Women on the Border mourns the loss of documentary filmmaker and activist Lourdes Portillo, who passed away in late April, in San Francisco, California.

In 2002, award winning filmmaker Lourdes Portillo released Señorita Extraviada, or Young Missing Woman, which highlighted the disappearance of hundreds of young women and girls, who were then found murdered in and around Ciudad Juárez’s maquiladora industrial parks beginning in the early nineties. Portillo’s powerful film received critical acclaim worldwide.

Viewers of the documentary were shocked by the imagery of young girls and women whose bodies had been mutilated and sexually assaulted prior to their deaths. The interviews with grieving families revealed their desperation and frustration at the failure of local Ciudad Juarez officials and authorities in the state of Chihuahua to thoroughly investigate suspects and bring justice for the horrific and often brutally violent murders of these young women. There were of course critics of Senorita Extraviada, like border writer Debbie Nathan, who saw the documentary as too focused on the stories of corruption by government officials and not enough on how these murders were simply an extension of the daily gendered violence at the border.  Nathan felt the film would have benefitted from a more nuanced examination of how the typical female maquiladora worker regularly experienced harassment, abuse, overwork and high levels of abuse in exchange for meager pay. Also in their communities and homes, border women often experienced abuse at the hands of the men in their lives. Like the maquiladora managers,  local authorities dismissed, mocked or simply ignored women’s claims of gender violence.

Whatever its limitations, Portillo’s film got the attention of activists, researchers, universities, and artists. The “maquiladora murders” conferences produced volumes of literature on the topic of the Juarez femicides. This was but one of her many acclaimed films that were notable for their investigation into “humanity’s dark side,” but it was seen by her friend, writer Sandra Cisneros, as the most “devastating,” one that made her “physically ill” from what she discovered during the filming. The activism and research it inspired can be linked to the ultimate success in a case before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights against the Mexican government for not responding to the calls for justice by the families and victims of the maquiladora murders.