Juarez is often called "City of Dreams" because hundreds of thousands of young women have been drawn to this frontier town from the most impoverished regions of Mexico. They aspire to a life free from poverty and free from the male-dominated traditional family and village. Since 1993 over two hundred of these young women have been murdered, and the crimes barely investigated. Many of the victims were assembly-line workers in the over four hundred mostly US-owned factories. This compelling documentary focuses on the social causes at the root of the unsolved murders. The factories, known as "maquiladoras" have brought the city jobs and opportunities otherwise rare in Mexico, but also enormous social changes as a result of free trade and globalization. Mexican human rights activists consider these women casualties in a deeper gender conflict caused by rapid changes in the male/female roles. In a country dominated by machismo, the women's independence as breadwinners has fuelled resentment. Sociologists and political scientists worldwide regard Juarez as a microcosm of the emerging global economy, where capital moves freely and labor is trapped by borders
