It’s a tricky thing, deciding to go ahead with a piece of fiction based on fact. There’s always the issue of whether the facts are broadly accepted (not always a given), and then there’s the potential to offend those for whom those facts are sacrosanct. Double these potential snags when you’re talking about events in another country, and events that affect a totally different demographic. You’re walking into a minefield.
I first became aware of the issue of the feminicidios (female homicides) in the mid-’00s. Amnesty International USA started a campaign to draw attention to the problem and it worked with me. I was exposed to a part of Mexico that had previously been closed to me as an American and I was affected. I immediately knew that I had to write about it, but it would be a few years before I figured out how and what.
For those who aren’t aware: since the early 1990s there have been a serious of vicious murders and unexplained disappearances among the female population of Ciudad Juárez, a border city directly across the river from El Paso. The city enjoyed an economic boom with the advent of NAFTA, but in 1994 the homicide rate among women jumped 600%. Something terrible was happening and no one could figure out how or why. The criminal justice system in Mexico is virtually nonexistent, with successful prosecutions of murders in some states going as low as one percent. So it went on and on. And on.