Feminicides Across Juarez and the Rest of the Globe: A Never-Ending Fight
As a kid, driving through the streets of Juarez always provided me with unique moments that have since become part of my childhood. With my mom behind the wheel and my cousins and myself in the back of her SUV, car games were bound to happen. Punch buggy was among the most popular and active games we had, especially in a city like Juarez, which had many old cars, several of them consisting of classic Beetles. And so, it was through these games that I began to notice a number of black crosses splattered across the wooden electricity poles. Taking a slight interest in these symbols’ purpose, I asked my mom about them as any other kid would. However, she quickly disregarded me, and we would continue to play some more car games. These crosses took up space in my mind for a short time, maybe a few minutes, and quickly left; as they would to anyone who is visiting Juarez or does not know the history of these symbols, but its meaning has had a long and dark cultural significance underlying the history of where I come from.
The crosses, which numbered in the hundreds as of 2016, are memorials in honor of women abducted and gone missing. While every victim has fallen into the hands of men, making them responsible for the crimes mentioned above, there is a much bigger threat across Juarez, Mexico, and Latin America that looms over our society. “Femicides,” or “feminicidios” as better known in Latin America, is the term used to describe “the assassination of women by men rooted in hatred, contempt, pleasure, or the assumption of ownership over a woman have led this atrocious act to become commonplace amongst Latin American countries,” (Saccomano, 52). Being the most extreme form of gender violence, femicides now account for the deaths of 12 women across Latin America each day, seven of which take place in Mexico. Unfortunately, amidst this chaos, it is my border city, Ciudad Juarez, that is notorious for its “rampant rights abuses against women” (Driver, 40).
The typification of this relatively new form of crime or gender-based homicide known as “feminicide” results from the rising numbers of violent female homicides committed by men over the past two decades. Although it may seem hard to believe that gender violence is a reoccurring issue in today’s society, violence towards women is a problem incrementing in numbers in several countries. According to the World Health Organization, a study conducted to gather data around the prevalence of violence between partners shows that Western Europe holds a 19.3%; Central America has a larger number of 29.51%, but these numbers are no match for South America’s 40.63% (Saccomano). The mistreatment, or in this case, blatant violence expressed towards the feminine gender, is a clear violation of a person’s human rights, a social problem, and imposes an obstacle for a country’s public health system. Furthermore, it affects the number of feminicides shared across the globe and holds South America as the continent most affected by this atrocious crime. Juarez is responsible for the biggest number of femicides across Mexico in 2020, with over 900 losing their lives to this crime.
Unfortunately, amidst this chaos, the city of Juarez, my hometown, has only been an outlet to amplify the feminicide epidemic and bring this discussion onto the global stage while creating for itself an infamous reputation. The feminicidal wave of violence seen in Ciudad Juarez in the 1990s has been a point of generalization for these violent crimes. While no one explanation accounts for these crimes, as each story is different regarding the victim and her circumstances, the beginning of the spike in feminicides in Juarez takes place in 1993, according to most scholars. Although picking a date to address this issue’s insurgence is important to bring this conversation to light, the conceptualization others have of them as a “new” problem is incorrect. Instead, scholars like Monárrez Fragoso argue that “that the crimes committed in Ciudad Juárez since the 1990s simply represent an intensified acceleration of a line of violence against women that has always existed” (Finnegan, 23).
However, the seeming reason for these killings is blatant misogyny; but scholars have shown that we need to look at the more profound economic shifts that have changed male attitudes towards women and their labor. This contrast in motives can also be represented by the difference in terminology between “femicide” and “feminicidio.” While femicides have always existed, the term “feminicides,” is employed in this article. The reason for this new terminology came across as the retheorizing of feminicides by Latin American scholars as the issue began to rise and people began to call for a more nuanced definition.
While the term femicide defines the killing of females because they are females, feminicide provides a more culturally accurate description to analyze these crimes as its categories exceed gender as it includes “a critical transborder perspective … rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities” (Lozano). By adopting these culturally appropriate terms, one can better understand women’s disappearances in Ciudad Juarez and the cultural and economic forms of oppression used to surround and hide it, perpetuating a corrupt system over 30 years of history. Another term useful to fully understand the situation the women Ciudad Juarez are currently going through is border materialism. Developed in her book “Not One More! Feminicidio on the Border,” Nina Maria Lozano describes border materialism as “a lens to examine how women’s bodies, neoliberal logics, and geography intersect and function to give rise to and perpetuate global acts of feminicidio” (Lozano).
