“I think that there are serial killers, I think that there are snuff films, I think that there’s organ trafficking, I think there’s gang initiation.” “It’s the only place where the first world and the third would meet, and that point is radioactive,” he said. Nava, describing Juarez as a “city out of control,” said the “enormous clash of cultures” along the border and the relative powerlessness of the Juarez factory workers has bred a situation ripe for violent exploitation of women. In the absence of conclusive investigations about the cause of the murders, a wave of speculation has arisen regarding the motives and identities of the killers. The cause of the Juarez women has been prominently taken up by actresses Salma Hayek, Jane Fonda and Sally Field, playwright Eve Ensler and feminist activist Gloria Steinem, among others. One group, Amnesty International, says it has documented numerous investigative delays, inadequate evidence gathering, sloppy forensic examinations, falsification of evidence and allegations of torture by Chihuahua state police in obtaining information and confessions in connection with the murders. While suspects have been detained, and Mexican law enforcement agents have claimed success in investigating the crimes, the vast majority of the murders remain unsolved, according to human rights groups. Over the past 13 years, the atrocities committed in Ciudad Juarez have evolved into an international scandal and a major embarrassment for the Mexican government as well as for state and regional legal authorities on both sides of the border. “The city is very damaged, and it doesn’t deserve to be demeaned for nothing more than personal enrichment, because truly we are making an enormous effort to clean up the image, in order to work for the benefit of the citizenry.” “We totally respect freedom of expression,” she said. Luz del Carmen Sosa, a spokeswoman for the Ciudad Juarez secretary of public security, said she had no record of any arrest of a movie production assistant and said it was not true that anyone had been harassed during shooting. “Now that the film is coming out, this is the proper time.” “If we made a big stink, the people who would pay the price were these women,” Martinez Jitner said. While the filmmakers did file a complaint over the stolen equipment, they decided not to speak publicly at the time about the other incidents. Speaking by phone recently while en route to the Berlin Film Festival, where the film will have its world premiere Thursday, Nava said he’s not surprised by the film’s hostile reception in some quarters, given the issues that “Bordertown” raises and the blame for the murders that it assigns not only to the Mexican government but to the United States and to the multinational assembly plants spawned by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Scores of additional women throughout the region, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, have been reported missing. Since 1993, the bodies of more than 400 female victims, many raped and mutilated, have been found in the area around Ciudad Juarez, a sprawling metropolis where many poor women work for maquiladoras (factories). Already, they allege, those reactions have included death threats against Nava and the cast, stolen equipment and intimidation of a film crew member during shooting in Mexico. When they began shooting “Bordertown,” the new Jennifer Lopez film about the hundreds of murdered women of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, director Gregory Nava and executive producer Barbara Martinez Jitner expected that their movie would stir up strong reactions.
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