El Centro Su Teatro (4725 High St.) features the premiere of the play “Braided Sorrow,” which theatrically examines an often unknown and undiscussed human rights violation going on today.

In the notorious Maquiladoras located just south of the United State’s border, American factories have moved in to the Mexio landscape by the droves. An often desolate wasteland of toxic water, shanty towns, and giant factories cranking out products to be exported, these American factories can hire workers for cheap and reap some tax benefits for producing outside the country.

Women in these places are especially vulnerable. Little to no protection exists for female workers, and sexual harrassment by bosses and male workers is common, and employment can be terminated for reporting abuse, getting pregnant, or any other so-called infraction.

Even worse, hundreds of women in this area have been “disappearing.” Some are found later, murdered and dumped somewhere in the muddy surrounding areas of the factories, but others are simply never seen again. Abduction and attacks are common, and go widely unprosecuted and unreported in the media.

“Braided Sorrow” takes a look at the struggles of a young woman in this environment. Alma, a young worker, faces the struggles of earning $4.75 a day in a factory while being sexually harrassed by her boss and the frightening walks home from her shift through a desolate, unnatural landscape after dark.

I’m excited to see this play, which runs through October 18th. It sounds like a reminder, a voice too often forgotten or not even heard, of the struggles of women who live so very close to us.