Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders

Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Mar 2005 · Arte Publico Press

About this ebook

Its the summer of 1998 and for 5 years over a hundred mangled and desecrated bodies have been found dumped in the Chicuahua desert outside of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the river from El Paso, Texas. The perpetrators of the ever-rising number of violent deaths target poor young women, terrifying inhabitants on both sides of the border. El Paso native Ivon Villa has returned to her hometown to adopt the baby of Cecilia, a pregnant maquilodoro worker. When Cecilia turns up strangled in the desert, Ivon is thrown into the churning chaos of abuse and murder. As the rapes of girls from the south continue, a conspiracy covers up the crimes that implicate everyone from the Maquiladora Assn. to the Border Control. Ivon's younger sister gets kidnapped and she knows that its up to her to find her. From acclaimed poet Desert Blood is a gripping thriller that ponders the effects of patriarchy, gender identity, culture, transnationalism and globalization on an intl crisis.

About the author

ALICIA GASPAR DE ALBA is the author of various works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, among them a collection of poems and essays, La Llorona on the Longfellow Bridge: Poetry y Otras Movidas (Arte PÏblico Press, 2003), and a historical novel Sor JuanaÍs Second Dream (University of New Mexico Press, 1999). She is also the editor of Velvet Barrios: Popular Culture and Chicana/o Sexualities (Palgrave / Macmillan, 2003). An Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and English at the University of California-Los Angeles, Gaspar de Alba is a native of the El Paso/Juàrez border. She has been researching the crimes since 1998 and organized an international conference on the murders at UCLA in 2003.