbered, title-less meditations that follow a starkly written introduction to the paramount problem: many females, often students or factory workers, have been (and continue to be) murdered in or around Juárez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Martínez’s objective, page-long prologue tells us that the murders are linked by evidence of sexual violence, torture, or mutilation, and that the numbers each year are steadily rising (from twenty-eight in 2004 to eighty-six in 2008). The problem is getting worse, and in its background we see a drug and labor trafficking culture, and exploitation in the maquiladoras, the export assembly plants where some of these girls are employed. In one of her many numeral-rich poems, Martínez cites the number of girls and women who currently work in that industry:

472,423
while they can be hired legally
at the age of 16, it is common for these girl-women
to get false documents
start work at 12, 13, 14

Martínez arranges beautifully sparse facts next to rich details that mesmerize with their quiet reality (“Amalia went back to Juárez / dirt floors/ sheets for doors/ Coca-Cola in small bottles/ in wood crates stacked/ bundles of tortillas and tamales/ out the front window/ pesos and dollar bills/ crushed on the ledge”). Moments like these, and small poems like “this / way” or “I refuse” helped me contemplate the horror (“right breasts severed / left nipples bitten off”) while holding onto glimpses of how these women and girls may have lived before they were tortured and killed (“crush of the crowded Juárez market / Malia is first / hand clutching mine/ Grandmother behind / tethered to Mom”).

I admired how Martínez incorporated found poems, such as selections from the Orthodox veneration of the Virgin Mary and Eve and “the missive / from the attorney general / of the state of Chihuahua,” into the same long poem as her narrated lesson on worthy ancient women: “finally, a great throng of women deserving to be named, some as Greeks, some as muses, some as seers, for all were nothing more than learned women held and celebrated…” Whether suggesting the beauty and toil of flower harvesting labor, evoking the motif of sisterhood, or considering the working conditions of women, as in poem "36." (“a typical maqui working schedule/ 60 hours per week/ typical daily wage—$8.29”), Martínez left me amazed at the breadth of her careful poetry.

The emotion of each experience—of a girl-woman and her loved ones—is nodded to and transcended. Martínez understands that the deep icon of the rose radiates out from what mathematicians or ethicists can understand about these brutal murders. I was literally propelled through these poems by a need to privilege these lives with my attention, by a kind of reverent curiosity about these girls’ and women’s stories, and by the utter pleasure of Martínez’s lovely, sparse, and thoughtful language. Justice often comes through awareness and empathy, and the way that Valerie Martínez reverently and tenderly handles her collection of meditations about this terrifying cultural pattern buoys the possibility of justice, and hopefully, a remedy.

Written by: Julie Ann, January 21st 2011

Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

mandy — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Georgina Guzman

University of Texas Press

Making a Killing is a collection of essays exploring the history and social/political/economic context of the murders of women in Juarez, Mexico from 1993 to the present day. Essays analyze the economic context of free trade that has contributed to a culture that devalues women workers and sees female bodies as expendable in the making of cheap products for American women. Essays examine activists’ and artists’ efforts to gain attention for the plight of women in Juarez, analyze the culture of law enforcement in Juarez, and vividly portray the efforts of mothers and relatives to get justice for their missing and murdered daughters.

Though the essays collected here are primarily academic, they are easy to read and will be of interest to the general public, not just other academics. The collection provides a thorough history and a complete picture of the efforts to stop the violence against women in Juarez throughout the last two decades. Though the subject is difficult, I enjoyed the book a lot.

I lived in El Paso, Texas for fifteen of the last twenty years; the stories of Mexican women being raped, murdered, and dumped in the desert on the outskirts of Juarez, Mexico filtered into my consciousness early. But so did the stories of narco-murders. In the last three years, the world has lost its preoccupation with the murder of women in Juarez and turned its attention instead to the mayhem and murders of over 25,000 Mexican citizens in the drug cartel wars ripping the nation apart. Juarez is the city most affected by these murders (3,000 in 2010 alone).

If I have one criticism of Making a Killing, it is that it pays little attention to the general culture of killing in Juarez. The murders of women didn’t begin in 1993—nor have they stopped. And the narco-murders didn’t begin in 2007—and who knows when they will end? Because the editors focus on femicide, only one essay suggests that the femicides overlap or are inextricably intertwined with the narco-murders. The culture of violence in Juarez envelops the femicides—but exceeds them as well. If we fail to explore and analyze this truth, then the murders of women by individual men and groups of men will be forgotten as we increasingly pay attention to the drug cartel war instead.

Written by: Jessica Powers, January 15th 2011

The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:40:00 +0000

By Teresa Rodriguez, Diana Montané

Atria Books

I have always assumed that every feminist knows about the murders in Juarez, Mexico. I have been obsessed with the murders and available news reports (or lack there of) for the past couple of years. So when I saw that the first non-fiction book to be published about the Juarez femicide was coming out, I was incredibly excited to see that these events would finally be discussed in an accessible format.

As I started reading the book, I couldn't put it down. I carried it with me everywhere, as these women's stories filled my head and my heart. The first couple of chapters were incredibly hard to get through. In fact, I had to take frequent crying breaks in order to read the first fifty pages. So when I started obsessively talking about this book to everyone I know, I was disappointed and dismayed to encounter the common response of "What murders in Juarez?"

And this is why The Daughters of Juarez is the most necessary and important book to come out this spring. For the past 12 years, over 400 women have gone missing in the desert of Juarez. From what is left of their desiccated bodies, medical examiners have found evidence of brutal rapes and torture of these young women. In the beginning of the crimes, most of the victims were young, poor maquiladora workers abducted on their way to or from work. As the crimes progressed and police failed to find the killer(s), more women were (and are) abducted and their bones have turned up in the desert.

This book is important for several reasons. First, these women's stories must be told in order for them to be remembered. The pervasive misogyny of these femicides must be told, because these crimes are happening in every part of the world, just under a different guise. Second, it is painfully relevant how the media has failed to pick up on this story. 400 women raped and brutally murdered, and only a few radical media sources have written a scarce number of reports about them. How can that be? What is so wrong with our society that no one cares if 400 women in one city are brutally raped and killed in less than a decade?

Finally, if these stories are not going to be covered in the mainstream media, then the mere existence of this book is amazing. The women of Juarez's stories are now accessible to anyone who happens to peruse the politics or true crime section of any bookstore. Rodriguez and Montané's combined account of this femicide is emotionally hard to get through, but their relentless dedication to bring justice to the murdered women and their families is truly inspiring, and is an amazing call to action.

Written by: Chelsey Clammer, April 16th 2007