On Nov. 17, independent filmmaker Lourdes Portillo screened her new documentary, Señorita Extraviada, and answered student questions in the Forum South Lounge. The film explores the brutal murders of 400 young women in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The sexual violence and killings, which first appeared more than a decade ago, continue today.
Suspects include an Egyptian national, local gangs, drug traffickers, and, to many victims, the police. Nearly all of the cases remain unsolved. A lack of substantial developments in the investigations has led to charges of government negligence, cover-ups, and even direct responsibility, but mounting pressure from victims’ groups and human rights organizations has brought about some recent action. After the film, the S&B asked Portillo a few questions.
Q: Do you keep in contact with the people you interviewed in the movie, and how are they doing now?
A: Yes, I do. I still definitely have a relationship with all of them. I have [been back to Juarez] several times. They’re doing much better. I think that there’s more of a big international movement to stop this, so they feel more protected. They feel more supported. That’s wonderful because before they felt alone.
Q: Catholic symbols featured prominently in several scenes of the film. How did religion play into the reactions of the people and your filmmaking?
A: I used the religious music in the film [because,] for me, it was very, very important to make a film that was like a requiem. In other words, it evokes the girls [and] who they were in the film, rather than focusing on their deaths and their spectacular killings and all that. That would be a very gory film. I wanted to make a film that was evocative of the simplicity and the beauty and the worth of these girls, so that’s why it’s a requiem. And the reason that it’s a requiem also is because Mexico is a Catholic country, and I was brought up as a Catholic, so that is how I can do a requiem in the Catholic way. It seems fitting to me.
Q: Shots of the city and its surroundings are often sped-up and many other shots are slowed down. Why did you choose to treat the images this way?
A: It’s a stylistic choice, really, to show chaotic and constant movement with camera. That’s the first part—it shows you that Juarez is like this frantic, chaotic place. And when you start telling the story, there are these moments where it goes into darkness. Everything slows down, and the cuts come up slowly from darkness into the image and the movements are very slow. This was a decision that was made between myself and my editor because the information is so horrific and so horrendous that people cannot digest it. If we went fast, you know, like MTV style, it would be impossible. You couldn’t digest all of that information. It was a way to have the audience go slowly with all the information and make sense out of it.
Q: This is a very political film, with a petition and a movement behind it. How has this compared with some of your previous films?
A: Well, there was one very political film that helped a lot, which was Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. That was the first film that came out about these mothers who were struggling to get justice for their children who had been killed during the dictatorship in Argentina. And it was very, very crucial in bringing that out in the world. The same with this—it just brings the information out, and that’s what, for me, making some of these documentaries [is all about]. I don’t just make political films; I make other things. But for me, they’re very important because I think that our press is not talking about the truth—maybe the truth as I see it, you know, as I experience it. We need a press that’s very independent, and we need a vision that is artistic that touches people’s hearts.
Q: In recent times multinational maquiladoras, or assembly factories, have moved into Juarez rapidly to take advantage of the cheap labor and large workforce. How much has globalization affected the environment of chaos and the murders?
A: I think immensely since NAFTA, the trade agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. It really opened up the floodgates. Once those factories [came] and they need[ed] 5,000 people [each], everyone from the South [of Mexico] started coming to look for jobs. So the infrastructure started falling apart. It’s very recent; I’d say in the last ten [or] 12 years, everything fell apart.
Q: Has there always been corruption in Juarez?
A: There has always been corruption. The border towns have the most corruption because this is where the first world meets the third world. The discrepancies between those two worlds are so great that there’s such a great big space for corruption.
—Linn Davis
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