Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, rape, and gender discrimination.

Cristina Rivera Garza, accompanied by her friend Sorias, begins her quest to reopen her sister Liliana’s murder case in Mexico City in 2019. It has been over 29 years since Liliana’s ex-boyfriend, Ángel Gonzalez Ramos, killed her. Rivera Garza has written to Mexico’s attorney general to request a copy of the case file, which authorities have difficulty locating as she and Sorias walk from office to office through the city’s bustling neighborhoods and streets. Femicide is common in Mexico, with 10 happening every day. Just months earlier, after police officers raped a teenager, Mexican feminists rallied for justice in front of the same attorney general’s office that Rivera Garza is now approaching. Here, Rivera Garza discovers that the file has been moved to one of three possible locations. She and Sorias visit another office in the building, where they are instructed to try elsewhere. The two pass a poster memorializing a student whose boyfriend murdered her in 2017; unlike Liliana, this student, Lesvy Berlin Rivera Osorio, got justice thanks to her mother’s efforts. Rivera Garza imagines Lesvy and Liliana as friends in the afterlife.