Juana Barraza is perhaps the most famous serial killer in all of Mexico’s history. Authorities have attributed the death of up to 48 elderly women in Mexico to Juana, and she was found guilty in 2008 of several murders and was sentenced to a total of 759 years in jail for her crimes. Referred to as Mataviejitas, or Little Old Lady Killer, Juana’s killing spree and the subsequent police investigation, became national news in Mexico in 2007 and 2008, and led to widespread pressure on the police department to solve the series of crimes against the nation’s most vulnerable members of society. Background Juana Barraza, or Juana Dayanara Barraza Samperio, was born on December 27, 1958 in the small rural town of Epazoyucan, Hidalgo, located north of the nation’s capital of Mexico City. Her father, Trinidad Barraza, was a local police officer and her mother, Justa Samperio, was a prostitute. Juana’s mother left her father shortly after Juana’s birth to begin a relationship with a married man named Refugio Samperio, was was Justa’s stepfather during her childhood. …show more content…
She was illiterate as a child and was often physically and emotionally neglected by her mother. She would later claim that her mother sold her to a strange man named Jose Lugo when she was only twelve years old for just three beers; the man sexually assaulted Juana repeatedly and she became pregnant with a boy. Juana would eventually have a total of four children, although her oldest son died in a robbery attempt at 24 years
The author of Mexican Lives, Judith Adler Hellman, grapples with the United States’ economic relationship with their neighbors to the south, Mexico. It also considers, through many interviews, the affairs of one nation. It is a work held to high esteem by many critics, who view this work as an essential part in truly understanding and capturing Mexico’s history. In Mexican Lives, Hellman presents us with a cast from all walks of life. This enables a reader to get more than one perspective, which tends to be bias. It also gives a more inclusive view of the nation of Mexico as a whole. Dealing with rebel activity, free trade, assassinations and their transition into the modern age, it justly captures a Mexico in its true light.
1Maritza Romero, Selena Perez: Queen of Tejano Music (New York: Power Kids Press, 1997) page 9 paragraph 2.
Ruíz, Vicki, and Sánchez Korrol Virginia E. "Huerta, Dolores." Latinas in the United States: A
Sonoma State University. "Maria Ygnacia Lopez de Carrillo Biography." SSU Library North Bay Regional & Special Collections. http://library.sonoma.edu/regional/notables/carrillio.php (accessed February 11, 2014).
On March 2, 1963 around midnight, a man in his early 20’s that we now know as Ernesto Miranda got out of his car and tied up the victim called Jane Doe as she wanted her name to be kept private. He drove her out to the desert outskirts of Phoenix. She did not resist Miranda as he kidnapped her as she feared for her life. Jane Doe was raped by Miranda a crime tried before by Miranda. He made her hand over the miniscule $4 she had and drove her back to the city. During the police questioning of Jane Doe about her attacker she said that she would recognize her attacker if she saw him again. About a week after the attack Jane Doe was out late with a family member, they walked by...
A. Attention Getter: A man 's face was found stitched on to a soccer ball, his body was found cut into 7 separate pieces in different locations with a single note that read "Happy new year because this will be your last". Headlines liked these are becoming much more common in Mexico, but who 's responsible for gruesome deaths like these? A drug war heavily lead by the Sinaloa Cartel.
In David Lida’s journalistic chronicles of Mexico City, he divulges a wealth of information to the reader through a number of sources and in a variety of ways. Lida paints the picture of Mexico City for the reader using anecdotal evidence, statistical data, and knowledge gathered from his own research of Mexican history and other published works that complement his work. And ultimately, his goal is to let us all in on what the city that he calls home is all about.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma, known by many as Evo, was born on October 26, 1959 in Orinoca, Oruro. His father Dionisio Morales Choque and mother Maria Mamani had in total seven children, two of whom didn’t survive past childhood. His upbringing will later become clear foreshadowing of the way in which he would rule. The house he grew up in was an adobe house, no more than ten by thirteen feet, which had a straw roof. He began working with his father harvesting sugar cane in Argentina at age six and by age twelve he helped his father herd llamas from Oruro to Independencia, a province of Cochabamba. While continuing to herd llamas as a means of making a living, he organized a soccer team and was elected technical director of selection for the canton’s team only two years later at age sixteen. Evo then moved to Oruro in order to attend high school and paid the bills by laying bricks, baking and playing trumpet in the Royal Imperial Band. Although he attended Beltran Avila High School, he was not able to finish his schooling and completed mandatory military service in La Paz.
