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The Femicide Machine
In Ciudad Juarez, a territorial power normalized barbarism. This anomalous ecology mutated into a femicide machine: an apparatus that didn't just create the conditions for the murders of dozens of women and little girls, but developed the institutions that guarantee impunity for those crimes and even legalize them. A lawless city sponsored by a State in crisis. The facts speak for themselves. -- from "The Femicide Machine
"Best known to American readers for his cameo appearances as The Journalist in Roberto Bolano's "2666" and as a literary detective in Javier Marias's nove "l Dark Back of Time," Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers. He is the author of "Bones in the Desert," the most definitive work on the murders of women and girls in Juarez, Mexico, as well as "The Headless Man," a sharp meditation on the recurrent uses of symbolic violence; "Infectious," a novel; and "Original Evil, " a long essay. The "Femicide Machine" is the first book by Gonzalez Rodriguez to appear in English translation.
Written especially for Semiotext(e) Intervention series, "The Femicide Machine" synthesizes Gonzalez Rodriguez's documentation of the Juarez crimes, his analysis of the unique urban conditions in which they take place, and a discussion of the terror techniques of narco-warfare that have spread to both sides of the border. The result is a gripping polemic. " The Femicide Machine" probes the anarchic confluence of global capital with corrupt national politics and displaced, transient labor, and introduces the work of one of Mexico's most eminent writers to American readers.
"Best known to American readers for his cameo appearances as The Journalist in Roberto Bolano's "2666" and as a literary detective in Javier Marias's nove "l Dark Back of Time," Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is one of Mexico's most important contemporary writers. He is the author of "Bones in the Desert," the most definitive work on the murders of women and girls in Juarez, Mexico, as well as "The Headless Man," a sharp meditation on the recurrent uses of symbolic violence; "Infectious," a novel; and "Original Evil, " a long essay. The "Femicide Machine" is the first book by Gonzalez Rodriguez to appear in English translation.
Written especially for Semiotext(e) Intervention series, "The Femicide Machine" synthesizes Gonzalez Rodriguez's documentation of the Juarez crimes, his analysis of the unique urban conditions in which they take place, and a discussion of the terror techniques of narco-warfare that have spread to both sides of the border. The result is a gripping polemic. " The Femicide Machine" probes the anarchic confluence of global capital with corrupt national politics and displaced, transient labor, and introduces the work of one of Mexico's most eminent writers to American readers.
136 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
March 27, 2017
This brief, dense book of theory and analysis is as brutal and harrowing as you'd expect. "Extreme capitalism converges here: plutocratic, corporate, monopolistic, global, speculative, wealth-concentrating, and predatory, founded on military machinations and media control. Ciudad Juárez is the realization of planned speculation that practices on city-slums and on the people there who are considered of little value." A necessary read on life under capitalism and the manifestation of misogynist violence. Will there be more of this, asks the author, in cities all over the world? We all know the answer.
May 1, 2013
Chilling. Written with a cold and beautiful sense of anger and urgency, Rodriguez lays responsibility for the rape, torture and deaths of 400 women in Juarez on the "machines" of culture. of misogyny, State violence, official neglect, the inhuman and efficient drug trade, Free Trade, and global inequality. In short, he shows how a perfect confluence of individual and social factors are responsible for the barbaric and continuing dehumanization of mostly poor women in Juarez.
August 8, 2012
A brief, historical account of how Ciudad Juárez has become both one of the most violent cities in the world and a city in which violence--rape, torture, and murder--of women has become a systemic expression of a hyper-machismo culture that treats independent women as disposable trash. Literally, not metaphorically.
July 27, 2020
I wanted more from this than it had. But the last part is worth the cost of the book.
