ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 examines documentary film about Juárez, focusing in particular on Lourdes Portillo’s acclaimed Señorita Extraviada (2001) and Rafael Bonilla’s La carta (2010). Arguing that the films are released at particularly pivotal moments in the history of feminicidal violence, I contend that distinct sets of tactics or representational modes are mobilized in response to those moments. The first documentary references the year 2001, the high point of the public focus on the association between the violence against women and the maquilas or the assembly plants that span the length of the US-Mexico border. This connection was intensified by the discovery of the bodies of eight women in the Campo Algodonero (Cotton Fields) and the ensuing media frenzy. In this regard, the film speaks back to dominant scripts about the crimes and the exceptionality of Ciudad Juárez and performs moments of wholeness, everyday life and renewal, signified most poignantly by the frequent shots of shoes threaded throughout. The second documentary studied here, La carta, captures the atmosphere of 2010 when Ciudad Juárez might properly be denominated an ‘emergency zone’ given the extreme levels of violence registered in the city with over 3,000 deaths recorded in that year alone. It looks at the use of the pre-modern communicative form of letter-writing as part of a project to build alliances between citizens in Ciudad Juárez and Mexico City. Its portrayal of the primary protagonist, Paula Flores, long-term activist and mother of feminicidio victim Sagrario Gonzalez, charts new territory about mother-activism, and presents the processes of reading and writing as possible vehicles for healing and regeneration from the wounds caused by feminicidio. Noting the different strategies deployed by each documentary, I explore the ‘working through’ (LaCapra 2001) of unspeakable trauma portrayed in Señorita Extraviada and the project of solidarity between centre and periphery depicted in La carta. Following this analysis, I examine the cinephiliac moments (Keathley 2006) experienced by this viewer in relation to both documentary films and explore the transformative potential of these moments for forging solidarity and resistance. These documentary films thus both provide innovative visual treatments of the pain of feminicidio and are a fitting showcase of the potential of documentary film to respond to its multiple complexities.
