The first, major non-fiction work based on the ongoing, international phenomenon of over 300 confirmed female homicides with 600 women still missing, in the bordertown of Juarez, Mexico.
For over ten years, the city of Ciudad Juarez has been the centre of an ongoing phenomenon of female homicides, reference in Spanish as femicidios or las muertas de Juarez ("the dead women of Juarez"). Ciudad Juarez is a northern, Mexican city, in fact a border city across the Rio Grande from the US city of El Paso, Texas.
According to Amnesty International, as of February 2005 more than 370 bodies have been recovered, with hundreds still missing. In November 2005, the BBC News reported that 28 women had been murdered so far in 2005.
As for who is behind the murders themselves, the answer remains unknown. Despite numerous arrests over the last few years, the killings continue, leading the Mexican police and the general public to consider many theories, among them that the original killer or killers are in jail and copycats have moved to the area since. Furthermore, there has been speculation that there has been a conspiracy of silence and cover-up by Mexican politicians.
'The Daughters of Juarez' will be the first, major non-fiction work to examine the Juarez murders. In it, authors Rodriguez, Montane and Pulitzer will focus on retelling the stories of those missing women, and of their families' plight to find the killer or killers responsible. As this story begins to land on the front pages of papers such as 'The New York Times', 'The Daughters of Juarez' will become a staple of required reading, for years to come.
