The Women of Juarez: Essay

I see her face as black as leather. Young still, though the desert winds have mummified her, turned her skin and hair the color of coal. Among all that black, her teeth shine white like pearls. Her mouth is twisted and contorted; her lips curl around like an old rubber band. From a photo in Harper's, three inches by five, she looks to me for an answer to the unanswerable question: why?

Mama, don't make me go, I hear her say. Mama, don't make me go. It is time to go to work. It is time to bury your precious things, so they will still be yours when you get home. Bury them along the way, niña. She changes the burial place every day to not be detected by los padillas, the gangs of young men that live in her neighborhood of shanties and scrap-wood shacks. She buries three spoons, one fork, two knives, a broken pocket watch and two faded pictures. I imagine she is thirteen years old. She works in a maquiladora, a foreign-owned factory. She earns twenty dollars a week for making electrical car parts, that go in cars that sell for $20,000 a year just a few miles north, in El Paso. You are lucky to have this job, her mother says. Are you living on the streets? Do you have a roof over your head? You are lucky, niña. Lucky.

In Juarez, along the border of Texas and Mexico, where the sun beats life out of the soil and drains water from the earth, they find them. The bodies of girls, pubescent maquiladora workers, kidnapped, raped and murdered, left out in the elements to disappear for good, their delicate flesh left victim to the whims of the harsh desert. In 1995 alone, over 150 girls disappeared. They have run off with boys, the officials say. You know young girls, they think of only one thing. But soon the bodies are discovered. They emerge from the arid land as eye witnesses to unsolved crimes. They tell stories through their broken bodies. Oh, the desert is harsh, their murderers think, this story will never be told. But they are wrong.

She goes to work when the sky is still blanketed by stars. She follows the distant glow of cold blue factory lights, that fill the horizon in front of her from end to end. Today will be a good day, she tells herself. It is Saturday. Tonight she will see her friends and talk about everything except this place. She will talk about music and love and walk through town to window-shop. She will work all day under those cold blue lights and walk back home along this same path, when the sky is once again blanketed by stars.

I did not run off with him, Mama. I did not run off with him, her picture says. She works all day just as she is supposed to. She only takes breaks at the bells. She doesn't talk to her friends in line; she stays focused and concentrated on her work. She doesn't mess up once. You have done good work, her boss tells her. Yes, she thinks to herself, today is a good day. She leaves the factory in the dark. She is already dreaming of her nighttime plans. She finds the place where she buried her things this morning. Someday she will not have to do this, she thinks to herself. Someday she will live in a house, with a locked door and running water and cabinets to hold things, things she will own. She thinks of the house she will own someday, she thinks of the neighborhood, with paved streets and drinkable water. She does not think of the three men, just out of boyhood, who have followed her since she left the factory.

They come upon her so fast she doesn't see their faces. Only the harsh sand below her as they slam her to the ground. In her left hand is the silverware she has just dug up. We will take these, nina, he says as he grabs them from her hand. You won't need them anymore . She struggles to get up, she yells out of anger, out of fear. But she is lying down on her belly. She hears them argue over who goes first, while one of them holds down her head. She coughs up dust and dirt while she struggles to scream. Be a good girl, one of them says to her, and shut up. You niñas are all the same, so much lip all the time. How you expect to get married someday? You look like shit. You are dirty and filthy from that maquiladora. What man would want you? You are nothing. No one cares about you. You will never be a woman. He forces himself inside her, again and again. The pain turns to numbness, and back to pain again. The second one comes on top of her, then the third.

I can live through this, she tells herself. Today is a good day. But she doesn't. They strangle her, or stab her, or shoot her, or suffocate her with her own clothes, or beat her with sticks, or kick the life out of her with their boots. They leave her dead in the desert, and walk away laughing.

It is Sunday when her mother, or her father, or her aunt, or her sister goes to the police. How old is she, the police officer asks. Thirteen, you say? She has probably run off with a boy. You know young girls, they think of only one thing. We will never find a niña who does not want to be found. But soon her body emerges from the arid land, and the photographer takes her picture. Her face is as black as leather.I did not run off with him, Mama, her picture says. I did not run off with him.