Femicide Machine

In Ciudad Juarez, a territorial power normalized barbarism. This anomalous ecologymutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn't just create the conditions for the murdersof dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guarantee impunity forthose crimes and even legalize them. A lawless city sponsored by a State in crisis. The facts speakfor themselves. -- from The Femicide Machine

Best known toAmerican readers for his cameo appearances as The Journalist in Roberto Bolano's2666 and as a literary detective in Javier Marias's nove l Dark Back ofTime, Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers. Heis the author of Bones in the Desert, the most definitive work on the murders ofwomen and girls in Juarez, Mexico, as well as The Headless Man, a sharpmeditation on the recurrent uses of symbolic violence; Infectious, a novel; andOriginal Evil, a long essay. The Femicide Machine is the firstbook by Gonzalez Rodriguez to appear in English translation.

Written especiallyfor Semiotext(e) Intervention series, The Femicide Machine synthesizes GonzalezRodriguez's documentation of the Juarez crimes, his analysis of the unique urban conditions in whichthey take place, and a discussion of the terror techniques of narco-warfare that have spread to bothsides of the border. The result is a gripping polemic. The Femicide Machineprobes the anarchic confluence of global capital with corrupt national politics and displaced,transient labor, and introduces the work of one of Mexico's most eminent writers to Americanreaders.

Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is a columnist for the Mexico City newspaper Reforma who began his career writing art criticism for the renowned writer and editor Carlos Monsivais. He has covered the Juarez femicides since 1995, revealing the ties between police, government officials, and drug traffickers. Assaulted and kidnapped by unknown assailants in Mexico City in 1999 and banned from the State of Chihuahua, he continues to write on these subjects. Bones in the Desert and T he Headless Man have been published in Mexico, Spain, France, and Germany. Gonzalez Rodriguez studied literature and journalism and is currently completing a doctorate in law.