 | |
| Author | Alicia Gaspar de Alba |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | mystery, thriller |
| Publisher | Arte Publico Press |
Publication date | 2005 (first edition) |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 346 p. |
| ISBN | 1558854460 |
| OCLC | 1298730962 |
Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders is a 2005 mystery thriller by author Alicia Gaspar de Alba based on the violence, kidnapping and femicides that occurred in Ciudad Juarez in 1998.
Ivon Villa, a lesbian professor living in Los Angeles, returns home to El Paso to adopt a baby girl from Cecilia, a Mexican maquiladora living across the border in Juarez, as well as attend a family reunion. But to her horror, Cecilia turns up dead in the desert, with the baby disemboweled, a victim of the epidemic of homicides of young women from southern Mexico emigrating to the north for better work. Things take a turn for the worse when Ivon's sixteen-year-old sister Irene gets kidnapped while attending a fair in Juarez. The search for her sister leads Ivon to discover a terrifying conspiracy that involves everyone from the Border Patrol to the corrupt judicales in Juarez. [1]
 | This section possibly contains original research .(December 2013) |
Several themes in the novel include poverty in Juarez, femicide, and especially the corruption of government institutions on both sides of the border, such as the INS, and the judicales. In her essay "Transfrontera Crimes: Representations of the Juárez Femicides in Recent Fictional and Non-Fictional Accounts," author Marietta Mesmer writes, "Like Rodriguez and Portillo, Gaspar de Alba also indicates that authorities on both sides of the border are actively and directly implicated in those crimes" [2] describing incidents in the book where the police burn victim's clothes, and discussing J.W.'s role in the pornography ring. Both sides benefit from the exploitation of Mexican women due to NAFTA: the US has them working in the factories as maquiladoras, while the Mexican side exploits them for prostitution.
In concurrence with this theme, Alba also touches on the indifference and silence of the media to report on the murders, with the American media failing to point out that victims are also young Mexican-American girls, wanting readers to believe that it is merely a Mexican problem.
Another theme in the novel is the conservative Mexican gender roles that are current throughout the novel, as the Mexican authorities blame the women for being victims, due to wearing makeup and looking promiscuous. Author Irene Mata observes that "Young women who work for the maquiladoras are often represented in the media as loose, immoral mujeres malas (bad women)." [3] In looking at the theoretical construct of femicide, Julia Monárrez Fragoso points out that the social phenomena of crimes against women and girls are “tied into the patriarchal system that predisposes, to a greater or lesser degree, that women be murdered." [4] This idea further extends to American girls as well, with authorities blaming Irene for being kidnapped in the first place. A recurring symbol in the novel is the phrase "So far from the Truth, So close to Jesus", suggesting a Mexico in sync with religion, yet too chaotic to figure out the madness of the murders.
The novel won the 2005 Lambda Literary Award for "Best Lesbian Mystery" and the 2006 Latino Book Award for Best English Language Mystery.
Numerous reviews were quite positive. [5] [ unreliable source? ] In a review for the San Antonio Current, Alejandro Perez wrote that "As Gaspar de Alba shows through her graphic, unsettling descriptions of the perpetrators' words and deeds, the climate that allows this intense verbal and physical violence against women pervades all aspects of society, in Mexico and the U.S. Parts of her novel are shocking and disturbing, but the tale should shock and disturb, like the real-life horror story it is, if only to underscore the conspiracy of silence surrounding the case." [6] Similarly, Darla Baker admired that "While it does not follow the traditional detective genre, with a happy final resolution linking all the facts, Desert Blood unearths several guilty parties and demonstrates the near-impossibility of making any one culprit pay. Thus are power relations understood: those who have power can get away with murder, and the poor have no recourse. But Gaspar de Alba holds; all members of modern society accountable." [7]
Ciudad Juárez, commonly referred to as just Juárez, is the most populous city in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. It was known until 1888 as El Paso del Norte. Juárez is the seat of the Juárez Municipality with an estimated population of 2.5 million people. It lies on the Rio Grande river, south of El Paso, Texas, United States. Together with the surrounding areas, the cities form El Paso–Juárez, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico–U.S. border, with a combined population of over 3.4 million people.
A maquiladora, or maquila, is a word that refers to factories that are largely duty free and tariff-free. These factories take raw materials and assemble, manufacture, or process them and export the finished product. These factories and systems are present throughout Latin America, including Mexico, Paraguay, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Maquiladoras date back to 1964, when the Mexican government introduced the Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza. Specific programs and laws have made Mexico's maquila industry grow rapidly.
More than 500 women were killed between 1993 and 2011 in Ciudad Juárez, a city in northern Mexico. The murders of women and girls received international attention primarily due to perceived government inaction in preventing the violence and bringing perpetrators to justice. The crimes have featured in many dramas, songs, and books.
Abdul Latif Sharif, first name also spelled Abdel, was an Egyptian-born American chemist and chief suspect in the Juárez killings, a decade-long murder spree that began in the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez in the early 1990s.
