Bajo Juarez: The City Devouring its Daughters

“She said some words to my mother that I’ll never forget: ‘Don’t be scared, but they just said on TV that they’ve found a girl that fits Alejandra’s description. We still don’t know if it’s her. Don’t be frightened but call and ask,’” said Maria Luisa Garcia, who stayed outside to speak to their neighbor while her mother Norma went into their modest house in Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico.

“Suddenly I heard a loud thud,” said Maria Luisa.

“When I ran inside to see what it was, my mother was on the floor crying. I said to her, ‘What is it? What is it?’

“The cell phone was on the floor and she was yelling: ‘Not my daughter! Not my daughter!' ”

Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade disappeared on Feb. 14, 2001, when she was leaving the maquiladora, or factory, where she worked in Ciudad Juarez, which sits on the United States/Mexico border with Texas.

The 17-year-old mother of two never reached home. Five days later, her body was found on waste ground wrapped in a blanket, displaying signs of physical and sexual abuse, according to Amnesty International. She had been held captive for several days before she was killed.

Lilia Alejandra is one of the 370 women who have disappeared in Mexico's Chihuahua state since 1993. Her story is the main focus of Bajo Juárez, a documentary film that was five years in the making and that opened here in Mexico this weekend.

For the young film-maker Alejandra Sánchez (Chihuahua, 1973), taking on the subject of the killings in Juárez became for her a social and gender responsibility. The director felt the need to shine light on one of the most painful phenomenon that Mexico has suffered. She also felt that the theme needed to be taken on from various viewpoints: since she considers it absurd that women could be assassinated soley for being women; because as time goes on the number of killings is growing at the same rate as the police’s indifference.

There can be no end to a mother's grief over the mysterious disappearance and death of her child, but this haunting documentary takes you as close as possible to penetrating it. Bajo Juarez, the city devouring its daughters follows unsolved and highly publicized crimes against women along the Mexico-U.S. border in the towns of Juarez, Chihuahua, and Laredo.

Directors Alejandra Sánchez and José Antonio Cordero bravely forge a new understanding of the enormous dangers still facing women in the malquiadoras factories, where hundreds of murders go unpunished. Using a narrative approach unique to a woman's point of view, Bajo Juarez integrates testimony from family members, journalists, factory workers, and police officials. The film's innovative techniques command attention to the horrors perpetrated against grieving parents still desperate for answers.

The film also introduces two journalists who refuse to accept the vague explanations from the police and government officials, and instead dig deeper into the hundreds of disappearances. The documentary points toward a disturbing corruption that reaches to the highest levels of the Mexican government.