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- In 2001, the term femicide emerged as a way to describe
violence against women because they are women.
When thinking about femicide,
the first thing that we want to remember
is that femicide is a global phenomenon.
Femicide is not unique towards Mexico,
however right now since 2004, the femicides have increased.
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One thing I try to do in my work
is to talk about critically what are the conditions
that give rise to femicide?
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Businesses don't want to come and set up shop
if there is negative attention.
So the government talks about femicide,
the killing of young women and girls in Mexico,
as a dark legend.
The activists and the mothers will not
let this escape public attention.
One of the ways that mothers and activists do this
is by painting crosses.
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So when you look at the disappeared women in Juarez,
these are not the affluent.
These are typically poor women.
When the free trade agreements happened,
most of the rural areas of southern Mexico were decimated.
So what happened is that workers in the southern states
of Mexico were forced to migrate
to look for work in the factory settings.
If a woman disappears in Ciudad Juarez,
there are often no family members there to look for them.
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We know that patriarchy is again a global phenomenon.
But we also want to think about
what the conditions are in Mexico.
Finding these bodies is typically
done by the family members.
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State officials have not been investigating these crimes.
Often the government would say,
"She's out with a boy".
"She's out on the wrong side of town."
"She was a prostitute, she was drinking."
They articulate the women as leading these double lives.
In my interviews with several of the family members,
after the femicides occurred, many of the men
in relationships would say to their woman comments like,
"If you act out, if you start showing your independence,
"you too are going to end up a victim."
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The role of the state has been taken on
by the mothers of the victims and the activists.
They have been for years holding restreos, or searches,
out in the desert to look for remains.
That creates a double trauma because the initial trauma
was the femicide, but the trauma then that is taken on
by the family members having to go and search
for their loved ones, search for clothing,
search for bones in the desert, is another set of trauma.
And these restreos are doing the work of the government.
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And so one of the things
we want to consider is who is culpable.
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There are many activists who talk about the fact
that American citizens can be crossing into Juarez
and targeting the women.
One man that I interviewed was working in Juarez
as an investigative journalist and he said that many
of the men that he would interview that crossed from El Paso
would tell him, if you want to rape and murder a woman,
there is no easier place than Cuidad Juarez.
And that is because of the impunity.
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No one is held responsible.
The government doesn't want the public to think
that these women were real and therefore crimes continue.
And that then feeds into a culture.
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Typically one thing that people want to know
is how can we address the issue of femicide.
What can we do?
One of the ideas was to boycott some of the corporations
that own the mahiladoras.
However when speaking with the workers,
they asked individuals not to boycott
because that would then mean a job loss for them.
So it's very important, the first thing I always say
is we need to speak with the community members themselves.
The community members are the ones
embodying and living this reality.
They are the ones that are on
the front lines engaging the activism.
Our role is to act in solidarity with them
in whatever capacity that we can.
But we follow their lead.
Projects like the Faces of Femicide
mural are extremely important.
What the Faces of Femicide does with the work
of Juvia and Miclavio is interview the mothers
about their daughters lives.
What were their dreams?
What were their aspirations?
What were they studying?
What did they want to accomplish?
To show the world that this was an actual human being
and the government cannot erase
or engage in cultural amnesia.
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One of the things that's also really important to remember
is that we cannot engage in stereotyping.
And currently what's going on with the Trump administration
is it functions to just fuel those negative stereotypes.
Mexicans as rapists, Mexicans as criminals.
These poor brown women, no, these are women with agency.
These are women leading social movements.
These are women with unique stories.
Rape against women is a global phenomenon.
Gendered violence is a global phenomenon.
This is in no way, shape or form
a Mexican problem or something
inherent to a Mexican sensibility.
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