Mexican photographer's exhibit honors women slain in border city

Mexico City, Mar 9 (EFE).- Photographer Cesar Saldivar is honoring the hundreds of women murdered in the border city of Juarez with an exhibition, titled "Perder el norte" (Losing the North), that just opened in Mexico City.

The photographer invited the public in Mexico City to a "re-encounter with the north" via the 35 black-and-white images in the show.

The exhibition, which runs until April 26 at the Mining Palace, seeks to dramatize the murders of women that began in the early 1990s in Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, in a subtle way.

"This exhibition seeks to bring about, by way of visual poetry, reflection and awareness on the part of society in light of an exceedingly tragic situation that has not been solved as of today, provoking a re-encounter with the north and with reality, so it can be understood and we can help change it," Saldivar said.

The photographs in the exhibition were produced in Saldivar's Madrid studio with models and actresses chosen to represent the women of Juarez.

The photographer said he did not have to be in Mexico to craft a message capable of "touching hearts."

The latest photos are a continuation of a project, also dedicated to "the dead women of Juarez," titled "Non smoking society," which Saldivar started in 2005 for the European public and adapted for Latin America four years later.

The images are from the "Marionetas," "Ciudad Juarez I-II-III," "Naturaleza muerta," "Abstraccion y Mascaras," "Torsos Femeninos" and "Abstracción Juarez" series.

"The women of Juarez have become a type of media brand that always represents the most violent, grotesque and visceral side, and I want to show it that way, I'm sure that the subtle can be very powerful," Saldivar said.

Ciudad Juarez, considered Mexico's most dangerous city and the scene of frequent shootouts between rival drug traffickers, first gained notoriety in the early 1990s when young women began to disappear in the area.

More than 500 women have been killed in Ciudad Juarez since 1993, according to the National Human Rights Commission, with the majority of the cases going unsolved.

In most of the slayings, the victims were young women from poor families who came to the border city from all over Mexico to work in the many assembly plants, known as "maquiladoras," built there to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Investigators have not determined who is behind the killings, although there has been speculation that serial killers, organized crime, people traffickers, drug smugglers and child pornographers, among others, may be involved.

The wave of killings of women and girls has sparked international outrage.

Investigations conducted by Congress found that some 6,000 women were murdered across Mexico between 1999 and 2005.