June 8, 2023
Sergio González Rodríguez weaves a complex tapestry of Mexico’s decaying institutions and the history of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Rodríguez attempts to write a journalistic counter-narrative to the Mexican state’s official narrative that grants impunity to the murderers and, thus, allows femicide to continue with little to absolutely no consequence at all. Rather than allow the typical misogynistic narrative that these women — many working-class, impoverished, working in maquiladoras — were secretly prostitutes, brought it on themselves in whatever way, ran away from home, etc. Rodríguez provides a really complex and wide account that brings together the political and economic history of Mexico and its institutions. Even more so, he brings together the official and informal (or underground) economy composed of drug cartels and criminality that operates within an illegal space — yet, Rodríguez is always quick to note that this economy is not something exterior you Mexico’s official economy, but rather the informal economy is intrinsic to Mexico’s economy. In noting what a “femicide machine” is, he is quick to note that
“Ciudad Juárez’s femicide machine is composed of hatred and misogynistic violence, machismo, power and patriarchal reaffirmations that take place at the margins of the law or within a law of complicity between criminals, police, military, government officials, and citizens who constitute an a-legal old boy network. Consequently, the machine enjoys discrete protection from individuals, groups, and institutions that in turn offer judicial and political impunity, as well as supremacy over the State and the law” (p.11).
Rodríguez is able to compose these really riveting paragraphs wherein it’s clear that the stakes are high at investigating the origin and causes of the femicides in Juárez. Just like Bolaño, who writes a portrait of Rodríguez (and later immortalises him in 2666 as “The Journalist”) says somewhere [quote from memory] that the femicides speak to the future of Latin America. And I think this little book really establishes weight to that claim — it’s clear that the implications of the femicide machine and it’s links to an extreme form of capitalism, basically a sort of ultimate stage of capitalism and masculine aggression, speak to a really pivotal stage in history as it is being lived even right now. The femicide machine, and although Rodríguez is only sketching a preliminary to a wider theory, is something that has a global implication. Although, of course, it’s also clear that it is important to retain a sense of space and place, Juárez is both particular and global in that it speaks to a certain moment within its own space and history, but has implications that stretch across all femicides elsewhere. And as the quote above sketches, the diffuse strands of power that operate within the femicide machine are difficult to locate — it’s not only that there are criminals out there killing women, but it’s more important how they so easily get away with it. Really Rodríguez is taking to task the entire Mexican government and it’s decayed institutions that can’t even take any sort of responsibility for the femicides.
And maybe it’s not even that they do not take responsibility, it’s that these institutions allow for the femicides to take place entirely unabated, with some theories suggesting that the police themselves are in on it. But Rodríguez’s account is more interested in a socioeconomic account of the femicides, it’s an institutional analysis that looks at how the conditions for these barbaric murders is created. The large tapestry is important when dealing with such strands of power because it isn’t that one person, or even a few can necessarily be located as the murderers — rather it’s a whole socioeconomic condition that allows for this barbarism to take place. Yet, it’s a little unclear of Rodríguez’s exact position on how to change this corrupt and decaying system. He is not exactly a revolutionary demanding for a total overhaul of the Mexican government, rather it seems he is asking for major changes within the completely corrupt system of Mexican governance and economy. And I wonder just how effective an institutional change is, when it is clear that those very institutions are so susceptible to corruption, and his own analysis supports that it isn’t the people who are corrupt within the institutions, it’s the major investments of global capital, and the movement of the formal / informal economies. NAFTA is a major part of the problem concerning Ciudad Juárez, the maquiladoras and their horrible labour conditions, and the very conditions created for the femicides, in Rodríguez’s analysis, go back to global capital. But, I still think it’s unclear where we are to go from here — he chooses to end on an haunting sort of question as to whether we as people will recognise this large scale societal injustice or allow our institutions, and thus our societies, to continue decaying and crumbling away into crime and corruption.
I, myself, would say, given that the problem extends all the way back to global capital, the problem itself lies in the capitalist mode of production — it isn’t just that we can reform the corruption out of already incredibly corruption systems and institutions, it’s that capitalism itself breeds this kind of corruptions and drive for profit; it’s not even the people, politicians and whatnot, they are more like actors, masks for capital and it’s worldwide investments. It’s strange given Rodríguez’s post-structuralist theorising in the text, he’d seem more given to break out some Marxist-esque call for revolt. But maybe that’s overlooking the scope of an already small text. This isn’t an exact criticism per se, but I imagine it’d make the text a little more effective if it drew any sort of larger conclusions from the research it uses.
