Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders is a 2005 thriller by American novelist, poet, and essayist Alicia Gaspar de Alba. The novel takes place in 1998 when Juárez, Mexico is experiencing a spate of brutal killings of poor young women and girls, mostly factory workers. The protagonist, Ivon Villa, is a women’s studies professor from Los Angeles who returns to her hometown of El Paso, Texas—just across the border from Juárez—to adopt a baby. When the mother of the unborn baby is murdered, Ivon investigates the murders herself. The disappearance of her younger sister increases desperation to solve the mystery. Ivon discovers a vast conspiracy, involving many levels of government on both sides of the Mexico-United States border, one fueled by sexism, racism, and classism. 

Desert Blood was the 2005 winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Mystery. Though the characters in the novel are fictional, the murders are real; in a disclaimer, Gaspar de Alba writes that she hopes “to expose the horrors of this deadly crime wave as broadly as possible to the English-speaking public” (vi). 

Plot Summary

Ivon Villa is a Women’s Studies professor at Saint Ignatius College finishing her dissertation on how bathroom graffiti reflects class and gender. She travels from Los Angeles to her hometown of El Paso, Texas, across the Río Grande River from Juárez, Mexico. On the plane, Ivon is seated next to a man in a cowboy hat, J.W., who irritates her with racist comments. She reads an article about “the Maquiladora murders”: Young Mexican and American women who work in the factories on the border are being kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed, their bodies left in the desert in Juárez. J.W. gives Ivon a roll of pennies for having lost a bet that he could guess her profession.

Ivon is greeted at the airport by her teenaged sister Irene and her cousin Ximena, a social worker helping Ivon and her wife Brigit adopt the unborn baby of a teenager named Cecilia. That night, Ivon and Ximena go to meet Cecilia after her shift at the factory, but Cecilia does not appear. Ximena, Ivon, and Ximena’s priest friend, Father Francis, drive to Cecilia’s house and find that she was murdered. At the morgue, Ivon notices a cup of pennies by Cecilia’s body.

After a confrontation with her traditional mother and an uncomfortable encounter with her ex-girlfriend Raquel, who invites Ivon and Irene to the Juárez fair, Ivon goes with Ximena to visit Elsa, a dying young factory worker who wants someone to adopt her son Jorgito. They realize Elsa was inseminated at the factory by a doctor who was testing contraceptives. Ivon decides to go back to Los Angeles. However, when she finds graffiti that reads, “Poor Juárez, so close to Hell, so far from Jesus” (98), she takes it as a sign that she should write about Juárez in her dissertation and help figure out why the murders are occurring. 

Irene is furious when Ivon breaks a promise to take her to the Juárez fair, so she goes by herself. Once there, she and Raquel’s niece Myrna grow increasingly intoxicated, and Irene eventually finds herself at a party in a dangerous part of Juárez. The next day, Ivon learns Irene never made it home. The family reports her disappearance, and Ivon is frustrated by the slow, inefficient investigation. As she talks to other families who have similar experiences, she begins to feel that sexism and racism are preventing the murders from being taken seriously.

Meanwhile, Irene is in captivity under a bed, where she hears conversations between her captors. Among them is a Texan whom readers recognize as J.W. Irene hears them talking about clients and live streaming; she also hears girls referred to as “pennies.” 

Ivon goes to Juárez to look for Irene and finds that those with information are reluctant to help her. When she and her cousin are kidnapped and almost killed by state police officers, she begins to realize the depth of the cover-up conspiracy. 

Father Francis, Ivon, Ximena, and others in the organization Contra el Silencio—“against the silence”—search the desert for bodies. When they find the mutilated body of a girl who has a penny shoved down her throat, Ivon theorizes that it is symbolic of how the American-owned factories are being forced down Mexico’s throat by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Father Francis believes the murders are backlash against women defying traditional gender roles by working factory jobs. Ivon contemplates the fixation on the girls’ fertility and further theorizes that someone wants to stop Mexican girls from crossing the border and having babies who will become American citizens.

On the way to the airport to pick up Brigit, Border Patrol detains Ivon. J.W., who turns out to be the chief detention enforcement officer, drives off with her in a Border Patrol vehicle. As they approach an abandoned refinery, Ivon realizes that he runs a pornography website and uses the plant to live stream the killing of women. Pete McCuts, the detective assigned to Irene’s case, had been following Ivon and calls for backup. When he is shot in the leg during a standoff, he breaks the rules by giving Ivon his gun, and Ivon saves Irene.

Ivon is upset when a newspaper honors J.W., who was killed that night, for giving his life in the line of duty. In thinking about all she learned, Ivon concludes that the American-owned factories are exploiting the girls’ labor and consider the girls a problem when they are “reproductive rather than just productive” (332). J.W.’s movies are a way to control the population and prevent unwanted immigration. Ivon realizes that the conspiracy is bigger than she thought and involves many levels of authority, from the factory owners to the government.

Irene recovers at home surrounded by family. Ivon begins reconciliation with her mother, and she and Brigit decide to adopt Jorgito.