This project interrogates the phenomenon of the maquila murders in Ciudad Juarez, a rapidly expanding city on the U.S. / Mexico border, over the past several years. Gloria Anzaldua has described the border as "una herida abierta [an open wound] where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds." "Maquila" explores the images and representations of women's bodies and murders occuring along this wounded border, using a web-based format to engage questions of gender, race, work, violence, and embodiment surrounding the Juarez incidents, with a focus on how they have been presented by mainstream media outlets. More than anything else, this project functions primarily as an intertextual meditation.

The pink and black color scheme throughout these pages is a reference to the community activism work done by a group called "Voces Sin Eco," which anonymously painted hundreds of telephone poles in Ciudad Juarez hot pink and marked black crosses upon them, in order to draw public attention to what they see as the often-suppressed outrage of the murders.