Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders

9781558854468

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Alicia Gaspar De Alba

Format Other Format

Dimensions 5.80 (w) x 8.60 (h) x 1.40 (d)

Pages 346

Publisher Arte Publico Press

Publication Date 2005/03/31

ISBN 9781558854468

Book ISBN 10 1558854460

About Book

It's the summer of 1998 and for five years over a hundred mangled and desecrated bodies have been found dumped on the Chihuahua desert outside of Juárez, México, just across the river from El Paso, Texas. The perpetrators of the ever-rising number of violent deaths target poor young women, terrifying inhabitants of both sides of the border.

El Paso native Ivon Villa has returned to her hometown to adopt the baby of Cecilia, a pregnant maquiladora worker in Juárez. When Cecilia turns up strangled and disemboweled in the desert, Ivon is thrown into the churning chaos of abuse and murder. Even as the rapes and killings of "girls from the south" continue--their tragic stories written in desert blood--a conspiracy covers up the crimes that implicate everyone from the Maquiladora Association to the Border Patrol.

When Ivon's younger sister gets kidnapped in Juárez, Ivon knows that it's up to her to find her sister, whatever it takes. Despite the sharp warnings she gets from family, friends, and nervous officials, Ivon's investigation moves her deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of silence.

From acclaimed poet and prose-writer Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Desert Blood is a gripping thriller that ponders the effects of patriarchy, gender identity, border culture, transnationalism, and globalization on an international crisis.

Reviews

Library Journal

Ivon Villa, a women's studies professor who needs to finish her dissertation in order to keep her job, travels to her hometown of El Paso to arrange for an adoption for herself and her female lover. Just across the border, however, the pregnant Juarez factory worker who agreed to give up her baby becomes the latest victim in a long string of unsolved murders of Mexican women in the area. Ivon vows to get past the secrecy, coverups, and conspiracy surrounding the terror-inflicting murders while dealing with her mother's disapproval, her cousin's alcoholism, and a renegade priest's activism. Offering a powerful depiction of social injustice and serial murder on the U.S.-Mexican border, this is an essential purchase for both mystery and Hispanic fiction collections. A native of the Juarez/El Paso border, Gaspar de Alba (Sor Juana's Second Dream) is an associate professor of Chicano studies and English at UCLA. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

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