Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

Chicana Matters Series

by Alicia Gaspar De Alba, Georgina Guzmán (Editor)

Since 1993, more than five hundred women and girls have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez across the border from El Paso, Texas. At least a third have been sexually violated and mutilated as well. Thousands more have been reported missing and remain unaccounted for. The crimes have been poorly investigated and have gone unpunished and unresolved by Mexican authorities, thus creating an epidemic of misogynist violence on an increasingly globalized U.S.-Mexico border. This book, the first anthology to focus exclusively on the Juárez femicides, as the crimes have come to be known, compiles several different scholarly "interventions" from diverse perspectives, including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, semiotics, and textual analysis. Editor Alicia Gaspar de Alba shapes a multidisciplinary analytical framework for considering the interconnections between gender, violence, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The essays examine the social and cultural conditions that have led to the heinous victimization of women on the border—from globalization, free trade agreements, exploitative maquiladora working conditions, and border politics, to the sexist attitudes that pervade the social discourse about the victims. The book also explores the evolving social movement that has been created by NGOs, mothers' organizing efforts, and other grassroots forms of activism related to the crimes. Contributors include U.S. and Mexican scholars and activists, as well as personal testimonies of two mothers of femicide victims.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, History, Death, Politics, Race, Womens

315 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Alicia Gaspar de Alba is a scholar, cultural critic, novelist, and poet whose works include historical novels and scholarly studies on Chicana/o art, culture and sexuality.

She is from the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, where she lived until age 27. She has a B.A. (1980) and a M.A. (1983) in English from the University of Texas at El Paso, and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico (1994). She started her doctoral work at the University of Iowa in 1985 but left after a year, then lived in Boston, Massachusetts for four years. In 1994, she was hired as one of six founding faculty members of the then César Chávez Center for Interdisciplinary Instruction in Chicana and Chicano Studies at University of California, Los Angeles. She has published and organized a conference on the Juarez murders. Alicia Gaspar de alba also keeps a regular blog called "Cooking With Sor Juana".

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not trained to read books with sentences like ``By combining Marxist critiques of political economy with poststructuralist feminist interrogations of discursive production...." I got much more from the less academic articles, like in the Testimonios section.

[Stefani Aleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book during a trip to Mexico City after visiting the Museum of Memory and Tolerance. MMT had an exhibition exploring femicide in the country of Mexico. I knew nothing of femicide and this book served as a thorough introduction. The author argues that NAFTA, sexism/machismo, and greed at the Mexican-US border have created intentionally negligent conditions that failed to protect the (poor, indigenous) women working in Juarez and other border cities. It's a great book and would definitely recommend this to others that would like to understand the role of globalism and neoliberalism in the context of violent sexism.

[Sanne Meijer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before I read this book I already knew about the femicides in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This is a book with analyses that shines some light on the mysterious femicides and sexual assaults that women in Juarez have been facing. Every author who wrote a chapter for this book points to the important factor of gender; something that plays a big part in every society and in this case seems to be one of the underlying motives for the femicides. The perpetrators are still unknown, but I hope this book gives some clues as to how to solve these horrific crimes.