A major part of Rodríguez’s text is spent theorising what he calls the “femicide machine” that he groups alongside other kinds of machines: war machines, criminal machines, city-machines, police machines, and so on. I feel like the blend of his post-structuralist theoretical tools with investigative journalism, at times, feels sort of a meaningless attachment that detracts from the incredible journalism that Rodríguez does. His writing style is a blend of journalistic research and data, with a more poetic post-structuralist theoretical bent that I feel makes his wider arguments feel a little thin at times — he takes his time to define what a “femicide machine” is, but many times I felt as if the concept was just kinda there, helpful to conceptualise the large political and economic history of Mexico that supports a lot of his argumentation, but it didn’t really seem to add anything to the argument he was making. He does a good job at providing a basis of the idea in the intro, but then it just seems like a sort of buzzword he flings in the main body of the book. And that’s another major problem I find — Rodríguez clearly is brilliant and has done a lot of important research and his argument is impressive in scope and consequence. But one of the main issues of the text is organisation. The chapters make sense, and he does maintain a thread of argumentation within each chapter that makes sense and coheres to the larger argument. But Rodríguez has little to no connecting tissue between his paragraphs a lot of the time, it seems as if he is presenting his information at random sometimes, with such major jump cuts between paragraphs it seems hard to track the links between his thoughts and arguments because there is no connection at all between the paragraphs. It’s the most glaring problem of the text because it feels like there is an even greater text underneath the present one, if it was just a little reorganised it would be even more brilliant.
And yet, it’s somewhat understandable for a book with such brevity even though it’s argument is quite large. It traces a thread through Juárez’s history, through its culture and identity, it’s relationship to the US border and El Paso, the maquiladoras and the horrible labor conditions many have to work in as almost quasi-slaves. Rodríguez weaves together so many threads to substantiate how and why the femicides are taking place and just how it is that they have gone on without any actual consequences really happening. There is no sense of justice being served at all for the victim’s families. This is not just the random act of a serial rapist / murderer, these acts are endemic of the state of Mexico’s institutions as a whole, and Rodríguez shows how this current state of affairs came to be. And again, I enjoy that he doesn’t sensationalise anything he is arguing — Mexico has had large amounts of sensational journalism looking to exploit its turbulent state of affairs, whether it be cartels, or even the femicides. Rodríguez paints an evocative portrait that doesn’t resort to trying to tell the reader just how shocking these things are, rather he remains analytical and looks to a larger socioeconomic web of sources that would enable these femicides to take place.
However, for what is there, I think this is an extremely important text, even with it being short in length, for diagnosing the state of Mexican politics, governance, and economy, through the lens of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Although my knowledge on contemporary issues in Mexico is limited, it seems that many of the institutional issues that Rodríguez highlights are at an extreme level still today.
“Ciudad Juárez’s femicide machine is composed of hatred and misogynistic violence, machismo, power and patriarchal reaffirmations that take place at the margins of the law or within a law of complicity between criminals, police, military, government officials, and citizens who constitute an a-legal old boy network. Consequently, the machine enjoys discrete protection from individuals, groups, and institutions that in turn offer judicial and political impunity, as well as supremacy over the State and the law” (p.11).
Rodríguez is able to compose these really riveting paragraphs wherein it’s clear that the stakes are high at investigating the origin and causes of the femicides in Juárez. Just like Bolaño, who writes a portrait of Rodríguez (and later immortalises him in 2666 as “The Journalist”) says somewhere [quote from memory] that the femicides speak to the future of Latin America. And I think this little book really establishes weight to that claim — it’s clear that the implications of the femicide machine and it’s links to an extreme form of capitalism, basically a sort of ultimate stage of capitalism and masculine aggression, speak to a really pivotal stage in history as it is being lived even right now. The femicide machine, and although Rodríguez is only sketching a preliminary to a wider theory, is something that has a global implication. Although, of course, it’s also clear that it is important to retain a sense of space and place, Juárez is both particular and global in that it speaks to a certain moment within its own space and history, but has implications that stretch across all femicides elsewhere. And as the quote above sketches, the diffuse strands of power that operate within the femicide machine are difficult to locate — it’s not only that there are criminals out there killing women, but it’s more important how they so easily get away with it. Really Rodríguez is taking to task the entire Mexican government and it’s decayed institutions that can’t even take any sort of responsibility for the femicides.
