Abstract
In recent decades, the incidence of feminicidio has been interwoven with increasing social and structural violence in Mexico, which has resulted in the need to stress its specificity to prevent the violent murders of women going unpunished. Feminicidio has become a topic of academic, political, social and cultural reflection not only due to its alarming prevalence in the country, but also because of the complexity of its characteristics. This article aims to show some relevant academic, activist and artistic approaches within the Mexican context.
Introduction
Twenty years since the emergence of the social movement denouncing feminicidio and the disappearance of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, the problem still remains unresolved. Over this period many theories, levels of discussion and social actors have evolved, inaugurating a process in which we can distinguish the following stages: Visibilization of the problem and its insertion into the public eye; the conceptual elaboration and creation of the category of feminicidio; the passage of legislation that protects women’s right to a life free of violence; the recognition of systemic gender violence in Mexican culture; the approach to possible causes and solutions; and the inclusion of the problem on the national feminist agenda.
In such a process, the original opposition between women’s groups demanding justice versus local authorities became even more complex. Intellectuals, academics, journalists, artists and activists have contributed to visualize and comprehend the breadth of the phenomenon in Juárez, its unfortunate spread to the rest of the territory and the contrast and relationship with the global patriarchal, capitalist trend.
Various strands of the topic constitute the present article. From the point of view of the feminist analysis, this study puts feminicidio at the center of the debate and explores the increasing violence in Mexico as a holistic social phenomenon that involves diverse types, modalities and forms of expression.
It is important to emphasize that ‘femicide’ and ‘feminicidio’ are terms used in different political and cultural contexts to define and characterize a similar problem, and each includes or excludes some particularities. The prevailing definition of femicide is the violent murder of a woman by the very fact that she is a woman (Russell and Radford, 1992). This approach involves an in-depth explanation of how the female gender condition is rooted in such a sociocultural construction that transforms the difference between sexed bodies into ideological bases of inequality and domination. In Spanish, both terms are used, but feminicidio introduces a linguistic stress on the female condition, and questions at the same time the social motives and the impunity derived from the lack of decisive action on the part of the state to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women (Lagarde, 2011). Accordingly, feminicidio and feminicide violence represent complementary categories that involve all modalities that lead to the violent murder of women.
In Latin America, the distinction between feminicidio and femicidio has been an important area of discussion due to the region’s theoretical and political distinctions in three central areas: the history of violence against women, recognition of women as subjects of human rights and the position of the state as guarantor of those rights. Thus, the feminicidio definition is not just a Spanish version of ‘femicide’, but also a link to the structural and systemic conditions (globalization, development models and human development) that permit and cover up these murders and leave them invisible and unpunished. English-speaking specialists have recognized the relevance of the term ‘feminicide’ as contributing to the comprehension of the complexity of this matter when they refer to Mexican and other Latin American cases (Driver, 2011; Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Jeffries, 2013).
This debate is present in legislation. Laporta (2015) divides the 11 Latin American countries that have laws on this matter into two groups, ‘according to the “strict” or “extended” definition they have of feminicidio, femicide or other criminal ascriptions as “femicide violence” which means to distinguish intimate femini/femicidios from those that include various subtypes of gender violence that result in the murder of a woman’ (2015: 180). Argentina is an exception: the law observes the term ‘violence against women’ but in a women’s murder, gender is considered an aggravating factor, but not a motive.
As I stated in a previous text, feminicidio and femicidio are not stabile Latin American feminist terms; on the contrary, they are situated in the legal and political context (Castañeda, 2012: 35). In my analysis I will use both terms, considered as different and meaningful to describe the phenomenon.
Femicide and feminicidio are concepts that belong to the feminist theories on violence, particularly on gender violence against women. 1 In the 1970s Mexican feminist approaches, sexual harassment and rape were considered the worst types of violence that women could suffer. Those approaches evidenced violence and intended to create a public politics and laws, but they failed before the familism of the right-wing, which delimited violence against women to the domestic and familial sphere. The second step led to the recognition of sexual violence as a social problem. In 1995, as a consequence of the Fourth World Conference on Women, violence against women, understood as a gender violence concept, gained strength. The emergence and discussion of the terms femicidio and feminicidio involve more than their specificities – the different ways that forms of violence can work together is one of the major distinctions. Each term addresses a multifactorial problem in which sexual and domestic violence are always present and relevant, but not with the same legal coverture.
