Confronting feminicidio in Mexico: pioneering anthropologist and activist Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos

Abstract

For decades, feminists sought to expand public consciousness around the concept of femicide. The word femicide was to evoke the notion that homicides of women were not incidental, but rather indicative of a broad pattern of gender-based violence across society (Caputi and Russell 1992; Radford 1992). When anthropologist Marcela Lagarde y de Los Ríos tried to apply the concept of femicide to the context of epidemic levels of homicides of women in her home country of Mexico in the 1990s, she found the Spanish translation of femicide – femicidio – fell short of capturing the complexity of this violence (Lagarde 2006). Homicides against women increased sharply in the 1990s, with little recognition from the Mexican government (Lagarde y de los Rios 2005; Olivera 2010). Families of murdered girls and women ‘sounded alarm’ on the widespread gender violence in Mexico, and particularly in Ciudad Juárez (Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010). Both the manner and the expansiveness of their activism – everything from rallies to protest encampments – spoke to the enormous scope of the problem. Yet, the murders continued, and few saw justice for deceased family members. The prosecution of those accused of gender-based violence was inefficient or nonexistent. Officials lost track of the numbers of missing or murdered women (Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010). For years, the common and widely reported belief on the homicides of women in Mexico was that homicides were a result of free trade and an increased number of women becoming maquila workers (factory workers near the US–Mexico border), or an unfortunate result of these women getting crossed in ongoing criminal matters (De Alba and Guzmán 2010; Haley 2001; Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010; Livingston 2004). Lagarde wanted a thorough investigation of the increasing violence, using a feminist anthropologist lens (Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010). The concept of femicide alone could not encapsulate the cultural understanding of how many women and girls were killed by homicide in Mexico and how such little recourse was taken to resolve it. Instead of the term femicidio to describe this gender-based violence, Lagarde translated the term into feminicidio (feminicide) to declare it a distinct concept. Feminicidio describes a wilful ignorance on the part of the state. ‘All women experience violation of their human rights stemming from the subaltern social status and political subordination of gender that affects them. It is in that framework that feminicide must be explained’ (Lagarde y de los Ríos 2010, xix). Lagarde posits that feminicidio is borne from the social