Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas. ROSA-LINDA FREGOSO, and CYNTHIA BEJARANO (eds.): Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

Abstract

In 2001, I first watched Lourdes Portillo’s documentary Missing Young Women (Señorita Extraviada) and have been haunted by some of the scenes in the film ever since. Viewers learned that in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, men kill women, take body parts as trophies, and then dump their victims like garbage along highways, or in remote desert locations. Unknown sadistic assailants have left a trail of victims, many of them young women who have recently migrated to the region to be employed in the border industries, the Maquiladoras. Their families have, even today, no clear information about the circumstances of the crimes, and have not been able to find closure.