VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN | THE AMERICAS | ADVOCACY & POLICY
The New Dawn Of Mexico’s First Female President
WORDS BY CHARLOTTE SWAINSTON | C.SWAINS@THEIWI.ORG | 22 OCTOBER 2024
Femicide, as defined by the World Health Organisation, is the deliberate killing of a women partially or wholly due to her gender and has four main iterations.(i) There are so-called ‘honour killings’ where women are killed due to intentionally or unintentionally violating a cultural code, and thus bringing her relatives into disrepute. Then there are dowry related killings, and indiscriminate ‘non-intimate femicide,’ where a woman is killed by a stranger. Finally, there is ‘intimate femicide,’ where a woman is murdered by someone known to her, usually a partner or ex-partner. (ii) Mexico is currently facing an epidemic of this fourth type: between 2015 and 2019, there was a 139% increase in femicides and 40% of these were by men already known to the victim. This epidemic recently peaked in the first half of 2020, where there were 626 femicides between January and August.
As the 2020 pandemic surge in femicide may suggest, this is an issue closely tied to the socioeconomic stability of the country. The historical origins of Mexican femicide equally reflect this. Femicide first captured public attention as a specific, distinct type of murder in Ciudad Juarez, a city situated in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. This city is located on the Texan-Mexico border and became a hotspot for drug cartels smuggling across the border, with illicit trade booming in the 1990s and early 2000s. As organised crime grew in the city, a brutal cycle of female abduction and murder grew alongside it.(iii) During this period 4000 women went missing, and there were 400 confirmed femicides. This sparked a protest movement which conceptualised the idea of femicide for the first time in Mexico, pressing the issue as a distinct and urgent one for the national stage.
Mexico has a high rate of violence and murder across both the sexes: what the activists from Ciudad Juarez brought to light it how different femicide is in comparison to homicide. It is uniquely violent as a crime – whilst most murders in Mexico are gun related, only 20% of femicides involve a firearm. Instead, femicide tends to have intimacy and proximity entrenched in the murder method: frequent methods included stabbing, drowning and strangulation.(iv) These intimate methods are related to the fact that most women are murdered at the hands of an intimate domestic partner. Scholars and activists point to Mexico’s ‘machismo’ culture: men are socialised to believe that they must provide for women, who in turn must obey them.
Machismo culture was placed under pressure in the mid-20th century, due to the introduction of American-run, Mexican-operated factories called maquiladoras. Maquiladoras allow for a Mexican industrial plant to perform labour processes whilst an American administration runs and oversees the business. The concept was created by the Mexican government in 1965 to stimulate industrialization and solve unemployment.(v) Yet the American companies were the ones calling the shots and thus they hired many female workers after realising that due to machismo culture, women would accept significantly lower wages than men – as low as 80 cents per hour. As a result of this influx of opportunity for women, a sudden culture power shift was enacted, which not only gave women more financial opportunity but also pushed men out of work and often, out of desperation, into crime. Male shame is heavily linked to femicide in Mexico, and the loss of jobs as a result of maquiladoras directly contributed to this. Femicide is therefore rooted in a deep patriarchal culture which has been exploited by colonialism and Western neoliberalism: a complex, intersectional issue, and one that requires a solution attuned to historical injustices.
A key issue in femicide is the perceived impunity of the crime, and this is partially due to systemic issues in the justice system. Offences between individuals, such as murder, femicide and domestic violence fall into the category of state-regulated crime, whilst crime that could generally be classified as more ‘organised’ are only under federal jurisdiction.(vi) Because of this system, different states vary dramatically in their interpretation of femicide laws, particularly with regards to how perpetrators are punished. Since 2019, all states have included femicide in their jurisprudence, but state divulgence has meant that precise definitions vary, as does sentencing and punishment. Mix Mexico’s divulged power with the widespread police corruption, and it becomes clear why 93% of crime in the country goes unreported, and 99% of crimes go unresolved.(vii) Divulged power magnifies the issue of femicide even more, as inconsistent punishment and application of law means that femicides are treated by the law more as discrete crimes, than as a systemic pattern of behaviour. These factors also make it a hard crime to monitor, and many human rights scholars have highlighted that there is a lack of statistical information available.
In this complex context, Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum as the first female president in June 2024. This was a landslide victory where she gained over 60% of the vote share, and consistently polled ahead of her opponents for many weeks before the vote. As a member of the Morena left-wing party, she is expected to continue her predecessor Obrador’s commitment to tackling social injustices, and she has made much of her gender considering this. Yet so far, she remains cautious and although promising to investigate the issues, is yet to manifest any concrete policy ideas.(viii) Sheinbaum takes office this month with an overwhelming majority in Congress which should allow her the opportunity to pursue a feminist political agenda – if she so choses. Pursuing this agenda will only be possible with a systemic, country-wide taskforce and method. Femicide is an issue rooted in deep historical injustices and driven by poverty and desperation. Achieving a new dawn for women in Mexico means achieving rejuvenation for everyone.
i.https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/77421/WHO_RHR_12.38_eng.pdf;jsessionid=2E636E5F0740BAC96712F0F2C005A00A?sequence=1 WHO – Understanding and addressing violence against women
Sasha Ramirez, Integrated Domestic Violence: One Solution to Mexico’s Femicide Epidemic, CWSL vol 51.2 URL: https://scholarlycommons.law.cwsl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1594&context=cwilj
iii.Ending the brutal cycle of violence against women in Ciudad Juárez and the city of Chihuahua – Amnesty International report. https://www.amnesty.org/fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/amr410112004en.pdf
iv.Ramirez
v.https://www.sandiego.gov/economic-development/sandiego/trade/mexico/maquiladoras#History
vi.Ramirez.
vii.Human Rights Watch, July 24 2020 https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/mexico-overhaul-police-forces
viii.https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/29/americas/mexico-female-president-violence-miltiarization-intl-latam/index.html