Rodarte x MAC coming makeup line’s goal was to celebrate Mexican culture. However, it seems they got more than they bargained for. Blogger Frisky pointed out that Juarez, a name for one of the line’s nail polishes, is the name of a town surrounded by a controversy regarding multiple (try 400) women rape murders that got little or no attention from the authorities.
Why’s it tasteless? Juarez is an impoverished Mexican factory town notorious for the number of women between the ages of 12 and 22 who have been raped and murdered with little or no response from police.
Most of the young women are employees at the border town’s factories, called maquiladoras, and disappeared on the way to or from work. Activists have been applying constant pressure on Mexican police, who have shown little response to properly investigating the murders, allegedly because the victims are poor women. The crime channel TruTV even called Juarez a “serial killers’ playground”! And it’s not like the Juarez murders are some big secret: Jennifer Lopez even starred in a film,“Bordertown,” playing a reporter who writes about the rapes and murders.
I must admit, I myself did not connect the dots at first, but now I do remember watching a documentary about the matter. It’s seems to me that it was a good way for Frisky to attract attention to the killings subject, but really, is Rodarte or MAC guilty of anything? No. There are so many places touched by devious human nature in the world that if we were to choose where to draw inspiration from, we’d be left with only flora and fauna. These days, most of Mexico is anguished by violence, but we cannot dismiss it’s culture as inspiration because of poor governmental authorities (and The War On Drugs).
