Tag Archives: femicide

FNS: One Woman’s Fight against Femicide Crosses Borders

In terms of this statement from the article below, I would point out that it is true that the murders of women increased greatly in 2008… They increased from about 25 in 2007 to 98 in 2008. At the same time, the murders of men increased even more–from 291 in 2007 to 1,525 in 2008. Interestingly, as the killings in Juarez exploded in 2008, the PERCENTAGE of the total homicide victims who were women DECREASED, from almost 8 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2008. In the same years (and for many years) the percentage of murder victims in the United States each year who are women was between 20 and 25 percent.
Overall, from 1993-2013, women are about 9.2 percent of total homicide victims in Ciudad Juarez. molly
                   Total homicides          Males                        Females
2007 316 291 25 7.91%
2008 1623 1525 98 6.04%
A sharp increase in women’s murders and disappearances coincided with the introduction of large groups of armed men, both from government security forces and organized criminal groups, after narco-violence exploded in 2008, the women’s advocate said.
“There is a correlation between the armed masculine presence and the murders of women,” Aragon added. “According to the statistics, this increased the vulnerability of women.”
FNS: One Woman’s Fight against Femicide Crosses Borders

April 23, 2014

Women’s/Human Rights News

One Woman’s Fight against Femicide Crosses Borders

Laura Aragon Castro has broad perspectives on the struggle for gender justice. Inside and outside of government and across multiple borders, Aragon has waged a long fight from different trenches for women’s access to justice and a life free of violence.

Growing up in the state of Chihuahua in the 1990s, the young Mexican woman became aware of the serial murders of women in the state’s big border city of Ciudad Juarez. Later, while studying in France, she learned about similar killings in her hometown of Chihuahua City.


To read more, click here

Discovery of dumping ground in Valley of Juárez puts slayings of women in spotlight—EPTimes

According to the figures for the state of Chihuahua for 2009, women are 5.9
percent of the total number of homicide victims. I may be missing
something, but I can see no statement or evidence in this article that the
12 (or 22) female murder victims discovered in one (or several) places in
the Valle de Juarez recently and who are thought to have been disappeared
and murdered between 2009 and 2011–I see no evidence in what has been
released about the recent discoveries that establishes that these women and
girls suffered the “very particular type of violence” that has been defined
by academics and others “as systemic sexual femicide, which has to do with
disappearances, torture, rape, mutilation and with abandoning their bodies
in empty lots or deserted areas of the city.”

One of the people quoted in the article says: “And there is also the issue
of the veil covering those responsible for the slayings,” she said.”—But
as far as I am aware, there are no meaningful prosecutions in a huge
percentage of ALL of the more than 10,000 murders that have occurred in
Juarez just since 2008.

I’ve also seen nothing in any of the writing about the “femicides of
Juarez” that establishes these murders as anomalies with the numbers or
characteristics of female homicide victims in other places in Mexico.  In
fact, the only things I’ve seen that even compare the numbers have
established that for all of the years between 1990 and 2007, the only thing
that distinguished the female murder victims in Juarez and the state of
Chihuahua from other states in Mexico is that the victims tended to be
younger. [see:

– El homicidio en México entre 1990 y 2007 : aproximación estadistica
/ Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo ; con la colaboración de Erick E. Aranda
García.
– México, D.F. : Colegio de México ; Secretaria de Seguridad Pública
federal, 2009.]

It seems to actually be the case that there is LESS neglect to the
murders of women in Juarez than in other places in Mexico with similar
numbers of female homicides and in that regard the activism on the part of
families is to be commended for bringing attention to the disappearances
and killings. It would be an advance if such attention could be brought to
bear on the many more thousands of victims over the same years who are men
and boys. [those numbers posted below for 1993-April 2012…]

Years                 Women   Total  % Women

1993-2007………………427       (3,538) –    12%

2008 ……………………….87         (1,623) –    5.3%

2009……………………….164        (2,754)—   5.9%

2010 ………………………304         (3,622) –   8.3%

2011 …………………….. 195           (2,086) – 9.3%

2012 (as of April 30) …55             (416) –  13%

*Women………**…1,232  **(  total **victims)* (14,039) – 8.7%

Women = 8.8 percent of total murder victims over the past 18 years
Statistics from El Diario based on official data from the Chihuahua
State Attorney General

molly