An Author Wrote About Her Sister’s Murder. It Led to a Breakthrough.

By the account, she acquired a tip from a reputable supply in August that he had doubtless been dwelling in Southern California below an assumed title. She was in a position to see his photograph, however solely on a web-based memorial web site: He died in 2020.

Rivera Garza requested for assist from legislation enforcement contacts within the U.S. to corroborate the story, and now believes that the person within the photograph was certainly Liliana’s ex-boyfriend. She is ready for ultimate affirmation from Mexican authorities.

That end result initially disenchanted Rivera Garza, thrusting her again into a well-recognized cycle of grief and guilt: if solely she had began her search sooner, if solely her sister hadn’t moved to Mexico Metropolis, if solely. However she then started to ponder the aim of her e-book, and what she in the end hoped to realize by documenting Liliana’s story.

“There’s a bigger idea of justice that entails the preservation of reminiscence and the reality, as nicely,” Rivera Garza stated. “I spotted little by little that the e-book in actual fact was attempting to do this work.”

Rivera Garza got here to see mourning as a communal course of. The e-book was “written from a wound that I share with so many different households in Mexico, Latin America, and world wide,” she stated.

Justice of any variety has been arduous to come back by for ladies like Liliana. In Mexico, greater than 1,000 murders final 12 months had been formally labeled as femicides — the killing of girls and ladies due to their gender. Not less than half of reported femicides within the nation go unresolved, in keeping with Impunidad Cero, a assume tank. And most violence in opposition to girls isn’t reported in any respect.

For Rivera Garza, discovering a technique to write about her sister’s demise, even within the context of such pervasive violence, was a problem. On the time, instances like Liliana’s had been usually described within the press and historic data as “crimes of ardour,” a building Rivera Garza stated implicitly blamed the sufferer whereas exonerating the accused. This lack of a “dignified and respectful language” prevented Rivera Garza from writing her sister’s story sooner, she stated.