"The Women of Juarez Demand Justice"

The shantytowns spread out around Juárez are home to a vast number of indigenous migrant workers who come there from the unemployment black spots of the agrarian south. Women ­ many as young as fourteen ­ comprise 70 per cent of the Juárez workforce. They eke out a four-dollar-a-day living in the maquiladoras ­ sweatshop factories that have mushroomed along the border since Mexico signed up to the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992. Yet in addition to exploitation and squalor, the women of Ciudad Juárez are oppressed by a murder rate that has attracted worldwide revulsion.

Statistics show that since 1993, at least 300 young women have been kidnapped, raped and killed ­ their bodies often defiled. Some 190 of these murders have occurred in the past six months; during the same period nearly 100 more have gone missing, presumed dead. The real toll may be higher, since many women do not have families living locally and their disappearances can go unnoticed and unreported. An open letter sent to the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights by angry Juárez residents puts the 'disappeared' figure at 450 in the past ten years.

Text borrowed from "Femicide Posters" by Daoud Sarhandi, EyeMagazine.com