Brainstorm #5

Emilia Garcia-Bompadre

Senorita Extraviada challenges the idea that young women are disposable by presenting the impact that their death and disappearance has on the city of Juarez. the documentary brings importance to the families of killed women and shares their pain with the audience, giving a voice to the killings that were covered up. It exposes how the killings have been ignored, demonstrating how the killers believe that the young women are disposable. This relates to Lisa Cacho’s concept of social death because by ignoring and covering up these women’s' deaths, the government and whoever else is responsible are in effect demonstrating that women are not important in society, that they are disposable: they are experiencing social death in Juarez. However, the mothers and family of these women killed do not let themselves fall into this facade that the government places, they create coping strategies for dealing with the disappearances. One of the images that was shown many times throughout the film and also mentioned in "Toward a Planetary Society" was a black cross with a pink background painted on telephone poles throughout the city as a sign of resilience, signifying that these women’s deaths are not to be brushed under the rug and forgotten. They combine religious and spiritual ideas with secular ones; the cross with the colors pink. the artwork and altares for these disappeared women are everywhere, highlighted in the documentary, reminding authorities that the women will not be forgotten.