The effects of that social, political and legal movement were a greater understanding of violence, but also an explosion of expressions of the phenomenon. In that context, gender violence against women needed a more comprehensive definition, one that could embrace all forms, from catcalling and verbal molestation to violent murder. In Mexico, the notions of femicide, sexual violence and serial murders of women were the points of reference to propose the concept of feminicidio during the 1990s. From the beginning of the 2000s to the present day, the relationship between facts and punishment is at the center of the question, especially before the creation of a law that typifies violencia feminicida, and establishes the legal resources to prevent, attend, punish and eradicate it.
Considering this, I will discuss some of the most important topics on feminicidio in Mexico, drawing on academic studies, social organization, politics and artistic expressions, to offer a feminist approach to the different aspects of a complex problem that requires to be analyzed from a holistic perspective.
Antecedents
In 1993 2 the news came to the fore of young women who had disappeared and been murdered in Ciudad Juárez, a city located in Chihuahua state, on the border between Mexico and the USA. However, this news did not reverberate much beyond local society. After a few years, the number of cases increased, as did the evidence of cruelty before, during and after those women’s murders. Little by little, the claims of victims’ families caught the eye of human rights activists and women’s organizations. Through their intervention, this extreme form of violence against women started to be analyzed from several points of view. Social scientists, journalists and activists from both sides of the border reported an increasing number of cases and made an important effort to identify the causes. During the 1990s, some common elements seemed to be in evidence: almost all the victims were youngsters, brunette, poor, immigrant and maquila 3 workers (Monárrez, 2009). This profile went hand in hand with at least three misogynist prejudices: (a) the victims deserved the aggression because they used to go dancing on week nights, breaking the rule of staying at home as ‘decent women’ should; (b) probably those women had flirted with their aggressors, arousing them, and when they refused sexual intercourse, men reacted violently; (c) as maquila workers, their low incomes were topped up with money from prostitution, and as a consequence they were more vulnerable to violent men or serial killers. This phenotype, which intended to establish a connection among feminicide victims, became at the same time a stigma against them (see Pérez and Padilla, 2002; Schmidt Camacho, 2005; Wright, 2006).
Of course, the victims’ friends and family disagreed with these assumptions. One by one, complaints to the judiciary were disregarded through omission, stigmatization or lack of interest on the part of the local authorities. The families had to look for help elsewhere: some of them established their own organizations, many led by the mothers of the victims; others approached national or international human rights organizations. 4
All these facts make of Ciudad Juárez an emblematic example of the risks of being a working woman, on the one hand, and institutional, legal and social impunity, denial and minimization on the other. Juárez is also the paradigm of the claim for justice. Thanks to the mobilization around the disappeared and murdered women, now Mexico has a term, a legislation and a social feeling of the injustice that goes beyond individual cases.
Two decades after the first denouncements and social mobilization, questions still hang in the air: what are motives behind feminicide? What are its causes? Nobody knows for sure. Domínguez and Ravelo (2003) have identified several hypotheses and 32 interpretations around the phenomenon: struggles inside organized crime, gory pornography, snuff films, satanic rituals, classist abuse based on the devaluation on women’s bodies, trafficking of human organs, initiation rituals, women’s sacrifices in order to satisfy a misogynist hatred, utilization of women’s bodies to send messages to the authorities or to rival gangs, weapons traffic as part of an economy of war, interchange of female bodies as part of a transnational and globalized economy, violence itself …
In reference to the prevalence of gender violence and feminicide, we can affirm that there is no one reason alone to explain it, but a combination of several, because as Domínguez and Ravelo (2003) say, there is a relationship between the sex-gender structure, domination mechanisms, the supranational economic system and the exacerbation of fear as ways of exclusion and submission.
