The Journal

Issue date: 3/27/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Laila Wessel Award-winning producer, writer and director Barbara Martinez Jitner speaks about her experience working alongside other women in horrible factory conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border after showing one portion of her video series March 19 in the University Center Sunnen Lounge.

Femicide, which is a relatively new term, means the systematic killing of women. This term is well known in Juarez, Mexico because of the many brutal murders that occur there every year. In the past 15 years femicide has become a horrifying trend plaguing the town's young, migrant female workers and students.

"Women in Mexico are devalued. They are sold into the sex trade or have their organs harvested for a profit," said Barbara Martinez Jitner, a Latin American producer, writer and director who came to speak at Webster University. "They are worth more dead than alive."

Since 1993 over 450 young women, who are predominately factory workers, have been abducted, raped, assaulted and murdered - many found with their organs harvested - in Juarez, Mexico, said Martinez Jitner.

No one has been held accountable for these crimes.

Her lecture, titled "Femicide at Our U.S. Border: To Be a Woman in Juarez is a Death Sentence" was held March 19 in the University Center Sunnen Lounge.

"This (lecture) was overwhelming. It's amazing that this could happen for 15 years and the government and media don't show it at all to the public," said Lauren Beck, a freshman international relations major.

The lecture was accompanied by Martinez Jitner's documentary "La Frontera," which means "The Border" in Spanish. The documentary portrayed the life and struggle of an indigenous woman of Oaxaca, Mexico. Eva Canseco migrated from her homeland in Oaxaca to Tijuana, Mexico to work in a factory. She was fired because she was too old. Canseco was only 30.

"The border factories want women workers because women will accept whatever they pay us," Canseco said.

Martinez Jitner is on tour during March for International Women's Month in order to bring awareness to this growing epidemic. Femicide is spreading throughout Mexico, from the border towns of Juarez and Chihuahua to as far south as Guatemala. In a substantial number of cases, the women were very young, about 14 or 15. The factories in question are Mexican divisionsof U.S. companies that have been established along the United States-Mexico border. There are 1,000 factories in Juarez alone. Juarez is located directly across the border from El Paso, Texas.

Continued...

Page 1 of 4 next >

Article Tools