‘Missing
women’ sheds light on Juarez tragedy
By Christine G. Adamo
On-line Forty-Niner
Women
are being slaughtered just south of the
border, said Jakie Joice, who is featured
in “The Missing Women of Juarez II: An Artist’s
Experience.”
The event will be in the Karl W. E. Anatol
Conference Center at Cal State Long Beach’s
Library East from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday.
 Lynne
Coenen, assistant director of the Women’s
Resource Center, said she hopes the well-known
street poet’s appearance will help publicize
mass slayings of female maquiladora, which
means assembly plant workers, in the Mexican-American
border town of Juarez.
Joice, a member of the local activist group
Viejas Kandalosas, said she lends an artistic
perspective to what she and other members
experienced on a trip they took to Mexico
in February. She said the trip helped her
document to fully realize what she was protesting
against and support family members affected
by what she called “slaughter.”
“We’d been doing benefits and shows without
having been [to Juarez],” Joice said. “I’m
interested in spreading word on this issue
to bring it international attention.”
A postcard advertising “The Juarez Project,”
a year-long event organized by the
Social and Public Art Resource Center in
Venice Beach, asserts that over 320 women
“have been abducted, raped and murdered
in Juarez.”
“Regardless of who’s doing it and why, it
needs to stop,” Joice said of speculations
that Juarez police and other government
officials may be involved.
Joice’s performance is the second in a two-part
series sponsored by the Women’s Resource
Center, La Raza Student Association and
the Women’s Studies Student Association.
The screening of Lourdes Portillo’s documentary,
“Senorita Extraviada,” was the first.
“Juarez is a lawless town where anything
can be bought,” said Becky Bailey, a senior
majoring in women’s studies.
Bailey helped bring Portillo’s film to the
campus and has been researching the maquiladora
topic.
“They’re third-world women,” she said. “[It’s
as if] they can be cast aside.”
She said little information exists online
and what appears in print is not always
true.
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