Bordertown |
- About the Film
Juarez is a city gripped by fear. Hundreds of women who work in the "maquiladoras," the factories along the Mexico/US border created by NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), have been brutally raped and murdered. EVA (Maya Zapata), a young Indian woman from Central Mexico is riding home on the "maquiladora" bus late one night, when the BUS DRIVER pulls the bus over and attacks her. She tries to escape but she is stopped by another MAN - a man with a distinctively scarred face. The two men rape and strangle Eva, then bury her in a shallow grave. They leave her for dead, but she does not die. Weak and covered with blood, she crawls out of her grave and wanders across the desert. She finds her way home to the shack where she lives with her mother and younger sister in the sprawling slum on the outskirts of Juarez known as Colonia Anapra.
Rumors begin to spread about how Eva survived an attack, and Eva's mother knows that the killers will not want Eva to identify them. Eva and her mother are in danger. They cannot go to the police, as the police are beholden completely to the multi national corporations that own the border factories and they will do anything in their power to cover up the murders. Too much money is being made by major corporations with the border factories, and going public with all these murders is very bad for business. Eva and her mother decide that they must go to ALFONSO DIAZ (Antonio Banderas) who runs El Sol De Juarez Newspaper - the only institution in Juarez that is trying to tell the truth about the murders.
LAUREN ADRIAN (Jennifer Lopez), a crack reporter from the Chicago Sentinel, is in Juarez doing a story about the murders. She is visiting her old associate Diaz who is now the editor of the Juarez newspaper. Eva and her mother arrive, and Eva tells Lauren and Diaz her story. Immediately Lauren realizes that this could be one of the hottest stories of the year. At first Lauren just wants a story, but soon she gets swept up in the dark world of the border.
About the Production
The idea for Bordertown began with filmmaker Gregory Nava. "I was born and raised on the U.S. Mexico border – I am bi-lingual and bi-cultural and I have family on both sides of the border. I am familiar with the extremes of wealth and poverty and the striking cultural contrasts that exist there. It is the only place where the first and third worlds meet. When I found out about the murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez – I knew I had to make a film about it."
Nava's collaborator Barbara Martinez Jitner went to Juarez to research Bordertown. An incredible picture emerged: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has spawned thousands of factories along the U.S.-Mexico border called "maquiladoras." These factories employ thousands of women workers, who are the cheapest form of manual labor, to assemble low-cost goods for U.S. consumption. Hundreds of thousands of young women have migrated from all over Mexico to work in these "maquiladoras" with the promise of a good job and upward mobility. Instead, they and their families find themselves working for slave wages and caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and deprivation. The majority of the victims in the Juarez killings are "maquiladora" workers who are attacked while traveling to and from work. They often have to make long journeys across the desert to reach the factories from the slums in which they are forced to live on the outskirts of Juarez. The factories have no provisions to protect these workers.
When women "disappear," they are easily replaced in the factories. They are victims of the unfeeling, de-humanized face of "globalization." The local authorities, the corporations, the Mexican government and the United States government are more interested in covering up these murders than in doing anything about them. And so, anyone who wishes to kill a woman for any reason can do so in Juarez almost with impunity. There is evidence of serial killers, organ trafficking, snuff films and gang initiations. It is a true "femicide" with many theories as to who the killer or killers might be.
Out of the stories that Nava heard from the mothers and families of the fallen, a drama began to emerge. "In tragic social situations like this one – there is always powerful human drama – stories that can both shock and inspire," Nava says. "I was influenced by the novels of the great Latin American writers Asturias and Marquez, also by the novels of Dickens – all of whom wove powerful human stories against a background of social injustice."
The Cast
JENNIFER LOPEZ (Lauren )
ANTONIO BANDERAS (Diaz)
SONIA BRAGA (Teresa)
MAYA ZAPATA (Eva)
MARTIN SHEEN (George Morgan)
Written and Directed by GREGORY NAVA
