J-Lo plays reporter probing Mexican border murders
(Shenzhen Daily)
Updated: 2005-10-10 11:10

"It's been just great for Nogales," Sonora state film commissioner Adolfo Salido said at a hotel in the city used by some cast and crew members. "It's brought in a lot of money and publicity, as well as giving local people some excitement," he added.

The shoot also gave day work to more than 200 local market stall holders, students and housewives, who have been paid up to 500 pesos a day to play roles ranging from market traders to corpses laid up on a mortuary slab.

"It's kind of a fun experience, though a little scary," said Crystal Zelk, a student from southern Arizona. "I play a corpse and it's creepy to think of my family seeing me there in the morgue, dead," she added.

More than 370 women have been beaten, stabbed or strangled to death in Ciudad Juarez since 1993. Around a third of them have been sexually assaulted or raped.

The killings have sparked outrage and inspired other filmmakers. "Bordertown" is the third attempt to bring the notorious killings to the screen in just over a year.

In June 2004, Mexican television giant TV Azteca broadcast a soap opera-style drama dubbed "As Infinite as the Desert," which characterised the murders as the work of serial killers, Satanic cults and snuff film makers.

"The Virgin of Juarez," an as-yet unreleased film starring Minnie Driver and Mexican actress Ana Claudia Talancon, lent a religious twist to the murders, framing them through the experience of a girl who suffers stigmata following an assault.

While cautious in the past about the way real victims' stories have been represented, families of the murdered women in the city welcomed the filming of the latest high-profile Hollywood production, which they hope may pressure Mexican authorities to finally solve the crimes.

"The fact that they are bringing attention to bear on the problem is good in itself," said Norma Andrade, the president of family support group Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa. "It will prevent the government from hiding the facts."