Abstract
This chapter considers the power of the concept of ‘feminicide’ (Russell and Radford, Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Twayne Publishers, 1992) to name the entrenched ongoing vulnerability of women and girls to feminicide. Drawing from a history of Juárez, Mexico’s feminicide, and statistics from the Feminicidio [Feminicide] 1993–2016 database, I analyze a system of gendered violence created by an exceptionally complacent State of Mexico toward the killing of women and girls. I argue that Juárez demonstrates a case of ‘systemic sexual feminicide’ where there have been virtually no legal consequences for perpetrators (Agamben, Homo Sacer. El poder soberano y la nuda vida. Pre-Textos, 2006). Using the methodology of the oppressed (Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed. University of Minnesota Press, 2000), I also consider examples of social resistance by relatives of the victims to attempt to forge other possibilities for access to justice.
Translated by: Charlotte ten Have and Kerry Carrington
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Notes
- 1.
(Monárrez 1998). This database was developed from the feminicide concept.
- 2.
In those years, Ciudad Juárez was classified as one of the most dangerous places to live due to the homicide rate.
- 3.
Throughout my research and activism, I have denounced this rhetoric of the Mexican state and the elites in power.
- 4.
As explained above, feminicide is complex, exists in diverse contexts, and variously represents victims and perpetrators and the reasoning related to gender for which they were murdered (Monárrez 2010). However, these are not discussed in this chapter, which focuses solely on systemic sexual feminicide.
- 5.
Abdel Latif Sharif Sharif was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a feminicide in 2003 and died in prison in 2009. In 2005, seven members of the ‘Los Rebeldes’ gang received a 40-year sentence for five cases.
- 6.
Six members of the Los Rebeldes gang received a 40-year sentence.
- 7.
Three members of Los Rebeldes were accused of murdering three victims; two other men were sentenced to 20 years in prison for the case of a young woman, one of them died in prison; the third was sentenced for 17 years; however, the victim’s mother claims that he did not act alone but rather that he is part of a criminal organization that he does not want to unveil. And in 2005, five members of another gang called ‘Los Ruteros’ or ‘El Tolteca’ were accused of the feminicide of three women. Their sentences range from 23 to 40 years in prison.
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Monárrez Fragoso, J.E. (2018). Feminicide: Impunity for the Perpetrators and Injustice for the Victims. In: Carrington, K., Hogg, R., Scott, J., Sozzo, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_44
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