Relating back to the transborder perspective of feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez, the hundreds of maquiladoras has allowed to enter now employ nearly one-fourth of the city’s 1.3 million population- a demographic estimated to range in 280,000 factory workers, in which women make over half of the labor force. With workers making approximately 39 cents per hour in a ten hour-hour workday, a maquiladora’s wage ranges from three to six U.S. dollars per day (Lozano). However, the cost-benefit of these jobs greatly change for women, who by day are forced to take care of their children-as most families cannot afford child care- and by night take on the graveyard shifts approximately 12 hours long. Furthermore, the locality of these women’s homes employed by maquilas consists of colonias on the outskirts of Juarez, miles away from the maquilas. Neoliberal globalization, in this situation, has not improved this issue, as the passage of the NAFTA, or North American Free Trade Agreement, has only lead to multinational corporations setting shop in Juarez, forcing many other Mexican women around the country to migrate North and take on these graveyard shifts. As a result, “if a woman disappears off of the assembly line, or on her way to or home from work, there is often no one to look for them” (J. Marquez, personal communication, November 1, 2004). The neoliberal materialistic economy Ciudad Juarez has imposed on women has created a system in which, if a woman does not show up to work, she is easily replaceable with another to take her place.
Economic issues such as handling the maquilas are translated into Juarez’s geography and gender norms, which have become yet another agent to impose feminicides. Working in the geographic locality of a free trade zone, like to one seen in Juarez, creates unsafe conditions for women to travel to get to work. Adding fuel to the fire, maquiladoras’ view on women as expendable leaves them no other choice but to go to work or be fired. One of Juarez’s infamous feminicide cases took place in Lomas del Poleo, a colonia where a large number of female workers are located, where eight female bodies were found after being dumped on the road. Still, the number of women within the workforce is growing due to their preference when hiring because women are seen as more susceptible to control. Their introduction to the workforce also disturbed the traditional family roles as well as the masculine labor section. This created a sense of emasculation within the men involved in maquilas that created resentment towards women expressed through violence. While it may be hard to understand that some gender norms might take many years to fade from Juarenze and Mexican society, there are a few approaches one may advocate for to diminish feminicides in Juarez.
Bringing on the topic of feminicides from Juarez to the global stage is easily translatable. By this, I am not referring to the implications of the leading causes of femicides across the globe all point towards the same reason; I am rather simply stating that this is a global issue. For example, the doubling of female homicides compared to their masculine counterparts in the household, has also been the result of unemployment across the global stage during the COVID 19 pandemic in places such as the U.K. (Moore). Whichever way you look at it, the disruption of culture’s socioeconomic households is bound to bring disruption and imbalance. As always, there are two ways of seeing this, that is one from an accurate perspective and one from a misinformed one. The complexity of this issue arises with the different typifications and laws that follow each crime. First of all, any violence rooted against women should fit into a physical, sexual, or phycological context, according to scholars (Saccomano). Furthermore, each type of violence listed would fit into three categories regarding in what scenario they take place: family, partner, or community violence. As the categorizations of feminicides begin to expand, so do unique cases and data that reflect the research.
Still, just as it has been seen in Juarez, the socioeconomic aspect of a culture and the employment rate of a particular area may have a more significant effect on feminicides than one may suspect. Many of the cases in Juarez dealing with feminicide are influenced by an underlying transborder cultural force, as many American companies, allowed by NAFTA, are coming in and setting up shop on the border, employing primarily women to handle the production and distribution of their goods, the result of a hetero masculine culture losing its jobs to women has resulted in hateful acts against the female sex. Similarly, other countries around the globe have experienced the effects of a capitalistic culture looking to expand their product at a cheaper labor cost than what they can find in their homeland; Southeast Asia being a large participator of these kinds of projects. Coincidentally enough, this region is in actuality in the lead of the average percentage of couple homicides concerning the total of homicides of women, leaving all of the Americas (North, Central, and South) in second place.