Another difficulty is that feminicide is not just located in Ciudad Juárez. According to statistics, other cities have even higher levels of violent deaths of women. In 2005, some locations in the state of Nayarit recorded the highest rates (Cámara de Diputados, 2005); nowadays Ecatepec, Estado de México, is recognized as probably the most dangerous Mexican municipality for women to live in (Observatorio Ciudadano, 2014). In contrast with the earlier observations of the phenomenon, there is no longer a unique profile to the female victims of murder: women of all ages, classes, ethnicities and races are victims. Differences seem to be related to the index of gender development, to race, job status, intensity of female subordination (particularly in domestic relationships), together with familial and community networks’ (in)capacity to protect women.
Mexican academic proposals on the definition of feminicide
It is possible to affirm that conceptual considerations about feminicidio in Mexico work together with the global and regional as well as local contexts. The premise is that feminicidio can exist in every social construction in which women are seen as inferior to men, but also its social, political, cultural and economic particularities influence the characteristics and intensity of the problem. In Mexico, as in other Latin American countries, feminicidio and genocide or communal violence are related.
In Mexico, the theoretical debate about the problem of women who have disappeared and been murdered focuses on different concepts. While ‘femicide’ was embedded in Anglo-Saxon activism and literature, Julia Monárrez (2009: 27) proposed the term ‘sexual systemic feminicide’ to characterize the crimes committed against women in Ciudad Juárez including social class, race and other logics of power related to ‘the reproduction of subalternity and otherness’.
Ravelo and Domínguez (2012) use the term ‘sexual violence’ to emphasize that in all those cases there was sexual harassment and rape. This approach highlights the treatment of women as sexual objects for the use and abuse of men.
Marcela Lagarde (2011) uses the term ‘feminicidio’ to emphasize the violation of women’s human rights; women genocide; the state’s responsibility expressed in silence, omission, negligence and collusion of the authorities; the role of political and social impunity; and the interconnection between social, structural, political and gender violence.
From another point of view, Incháustegui (2014) thinks there is a relationship between patriarchal crisis, the social emergence of women and female questioning of male ways of domination, in addition to claims for the recognition of women as citizens that lead to increased violence against them, particularly to feminicide. Some important social changes surround the emergence of women as social subjects, like the appropriation of their own bodies, transformations in their reproductive life and sexuality and their subjective, economic and political empowerment. In different contexts, some groups of women have freedom and identities that reject subordination and act as models for other women. The author offers a hypothesis: violence against women and feminicidio are mechanisms of male domination acting to contain women’s advances and preserve men’s dominant positions in the whole of social life. Mexican women’s situation is no exception with regard to this hypothesis, but the context also embraces deep transformations in politics, economics, development, culture and, mainly, in what she calls ‘culture of violence’.
It is also important to point out the questioning around the term feminicidio. Melgar and Belausteguigoitia (2008: 15) observe that Lagarde’s definition ‘has favored an extended and lax meaning in which the nuances and distinctions between common and extreme cases are lost’. Their proposal is to continue to look for an accurate term for the different phenomena; what they are doing is to use the terms femicide and feminicidio for different purposes. 5
A women’s issue: The role of mothers, families and female activists in Ciudad Juárez
The mobilization of relatives and friends has brought to the fore the situation of hundreds of women and girls who have disappeared and been murdered in Ciudad Juárez. They have organized public demonstrations, trials and marchas in Juárez and beyond. Many mothers have become leaders, activists, speakers in different forums. Women and organizations have the star roles in movies, documentaries, academic papers and books. Their lives have a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ that began when each feminicidio occurred.
Some women’s organizations have become emblematic: ‘Coordinadora Pro Derechos de la Mujer’, ‘Casa Amiga’, ‘Nuestras Hijas de Regreso a Casa’, ‘Voces sin Eco’, ‘Justicia para Nuestras Hijas’, ‘Mujeres de Negro’ or ‘Red Mesa de Mujeres’. The majority count on legal counselors and journalists’ support. Many of them have received promises from the authorities, mainly in the form of economic compensation or governmental help. Some mothers and families have accepted these offers, but most have not. Some groups have presented formal legal cases to national and international organizations. The most successful case has been ‘Caso del Campo Algodonero’, in which the Mexican government has been denounced by NGOs before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights for the forced disappearance, torture and murder of three young women in Ciudad Juárez whose bodies had been found in the place that gives name to the case. Once it was accepted, the process culminated in a judgment against the Mexican government in 2009 on charges of discrimination and for not guaranteeing the rights to life, individual integrity and freedom of the three girls and violating their rights to justice and judicial protection (Red-CLADEM, 2010). Up to today the Mexican government has not completely complied with the demands of the court’s judgment.