And maybe it’s not even that they do not take responsibility, it’s that these institutions allow for the femicides to take place entirely unabated, with some theories suggesting that the police themselves are in on it. But Rodríguez’s account is more interested in a socioeconomic account of the femicides, it’s an institutional analysis that looks at how the conditions for these barbaric murders is created. The large tapestry is important when dealing with such strands of power because it isn’t that one person, or even a few can necessarily be located as the murderers — rather it’s a whole socioeconomic condition that allows for this barbarism to take place. Yet, it’s a little unclear of Rodríguez’s exact position on how to change this corrupt and decaying system. He is not exactly a revolutionary demanding for a total overhaul of the Mexican government, rather it seems he is asking for major changes within the completely corrupt system of Mexican governance and economy. And I wonder just how effective an institutional change is, when it is clear that those very institutions are so susceptible to corruption, and his own analysis supports that it isn’t the people who are corrupt within the institutions, it’s the major investments of global capital, and the movement of the formal / informal economies. NAFTA is a major part of the problem concerning Ciudad Juárez, the maquiladoras and their horrible labour conditions, and the very conditions created for the femicides, in Rodríguez’s analysis, go back to global capital. But, I still think it’s unclear where we are to go from here — he chooses to end on an haunting sort of question as to whether we as people will recognise this large scale societal injustice or allow our institutions, and thus our societies, to continue decaying and crumbling away into crime and corruption.
I, myself, would say, given that the problem extends all the way back to global capital, the problem itself lies in the capitalist mode of production — it isn’t just that we can reform the corruption out of already incredibly corruption systems and institutions, it’s that capitalism itself breeds this kind of corruptions and drive for profit; it’s not even the people, politicians and whatnot, they are more like actors, masks for capital and it’s worldwide investments. It’s strange given Rodríguez’s post-structuralist theorising in the text, he’d seem more given to break out some Marxist-esque call for revolt. But maybe that’s overlooking the scope of an already small text. This isn’t an exact criticism per se, but I imagine it’d make the text a little more effective if it drew any sort of larger conclusions from the research it uses.
A major part of Rodríguez’s text is spent theorising what he calls the “femicide machine” that he groups alongside other kinds of machines: war machines, criminal machines, city-machines, police machines, and so on. I feel like the blend of his post-structuralist theoretical tools with investigative journalism, at times, feels sort of a meaningless attachment that detracts from the incredible journalism that Rodríguez does. His writing style is a blend of journalistic research and data, with a more poetic post-structuralist theoretical bent that I feel makes his wider arguments feel a little thin at times — he takes his time to define what a “femicide machine” is, but many times I felt as if the concept was just kinda there, helpful to conceptualise the large political and economic history of Mexico that supports a lot of his argumentation, but it didn’t really seem to add anything to the argument he was making. He does a good job at providing a basis of the idea in the intro, but then it just seems like a sort of buzzword he flings in the main body of the book. And that’s another major problem I find — Rodríguez clearly is brilliant and has done a lot of important research and his argument is impressive in scope and consequence. But one of the main issues of the text is organisation. The chapters make sense, and he does maintain a thread of argumentation within each chapter that makes sense and coheres to the larger argument. But Rodríguez has little to no connecting tissue between his paragraphs a lot of the time, it seems as if he is presenting his information at random sometimes, with such major jump cuts between paragraphs it seems hard to track the links between his thoughts and arguments because there is no connection at all between the paragraphs. It’s the most glaring problem of the text because it feels like there is an even greater text underneath the present one, if it was just a little reorganised it would be even more brilliant.
And yet, it’s somewhat understandable for a book with such brevity even though it’s argument is quite large. It traces a thread through Juárez’s history, through its culture and identity, it’s relationship to the US border and El Paso, the maquiladoras and the horrible labor conditions many have to work in as almost quasi-slaves. Rodríguez weaves together so many threads to substantiate how and why the femicides are taking place and just how it is that they have gone on without any actual consequences really happening. There is no sense of justice being served at all for the victim’s families. This is not just the random act of a serial rapist / murderer, these acts are endemic of the state of Mexico’s institutions as a whole, and Rodríguez shows how this current state of affairs came to be. And again, I enjoy that he doesn’t sensationalise anything he is arguing — Mexico has had large amounts of sensational journalism looking to exploit its turbulent state of affairs, whether it be cartels, or even the femicides. Rodríguez paints an evocative portrait that doesn’t resort to trying to tell the reader just how shocking these things are, rather he remains analytical and looks to a larger socioeconomic web of sources that would enable these femicides to take place.
However, for what is there, I think this is an extremely important text, even with it being short in length, for diagnosing the state of Mexican politics, governance, and economy, through the lens of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez. Although my knowledge on contemporary issues in Mexico is limited, it seems that many of the institutional issues that Rodríguez highlights are at an extreme level still today.
