By Cristina Rivera Garza It is also a place that is written about in relation to violence. Over the past few decades, the US- Mexico border has been awash in a particular kind of militarized violence carried out by both national governments, along with private interests, such as cartels and militias. It is often the bodies of ordinary people, whether migrants crossing the scorching Sonoran Desert in Arizona or women hanging from overpasses in Ciudad Juárez, that become the targets of cruel government policies, cartel violence, and cartel-government corruption. 2 Inherent in this violence are questions about language—how to define the violence and how to write and speak against it. “Mexicans have been forced to witness the reduction of the body to its most basic form: as a producer of capital through both the maquilas and other transnational companies,” writes Cristina Rivera Garza in the introduction to