Hotel Juárez: Dramaturgia de feminicidios (review)

218 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW Mijares, Enrique, ed. Hotel Juárez: Dramaturgia de feminicidios. UJED-Durango, Mexico: Teatro/Coedición Union College, Editorial Espacio Vacío, 2008: 350pp. As part of the Teatro de Frontera collection, Hotel Juárez: Dramaturgia de feminicidios (2008) is an invaluable addition to the growing number of political, humanitarian, and artistic outcries against the extreme violence being perpetrated against women along the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juárez since 1993. This collection of eleven plays also speaks to the “modelo juarense” currently being replicated in countries like Guatemala and El Salvador, and which has been observed throughout contemporary history in Latin America. The kidnapping, torture, and assassination of hundreds of women and young girls (more than 460 dead and hundreds missing) have continued despite national and international attention and arrests. Many now see the bungled investigations, sensationalist press conferences, false arrests, and endless bureaucracy of the past sixteen years as a farce which merely exposes and reinforces the rampant corruption in the Mexican government, army, and police, now allied in many cases with the very drug lords they purportedly pursue. This anthology, however, is full of serious works, which delve deeply, and honestly into the spectacles of horror occurring in many of the poorest neighborhoods of Ciudad Juárez. The text features three introductory pieces. The first is a note from the editor, Enrique Mijares, which explains briefly the conception of the project at the Latin American Theatre Today Conference in 2008, the process of selection of the works included, and the title of the anthology (an homage to the recently deceased playwright, Hugo Rascón Banda, whose play of the same title is included). This note is followed by two longer introductions by Victoria Martínez and Rocío Galicia. The former entitled “La vida vale” gives an excellent description of the themes around which the plays are constructed. Martínez cites the image of the desert wind as one of the main characters in many of the plays; it appears as dramatic background and dialogue within the plays, most notably in Trazos del viento, by Alan Aguilar. The city of Juárez also registers as a protagonist through mythic and biblical references in La ciudad de las moscas, by Virginia Hernández and Sirenas del río, by Demetrio Ávila, as well as metaphorically in Rascón Banda’s Hotel Juárez. The red line, which conjures multiple associations (the red bus line in Mexico, the border, the line between the powerful and meek, and the temporal and spatial lines between the colonial past and present) as Martínez reminds us, figures prominently in Cruz Robles’Deserere. Enrique Mijares’ Jauría explains the inhumanity of these crimes through a cast of animals, characters that are involved in the grotesque criminal underworld of Juárez. In Justicia Light, Ernesto García reveals through a chorus of two women (Luz 1 and Luz 2) the very lack of light being shone on the crimes, as officials discuss cases. In Tlatoani, dramatist Juan Tovar shows the direct criminal connection between the U.S. and Mexico through a corrupt and sadistic agent sent from the U.S. to investigate the murders. Mujeres de Cd. Juárez, by Cristina Michaus is, as Martínez points out, FALL 2009 219 a metatheatrical play dedicated to the 2003 victims in Mexico City, in which the characters sing about the crimes using norteño style music. Finally, Martínez also finds threads of surrealist impulses in plays like Lomas de Poleo, by Edeberto Galindo, Estrellas enterradas, byAntonio Zuñiga, which reflect the nightmarish environment in which the people of Juárez must live and work in fear. While Galicia’s introduction, “Memorias de duelo,” also describes each of the works, her detailed analysis of historical, political, cultural trends resulting from economic policies in 1965 and 1994, adds a level of sophistication not often present in typical introductions. In addition to economic policies, Galicia also investigates the growing violence related to drug and gang wars or the “generación de la maquila” and how these events are shaping the region. She traces the hypotheses surrounding the motives for the crimes...