The struggles of these women have analogies with others in Latin America that claim justice from their position as mothers, daughters, sisters, grandmothers and friends. Like the Madres and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of Juárez’s victims exemplify a particular way of female activism. As if this situation were not enough, the political authorities deny their version, refuse to receive them and seek to discredit them. 6
The radicalization of the demands of these women has sometimes acted against them in similarly violent ways: many of them have become the new victims of feminicide. Some cases have been shocking, like the killing of Marisela Escobedo in December 2010, who was shot outside the Palacio de Gobierno, in Chihuahua City, calling for justice after the confessed killer of her daughter was released for ‘lack of evidence’.
In spite of the government’s attitude, the mothers of Juárez are a model for others who have suffered a loss in other Mexican locations. For instance, in Mexico City ‘Alí Somos Todas’ is a group formed after the assassination of Alí Cuevas, a student at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. ‘Académicas en Acción Crítica’ is a collective dedicated to working with other feminist groups that denounce specific forms of feminicidio or the authorities’ refusal to apply the law in cases that require the protection of women in contexts where there is the threat of feminicide.
The fight for justice itself became a catalyst for violence. At the beginning there were women with no history of political participation; later the victims’ mothers and families were persecuted and even killed because of their demands. Over the years, human rights activists, journalists and commentators were added to the bloody list. It is clear that any person that talks about, denounces or researches this subject becomes a target.
The Feminicide Commission at the Mexican Congress: A paradigm in the legislative work on violence against women
In 2003, Marcela Lagarde, as president of the ‘Comisión Especial para Conocer y Dar Seguimiento a las Investigaciones Relacionadas con los Feminicidios en la República Mexicana y la Procuración de Justicia Vinculada’ (Feminicidio Commission), initiated two processes: the creation of the ‘Ley General de Acceso de las Mujeres a una Vida Libre de Violencia’ (the General Law of 2007) and the ‘Investigación Diagnóstica sobre la Violencia Feminicida en la República Mexicana’ (Diagnosis and Research on Feminicidal Violence in the Mexican Republic). This was the first large-scale project aimed at examining the feminicide phenomenon in Mexico.
This project had a hypothesis: in those places with a lack of civic politics, with no respect for human rights, with high levels of poverty and marginalization and low levels of education, it was likely to find a large number of women who had suffered violent deaths. From this point of view, a violent death is not always linked to physical violence: prohibition of abortion, lack of attention to maternal health, absence of politics on sexual and reproductive rights are, for example, structural conditions that serve in the subordination of women and contribute to diminish their social position and opportunities. At the core of this problem is the fact that women’s lives are not as valuable or respected.
The methodology combined both quantitative and qualitative methods to obtain information on different subjects. The main concern was the lack of official data about women’s violent deaths. In the course of the research, one sentence summed it up: ‘the data is that there isn’t any data’, because the judicial authorities, in fact, did not have the kind of information required for these investigations – that is to say, the actual numbers of deliberate murders of women. Little by little, information began to appear, but the figures were contradictory. In contrast, media information was abundant, as was that from artistic and various organizational sources. Researchers analyzed politics and programs to prevent gender violence or violence against women, as well as the budgets invested in them. Other aspects studied from a gender perspective were social politics, education, maternal health and death. Focus was centered on primary and secondary legislation on violence (Cámara de Diputados, 2005; Lagarde, 2010).
A very important contribution of this investigation was the confirmation of emblematic cases. The method pursued was to combine analysis of judicial cases with qualitative and journalistic information. Then, an in-depth analysis and collective reflection allowed the researchers to identify whether the violent death of a woman was or was not a feminicidio. This exercise was particularly useful to demonstrate that by rigorously analyzing the phenomenon, it was possible to distinguish feminicidio from other murders of women.
In the end, the researchers were able to draw up a national overview of feminicidio and feminicide violence; rates of feminicide were determined and the first geographical index of feminicide violence was constructed (Cámara de Diputados, 2006).