But don’t just take it from me; an article written by Nandini Deo covering the resistance of violence against women in India, the organization of women and labor in Asia, and the confrontation of women and migrants against neoliberalism found neoliberal globalization as a threat that binds these three topics together. Although neoliberal globalization primarily affects the production course of a company, its underlying effects lie within the progressive politics of the countries it sets up shop in, and while its meaning has held connections to American capitalism, it has not stopped places that profess Marmixt ideals such as India and China from implementing it. Furthermore, particular agendas between the state and its citizens are preferred by installing “neoliberal economic and political ideals into a global orthodoxy” (Deo). A good example of this has been the increasing burdens Southeast Asian workers are forced to endure, which primarily results in them responding to risks their companies would cover in the past, such as “risks of ill-health, providing sustenance and shelter, managing fluctuations in consumer demand, and responding to technological changes all within the home” (Deo). Like in Mexico, these targeted workers end up being female as research has concluded that most of the competition for low wages occurs in rural and urban areas as Southeast Asian governments keep pushing policies of liberalization and are further in need of expandable resources.
Unfortunately, this resulted in a trend of a female migration wave across Southeast Asian countries that result in workplace casualties and the informalization of the workforce. Furthermore, “Asian states are counting on remittances sent by an increasingly female and casualized migrant workforce to fuel development and shore up foreign exchange reserves in a deliberate policy of encouraging international migration while providing no services or protections for these workers” (Deo). Less known but equally important has been the recent repercussions this has had on social movements and labor unions. During the 1970s, India’s women’s movement aimed at raising awareness on financial progress and the female role within it; however, by the 1990s, the decade when neoliberalism was at its peak, the main message of the movement spoke about violence against women. Making matters even worse, this disservice that is going out towards the rest of the world also affects the work of feminist activists as the theme of violence against women is being exploited to control their dialogue and draw away attention from the real problem. As a result, resources across the globe have been used to build anti-violence campaigns, conventions, and “progressive policies,” while countries and foreign companies keep viewing women as a resource of disposable labor.
You may be wondering by now, “Well, why are these regions not mentioned in the charts? Where is the evidence? Why am I not hearing about this?” The answer, like that of many other global issues, points to the lack of attention and coverage their country’s media has given to this issue. Furthermore, their lack of participation has altered several if not majority of the charts depicting feminicide from a global perspective, with Latin America as a whole and many other Latin American countries taking on the first places while the multitude of feminicides that occur in Southeast Asia as a result of their lack of action which has resulted in them making up for one-third of the global trafficking trade through an overwhelming majority of women (International Organization for Migration) and not passing laws on marital rapes in most of their countries to keep the list short. On the other hand, measures such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women have been ratified by all Latin American countries, while 14 of them have adopted the Convention’s Optional Protocol, giving the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women the jurisdiction to monitor the countries criminal approach and law regulations. However, since no uniform laws regarding the components of a feminicide have been implemented, the result has led to each Latin American country has a different criminal category for gender-based violence and has therefore given different results on the global chart (Global Americas).
My approach to taking on the issue of feminicides from a local and global perspective would be first to form a set of uniform laws as to what constitutes a feminicide. To those wondering what this new definition would be, I do not know exactly what every nation must consider for the classification of such an atrocious crime like feminicide. Still, it would run along with the “critical transborder perspective … rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities” (Lozano), mentioned in previous references. At the very least, this one definition would be the start needed to begin filing and addressing these crimes, along with their root causes, which have been covered up time and time again, allowing the cycle to repeat itself.
Data will be corrected, like the number of feminicides and their respective countries, which researched proved to differ according to the sources. Identifying the true number of feminicides around the globe or that closest to the truth would also be the first step at shedding light on those countries who have been covering it up for so long. If with the help of institutions such as the U.N. who have tried tackling this problem from different positions, creates a stronger stance across all of its reach and sets a firm set of laws and works with each countries normative frameworks to establish the most appropriate set of legal outcomes for this crime will this topic be shed the global light and attention it deserves.
