Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders

A young woman, her body numbed from an injection kidnappers have given her, is dragged by the neck from the back of a car. She does not feel the wounds as they mutilate her, but she feels “a current of night air deep inside her” (2). When she attempts to scream, she is hit. As the kidnappers laugh, she hears singing.

Ivon Villa is on a plane, traveling to her hometown of El Paso, Texas. She is disturbed by an article she is reading about “the Maquiladora Murders,” a string of brutal murders of young women on the Mexican border. “Maquiladora” refers to American-owned factories in Mexico that export their goods to America; most of the murdered girls are Mexican factory workers. Ivon is upset because she is just learning about these murders now. She is also nervous about telling her mother about a plan she has with her cousin Ximena.

Ivon is agitated further when a man in a cowboy hat takes the seat beside her. Though she buries her nose in her magazine to indicate she does not want to speak with him, the man introduces himself as J.W. and asks her several questions. At one point, he notes that she doesn’t “look Mexican” (6). Ivon notices that his watch costs at least 10 thousand dollars and compares it to the five-hundred-dollar watch her wife Brigit gave her. At one point, J.W. asks her to hold his hat, and she notices it says “Lone Star Hat Company” (5). He orders a double whiskey from the flight attendant and grows more intoxicated as the flight goes on.

J.W. bets Ivon 50 cents he can guess her profession. When he says she must be a model, Ivon wonders why men enjoy trying to “pick up on butch women” (6). As the plane descends, he hands her a roll of pennies to make good on their bet.

Ivon considers the “nameless women in the sand” for whom the borderland “had become a deathbed” (7). J.W. winks at her as he lets her out of their row, and she feels “like she had a swarm of butterflies hatching in her belly” (7) as she disembarks from the plane.

Ivon is greeted at the airport by her younger sister Irene and cousin Ximena. Irene is holding a balloon congratulating her on new “New Arrival” (8), and Ivon scolds Ximena for telling Irene about their plan. Ximena assures her that her mother does not know she is coming. Irene is thrilled about becoming an aunt and asks Ivon for reassurance that after the baby comes, she will still be able to live with her if she gets into Saint Ignatius. 

Once they pile into her car, Ximena tells Ivon, who does not want to stay with her mother, that she can stay at their late grandmother Maggie’s house until the following week, when there will be a family reunion she hopes Ivon will attend. They discuss how long Ivon will be there. Ximena does not know when Cecilia, the young mother who will give birth to Ivon and Brigit’s baby, will deliver. Cecilia has had to hide her pregnancy from her superiors at the factory because she would be fired if they find out. Ivon and Ximena are going to meet Cecilia at midnight, after her shift. When Ivon turns on the radio, a song reminds her of Raquel, who once broke her heart. Irene wants to know if Ivon will take her to the Juárez fair.

Irene and Ivon discuss how Ivon and their mother have had confrontations in the past; Ivon remembers how her mother claimed Ivon’s getting a tattoo led to her father’s death. Irene shocks Ivon by revealing she has pierced her tongue. 

Ximena explains that when they meet Cecilia’s family, she will bring a priest friend to assuage the family’s fears. Ivon will have to pay the priest and have extra money in case she needs to bribe anyone. She will also have to pay the nurse who fills out the birth certificate. Ivon complains that she has only brought money to pay Cecilia. Irene calls the situation “sleazy,” and Ximena responds, “‘Welcome to the real world of the border, baby girl’” (16).

For six years, Brigit tried to convince Ivon that they should have a child. Ivon rejected the idea because she did not want to take time away from her dissertation—she is writing about how class and gender are represented in bathroom graffiti—or her professorship at Saint Ignatius College. She also wanted to save money so they could buy a house; her father “had always said you weren’t anything in this country unless you owned your own house” and Ivon believes that “the order of things” is “[d]issertation, tenure, real estate” (18). 

However, an encounter with a little boy in a bookstore made Ivon yearn for a little boy of her own. Realizing she could always make more money but could never reclaim time, she told Brigit she was ready to adopt. When Brigit asked what she would do about her dissertation, Ivon told her she only had two chapters left even though one “was a case study she hadn’t even gathered data for yet” (19). She decided to consult with her cousin Ximena, a social worker. She imagined that her future child would call her Mapi, a combination of Mami and Papi, “because Ivon was going to be a little of each” (20).

