Sergio González Rodríguez

In Ciudad Juarez, a territorial power normalized barbarism. This anomalous ecology mutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn't just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guarantee impunity for those crimes and even legalize them. A lawless city sponsored by a State in crisis. The facts speak for themselves. -- from The Femicide Machine Best known to American readers for his cameo appearances as The Journalist in Roberto Bolano's 2666 and as a literary detective in Javier Marías's nove l Dark Back of Time, Sergio González Rodríguez is one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers. He is the author of Bones in the Desert, the most definitive work on the murders of women and girls in Juárez, Mexico, as well as The Headless Man, a sharp meditation on the recurrent uses of symbolic violence; Infectious, a novel; and Original Evil, a long essay. The Femicide Machine is the first book by González Rodríguez to appear in English translation. Written especially for Semiotext(e) Intervention series, The Femicide Machine synthesizes González Rodríguez's documentation of the Juárez crimes, his analysis of the unique urban conditions in which they take place, and a discussion of the terror techniques of narco-warfare that have spread to both sides of the border. The result is a gripping polemic. The Femicide Machine probes the anarchic confluence of global capital with corrupt national politics and displaced, transient labor, and introduces the work of one of Mexico's most eminent writers to American readers.

The Femicide Machine

La pandilla cósmica

La más reciente obra de Sergio González Rodríguez, una novela llena de enigmas y personajes ambiguos que sorprenderá en cada momento. Hay novelas malas, regulares y buenas. Ésta es una novela extraordinaria sobre la venganza y el poder de la imaginación. Sus personajes simbolizan una pugna generacional desde las obsesiones más íntimas cuya aventura encubre, como en cualquier persona, un secreto que determina los actos de la vida: un joven viajero, escritor de cuentos inescrutables y aspirante a creador de novelas gráficas; un librero de viejo; una muchacha que trabaja como doble de la modelo y actriz Paris Hilton; un ex guardaespaldas convertido en instructor de artes marciales; y una tríada de criminales de Hong Kong, protagonizan una trama de suspenso que proyecta la sombra del crimen y los negocios en el mundo actual. El artista adolescente que confundía el mundo con un cómic refleja sus vastas posibilidades al desplegarse en diversos niveles de lectura, reto para la complicidad de lectores hartos de relatos convencionales. Nunca la sencillez narrativa tuvo tanta riqueza como en esta novela diamante: valiosa, enigmática, sorprendente y de facetas múltiples. Con esta obra, Sergio González Rodríguez renueva el género novelístico en las letras iberoamericanas y ratifica la creatividad que lo distingue. La recompensa de un escritor que día tras día disfruta de mayor prestigio dentro y fuera del país.

El artista adolescente que confundía el mundo con un cómic

Juan Villoro

Anabel Hernández

Lydia Cacho

Elena Poniatowska

Marcela Turati

Diego Enrique Osorno

Emiliano Ruiz Parra

With contributions from seven of Mexico's finest journalists, this is reportage at its bravest and most necessary - it has the power to change the world's view of their country, and by the force of its truth, to start to heal the country's many sorrows. Supported the Arts Council Grant's for the Arts Programme and by PEN Promotes Veering between carnival and apocalypse, Mexico has in the last ten years become the epicentre of the international drug trade. The so-called "war on drugs" has been a brutal and chaotic failure (more than 160,000 lives have been lost). The drug cartels and the forces of law and order are often in collusion, corruption is everywhere. Life is cheap and inconvenient people - the poor, the unlucky, the honest or the inquisitive - can be "disappeared" leaving not a trace behind (in September 2015, more than 26,798 were officially registered as "not located"). Yet people in all walks of life have refused to give up. Diego Enrique Osorno and Juan Villoro tell stories of teenage prostitution and Mexico's street children. Anabel Hernández and Emiliano Ruiz Parra give chilling accounts of the "disappearance" of forty-three students and the murder of a self-educated land lawyer. Sergio González Rodríguez and Marcela Turati dissect the impact of the violence on the victims and those left behind, while Lydia Cacho contributes a journal of what it is like to live every day of your life under threat of death. Reading these accounts we begin to understand the true nature of the meltdown of democracy, obscured by lurid headlines, and the sheer physical and intellectual courage needed to oppose it.

The Sorrows of Mexico

Sergio González Rodríguez

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