SOUNDTRACK: TORI AMOS-“Juarez” (from To Venus and Back) (1999).
This song was the first that I had heard of what was happening in Juarez, Mexico. In AP Magazine (Oct 99) Tori Amos said:
“I read an article about several hundred women in Juarez, Mexico, who had been taken out to the desert and brutally raped and murdered. When they didn’t come home, their brothers would go and look for them, and many times they’d find nothing. Sometimes they’d find a hair barrette or a sock or something they knew was their sister’s. The authorities haven’t really done anything about it…they get into this serial-killer theory. I mean, how much serial can one man indulge in? So as the song started to develop, I really began taking the voice of the desert, singing in that perspective.”
The song is very abstract, with references to Juarez, but overall the meaning is oblique (in typical Tori Amos fashion). Sonically it is claustrophobic and creepy, and the repeated line “No angel came” adds to the intensity of it. It has never been a favorite song, although I think as a commentary on the situation it is delightfully eerie. It doesn’t really add anything to 2666, but at least it provided me with some context.
[READ: Week of March 8, 2010] 2666 [pg 404-465]
Week 6 picks up much where Week 7 left off. There are a lot more deaths (Nicole at bolanobolano has the dubious honor of tallying them)in this reading. And you’ll have to look at bolnobolano for the details, as I’m not up to keeping the records straight.
Juan de Dios Martínez is ordered to stop working on The Pentitent, so that his officers can be freed up for other duties.
And the first dead woman of this section is an American, Lucy Anne Sander. She and a friend came down from Huntsville, Arizona. While her friend, Erica, was parking the car, Lucy got out to walk in the wet grass. She was not seen again for three days when her body turned up, raped and murdered. This was the first instance in the book where someone aggressively looks for a missing woman. Erica befriends a local nurse (and they from an intense bond in the short time they know each other) and has an Arizona sheriff come down to investigate on her behalf. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 