DVD Review: Bordertown

Bordertown (2006, Director Gregory Nava, starring Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas, Maya Zapata, and Martin Sheen)

“A lot of people don’t want people to know about this,” says Gregory Nava, the director of “Bordertown.” “This” is the rape and murder of hundreds of women (some say thousands) in the border factory towns of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua, Mexico. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations are very concerned about what has been called “femicide,” the killing of women.

The film was inspired by the real life hero, Barbara Martinez Jitner, who posed as a maquila worker in order to make her film, “La Frontera.”

"Bordertown" is about an American reporter  (Lopez) who goes to Juarez to write a story about the disappeared women and becomes involved in the case of Eva, a sixteen-year old maquiladora worker who was raped and left for dead. Eva, originally from the state of Oaxaca, is a strong young woman who wants to find and have those who raped and tortured her punished.

The film also focuses on the role of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Act, in creating the conditions for the concentration of Mexican women, most of whom come from other states of Mexico, in the maquilas, the border factories.

Though the film has laudable intentions, I cannot fully recommend it because it is an uneven combination of an implausible thriller and a serious film about troubling subjects. It also has many holes in the plot.

I do, however, highly recommend, the informative added features that follow the DVD.

 “Dual Injustice,” tells the story of a young woman who disappeared from her school in 2003. Several months later, when her body was identified by its clothing, her cousin, who had come from the southern state of Chiapas to support the family, was arrested for her murder. He was tortured into making a confession and wasn’t released for three years, until Amnesty International and other groups helped his release. Mexico is a country that is known for torturing prisoners in order to obtain confessions. It is also well known that the disappearances of thousands of young women have not been properly identified. That leaves the culprits free to murder other women. The mothers of three victims pursued human rights complaints before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, both of which are part of the Organization of American States (OAS).

An update: As Ciudad Juarez has descended into further violence due to fighting between rival gangs, and the deaths of more than two thousand people, more young women have continued to “disappear.”  Mexico has been accused of violating the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons and the American Convention on Human Rights.

“Ni una mas,” “Not one more,” is the cry of those protesting the Mexican government’s inaction and/or complicity in the murders of these women.

Another special feature, “La Frontera,” (“The Border”)  tells about the life of Eva Canseca, a border factory worker from the state of Oaxaca who wants to cross the border to make a better life for her children. She is from a largely indigenous region of Oaxaca and claims that high taxes and low wages are causing many farmers to leave the land, thus destroying the ancient cultures of the Zapotec and Mixe people.