Book on women being killed in Tijuana - CITY OF OMENS: A Search for the Missing

Jul 3, 2019, 5:41 PM

tbot1102

California

Has anyone heard of this which I just saw reviewed in New York Times?

Name of the book is - CITY OF OMENS: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands (Bloomsbury, $28)

Here are some of the things the review said -

Life is cheap in the Mexican border city. Hundreds of women die each year in the city of Tijuana and along the highway of the Baja coast, many of them from domestic violence, drug overdoses and H.I.V.-related diseases associated with the sex trade.
Other bodies, often teenagers, turn up “bound and mutilated.” Still others simply disappear. The author refers to all these deaths as “femicide".
This is attributed to the collapse of Tijuana’s thriving vice economy after 2009, when the city became off-limits to American sailors and Marines. No longer protected by the Yankees, working girls became fair game for predators along the border.
These are only a few of the latest count (in 2013) of 1,200-plus women who die under suspicious circumstances every year in the Mexican state of Baja California, the real number is much higher.

comments (4)

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Jascoi6 years ago

amazing that this crime goes on. anywhere.

sinclair6 years ago

This happens all over Mexico, but it is amplified in border towns like Juarez, Tijuana, Nuevo Laredo, etc.

Papi_Chulo6 years ago

Mexico is corrupt to the core and big-part of the reason for a lot of the crime including kidnappings, etc - supposedly very-few crimes get solved so not much rule-of-law allowing the criminals to often act w/ impunity.

I've been hearing about this since the early-90s when NAFTA was approved and a ton of huge factories opened up in the border-towns - tons of Mexicans relocated from all over MX to where these big-factories were in order to work - many factories ran 24-hours and many young-women had to walk to-and-from the factories late at night - w/ the large migration of workers so did many criminals and opportunists also migrate to the area

tbot11026 years ago

All in all a tough life for women. But that increases my respect for the girls working in HK. I am sure some goons do visit HK and then they can blackmail/coerce women into sexual servitude or relationships. I don't think the girls get much protection once they are outside the club. May be they have boyfriends/relatives to watch over them? I once met with a girl who lived with her brother - she told him that she worked in a 'casino'!

That being said, I am surprised how drama-free HK has been. It feels and is pretty safe - I mean no tough guys showing up. Or who knows the owners (who I am told are from Spain) have the tough guys on their pay roll! Such a fascinating subject this....