Yet the system and personnel stay in place unchecked, and the murders continue. How can this be? I read this book cover to cover in one sitting, filled with astonished outrage by the last page. The reader is left with feelings that -- for me -- built from a sense of empathy and thoughts of injustice into shocked disbelief, that finally became searing rage.
Lest that rage cauterise into helplessness, though, Daughters also outlines a hint of relief. Heroes and heroines dot the pages with relief, like cactus blooms in the Samalayuca surrounding Ciudad Juarez. Selfless angels dot the story with beauty in action. A forensics technician would not give up despite office ridicule. A woman began the area’s first rape crisis and family counseling center out of her own meager finances and from her own home. As time went on a sense of futility overtook some - but some efforts to relieve the continued suffering continue to this day. The rape crisis center, Casa Amiga, still offers counseling and education. The victims’ loved ones, the protestors and the helpers of Juarez still face public and official pressure to shut up, to go away. Casa Amiga and Amnesty International know this will solve nothing and continue to try to help. Other relief organisations involved are: Amigos de Mujeres (Friends of Women), Justica Para Nuestra Hijas (Justice for Our Daughters), Mujeres de Negro (Women in Black), Mujeres Por Juarez (Women of Juarez) and Nuestras Hijas de Regreso A Casa (So That Our Daughters May Come Home).
It is the faces of the mothers I can’t forget as I reflect on this powerful book. Their photos and others mentioned by name are included in this work. Going on with life is a necessity if they wish to survive and feed their family. But as they work their subsistence level jobs the photos show a faraway gaze. Somehow I imagine their thought: A little girl they sent out to work one day, whose photo still adorns the tar paper wall at home. A quinceanera photo of a girl who would never be allowed to grow up. Grandchildren who will never be. All because of a systematised hunting spree which continues as if by permission. For the mothers, the families, the friends of the murdered daughters of Juarez, justice waits. But its hiding place has not been found.
Article comments