By Stacy Macias

"Mi nombre es…, Madre de….,
Mi hija fue desaparecida…"
"My name is…, Mother of…,
My daughter disappeared…"

The poignant voices of five mothers from Cuidad Juarez resonated throughout Ackerman Ballroom from October 31st - November 2nd, 2003, when over 1500 students, scholars, and community members converged on the UCLA campus to participate in a three-day international conference entitled "The Maquiladora Murders, Or, Who is Killing the Women of Juarez?" The conference brought together participants from throughout the US and Mexico to address the context, theories, and activism surrounding the murders of over three hundred women who have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, which is situated along the US/Mexico border with El Paso, Texas. Held during Mexico's annual cultural celebration "Dia De Los Muertos" (Days of the Dead), the conference integrated scholarly inquiry and personal testimony with the multiple social, cultural, political, and artistic responses emerging from what has now become an epidemic of young, brown-skinned, and poor, dead women.

Through various panel presentations, experts from multiple fields shared their scholarly investigations and activist efforts, probing the embedded gendered, raced, and classed context of the murders. While interest in finding the culprits of the crimes has grown over the past few years, the conference problematized the larger contexts of the murders: a growing globalized economy; the geo-political dimensions of the US/Mexico border; the unattested violence committed against women; and the unmoved local government responses. It is these contexts that Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA, who spearheaded the conference, urged the public to scrutinize. Moving beyond the query of 'who' has committed the crimes allows deeper-rooted questions to surface such as, 'who benefits from the deaths of these young women?' or 'why is there is a direct correlation between the passage of NAFTA and the murders of mostly female maquiladora employees?' It is these pending questions that drew conference audience members to the microphones to voice their outrage and disbelief, and share in the pain that permeated the conference.

Interwoven with the personal voices of the mothers of the victims, the conference also provided a space to visualize who these young women were in life, before they were murdered. The personal accounts of the mothers and their brave work on the frontlines, infused everyone in the audience with hope and reminded us all just what is at stake if we remain ignorant or silent about such brutal acts of violence enacted against women, and the critical issues that plague the US/Mexico border.

Stacy Macias is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Women's Studies Programs