The Femicide Machine

In this grim analysis of the infamous murders of young women in the Mexican border city of Juárez, Mexican journalist Rodríguez (Bones in the Desert) links this series of grisly, ongoing, unsolved crimes with local, national, and international societal and political malaise. Rodríguez portrays Juárez as “four cities in one”: a border town/U.S. backyard for “those seeking escape from regulation across the border”; a city dominated by the maquila model, where “public space became oriented around the [manufacturing-assembly] plants” and multinational corporations “prosper from urban impoverishment in developing nations”; and a nexus of the war on drugs and organized crime, exacerbated by government corruption. According to Rodríguez, these elements create an environment for “the femicide city,” where women and girls are tortured and murdered with impunity. Despite the book’s straightforward brevity, readers may be put off by the dry, academic tone and stilted translation. However, the epilogue, a mother’s heartbreaking narration of her 17-year-old daughter’s abduction and subsequent rape, torture, and murder, denied by the local police but reported by the El Paso FBI, brings the book’s message to terrifying life. (Feb.)