The results were not surprising: all data pointed to a generalized disadvantage for women all over the country; other states appeared as dangerous as Chihuahua, or even more so; alarm bells sounded in many places. However, some reactions were unexpected: some groups of activists accused the investigation of ‘desjuarizar’ the feminicide, that is to say, turning the spotlight away from Juárez and contributing to reduce the already scarce attention paid to the murders in the city so far. However, this project became a model for other academic, institutional and activist research projects.
The General Law, approved in 2007, made it possible to characterize feminicidio and to establish a distinction between its types, including psychological, physical, patrimonial, economic and sexual violence; and the modalities of family, labor, scholarly, communitarian, institutional and feminicidal violence (Ley General, 2007). This law brought together violent practices that are usually analyzed separately, establishing connections among them.
Also included in the General Law is the ‘alerta de género’ (gender alert), a mechanism to prevent, confront and eradicate gender violence. It is a temporary prescription to introduce governmental actions in those contexts where menaces to the security and life of women put them in vulnerable situations. In recent years, organizations in different states have asked that this alert be put into action, but political and judicial authorities have not accepted their demands or have neglected to apply it. 7
Subsequent legislatures have continued with various lines of investigation, data collection and consolidation of state laws. 8 Incháustegui (2014), who later presided over the ‘Feminicidios Commission’ 2009–2012, summarizes some of the conclusions: (a) there is a ‘social soil’ that sustains feminicide; (b) violence against women is independent from social violence; (c) feminicide violence has its own source. This situation explains correlations between gender violence and social violence, always more damaging to women than men. Based on findings derived from the analysis of official sources, Incháustegui concludes that there is a ‘new epidemiology’ of feminicide in Mexico characterized by younger victims, increasing numbers of murders in public spaces and a more frequent use of guns to kill women. Finally, she highlights governmental responsibility: its tolerance and omissions have led this situation to the point that ‘impunity covers 90.02 percent of feminicides’ (2014: 397).
This problem persists because eradicating gender violence would require structural changes that no Mexican government has yet undertaken. This official posture has provoked different reactions; maybe the most important is the emergence of new subjects and actors claiming justice. From their particular position, indigenous women’s organizations, for example, have incorporated gender and social violence in their demands – especially to denounce institutional and communal violence, expressed often as discrimination, racism and exclusion. 9
Artistic expressions against feminicidio
Parallel to the social demands for justice, feminicidio has motivated numerous artists to offer their own vision, critiques and proposals to society. Beginning with the motto ‘Ni una muerta más’ (‘Not one more woman killed’), feminicide is presented in performances, dance, theatre, films, photography, literature and poetry. In this respect, many studies in the arts and humanities are relevant. As the main purpose of this work is to offer an overview, I will only mention a few examples, such as Rojas’s analysis (2011) of the rhetoric of discourses on tragedy and feminicidio in Ciudad Juárez, the emblematic books of Washington (2005), González (2006) and Bolaño (2004), and the synthesis done by Melgar and Belausteguigoitia (2008) about the most relevant production up to 2008. The creative work has increased enormously, expressing the cultural dimension that the relationship between gender violence and feminicidio has acquired.
One of the most emblematic poets and activists in Juárez is Susana Chávez, victim herself of feminicidio; the following poem titled ‘Pliego Petitorio’ 10 is hers:
Arminé Arjona is another poet from Juárez whose work denounces the impunity surrounding feminicidio. Her poem ‘Sólo son Mujeres’ synthesizes the phenomenon:
Verónica Leiton (a visual artist resident in Ciudad Juárez) uses art to reinforce the demands for reparation to the victims and their families. She created a sculpture called ‘Flor de Arena’ (2011), conceived like a fountain whose water would clean and purify the painful memories of ‘Campo Algodonero’ victims and witnesses.
‘Bordamos Feminicidios’ is a women’s group that uses embroidery to make visible the names, places, dates and circumstances of the victims of feminicidio in the moment of their death. Their work endows with new meanings this ‘typical’ female activity, embroidering at the same time a strong link between living women and those who were killed. It is also a call to read, recognize and expose in a peaceful yet implacable way their claim for female justice. For this group of women, the most important act is not to count murdered women; the main objective is to name them, because if we know their names they exist, they are real (Desinformémonos, 2013).
