As a part of the annual Social Justice Night, the School of Social Work’s Emmit J. and Mary Martha Doerr Center for Social Justice hosted a presentation entitled “Femicide at Our U.S. Borders: To Be a Woman in Juarez is a Death Sentence” by filmaker Barbara Martinez Jitner on Tuesday, Sept. 25.

The center’s mission is to promote social justice at SLU and beyond and to encourage students to become social-justice practitioners.

John Slosar, Ph.D., co-director of the center, said that the “themes of the event vary from year to year.”

Both John Slosar and his co-director and wife Betsy Slosar said that Martinez Jitner was the perfect keynote speaker for this year’s event because of all the social work and community service that the Jesuits and SLU students do in Latin America. They also found that the events in Juarez, Mexico, that Martinez Jitner described are not well known.

More than 475 young women and girls have been brutally killed, and over 1000 more have been abducted in the past 14 years in the city of Juarez. Martinez Jitner said that she believes that authorities there seem indifferent, with no real plans to investigate, and perpetrators continue their actions with impunity.

Many efforts have been made to stop the violence, including campaigns by organizations like Amnesty International, but to no avail. An additional 12 girls have been murdered since February 2007.

Martinez Jitner first became active in the issue after filming her documentary, La Frontera (2000), about workers in maquiladoras (low-wage factories on the U.S.-Mexican border).

“The open corruption and cover up was unbelievable,” Martinez Jitner said of her time filming.

During the production of Bordertown, a film about the murders in Juarez starring Jennifer Lopez and Antonio Banderas, both Martinez Jitner and Lopez received death threats. Martinez Jitner went with a skeleton crew to Juarez, where she said that police beat and tortured her assistant, confiscated footage, broke into their hotel rooms and stole more than $100,000 in camera equipment.

“They are trying to fill the world with the false ideas about the content of the movie,” Martinez Jitner said.

A woman’s body was discovered by Amnesty International earlier on the day of the speech; Martinez Jitner dedicated the evening to that woman.

Besides showing her documentary and a clip from Bordertown, she spoke about her experiences in the maquiladoras, and the deaths and corruption in Mexico.

Joan Suarez, the chairperson of Missouri Immigrant and Refugees Advocates, spoke after the presentation. She brought the presentation to St. Louis by tying in the events in Mexico to immigration issues in Missouri. She hopes that more evidence will help put pressure on the Mexican government.

“More has to happen than just raising awareness. A national campaign must be developed,” Suarez said.

Stephen Dienger, a senior in the School of Social Work attended the presentation and said, “I am not a woman, but this hits close to home, because I can imagine those girls being my sisters or friends.”

Martinez Jitner and Suarez encouraged students to fill out the online petition on Amnesty International’s website, to be sent to Mexican President Felipe Calder?n.

They also said that they hope attendees would help raise awareness by seeing Bordertown and explaining the issue to their friends.