The MUJER Festival
July 14, 2002
El Paso, Texas

Being literally on the border of Mexico and the United States can put one in a very difficult and ambivalent situation, especially when it comes to issues that take place across that imaginary line but affect your own situation despite the stipulated boundary. Being of Mexican-American heritage only makes the conundrum worse, for it isn't possible to consider one's self merely American just because of what it reads on your birth certificate. You inevitably care about what's going on so close to you even if it is in an entirely different nation.

And earlier this year, a group of musicians, human rights activists, social workers, artists and media from El Paso, Texas, decided to take action against something absolutely horrific taking place in its sister city of Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The scenario was this: Since the early 90's, more than 300 young women have been sexually assaulted and brutally murdered, their bodies discarded in the Chihuahua desert that surrounds Mexico's 4th largest city.

What's worse, many more women have been reported missing with absolutely no leads as to their whereabouts. The same goes for the dead: police and special investigative teams can't seem to find anything that will solve these crimes, much less arrest a true perpetrator. The Juarez police force itself has been linked to a few of the murders, while the drug war, sex trade and maquila industry have been blamed for others. Skeletal remains are found with clothing matching one girl's description while the bones are DNA sampled only to reveal they belong to an entirely different young woman. Family members who persist in finding their own clues are stalled, misled or even threatened. The web of deceit and mystery grows more complex as the years go by and more and more girls disappear just when enough time has passed to put people at ease.

The organizers of the first-ever MUJER Festival - representing Musicians United for Justice, Equality and Respect - were not just from El Paso. The final tally of organizers and participants drew from Juarez and the larger state of Chihuahua as well as Albuquerque, New Mexico and Southern California. What's more, the event drew attention from top-name artists who, in the comfort and distance afforded by their success and status, easily could've ignored the call to participate. But the likes of Sparta (featuring former members of At The Drive-In who also happen to be native El Pasoans) and Los Angeles' Grammy winning outfit Ozomatli signed on not just to lend their names, but also to perform entirely on their own dime.

The rest of the event's line-up encompassed everything from solo performance art to large ensemble Latin fusion, with straight-out punk, classical guitar, electronica and theater in between.

The Beginning

Gates were open upon our arrival just a few minutes after 3:00, at which time only a few bodies were milling around - most of them festival organizers or crew. Parking was available across the street at a flat rate of $3; there was also plenty of street parking in the neighborhood, which to some might be considered dubious considering its proximity to Union Station and the Border Highway. In any other big city, a festival of this caliber would've been sucking money like leeches but there was simply nothing exploitative about MUJER or the people involved.

We were let in with no problems and in fact given quite the royal treatment with full photo/interview access and admission to the VIP guest area/green room. At this early hour stages were still being set up while other preparations were going down in the various venues and through the alleyway that joined the buildings. It was pretty low-key; people looked like they knew what they had to do and were getting it done, without all the melodrama that would've been going down in someplace like Los Angeles. Bands were carting in and setting up their own equipment - and that included bigwigs Sparta and Ozomatli.

Experimental rockers Siva were the first band on the main Club 101 stage. The El Paso natives smashed into their first number promptly at 4:00 with singer Gregg Sosa at full throttle - sans instrument save a powerful voice - giving it up to a small but interested crowd who'd braved the hottest part of the afternoon to be there. The five-piece was made up of two guitarists, a drummer, a female bassist and the aforementioned Sosa, which as a unit delivered an uber-tight set of banging punk-metal with depths of surprising melody and swells of ambient guitar work. "It's good to be here for a good cause," said the kinetic Sosa mid-set. The band weren't ashamed of demonstrating the huge amount of soul that drove them, nor were they snobbishly distant in their passionate delivery as bands of their caliber in bigger cities can be. Ending with a number they identified as their "refugee song" which featured drummer Mike Morales on surprisingly strong vocals, Siva's set was a hopeful and impressive kick-off to this first-ever event that no one - organizers, participants, fans or otherwise - was making any bets on beforehand.

Soon after the band had stepped offstage, we wandered into the green room to talk with Siva bassist Vanessa Monsisvais about the music scene in El Paso.

Adjacent to the green room in the bar area of E9, Chihuahua native Lourdes Portillos' stunning and absolutely appropriate documentary, "Senorita Extraviada", was being screened. This second indoor venue was located just yards from Club 101. The room was filled with an impressive crowd, captivated by the acclaimed documentarian's chronicle of injustice in Juarez - hundreds upon hundreds of women missing and murdered, their unsolved cases trapped in the mire of corruption and bureaucracy within the Mexican and international crime fighting and political forces.

Tables of literature and sign-up sheets were also being manned within E9 with representation from organizations as pertinent as Casa Amiga, the FMLA and Mujeres Por Juarez, along with groups promoting causes as worthy as immigrant rights and preventing animal cruelty. The growing crowd perused flyers and spoke with representatives while local television crews explored the scene.

In general, the early part of the festival was dedicated to local talent - a showcase that El Paso and Juarez can be thoroughly proud of. Juarez artist Androide manipulated sampled grooves from all genres for his electronic set of Latin-flavored beats, complimented throughout by more mellow (yet no less enticing) original compositions with added layers of melody provided by keyboards played along with the loops. Its depth of melody set Androide's music apart from typically beat-driven techno or ambient music - which went even further into its own when a guitar was added for tracks that had the good-sized crowd swaying.