‘Encuesta de Violencia a Mujeres’ is the title of an urban performance by Lorena Wolffer. She installed polling booths and invited women to answer a questionnaire about physical, psychological and sexual violence. In her most shocking performance, ‘Mientras Dormíamos (El Caso Juárez)’, she uses her own body to mark the places where women victims were injured, mutilated and tortured to death. Her objective is to use her body as an instrument to give voice to those women who no longer have one. She based her performance on data obtained from 50 police files of murdered women.
These examples highlight the role of art, literature and visual technologies as powerful means to spread knowledge and build awareness of feminicidio from an intimate and subjective perspective (see Ballester, 2015).
The social organizations, once again
In the last decade and a half, 11 the increase of violence in Mexico has been alarming, 12 not only in terms of numbers but also in frequency, intensity and cruelty. The dramatic event of the 43 students who disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in September 2014 13 highlights the impunity and the absence of rights to protect the individual. Unfortunately, events like this have also contributed to make feminicidio invisible.
Feminists, activists and NGOs have taken various forms of action to demand justice in cases of feminicide. There are two important initiatives to mention. One is the coming together of a huge group of scholars and activists to orchestrate the popular trial against Felipe Calderón, his ‘fight against organized crime’ and its social consequences for women’s lives. The framework was the Mexican branch of Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos, an ethical, autonomous and not for profit international tribunal that organized several sessions related to the main social, economic and political problems in the country, one of them dedicated to feminicide and violence against women (Castañeda et al., 2013). There were two obvious outcomes: new organizations appeared and there is a now a tendency to link feminicidio with other forms of gender violence that seriously affect women in the public and domestic domains, such as the case of women trafficking and abortion. The Tribunal declared that the criminalization of social protest was akin to an official strategy to oppose, confront and weaken all kinds of criticism or mobilization against the Mexican state.
In its declaration (Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos, 2014), the Tribunal concludes that the Mexican state has violated all legal and human rights framed within international conventions and treaties ratified to stop violence against women.
The other important expression is the effort of ‘Observatorio Ciudadano Nacional del Feminicidio’, constituted as a ‘network of networks’ that acts as a citizen oversight in respect of the absence of a formal, accurate institutional database on feminicide violence, as well as the absence of positive measures around the gender alert declaration. A product of the mobilization all over the country is the ‘Estudio de la Implementación del Tipo Penal del Feminicidio: Causas y Consecuencias, 2012–2013’ (2014). This study explains in detail the strong relationship between state omissions in terms of the prevention of and attention to gender violence and the increased vulnerability of women when they appeal to law to exercise their rights and citizenship.
Around 8 March 2015, inspired by the commemoration of International Women’s Day, individuals and groups committed to human rights defended the women’s claims and came together in the name of motherhood. And the mothers and relatives of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa, seeking alliances to continue their battle to recover their sons, recognized their shared condition with the mothers of other missing sons and daughters.
In opposition to the trend that tries to include feminicide in general social problems, ‘Las Aparecidas’ define themselves as a collective that tries to ‘visibilize (make appear) in quotidian spaces the women we’re missing’. As part of their claims, they give a new meaning to the motto ‘Alive you took them, alive we want them back’ (Vivos los llevaron, vivos los queremos) and affirm: ‘We want us alive’ (Vivas nos queremos), feminizing actions, proclamations and appealing to social conscience (Las Aparecidas, n.d.).
Final comments
Today, social and structural violence is linked to feminicidio across Mexico. The presence of organized crime, drug trafficking and political violence has contributed to aggravate the conditions of vulnerability that surround women’s lives. Ciudad Juárez remains a typical case of precariousness for women, immigrants and the poor, but is also the symbol of disinterest in security and respect for human rights. Institutional actions are weak and insufficient to protect the female population and to offer them conditions of wellbeing. Nevertheless, Juárez is by far not the only place where to be a woman is dangerous.
