BookOpinion

Serial murders in the border town of Juarez, Mexico, are the topic of this true story written by reporter Teresa Rodriguez. In her book, The Daughters of Juarez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border which was released this March, she details the continuing horrors that occur with stunning frequency.

More than 400 women and girls have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez in the past 12 years. Despite a number of arrests over the years, the murders continue — the killers growing bolder.

“You’ve got police ineptitude, you’ve got an understaffed police department, some authorities who may be corrupt or complicit in this crimes,” Rodriguez said in an NPR interview. “I think, unfortunately, as long as these victims are poor, it’s obvious there is like a silent cycle of discrimination. There is an activist who helped me through the process who said, ‘You know, Theresa, it is a disgrace to be a women in Ciudad Juarez, but it is a crime to be a poor woman.’”

Both the numbers and the brutality of the crimes is shocking. “This story is more horrifying than a Stephen King novel, has more twists and turns than an Agatha Christie plot, and has a higher body count than any James Bond flick — and it is all true,” writes journalist and author Edna Buchanan. “You will never forget The Daughters of Juárez, which is exactly what the authors intend and accomplish brilliantly. This book must be a beacon, a catalyst for justice, that rare commodity so nonexistent in Juárez. The authors bring to life the human faces, shattered families, and lost dreams of those who must not be forgotten.”

Listen to the NPR Podcast or read the first chapter of The Daughters of Juarez below:

Chapter One: A Corpse in the Sand

I don’t feel safe because once I step out on the street, I don’t know if the second step I take will be my last.

— Guillermina González, victim’s sister

Ramona Morales hurried from her small concrete house in Juárez, Mexico, just after 8:30 P.M. on July 11, 1995. She was determined to be at the bus stop when her daughter, Silvia, arrived after a long day of school and work.

In the last thirty-six months, there had been a series of brutal sexual attacks against young women in and around the Mexican border city, all of them fatal. Ramona wanted to make sure her teenage daughter didn’t become the next victim.

She had noticed short stories about the killings in the newspaper. Many of the victims had disappeared on their way to or from work, often in broad daylight; their lifeless remains were found weeks, sometimes months later, in the vast scrublands that rim the industrialized border city. What the newspapers hadn’t reported would have frightened her even more. The victims bodies exhibited signs of rape, mutilation, and torture. Some had been bound with their own shoelaces. Others were savagely disfigured. One young girl endured such cruelty that an autopsy revealed she had suffered multiple strokes before her assailant finally choked the life from her.

The victims were young, pretty, and petite, with flowing dark hair and full lips. All had been snatched from the downtown area, while waiting for a bus or shopping in stores. An alarming number were abducted en route to their jobs at the assembly plants, known locally as maquiladoras, that made parts and appliances for export.

The once unremarkable border town was fast becoming the fourth-largest city in Mexico with the opening of hundreds of these export factories. Locked behind towering gates and manned security booths, these contemporary assembly plants, many with neatly tended greenery and lush lawns, seemed a stark contrast to the prickly cacti and blowing tumbleweed indigenous to the arid region. Eighty percent of the factories were American-owned and produced goods for major U.S. corporations including Lear, Amway, TDK, Honeywell, General Electric, 3M, DuPont, and Kenwood. They had been built in response to NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the United States and Mexico in 1993.

The plants, which looked just like the ones constructed by those same companies north of the border, were drawing tens of thousands of laborers from across Mexico each year with the promise of work. The constant influx of people was rapidly creating a booming metropolis. Indeed, the city of Juárez was growing so fast that it was nearly impossible to map.

The city’s roadways were a hodgepodge of paved and unpaved streets, some marked, others anonymous sandy paths that led to the shantytowns and squatters’ villages continually springing up on the outskirts of town. When viewed from north of the border, Juárez appeared a vibrant and major metropolis, but on closer inspection the city seemed to be El Paso’s poor, depressed relative, more reminiscent of a third world country.

The one- and two-story buildings crowding the narrow streets just off the Santa Fe Street Bridge from El Paso were dilapidated, their pastel colors dulled by a layer of brown dust from the sandstorms and car fumes. There were no emissions laws in Mexico, and pollution continued to be a problem.

In addition to car exhaust, road debris was a major concern in the city. Ramshackle tire shops — little more than wooden huts — dotted almost every corner, offering motorists a quick fix for the innumerable blowouts caused by such debris. American-built cars and trucks from the seventies and eighties dominated the landscape, many of them looking like they’d been resurrected from junkyards.

After dark, loud music blared from the nightclubs and cantinas that lined the streets of the red-light district, frequented by local street gangs, drug traffickers, and those who wanted to dance and party. Bars stayed open all night on Mariscal and Ugarte Streets, magnets for those eager to cross the border and indulge under the veil of anonymity.

Driven by a desire to maximize profits, the city’s factories also operated on a twenty-four-hour schedule. Even some of the schools held two sessions each day to accommodate the ever-growing student population.

Getting a job on one of the hundreds of assembly lines meant a chance at a better life for the impoverished and often untrained laborers flooding into the Juárez area from throughout the region. Construction and forestry jobs had all but dried up in other parts of the country. Juárez was one of the few places in Mexico that was experiencing a growth in the job market.

The truth, in fact, was that there were plenty of employment opportunities in the factories of Juárez — so many that entire families could expect to find work there in a fairly short period of time. Girls in their early to mid teens were especially sought after because…

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