May 7, 2013
For those of us already connected with radical/anarchist politics, it comes as no surprise how the state, military, drug cartels, etc. have been instrumental in creating a femicidal apparatus in Ciudad Juarez. Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez provides all the facts and figures necessary to trace these intersections and the emergence of the femicide machine. In some ways, this is just the same old story.
What is interesting, however, is how the state has responded to this apparatus. The resistance to the femicide machine by various non-governmental organizations has become more vocal and widespread throughout the years, yet the Mexican state still downplays the occurrence of these murders by outright denying them, shifting the blame, or paying off the victims' families. If this trajectory continues, at some point the tension will come to a head. Though the potential for revolt is there, it seems more likely the state will shift its response to these murders.
The book ends with a fairly detailed account of a victim and her family through the days of her murder. Though short, these few pages gave life to the preceding analysis.
What is interesting, however, is how the state has responded to this apparatus. The resistance to the femicide machine by various non-governmental organizations has become more vocal and widespread throughout the years, yet the Mexican state still downplays the occurrence of these murders by outright denying them, shifting the blame, or paying off the victims' families. If this trajectory continues, at some point the tension will come to a head. Though the potential for revolt is there, it seems more likely the state will shift its response to these murders.
The book ends with a fairly detailed account of a victim and her family through the days of her murder. Though short, these few pages gave life to the preceding analysis.
June 5, 2019
Rodriguez dismantles the mysognistic narrative that surround the deaths of hundreds of women in in the Mexican border town Cuidad Jaurez. Coined as 'Femicide', a suite of conditions coalesce which explain why so many women were killed.
The intellectual framework, a revolving door between cartels, the authorities and international community, sell stories of 'promiscuous' women, who given their lifestyle were likely to get caught up in trouble. Rodriguez pooh-pooh's this. The reality is far more sinister.
Instead, the cartels trade in drug and human trafficking, extreme violence, prostituion et al. The authorities currency is corruption, ignorance and complicity. The families that live in the town live in fear, and the international community refuses to recognise the existence or scale of the issue thereby avoiding the need to rise to the klaxon of calls to intervene.
Society should be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable, and this is a tale which shows just how far we still have go to.
The intellectual framework, a revolving door between cartels, the authorities and international community, sell stories of 'promiscuous' women, who given their lifestyle were likely to get caught up in trouble. Rodriguez pooh-pooh's this. The reality is far more sinister.
Instead, the cartels trade in drug and human trafficking, extreme violence, prostituion et al. The authorities currency is corruption, ignorance and complicity. The families that live in the town live in fear, and the international community refuses to recognise the existence or scale of the issue thereby avoiding the need to rise to the klaxon of calls to intervene.
Society should be judged by how we treat the most vulnerable, and this is a tale which shows just how far we still have go to.
August 7, 2016
An excellent companion to the utterly masterful and life-changing 2666. This book fleshes out, in dispassionate (and thus all the more damning) prose the structures (economic, legal, illegal, corrupt, disavowed) the have made Ciudad Juarez the machine to produce murders of women. The book finishes with a brief, powerful sketch of the death of one of these victims.
Powerful and urgent.
(Semiotext(e) is, by the way, such a marvelous press. This is part of the same series that produced the excellent Atta.)
Powerful and urgent.
(Semiotext(e) is, by the way, such a marvelous press. This is part of the same series that produced the excellent Atta.)
January 18, 2014
This was an informative book about the war on drugs, the border, the maquiladora, the cartels, the legal impunity of rape and murder of women and little girls and the media's dismissiveness of the victims and their families, and the inseparability between the institutions of organized crime and government in Mexico, all of which have contributed to the creation of a "femicide apparatus" in Ciudad Juárez and the greater state of Chihuahua.
August 23, 2013
Powerful and devastating, this book explores the connections between drug cartels, corrupt government and femicide in Mexico.
August 17, 2015
A most important document of pressing contemporary horrors - see its fictional companion 2666 by Roberto Bolaño.
March 25, 2020
Amazing, highly intersectional and interdiscursive approach to the femicide crisis in Mexico.
February 18, 2025
Fantastic journalism. Excellent analysis of the situation.
