1. Louis Owens. Mixed Blood Messages: Literature, Film, Family, Place.  Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, p 13.  Of mixed Cherokee, Choctaw and Irish heritage, Owens focuses on the theme of mixed blood identity in much of his writing, in which he disputes the notion of the "real Indian" and the imagery proliferated by this limited social construct.  Owen's own life, cut short by suicide in 2002, was deeply affected by his inability to prove his Native ancestry, thereby branding him a non-Indian in the eyes of the American government. 
2. The Mexican government has tried since the beginning to lessen the number of deaths. The latest official figure I have is 323 women (a declaration to the media made by Mexican President Vicente Fox, June 1, 2005). Non-governmental organizations and human rights groups give a higher figure, around 400 or even more. There are also hundreds of women reported as missing. Research on the events of Ciudad Juarez is based primarily on the book Huesos en el desierto (González Rodríguez 2004), on the documentary film Señorita Extraviada (Portillo 2001), and on Julia Monárrez-Fragoso's work on the subject (Monárrez-Fragoso 2003). For more information on Juárez visit the website of the organization Nuestras hijas de regreso a casa: www.mujeresdejuarez.org
3. This description of the precision of the femicides as almost 'bureaucratic' derives from Rita Laura Segato (Segato 2004).
4. I refer to a 'repetition within a difference' because I want to clarify the idea that to 'cite' is not merely to 'replicate'. In citing, a difference is always introduced, the 'original' is already altered. In citing again something that was in itself a rendering of a prior situation, it is clear to see that we are altering something that was already altered, but seemed to be unchanged. An example of the practice and the effects of citationality is given by Joan Scott's book Only Paradoxes to Offer (Scott 1997). In her book, Scott analyses the strategies that 17th- to 20th-century French feminists utilized in order to struggle for the extension of the purportedly universal 'rights of man and the citizen' to women. Although speaking from a position of difference (from the illegitimate standpoint of 'women', which was excluded from the public sphere), these feminists aimed at uncovering the false universality of rights precisely by citing them on behalf of women and by rhetorically appropriating a set of rights that did not belong to them.
5. In her work, Melissa W. Wright has interestingly shown that the corporate elites of the city have always regarded female labor as 'temporary'. These elites regard the high turnover present in the maquilas as a reflection of the low value women attach to being loyal to their employers and of the cultural construction of Mexican femininity that demands women to be primary care-takers of the family (Wright 2001).
6. Cultural workers interested in the Juárez case have interestingly depicted the tension between individuality and the idea of 'interchangeability'. For example, in Lorena Wolffer's performance piece, Mientras dormíamos (While We Were Sleeping, 2003) the artist drew on her body the blows, cuts, and shots that 50 of the victims had suffered. Her performance highlights the essence of these murders: in Wolffer's body the wounds coexist, mime each other's shape, overlap. All of the violence inflicted on the body of 50 women is captured in one body – all this screams interchangeability. Nevertheless, by highlighting the fact that these wounds were inflicted to 50 different, individual women, Wolffer at once countered the idea of their replaceability.
7. See also Portillo's article on the filming of the documentary (Portillo 2003).
8. For example, former Chihuahua attorney general Arturo González Rascón said: "Unfortunately, there are women who because of the circumstances of their lives, the places they go about their activities, are at risk; because it would be very difficult for anyone going out into the street when it is raining, well, it would be very difficult for them not to get wet." And the president of the Juárez's Association of Maquilas commented, "It is a very small number [of deaths], and yet we had people from the entire world interviewing us" (both quoted in Monárrez-Fragoso 2003: 160,162). Recently, Mexican president Vicente Fox referred to the advocacy of families and civil society groups in Juárez as just a 'recycling' of already solved cases. See El Universal news, May 31, 2005. 
9. See, for example, the website of the Ciudad Juárezes mejor ('Ciudad Juárez is Better') campaign (www.juarezesmejor.com.mx), which indeed tries to conceal the city's violent reality with an aura of communal harmony.   
10. It is important to point out that The New York Times recently reported that Juárez is by no means the only town where events of this kind are taking place. Rather, in this city the victims' relatives and civil society groups have been more successful at publicizing and denouncing what goes on. See "In Mexico's Murders, Fury is Aimed at Officials," The New York Times, September 26, 2005.