Full Description
More than 600 women and girls have been murdered and more than 1,000 have disappeared in the Mexican state of Chihuahua since 1993. Violence against women has increased throughout Mexico and in other countries, including Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru. Law enforcement officials have often failed or refused to undertake investigations and prosecutions, creating a climate of impunity for perpetrators and denying truth and justice to survivors of violence and victims' relatives. Terrorizing Women is an impassioned yet rigorously analytical response to the escalation in violence against women in Latin America during the past two decades. It is part of a feminist effort to categorize violence rooted in gendered power structures as a violation of human rights. The analytical framework of feminicide is crucial to that effort, as the editors explain in their introduction. They define feminicide as gender-based violence that implicates both the state (directly or indirectly) and individual perpetrators. It is structural violence rooted in social, political, economic, and cultural inequalities. Terrorizing Women brings together essays by feminist and human rights activists, attorneys, and scholars from Latin America and the United States, as well as testimonios by relatives of women who were disappeared or murdered. In addition to investigating egregious violations of women's human rights, the contributors consider feminicide in relation to neoliberal economic policies, the violent legacies of military regimes, and the sexual fetishization of women's bodies. They suggest strategies for confronting feminicide; propose legal, political, and social routes for redressing injustices; and track alternative remedies generated by the communities affected by gender-based violence. In a photo essay portraying the justice movement in Chihuahua, relatives of disappeared and murdered women bear witness to feminicide and demand accountability.
Contributors: Pascha Bueno-Hansen, Adriana Carmona LÓpez, Ana Carcedo CabaÑas, Jennifer Casey, Lucha Castro RodrÍguez , AngÉlica ChÁzaro, Rebecca Coplan, HÉctor DomÍnguez-Ruvalcaba, Marta Fontenla, Alma Gomez Caballero, Christina Iturralde, Marcela Lagarde y de los RÍos, Julia Estela MonÁrrez Fragoso, Hilda Morales Trujillo, Mercedes Olivera, Patricia Ravelo Blancas, Katherine Ruhl, Montserrat Sagot, Rita Laura Segato, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, William Paul Simmons, Deborah M. Weissman, Melissa W. Wright
Contents
Preface. Feminist Keys for Understanding Feminicide: Theoretical, Political, and Legal Construction / Marcela Lagarede y de los Ríos xi
Acknowledgments xxvii
Introduction. A Cartography of Feminicide in the Américas / Rosa-Linda Fregoso and Cynthia Bejarano 1
Part I: Localizing Feminicide
Testimonio: Eva Arce 45
Violencia Feminicida: Violence against Women and Mexico's Structural Crisis / Mercedes Olivera 49
The Victims of Cuidad Juárez Feminicide: Sexually Fetishized Commodities / Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso 59
Territory, Sovereignty, and the Crimes of the Second State: The Writing on the Body of Murdered Women / Rita Laura Segato 70
Getting Away with Murder: Guatemala's Failure to Protect Women and Rodi Alvarado's Quest for Safety / AngÉlica Cházaro, Jennifer Casey, and Katherine Ruhl 93
Femicides in Mar de Plata / Marta Fontenla 116
Femicide and Sexual Violence in Guatemala / Hilda Morales Trujillo 127
When Violence against Women Kills: Femicide in Costa Rica, 1990-99 / Montserrat Sagot and Ana Carcedo Cabañas 138
Feminicide in Latin America in the Movement for Women's Human Rights / Adriana Carmona López, Alma GÓmez Caballero, and Lucha Castro RodrÍguez 157
Part II. Transnationalizing Justice
Testimonio: Julia Huamañahui 179
Obedience without Compliance: The Role of the Government, Organized Crime, and NGOs in the System of Impunity That Murders the Women of Cuidad Juárez / Héctor Domíguez-Ruvalcaba and Patricia Ravelo Blancas 182
Innovative Transnational Remedies for the Women of Cuidad Juárez / William Paul Simmons and Rebecca Coplan 197
Global Economics and Their Progenies: Theorizing Femicide in Context / Deborah M. Weissman 225
Searching for Accountability on the Border: Justice for the Women of Cuidad Juárez / Christina Iturralde 243
Photo Essay: Images from the Justice Movement in Chihuahua, Mexico 263
Part III. New Citizenship Practices
Testimonio: Rosa Franco 273
Cuidadana X: Gender Violence and the Denationalization of Women's Rights in Cuidad Juárez, Mexico / Alicia Schmidt Camacho 275
Feminicidio: Making the Most of an "Empowered Term" / Pascha Bueno-Hansen 290
Paradoxes, Protests, and the Mujeres de Negro of Northern Mexico / Melissa W. Wright 312
Testimonio: Norma Ledezma Ortega 331
References 335
Contributors 367
Index 371