“The true cause of such ineptitude resides in the efficacy of the femicide machine, whose functioning has evolved over time, incorporating judicial and political systems, to such an extent that Mexican authorities have sidetracked or blocked the investigations. This performance goes beyond the mere incompetence or negligence which some have cited to justify their own actions. Authorities have continually discredited those who oppose their official version of the truth: The crimes, they insist, are merely a product of domestic violence, or, more recently, the war on drug trafficking. They seek to discount the systematic and peculiar violence against women”
“In 2003, the commission issued a report condemning the federal government’s oversight before the problem.”
“The current crisis in Mexico reflects the high costs of indifference and complicity with respect to institutional decline. At one point, every murder victim in Ciudad Juarez sent out a warning cry that was either ignored or minimized by the state and the Mexican government.”
"Authorities refused to investigate the cases in depth. These events imply a misogynistic furor that escalated from an isolated crime to a collective ravaging."
"There is no concentrated, proactive defense against organized crime in Ciudad Juarez. Consequently what remains is a useless and brutal government operation that constantly harasses the civilian population and tramples its rights."
What's the difference between that police force and a tumor? It does the opposite of what it's paid to do. Sounds like Washington State Police.
Everything that Rodriguez said about the Mexican police is 100% also true of the Washington police. They are only just now getting around to the Nordic model. Pushback on felonies for Johns for driving the market up and creating the collapse is immense.
“The true cause of such ineptitude resides in the efficacy of the femicide machine, whose functioning has evolved over time, incorporating judicial and political systems, to such an extent that Mexican authorities have sidetracked or blocked the investigations. This performance goes beyond the mere incompetence or negligence which some have cited to justify their own actions. Authorities have continually discredited those who oppose their official version of the truth: The crimes, they insist, are merely a product of domestic violence, or, more recently, the war on drug trafficking. They seek to discount the systematic and peculiar violence against women”
“In 2003, the commission issued a report condemning the federal government’s oversight before the problem.”
“The current crisis in Mexico reflects the high costs of indifference and complicity with respect to institutional decline. At one point, every murder victim in Ciudad Juarez sent out a warning cry that was either ignored or minimized by the state and the Mexican government.”
"Authorities refused to investigate the cases in depth. These events imply a misogynistic furor that escalated from an isolated crime to a collective ravaging."
"There is no concentrated, proactive defense against organized crime in Ciudad Juarez. Consequently what remains is a useless and brutal government operation that constantly harasses the civilian population and tramples its rights."
What's the difference between that police force and a tumor? It does the opposite of what it's paid to do. Sounds like Washington State Police.
Everything that Rodriguez said about the Mexican police is 100% also true of the Washington police. They are only just now getting around to the Nordic model. Pushback on felonies for Johns for driving the market up and creating the collapse is immense.
January 12, 2018
S.G. Rodgríguez has an extract here of about 100 pages from his other published works, and he presents the biggest strands of the economic, geopolitical, military, macho, industrial machines which in combination funnel into one femicide machine. The epilogue is the heart wrenching timeline in which a father loses his daughter. The father reports her disappearance from a factory (machine), is spurned by the local police (machine), continues to reach out to the community (machine) in spite of the absence of police support. One week later, on Valentine's Day, someone finds the daughter's body, and the father learns of her death because a neighbor heard on the news (machine) of "some body" who fits the description of his daughter. The alienation of justice for this family is soul crushing, but readers must not look away, because it is in this narrative that we see broken systems perpetuating this father's tragedy and the way in which next week, next day, next hour, it will be some other father's tragedy. These machines are self perpetuating, and as Rodríguez writes, "impunity is a stimulant" to more crime. Rodríguez implores his community to resist the machine and to abandon the collective amnesia that creates fertile ground for more femicide.
May 26, 2022
Various forces (drugs, free trade agreements, police incompetence, machismo culture and other cross border dependencies) converge in the city of Ciudad Juárez , Mexico to create the perfect environment for the constant, almost ritual murder of its female citizens.
I love the Semiotext(e) Intervention Series, but this one was a big let down. At first, I thought it was just poor translation because quite a few sentences felt willfully obscure (and I still think a better translator might have made more sense of some stickier sections). Then, as it went on, I realized what a mess the entire text is. It just wanders without much coherence or logic all over the place. Never really concluding or describing anything really. Poorly formed, organized and elaborated. It's just a real mess of a text and that's too bad, because what is going on in Ciudad Juárez deserves much better telling, exposure and analysis.