Considering this, it is important to emphasize two ideas: first, the biggest difference between the violent death of men and women is not quantitative but qualitative. Even though there are many (or more) male violent deaths in Mexico, in feminicide the main reason is the deep inequality between women and men combined with the prevalence of patriarchal structures organizing social relationships, life opportunities, sexualities and ideology. As Wright (2006) has demonstrated, the biggest qualitative difference is that in the current conditions of globalization, rampant capitalism and poverty, women have become disposable beings and the many elements playing to produce this subhuman status are precisely the ideological justification of violence against them. The most popular ideology mentioned is misogyny itself, but, as Lamoureux (2012) reminds us, today it is also necessary to include anti-feminism as a link between violent discourses, representations and practices that see any defense of women’s rights as an attempt to destabilize the domain and privileges of gender, class, ethnicity or race.
The second idea is that the Mexican situation is very grave but, regrettably, not exclusive. In the last years, comparative studies have been developed, inside Mexico and among other countries. As some works show (Fregoso and Bejarano, 2010; Ravelo and Domínguez, 2012), all forms of violence against women are present, at least in most countries of Latin America.
Seeking a wider perspective on the feminicide issue, Femenías (2011) associates generalized feminization (of the labor market, economy, politics, female agency) with the increase in gender violence against women. She affirms there is a direct relationship between the two tendencies, affecting women and men, in particular when men have to occupy places traditionally assigned as feminine: then, their response is extremely violent with ‘the others’, women.
In this respect and from a different position, Segato (2013, 2014) finds in ‘expressive violence’ a source of reflection, even more because she links it with a worrying tendency to substitute states with powers related to illicit capital. For her, the current context implies that the necessity of domain, sovereignty and control requires rape and torture, because total control demands total annihilation of the other. In misogynist societies, women are ‘the others’ and their bodies are territories to conquer and submit. This vision introduces the idea of limits and its link with security versus subjectivity and self-consciousness. These contradictory and paradoxical relationships constitute vital dimensions in structural processes in which the condition, citizenship and capacity of resistance of the subject are played out across personal, political and global intersections. In this context, all the authors mentioned coincide on the relevance of the culture itself.
From an anthropological perspective, feminicide violence has a preeminent position in the gender culture of domination, as Schmidt Camacho (2005: 267) states: While international observers commonly represent the gender violence in Juárez as a regressive cultural manifestation of masculine aggression, it is perhaps better understood as a rational expression of the contradictions arising from the gendered codes of neo-liberal governance and development. The combined processes of economic restructuring and political transition have had the perverse effect of increasing the state’s stake in the denationalization of poor women’s citizenship precisely at the moment of their emergence as new political and economic actors. The global economies that convert subaltern women into commodities interrupt women’s purchase on the most basic right to personal security. The feminicidio represents an assault on this bodily agency in extreme.
To sum up, ‘The tragedy of Chihuahua unfolds as a wholesale inability to imagine a female life free of violence.’
The philosophical reflection around this analysis is – or should be – the value of lived life, more importantly, the value of women’s life. To strip away from them the right of existence acquires meaning in the context of a culture that allows and welcomes these practices.
We live in a historical period of opposition between freedom and subjection. Institutions reinforce domination and compete with progressivist subjects and groups that propose many different lifestyles. But it is also a field of competition around discourses, meanings and communication. It is not surprising that the right-wing adopts human rights terminology or tries to convince with the idea that family violence is the real social problem to tackle, contrary to the feminist vision in which reducing violence to domestic, private and familiar environments is not only partial, but also misogynist.
At the core of these oppositions, there is a very different conception of life, justice, human dignity and the future. For the victims of feminicidio, in Mexico as in any other country, the old Latin American motto ‘No forgiveness, nor forgetfulness’ (Ni perdón ni olvido) expresses a vindication of memory, justice and history mutually reinforcing the notion that women’s lives do deserve to be mourned.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Dr Chaime Marcuello for the invitation to participate in the Femicide across Europe Annual Conference (Zaragoza, Spain, 18–20 March 2015), where the first version of this article was presented, and for his support to bring it to fruition. Special mention goes to Artemisa Téllez, teacher, ‘cómplice’ and reader of this text and to Verónica Valero, for her dedicated collaboration in the bibliographical research for this and many other recent papers.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.