Lopez, Banderas, Driver Star In Films About Killings of Women

The killings of hundreds of women in this border city have become the focus of Hollywood's camera lenses, with Jennifer Lopez, Antonio Banderas and Minnie Driver starring in movies about them.

The slayings have been the subject of scores of books, songs, documentaries and TV series. But victims' relatives worry the films will exacerbate Juarez's already tattered image and do little to pressure authorities to solve the crimes.

"Bordertown," with Lopez and Banderas, began production in New Mexico last month. In coming weeks, production will move to the border city of Nogales, where a crew has already built a shantytown resembling Anapra, a Juarez neighborhood where many of the victims lived.

In the film, co-written and directed by Gregory Nava, Lopez plays a Chicago-based reporter sent to Mexico to investigate the killings and who meets a young factory worker who survived an attack. Banderas also plays a U.S. reporter.

"The Virgin of Juarez," stars Driver, who plays a Los Angeles-based reporter sent to investigate the killings, and Ana Claudia Talacon, who portrays a survivor of the vicious attacks. The film was completed last year but has yet to be released.

Authorities say 340 women have been slain over the last 12 years in Juarez, a city of about 1.3 million people across from El Paso, Texas. But human rights groups say the number of women killed is much higher.

At least 100 of those deaths appear to fit a pattern where a young, slender woman was sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the desert outside Juarez. Some have speculated that they were the work of a serial killer, but investigators have denied that.

Ciudad Juarez garnered international attention after victims' relatives, backed by Mexican and international activists, started expressing outrage over the alleged corruption, ineptitude and indifference of investigators. The relatives complained that prosecutors seemed to be more interested in closing cases using fabricated evidence than unearthing the truth. A few men have been convicted in the killings, and dozens more have been arrested. But many suspects have been released after judges threw out their cases, and some have claimed to have been tortured into confessing.

Activists and victims' mothers acknowledge they don't know a lot about the films, and say they were never approached by those involved in the productions.

They fear the films will concentrate on gruesome details instead of bringing attention to the sloppy police work and the lack of results in the investigations.

"Even the title is guileful," Victoria Caraveo, a longtime Juarez activist, said of "The Virgin of Juarez." "I know that those people are artists and have a certain sensibility. But what worries me is the context of their work."

Caraveo was especially critical of the fact that both films follow U.S. journalists as they investigate the slayings.

"Where were these journalists when the killings started?" Caraveo said. "If it hadn't been for the mothers, who keep demanding justice, the situation here would still be ignored."

Josefina Lopez, a Los Angeles-based playwright and screenwriter whose credits include "Real Women Have Curves," decided to write a movie about the slayings after visiting the city.

"I went to visit the murder site in Lomas de Poleo, and when I was there I had a feeling that a lot of the spirits of those women were still there," Lopez said.

Lopez - whose film is in preproduction for HBO - said she didn't interview any of the victims' relatives and collected stories through testimony given to a documentary filmmaker and from press articles.

"If the end result is that more people hear about the killings and the killings stop, then the more films, the better," Lopez said.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia said he expects the films to bend the facts and further distort the city's image.

"Some people like to focus on yellow journalism, but it's not right that they only talk about this tragedy and not show the real face of Juarez," he said.

One of the most criticized projects was a drama produced by Mexico's TV Azteca titled "As Infinite as the Desert." The two-week series, which aired last year, depicted some of the most gruesome murders using real victims' names.

Activists and victims' relatives demanded that the series be pulled off the air and threatened to sue the network.

Although the mothers backed off the lawsuit against TV Azteca, they did succeed in pressuring Los Tigres del Norte, Mexico's most popular norteno band, to cancel a concert in Ciudad Juarez. Los Tigres were promoting a new album that included the hit single "The Women of Juarez," a song that denounced the killings.

"Anyone thinks they can film a movie or make a song or a soap opera about our daughters," said Rosaura Montanez, whose 19-year-old daughter was kidnapped after leaving a friend's home, raped and killed in 1995. "It seems our daughters died so these people would have material for their songs and movies. It's just not fair."

But not all the victims' relatives are critical of the attention.

Paula Flores, whose 17-year-old daughter was killed in 1998, has always talked to anyone who wants to hear about her plight in hopes that the attention will force authorities to act.

"I'm for (the films) if they are done with respect toward our daughters and they can help us with our demand for justice," she said. "What I want is for the whole world to know that we live in impunity, in a city without law."