Femicide or feminicide is a term for the hate crime of systematically killing women, girls, or females in general because of their gender and/or sex. In 1976, the feminist author Diana E. H. Russell first defined the term as "the killing of females by males because they are female." Femicides are more often perpetrated by men against women. This is most likely due to unequal power between men and women as well as harmful gender roles, stereotypes, or social norms. Though femicide is not purely male-perpetrated but can be female-perpetrated as well.
Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa A.C. is a non-profit organization composed of mothers, family members, and friends of victims of the female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. The mothers claim that their cases have gone unsolved in some cases for over 12 years. Their hope is to get the murderers of their daughters arrested and hopefully convicted.
Bordertown is a 2007 American crime drama film written and directed by Gregory Nava, and starring Jennifer Lopez, Martin Sheen, Maya Zapata, Sônia Braga and Antonio Banderas.
Human Rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.
"Invalid Litter Dept." is a song by American rock band At the Drive-In, released in 2001 as the third single from the album Relationship of Command. The CD release in March 2001 came in a variety of international formats, including the standard two CDs in the United Kingdom. The Australian release included the UK B-sides from the two CD releases. "Invalid Litter Dept." is the band's highest charting single in the UK, peaking at No. 50 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 47 on the Scottish Singles Chart.
Alicia Gaspar de Alba is an American scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and poet whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chicana/o art, culture and sexuality.
Barrio Azteca, or Los Aztecas, is a Mexican-American street and prison gang originally based in El Paso, Texas, USA and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The gang was formed in the Coffield Unit, located near Tennessee Colony, Texas by Jose "Raulio" Rivera, a prisoner from El Paso, in the early 1980s. It expanded into a transnational criminal organization that traded mainly across the US-Mexico border. Currently one of the most violent gangs in the United States, they are said to have over 3,000 members across the country in locations such as New Mexico, Texas, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as well as at least 5,000 members in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Campo Algodonero in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is the memorial site for hundreds of women who have died during the past two decades. The Algodonero became an important site after eight women were found dead in 2001. This memorial site was recently created after the verdict of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights against the State of Mexico in regards to the case of the Algodonero field where eight women were found dead. The memorial site includes a statue of a woman, made by Veronica Leiton, and multiple pink crosses that represent the women who were found. Campo Algodonero serves as a standing symbol of memory that dwells in the lives of all of the victims’ families who refuse to stay quiet and who are constantly in the middle of controversy.
Sergio González Rodríguez was a Mexican journalist and writer who was best known for his works on the femicides in Ciudad Juárez from the 1990s to the 2000s, such as Huesos en el desierto and The Femicide Machine. González Rodríguez was a writer who worked in many literary genres, producing literary journalism or crónicas[es], novels, essays, and screenplays for documentaries. His writing was recognized with several awards in Mexico and Spain.
Violence and Activism at the Border is a book by University of Texas professor Kathleen Staudt, in which the author discusses violence against women in the border city Ciudad Juarez in Mexico.
María Guillermina (Guille) Valdes Villalva was a Chicana scholar and activist born in El Paso, Texas. She was considered an "authority" and "pioneer" on researching United States-Mexico border issues and had a "lifelong commitment to social justice."
Violence against women in Mexico includes different forms of gender-based violence. It may consist of emotional, physical, sexual, and/or mental abuse. The United Nations (UN) has rated Mexico as one of the most violent countries for women in the world. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico (INEGI), 66.1 percent of all women ages 15 and older have experienced some kind of violence in their lives. Forty-nine percent have suffered from emotional violence; 29 percent have suffered from emotional-patrimonial violence or discrimination; 34 percent from physical violence; and 41.3 percent of women have suffered from sexual violence. Of the women who were assaulted in some form from 2015 to 2018, 93.7 percent of them did not seek help or report their attacks to authorities.
The 1917 Bath Riots occurred in January 1917 at the Santa Fe Street Bridge between El Paso, Texas, United States, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The riots are known to have been started by Carmelita Torres and lasted from January 28 to January 30 and were sparked by new immigration policies at the El Paso–Juárez Immigration and Naturalization Service office, requiring Mexicans crossing the border to take de-lousing baths and be vaccinated. Reports that nude photographs of women bathers and fear of potential fire from the kerosene baths, led Carmelita Torres to refuse to submit to the procedure. Denied a refund of her transport fare, she began yelling at the officials and convinced other riders to join her. After three days, the discontent subsided, but the disinfections of Mexicans at the U.S. border continued for forty years.
Emma Pérez is an American author and professor, known for her work in queer Chicana feminist studies.
Julián Cardona was a Mexican photojournalist who was known for documenting poverty and violence in the city of Ciudad Juárez.
Femicide, broadly defined as the murder of a woman motivated by gender, is a prevalent issue in Latin America. In 2016, 14 of the top 25 nations with the highest global femicide rates were Latin American or Caribbean states. In 2021, 4,445 women were recorded victims of femicide in the region, translating to the gender-based murder of about one woman every two hours in Latin America.
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