Other solutions could be taken to handle and reframe the manner in which women have been sought after as easy targets by large corporations such as female work unions. With female work unions, better solutions towards labor organization, and the separation between government’s involvement with private companies could bring more topics of conversation to the global discussion. With all of this in mind, female work unions could have a chance to encourage those women in rural or informal workplaces to work under better conditions and deconstruct the political agenda many countries across the globe adopt to benefit from women’s labor, which leads to a social disrupt that results in a negative backlash against them.
The fight against feminicides holds a rocky path that involves many obstacles that range from what we now know as classic misogynistic oppression that will try to set back the movement to “grey lines” within the laws and jurisdictions of countries that allow for this issue to continue unresolved. However, all it takes to make a difference is one person. By bringing awareness to this issue and shedding light upon those who have misconstrued ideas about feminism or its basic ideas, such as fighting against the unfair hate acts against one gender, this topic could get the attention it deserves, both in places where it seems to suffer the most such as in Latin America to its more subtle yet equally brutal influences throughout Southeast Asia. Until then, the fight against feminicides does not stop and a new cross will be painted into a lamp post each day.
Works Cited
Arroyo, Lorena. “Feminicidios: la guerra invisible que mata a 12 mujeres por día en América Latina” Connectas: Plataforma Periodistica Para Las Americanas, https://www.connectas.org/feminicidios-la-guerra-invisible-que-mata-a-12-mujeres-por-dia-en-america-latina/. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
Bhalotra, Sonia. “Job Displacement, Unemployment Benefits, and Domestic Violence.” VOX, CEPR Policy Portal, 13 Nov. 2020, voxeu.org/article/job-displacement-unemployment-benefits-and-domestic-violence.
Driver A. We Want to Stay Alive: Ending Feminicide in Juárez, Mexico. World policy journal. 2016;33(4):39–46. doi:10.1215/07402775–3812949
“Facts and Figures.” UN Women | Asia and the Pacific, asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/focus-areas/end-violence-against-women/evaw-facts-and-figures#_ftnref5.
Finnegan N. Cultural Representations of Feminicidio at the US-Mexico Border . Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group; 2019.
Gallón, Natalie. “Women Are Being Killed in Mexico at Record Rates, but the President Says Most Emergency Calls Are ‘False’.” CNN, Cable News Network, 16 July 2020, edition.cnn.com/2020/06/05/americas/mexico-femicide-coronavirus-lopez-obrador-intl/index.html.
Lozano-Reich NM. Reconceptualizing Feminicidio: Border Materiality in Ciudad Juárez. Women’s studies in communication. 2018;41(2):104–107. doi:10.1080/07491409.2018.1463767
Moore, Anna. “‘Every Abuser Is More Volatile’: the Truth behind the Shocking Rise of Domestic Violence KillingsA.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 22 Apr. 2020, www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/apr/22/every-abuser-is-more-volatile-the-truth-behind-the-shocking-rise-of-domestic-violence-killings.
Nandini Deo (2011) Women, work, violence and the neo-liberal moment, Contemporary South Asia, 19:4, 465–470, DOI: 10.1080/09584935.2011.622037
Saccomano, Celeste. “El feminicidio en America Latina: vacio legal o deficit del Estado de derecho?” Violencia de Genero y Relaciones Internacionales, no. 117, p. 51–78, 2017, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26388133. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
Torres M. Not One More! Feminicidio on the Border: Lozano, Nina Maria. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019. xxv + 158 pp. $29.95 (paperback). ISBN-13: 978–0–8142–1389–6. Women’s studies in communication. 2021;44(1):127–129. doi:10.1080/07491409.2021.1874748
“What Are the Effects of Lockdown and Recession on Domestic Violence?” Economics Observatory, 7 Mar. 2021, www.economicsobservatory.com/what-are-effects-lockdown-and-recession-domestic-violence.
Written by Douglas Broom, Senior Writer. “As the UK Publishes Its First Census of Women Killed by Men, Here’s a Global Look at the Problem.” World Economic Forum, 25 Nov. 2020, www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/violence-against-women-femicide-census/.
Saccomano, Celeste. “El feminicidio en America Latina: vacio legal o deficit del Estado de derecho?” Violencia de Genero y Relaciones Internacionales, no. 117, p. 51–78, 2017, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26388133. Accessed 15 February, 2020.
