Feminicide: Impunity for the perpetrators and injustice for the victims

Study
North America

Executive Summary

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. 

Author(s)

Julia E. Monárrez Fragoso
I argue that a system of violence exists that has been linked to the killing of 150 girls and women in 23 years. I propose that this occurs through what Maria Lugones (2011) calls the coloniality of gender: the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality; in combination with an exceptionally complacent State (Calveiro 2008). Together, these forms of social power have created a level of impunity for feminicide that is historical, territorial, and constant. I describe these cases as ‘systemic sexual feminicide’ (Monárrez 2009).

 

 


 

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