I love the Semiotext(e) Intervention Series, but this one was a big let down. At first, I thought it was just poor translation because quite a few sentences felt willfully obscure (and I still think a better translator might have made more sense of some stickier sections). Then, as it went on, I realized what a mess the entire text is. It just wanders without much coherence or logic all over the place. Never really concluding or describing anything really. Poorly formed, organized and elaborated. It's just a real mess of a text and that's too bad, because what is going on in Ciudad Juárez deserves much better telling, exposure and analysis.
November 19, 2025
One of the most harrowing and visceral accounts of political-human-cultural geography anyone will read. Rodriguez avoids pretentiousness and lunges straight for a guttural expression of the violence and impunity of Ciudad Juarez. I have few words for a book so potent, and this is not a bad thing.
Biopolitics, maquiladoras, necropolitics, impunity, machinations, death.
Biopolitics, maquiladoras, necropolitics, impunity, machinations, death.
October 30, 2025
A good overview of Juarez’s femicide “machine.” Does a decent job at presenting what the machine is and its spatial dependence, but does not provide much background context for a reader without an extensive background on the drug war, NAFTA, or maquiladoras.
Read
December 1, 2021I have no interest in rating/reviewing this.
Heartbreaking.
Research for my thesis.
Heartbreaking.
Research for my thesis.
December 18, 2021
It was brutal to read, but it was an important read. Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez is eloquent and honest in his description of the femicide machine in Ciudad Juarez. My heart aches for the victims.
August 30, 2025
the machines of global capital unleashed an unspeakable evil that comes to a head at inflection points such as the Sonora desert and Ciudad Juarez
October 11, 2025
Highly recommended. Rodriguez can describe oppressive systems (and their impact) in very few words.
September 26, 2013
The Femicide Machine is a short, sharp, and dense contextualization of femicide in Mexico framed within neoliberal policies of Latin America and the USA, by novelist, journalist, political force, and PhD Candidate Sergio González Rodríguez who began his femicide investigations in Ciudad Juárez in 1996.
González Rodríguez focuses on the life of femicide as part of a connected network between neoliberal policy, drug cartels, the complicity of governments, and the consequences of that interplay on the transborder town of Ciudad Juárez. Femicide is the gendered killing of women because they are women often accompanied by sexual assault. The femicide machine is a fluid, disembodied assemblage that, in order to reproduce, is constantly multiplying and changing based on whatever it is feeding off of, like a Serres-ian parasite, making it difficult to manage or fight. In short, it is composed of violence and is “inscribed within a particular structure of the Neo-Fordist economy”. It is difficult to define what it is, and as such, González Rodríguez is concerned with what it does and how it is able to do so —with unlimited assistance of governments that depend on it and thus create indifference and amnesia in their people. He notes in a BookForum interview,
“[the machine] refers to a whole system of relations between power and people that operates through economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. It is an interconnected system that influences reality through abstract patterns and designed practices in order to achieve specific objectives: gain, productivity, and control. This is the logic of the new global order.”
The effects of the logic of the new global order on on Ciudad Juárez are well defined in The Femicide Machine The book provides a history of Ciudad Juárez, its maquila (manufacturing assembly) workforce boom in the 1950s and the simultaneous rise in poverty and violence. The government did nothing to account for this growth and all basic social and health services could do was decline as more people needed them. More people kept migrating in search for work, and in search of crossing over to the USA. In turn, the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso border became of the most busy human transit nodes in the world. The difference of this transborder is staggering: Ciudad Juárez is one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico and El Paso, Texas, is stated to be the second safest city in the USA. How can this be? How do the governing bodies work together to create such a divide? How does the US ideology penetrate the Mexican multitude? Little is mentioned of religion’s role in the femicide machine, and I’m curious in what ways it relies, because it must, on Catholicism. Mexico is one of the most Catholic countries in the world.
