Mia Levitin

Femicide in Mexico reaches staggering proportions

Ten women, on average, are killed there every day – and Cristina Rivera Garza’s investigation of her sister’s murder is met with the usual ‘silence of impunity’

Cristina Rivera Garza. [© Tonatiuh Ambrosetti, Fondation Jan Michalski, 2022] 
issue 11 March 2023

In July 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza, a 20-year-old architecture student, was strangled to death at her home in a borough of Mexico City. Her suspected killer, Ángel González Ramos, an ex-boyfriend, fled and remained at large. Three decades later, buttressed by a movement protesting against violence towards women, her sister returned to Mexico in the hopes of finding justice.

An acclaimed author and essayist, Cristina Rivera Garza is a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Houston. Liliana’s Invincible Summer begins with her quest to track down the case files. When the paper trail hits a dead end, she turns her detective work to her sister’s personal archive, motivated to memorialise Liliana in the absence of an institutional record.

Liliana was a prolific writer of letters and notes, lengthy excerpts of which are reproduced in the book. What begins as juvenilia – bits of song lyrics adorned with Hello Kitty stickers – evolves into a portrait of a young woman’s ambitions and inner life.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in