Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez

Kathleen Staudt

jun 2009 · University of Texas Press

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Between 1993 and 2003, more than 370 girls and women were murdered and their often-mutilated bodies dumped outside Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico. The murders have continued at a rate of approximately thirty per year, yet law enforcement officials have made no breakthroughs in finding the perpetrator(s). Drawing on in-depth surveys, workshops, and interviews of Juárez women and border activists, Violence and Activism at the Border provides crucial links between these disturbing crimes and a broader history of violence against women in Mexico. In addition, the ways in which local feminist activists used the Juárez murders to create international publicity and expose police impunity provides a unique case study of social movements in the borderlands, especially as statistics reveal that the rates of femicide in Juárez are actually similar to other regions of Mexico.

Also examining how non-governmental organizations have responded in the face of Mexican law enforcement's "normalization" of domestic violence, Staudt's study is a landmark development in the realm of global human rights.

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Kathleen Staudt is an award-winning Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has written or co-authored more than a dozen scholarly books on women's studies, borderlands, and political science, most recently Pledging Allegiance: Learning Nationalism at the El Paso-Juárez Border, with Susan Rippberger, and Fronteras No Más: Toward Social Justice at the U.S.-Mexico Border, with Irasema Coronado.