A Vital Matters Artwork: El Arbol de la Muerte: Maquilando Mujeres (The Tree of Death: Factory Women)

The ceramic Tree of Life is a Mexican popular art tradition and embodies centuries of accumulated symbolism. Trees using death imagery may be placed on Day of the Dead altars to memorialize loved ones. In Tree of Death: Factory Women, Veronica Castillo creates a visual elegy for more than 400 young women and girls who have been brutally murdered since 1993 in Cuidad Juárez on the Mexican border near El Paso, Texas. Sadly, U.S. and foreign-owned border factories and the press has done little to investigate these crimes, and today the murders continue and remain unsolved. Castillo's compelling work is a poignant reminder of the violence that has devastated a community and a moving tribute to the innocent victims of these heinous crimes. It also demonstrates the power of popular art to expand beyond its traditional meaning and to bring public attention to this tragedy. Born into a family of ceramicists in one of Mexico’s most renowned centers of Árbol production, Castillo has received international acclaim for her continuation of the artistic tradition as well as her social and political activism. With El Árbol de la Muerte: Maquilando Mujeres (The Tree of Death: Factory Women), Castillo offers a visual elegy for the hundreds of women and girls who have been brutally murdered in Cuidad Juárez on the Mexican border near El Paso, Texas.Centering on the underreported and largely unpunished killings of female workers lured into U.S. and foreign-owned border factories, El Árbol de la Muerte is draped with mutilated corpses, skeletal remains, and discarded clothing. Merciless killers, men with names that inspire fear, go about their horrific business, while the next shift of unprotected women stands on a roulette wheel of greed, desperation, and violence outside the factory door. Above the blood-drenched tree and blindfolded skull, a circular emblem invokes Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess who was dismembered by her brother, the solar god Huitzilopochtli. Here, she has risen to cast light upon the tragedies and force society to recognize the grotesque Árbol that has been nurtured.