"They are not only murders; they are murders preceded by humiliation, rape, and torture, and having another common factor, which is the assumption that in virtually every case the murderers had no previous acquaintance with the victims."
-Alma Guillermoprieto
Infamous for drug trafficking, violence, and worker exploitation in the numerous maquiladoras, Ciudad Juárez added a new misfortune to its repertoire in 1993: femicides. Defined as sexual homicides, femicides can be classified as any violent murder of a woman. But in the context of Juárez, femicides usually do not include women murdered by husbands, boyfriends, angry lovers, or the like; instead, it is used to categorize the growing number of women who are abducted, raped, mutilated, killed, and then abandoned in empty desert fields or in poor barrios on the outskirts of the city. Mexico’s response has varied over the years, but has always deflected blame and responsibility onto whomever is most convenient. As a result of government corruption and collusion from the local to federal levels, local organizations and international NGO’s have worked diligently to shed light on the femicides on an international scale. But perhaps one of the reasons the Juárez femicides remain so important today, fifteen years after the first body was counted, is that the killing has not ceased and virtually nothing has been attempted to find the killers or prevent more women from dying. Worse, it has spread to Chihuahua City, just south of Ciudad Juárez, and cases are being reported in other Mexican cities and in Guatemala. While first considered an anomaly unique to a violent border city, the spreading femicides must be reevaluated on a much larger scale in order to put a stop to the murders.
My intended purpose for making this website is to illustrate the many facets of the femicides in Ciudad Juárez, while stressing the complexity of trying to unravel these murders. Moreover, I wanted this website to be a jumping off point for people to continue learning and researching about the femicides, which is why I want to encourage utilizing the resources page I compiled.