When the legal workforce in Ciudad Juárez declined after the 2008 crisis it did not stop migration into the city, increased an illegal workforce, and amplified violence. Although the concept of illegal work needs to be questioned since the police force and the state depend on and work with many of the powerful drug cartels. This complicity is convenient in its efficacy to dismiss the systemic and systematic violence against women in the region, which finally reached public criticism in 1993. Statistics are sketchy to total how many hundreds of women have been victims of femicide because no one is able to systematically keep track. When a group of scholars concerned with violence against women wanted to set up a comprehensive investigate structure for each missing woman the authorities refused to put it into practice. González Rodríguez makes clear there is no justice for the women and for those that try to expose the tragedies. The Epilogue, “Instructions for taking Textual Photographs” is a reconstructed story based on a femicide victim, Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade, from the point of view of her mother who in the end is also killed as she fights for femicido justice. That section and the following "textual photographs" were the most evocative and clearly where the author shines —in experimenting with form and style
González Rodríguez focuses on the life of femicide as part of a connected network between neoliberal policy, drug cartels, the complicity of governments, and the consequences of that interplay on the transborder town of Ciudad Juárez. Femicide is the gendered killing of women because they are women often accompanied by sexual assault. The femicide machine is a fluid, disembodied assemblage that, in order to reproduce, is constantly multiplying and changing based on whatever it is feeding off of, like a Serres-ian parasite, making it difficult to manage or fight. In short, it is composed of violence and is “inscribed within a particular structure of the Neo-Fordist economy”. It is difficult to define what it is, and as such, González Rodríguez is concerned with what it does and how it is able to do so —with unlimited assistance of governments that depend on it and thus create indifference and amnesia in their people. He notes in a BookForum interview,
“[the machine] refers to a whole system of relations between power and people that operates through economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions. It is an interconnected system that influences reality through abstract patterns and designed practices in order to achieve specific objectives: gain, productivity, and control. This is the logic of the new global order.”
The effects of the logic of the new global order on on Ciudad Juárez are well defined in The Femicide Machine The book provides a history of Ciudad Juárez, its maquila (manufacturing assembly) workforce boom in the 1950s and the simultaneous rise in poverty and violence. The government did nothing to account for this growth and all basic social and health services could do was decline as more people needed them. More people kept migrating in search for work, and in search of crossing over to the USA. In turn, the Ciudad Juárez/El Paso border became of the most busy human transit nodes in the world. The difference of this transborder is staggering: Ciudad Juárez is one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico and El Paso, Texas, is stated to be the second safest city in the USA. How can this be? How do the governing bodies work together to create such a divide? How does the US ideology penetrate the Mexican multitude? Little is mentioned of religion’s role in the femicide machine, and I’m curious in what ways it relies, because it must, on Catholicism. Mexico is one of the most Catholic countries in the world.
When the legal workforce in Ciudad Juárez declined after the 2008 crisis it did not stop migration into the city, increased an illegal workforce, and amplified violence. Although the concept of illegal work needs to be questioned since the police force and the state depend on and work with many of the powerful drug cartels. This complicity is convenient in its efficacy to dismiss the systemic and systematic violence against women in the region, which finally reached public criticism in 1993. Statistics are sketchy to total how many hundreds of women have been victims of femicide because no one is able to systematically keep track. When a group of scholars concerned with violence against women wanted to set up a comprehensive investigate structure for each missing woman the authorities refused to put it into practice. González Rodríguez makes clear there is no justice for the women and for those that try to expose the tragedies. The Epilogue, “Instructions for taking Textual Photographs” is a reconstructed story based on a femicide victim, Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade, from the point of view of her mother who in the end is also killed as she fights for femicido justice. That section and the following "textual photographs" were the most evocative and clearly where the author shines —in experimenting with form and style
October 24, 2013
Horrifying and illuminating. While the concept of machines is certainly a useful device in understanding the system that creates the conditions under which these murders occur and remain unpunished, I believe the book could have avoided mystifying the subject as much as it did, a counterproductive spectacular impulse that I think the author knows enough to recognize. In other words, I shouldn't have to read 70 pages of background before being first presented with the who/what/why/where/how of the situation.
January 18, 2023
Absolutely devastating. Like The Iguala 43, Sergio González Rodríguez' unapologetic investigation into the corruption within the Mexican government - and their ties to US institutions - results in a jaw-dropping account of systemic violence that the powers that be would prefer dissolved into a collective amnesia.
July 13, 2014
This book would have been much more interesting if its conclusions weren't completely based on the authors idea of justice and how that comes when the Mexican state us strengthened.
January 12, 2015
Nightmare-inducing.
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July 8, 2016364.152 G6438 2012
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