Back in the present, when Cecilia fails to meet them outside her factory, Ximena goes inside to find her. Ivon is concerned when Ximena reports that Cecilia finished her shift early and was picked up by someone. She asks Ximena about the bodies being found in the desert and is outraged that the murders have not been in the news. Ximena tells her hundreds more women have gone missing and that her priest friend has created a nonprofit, Contra el Silencio, that conducts rastreos, or searches for bodies. The task force “[t]reats the families like shit” (24), and the police do not look for the bodies.

Ximena, who has joined these searches on occasion, describes the violence of the scenes she encountered. To avoid hitting a jackrabbit in the road, she stops short; a bus swerves around her and hits the jackrabbit.

Grandma Maggie left her house to Ximena, the oldest cousin and favorite grandchild. For nine months of the year, Ximena uses it as a halfway house for runaway teenagers. Living in the house full time is Yerma, Grandma Maggie’s tortoise.

After returning from the factory, Ivon and Ximena watch TV together and drink tequila until falling asleep. Ivon is woken up at seven o’clock in the morning by a phone call from prison, but she hangs up, not understanding the name. She finds a note from Ximena saying that she left in the middle of the night and plans to return at nine in the morning so they can visit Cecilia’s family.

Picking up the newspaper, Ivon reads about the murder of a 15-year-old girl. She is unnerved when a man calls to her from outside. It is Father Francis, and he tells her that Ximena was in a car accident. After she left the night before, still intoxicated, she crashed into a telephone poll to avoid hitting a pedestrian. As it was her third offense, she is currently in jail. Ivon realizes the phone call that morning had been from Ximena. 

Ivon invites Father Francis to help himself to coffee—“[t]he only man she’d ever served coffee to and warmed tortillas for, and only because her mom made her, had been her dad” (30)—while she showers and dresses to visit Cecilia’s family. Ivon and Father Francis discuss how the newspapers are underplaying the murders. Ivon ponders how people in El Paso “lie to themselves” about the seriousness of their problems and how she wants Irene to move in with her so she can take her away “from this lithium-loaded city where nothing and nobody ever changed” (31).

Ivon tells Father Francis she only has three thousand dollars for Cecilia and that she can give him his cut after stopping at the bank. Father Francis tells her she will also need money to bail Ximena out of jail and reclaim her car. When Ivon says Ximena is “too much” (31), Father Francis says Ximena “operates on favors and debts” (32).

Father Francis and Ivon pick up Ximena from jail. Ivon is annoyed when Father Francis calls Ximena their “alcoholic friend” (33) and tells her to give him the money and wait in the car. As she sits waiting, she speaks with Ximena’s younger brother, Patrick Cunningham, a police officer. 

When Father Francis returns with Ximena, he drives them to Cecilia’s family’s house. The neighborhoods they pass grow poorer and poorer, with houses made of pallets and tires. Ivon asks what she should say to Cecilia. Father Frank tells her to let him and Ximena talk, that she should not mention she is gay, and that she will have to give the family some money so Cecilia can see a doctor and deliver in a clinic. Father Francis reminds her she must pay the nurse, who is “the one who’ll write the names” and is therefore “the most important player” (37). Ivon is wary at the suggestion that she will have to pretend she herself had the baby. 

A large group of people is standing outside Cecelia’s house; Ximena, concerned, goes to speak with them. Ivon hands Father Francis the money and guesses that “this isn’t something you do through your church” (39). He responds that they are “just trying to help these young women” (39) who cannot afford to have children. Some of the money is for Contra el Silencio and some is for the birth certificate. He helps Ximena with the adoptions and Ximena procures donations for Contra el Silencio, which helps “the friends and relatives of the American girls” who are killed (41). He laments that no one looks for the missing girls and that the mayor of El Paso understates the problem.

Ximena returns to the car visibly upset and informs them that Cecilia’s dead body was found in an abandoned car. She has been stabbed. Father Frank, upon hearing Cecilia’s aunt and grandmother were taken by police to identify the body, pulls quickly out of the driveway, worried about “[t]wo women alone in a police car in Juárez” (42). Ivon wants to speak with the factory security guard; Father Frank says the security guard was “probably in on it” (42). 

A boy knocks on the window selling shabby, scantily clad Barbie dolls. He calls them “maqui-locas”—or Americanized female factory workers—and says they are “muy cheap” (43).