Life in Mexico was, before the Revolution, defined by the figure of the patron that held all of power in a certain area. Juan Preciado, who was born in an urban city outside of Comala, “came to Comala because [he] had been told that [his] father, a man named Pedro Paramo lived there” (1). He initially was unaware of the general dislike that his father was subjected to in that area of Mexico. Pedro was regarded as “[l]iving bile” (1) by the people that still inhabited Comala, a classification that Juan did not expect. This reveals that it was not known by those outside of the patron’s dominion of the cruel abuse that they levied upon their people. Pedro Paramo held...
These murder cases stayed unsolved for decades, and their resolution may give some sense of closure to the long-suffering families of the victims. But these triumphs are largely symbolic. By congratulating ourselves too much for them, we risk neglecting the challenges of the present.
The emotional letter that Juan left for his mother might be one of the most emotional scenes in the documentary. The pure emotions that the letter was written by Juan to her mother leaves the audience with the bonds and emotions felt between the kids and families. Juan Carlos’s father abandoned the family years ago and left to New York, consequently Juan believe it is his responsibility to provide for his family. He also wants to find his father in New York and confronts him about why he has forgotten about them. The story of Juan is not just about migration of children, but also the issue of family separation. The documentary does not dehumanize but rather bring the humane and sensitive lens to the story of Juan where the human drama that these young immigrants and their families live. Juan Carlos is not the first of Esmeralda’s sons to leave for the United states, his nine-year-old brother Francisco was smuggled into California one month earlier. Francisco now lives with Gloria, his grandmother, who paid a smuggler $3,500 to bring him to Los Angeles, California. Once Juan Carlos is in the shelter for child migrants his mother eagerly awaits him outside. After she sees him she signs a paper that says if Juan Carlos tries to travel again, he will be sent to a foster home.
Using both English and Spanish or Spanglish the author Gloria Anzaldua explores the physical, cultural, spiritual, sexual and psychological meaning of borderlands in her book Borderlands/La Frontera: A New Mestiza. As a Chicana lesbian feminist, Anzaldua grew up in an atmosphere of oppression and confusion. Anzaldua illustrates the meaning of being a “mestiza”. In order to define this, she examines herself, her homeland and language. Anzaldúa discusses the complexity of several themes having to do with borderlands, mestizaje, cultural identity, women in the traditional Mexican family, sexual orientation, la facultad and the Coatlicue state. Through these themes, she is able to give her readers a new way of discovering themselves. Anzaldua alerts us to a new understanding of the self and the world around us by using her personal experiences.
The nature of brutality is not something to be toyed with, the carnage it causes to individuals, families and institutions cannot be overestimated and Gabriel Garcia Marquez shows us that willfully ignoring it’s entry into our community is tantamount to destruction and when faced with the desecration of anything we place in high regard, we should always question the role of brutality and consider the alternative that emphasizes the importance of human life and due process.
Then, Juana pull herself to the path of the border city of Mexico, Tijuana. It is when she met Adelina Vasquez who worked her way into prostitution as a way of survival in Tijuana. In the article of Then and Now: US Policy Towards Central American Fuels Child Refugee Crisis stated that, “An indigenous Mayan who then spoke Spanish but no English, she faced sexual violence and dehydration along the way—but survived.” (Schivone) The difference between difference and life changing began when they met because they changed each other like no other could because they were both searching for some sort of freedom. Adelina subconsciously wanted to get away from her boyfriend who pimped her out as a working girl while Juana believed that if she were to
Contemporary society tends to place emphasis on the important and influential men in the drug business. Movies such as Scarface show men with leading and powerful roles in cartel related positions. Women, specifically Mexican, have been represented under sexist lenses in which they are shown as meek, weak, fragile, and uninvolved in the drug business. However, I will argue that Mexican women enter the drug business because they see it as a way of empowerment, an economic measure, and as an obligation to the important males in their lives. As we see in the series “La Reina del Sur”, the protagonist, Teresa Mendoza, is a Mexican woman who becomes the one of the most powerful drug traffickers. Teresa is represented as a woman of power, influence, and capable of intimidation. This series represents the contemporary movement of the rise of female drug lords, and the increase in power of women in the Mexican drug business. This is reinforced by ethnographic words of scholars in the following articles. The first article “Female Drug