Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders

Graffiti in Desert Blood is an act of subversion the powerless engage in to anonymously speak out against their oppression or comment on social injustice. Ivon, whose dissertation is titled “Marx Meets the Women’s Room: The Representation of Class and Gender in Bathroom Graffiti (Three Case Studies),” is especially interested in the graffiti she finds in Juárez, which touches on “[v]iolence against women, the economic exploitation of the border, [and] even the politics of religion” (98). In the Kentucky Club bathroom, Ivon comes across the statement, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States” (98). Beneath it, someone has written shakily, in red nail polish, “Poor Juárez, so close to Hell, so far from Jesus” (98). Ivon decides to use Juárez as the third case study in her dissertation, hoping it would “help her understand what was going on in her own hometown” (98).

As the novel progresses, Ivon develops a deeper understanding of what the Kentucky Club graffiti means. Returning a second time with William, Ivon finds that a new statement has been written: “Poor Juarez, so far from the Truth, so close to Jesus” (186). She then receives an anonymous phone call telling her the statement means “a factory close to Jesus” (211). Later, when she is kidnapped by J.W. and brought to the ASARCO copper refinery in El Paso, Ivon realizes that “Jesus” refers to the Christ the Redeemer statue at the top of Mount Cristo Rey and that the ASARCO plant, in view of the statue, is where the Juárez murder victims are being raped and killed. 

Throughout Desert Blood, Ivon grows to understand how little the people can trust authorities who are supposed to help them. Father Francis mocks her suggestion that they ask the factory security guard if he knows what happened to Cecilia, suggesting he is “probably in on it” (42); she and William are arrested and nearly murdered by two judiciales, or state police; and Junior, the medical examiner, and J.W., a Border Patrol officer, are two major players in the murders. The ubiquity of the corruption means asking for help is not only futile but also dangerous. Graffiti is a way for the vulnerable to cry out without putting themselves in danger. In doing so, they offer clues about their suffering. 

After Irene is found and Ivon considers the widespread nature of the conspiracy—“[a] bilateral assembly line of perpetrators, from the actual agents of the crime to the law enforcement agents on both sides of the border to the agents that made binational immigration policy and trade agreements” (335)—she imagines that “[s]omewhere out there […] a prophet was writing on bathroom walls” (335). Though Irene is found, the murders will continue, and anonymous prophets will cry out for help the only way they can. The gritty nature of graffiti—scrawled shakily in bathroom stalls, among lewd sexual comments—reflects the prophets’ humbleness.

The Río Grande River, which separates El Paso from Juárez, represents the firm but fluid border between America and Mexico. Landmarks from each side can be seen across the river, indicating not only the cities’ physical proximity but also the intermingling of cultures. Ivon crosses the river frequently throughout Desert Blood. She recalls how, as a teenager, she would cross on foot into Juárez to go to bars.

This uncomfortable cultural fluidity is represented by Irene’s experience at the Juárez fair. She is irritated when Myrna calls her a “pocha,” and she feels that although “[s]he looked like them, same color of skin, some Mexican features” (104), people could tell she was an American and therefore, a “sell-out” (104). However, it is not only Americans in Mexico who are mocked. Irene overhears someone tell a joke about a “wetback” and is later called a wetback herself when, during the party at Paco’s house, she swims in the Río Grande, “daring the Border Patrol vans cruising the black bridge to take her in so she could laugh at them and tell them she was an American citizen” (111). The fact that both Americans in Mexico and Mexicans in America are fodder for jokes and criticism shows how tension exists despite the fluidity. It also speaks to the larger theme of identity in Desert Blood and how characters struggle when they are in-between identities. 

While in captivity, Irene dreams of water, first of being in the “cool blue water” (195) of the pool at school and then of “black and slimy” water (195), which she knows to be the river. She imagines hands “growing up from the bottom, reaching for her, trying to pull her down” (195) and being unable to get away. At Paco’s house, Ivon notes that “[b]eer cans and human feces floated in the black water” (141) and cannot believe Irene had gone swimming there. The contrast between the cool soothing water of the pool and the muddied waters of the Río Grande also symbolizes how Irene is caught between two stages.

Though the 40-foot statue of Christ the Redeemer at the top of Mount Cristo Rey in New Mexico is sometimes visible in Juárez, in Desert Blood, Jesus is portrayed as far away, blind to suffering, or incapable of healing. 

In the bathroom at the Kentucky Club, Ivon finds graffiti that reads, “Poor Juárez, so close to Hell, so far from Jesus” (98). She later learns that the murders of the girls take place on the ASARCO grounds, or “a factory close to Jesus” (211). When Ivon looks for her sister’s body, the desert is “almost in the shadow of Cristo Rey” (236); that same day, Ivon remembers how her father died on a pilgrimage to the Christ the Redeemer statue. At the end of the novel, Ivon sees “Christ the Redeemer etched clear and white at the top of Mount Cristo Rey in the distance” (330) and imagines that someone is writing new graffiti in a bathroom somewhere.

Throughout the novel, Ivon shows religious skepticism. She must refrain from challenging victims’ family members who believe “God will bring back the missing girl in their lives” (167). She is frustrated that Father Francis did not report that Elsa and other girls were inseminated by Dr. Amen “because of his Catholic ode to secrecy” (115). When a nurse praises Jesus for saving Irene, Ivon thinks, “No thanks to Jesus, she’s […] gang-banged and dog-bitten and lonely every day” (315). Ivon’s skepticism is reflected in the fact that the murders and disposal of the bodies literally occur in the shadow of the Christ the Redeemer statue. According to the graffiti, Juárez is “poor” because it is “far from Jesus”; however, the crimes that occur in Jesus’s shadow suggests not that Juárez suffers because Jesus, or people’s construction of him, is as powerless to hear or answer their prayers as a statue. Though the statue “stretches its crucified arms out like a holy bridge between the First World and the Third” (236), it is in fact nothing more than “a mirage of faith across the desert” (236).