Woman Killing and Adoption in Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005)

Abstract

Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s novel Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005) informs its readers about the serial feminicidal violence that has afflicted Ciudad Juárez, the twin town to El Paso, Texas. The novel is explicit about its feminist, political agenda and appeal to social justice. The article discusses details from the novel in which Gaspar de Alba portrays the Juárez murders in a compelling manner that employs Diana Russell’s, and Rosa Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano’s concepts of femi(ni)cide to provide a fictionalized, yet analytical, account of institutionalized gender violence targeting poor brown women. The article is innovative in its focus on Desert Bloods’ side characters, Cecilia and Elsa, who are key in Gaspar de Alba’s ability to convey the complex structure of how feminicides come to be perpetuated through the utilization of women’s bodies under capitalist and androcentric systems of social life. Concurrently, this article argues that a more careful and nuanced representation of intercountry adoption enhances Desert Blood’s feminist and ethical appeal, and accounts in a greater detail for the dynamic of power relations between the Chicana protagonist and the two Mexican side characters of Cecilia and Elsa.