The Femicide Fallacy:

Tyranny of the Ten Percent…

Molly MolloyNew Mexico State UniversitySALALM 59May 13, 2014

Serial killer may stalk Mexican border city; Seven women dead: In fearful Ciudad Juárez, some blame influences from the United States. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 1, 1995 Serial killer may stalk Mexican border city; Seven women dead: In fearful Ciudad Juárez, some blame influences from the United States. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 1, 1995 Serial killer may stalk Mexican border city; Seven women dead: In fearful Ciudad Juárez, some blame influences from the United States. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 1, 1995 IN Juárez, WOMEN JUST VANISH. FIVE HAVE GONE MISSING THIS YEAR - OVER 100 IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS.; AND THEY USUALLY TURN UP IN THE DESERT. DEAD. MAIL ON SUNDAY, May 17, 1998 IN Juárez, WOMEN JUST VANISH. FIVE HAVE GONE MISSING THIS YEAR - OVER 100 IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS.; AND THEY USUALLY TURN UP IN THE DESERT. DEAD. MAIL ON SUNDAY, May 17, 1998 IN Juárez, WOMEN JUST VANISH. FIVE HAVE GONE MISSING THIS YEAR - OVER 100 IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS.; AND THEY USUALLY TURN UP IN THE DESERT. DEAD. MAIL ON SUNDAY, May 17, 1998

IN Juárez, WOMEN JUST VANISH. FIVE HAVE GONE MISSING THIS YEAR - OVER 100 IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS.; AND THEY USUALLY TURN UP IN THE DESERT. DEAD. …. MAIL ON SUNDAY, May 17, 1998

Serial killer may stalk Mexican border city; Seven women dead: In fearful Ciudad Juárez, some blame influences from the United States. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, October 1, 1995

FOR MEXICAN WOMEN, ROAD TO A JOB IS A RISK IN Juárez, THEY WORK LATE HOURS IN FACTORIES. THOUGH EMPOWERED BY EMPLOYMENT, IT ALSO BRINGS DANGERS. … The Philadelphia Inquirer, JUNE 14, 1999

Who protects the women of Juárez? Did a demented serial killer order accomplices to conduct a rape and murder spree from his prison cell? Would that explain why 182 women have been slain in six years in Ciudad Juárez? The surviving women of this turbulent border town don't think so. The Globe and Mail (Canada), December 9, 1999

G2: Women: Deadly frontier: In nine years, 300 women have been murdered in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez, 76 of them by a serial killer - or killers. But there was little outrage - until a mass grave full of mutilated bodies was discovered. Jo Tuckman reports The Guardian (London), March 25, 2002

Wave of Women's Killings Confounds Juárez ….The New York Times, December 10, 2002

Observer Magazine: DISPATCHES: THE LAWLESS MEXICA

Observer Magazine: DISPATCHES: THE LAWLESS MEXICAN BORDER TOWN OF Juárez IS NO STRANGER TO DEATH. FIEFDOM OF THE INFAMOUS NARCO-TRAFFICANTE 'LORD OF THE SKIES', ITS FORTUNES ARE BUILT ON HARD DRUGS AND CHEAP LABOUR. BUT NOW AN EVEN MORE RUTHLESS MENACE STALKS ITS DUSTY STREETS. ED VULLIAMY UNRAVELS THE MURDER SPREE WHICH HAS LEFT 340 YOUNG WOMEN DEAD……The Observer, March 9, 2003

Who Is Killing the Young Women of Juárez? A Filmmaker Seeks Answers The New York Times, August 19, 2002

Where the devil fears to tread In Ciudad Juárez, notorious in Mexico as 'the town of the murdered girls', JULIAN COMAN reveals the latest twist in the brutal saga of the serial sex slayings that have horrified the border city for more than a decade SUNDAY SUTELEAPH(LONDON), June 01, 2003

Who Is Killing the Young Women of Juárez? A Filmmaker Seeks Answers The New York Times, August 19, 2002

The World: 'Rich killers' stalk City of Lost Girls: Sandra Jordan reports from Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, where one campaigner is battling the authorities to expose the powerful men she believes to have murdered 100 women….The Observer, November 2, 2003

Rights commission scathing in report on Mexican killings: Authorities have failed to solve deaths of 263 women in bordertown Juárez…….The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec), November 27, 2003

Film stars lead Juárez killings march; Morning Star, February 16, 2004

OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

El cineasta Gregory Nava dice que hay 5 mil mujeres desaparecidas en JuárezEl Diario entrevistó al director de cine Gregory Nava, quien se molestó por las preguntas sobre la repetición de mitos y clichés en su película Verdades que matan (“Bordertown”, en inglés). El cineasta dijo que hay más de 5 mil mujeres desaparecidas en Ciudad Juárez y que su película “dice que hay películas snuff, que hay gente robando órganos, que hay asesinos seriales, que hay gente rica que está haciendo esto y está tapado”. …17 de Mayo de 2008http://www.almargen.com.mx/notas.php?IDNOTA=914&IDSECCION=Homicidios%20de%20Mujeres&IDREPORTERO=La%20Redacci%F3n

The film is inspired by the true story of the numerous female homicides in Ciudad Juárez and tells the story of an inquisitive American reporter sent in by her American newspaper to investigate the murders.

500 girls and women disappear and are later killed in Juárez, Mexico, and no one does anything about it. This book, with its explosive conclusions, reveals the high-level protection that allowed the killers to continue living their lives for over a dozen years. The “femicides,” as the murders are called, have spread to other parts of Mexico. This is the real story behind the Hollywood movie.

WorldCat results for: ((su= "Women" AND (su= "Crimes against")) AND su= "Mexico") and (su= "Ciudad Juárez."). (Save Search) Records found: 249 (English: 111) Rank by: Number of Libraries

Year Total Homicides Female Homicides

% of total victims who are women

1988 26 1 4%1989 82 13 16%1990 44 3 7%1991 69 3 4%1992 55 6 11%1993 123 23 18%1994 234 19 8%1995 294 36 12%1996 253 37 15%1997 260 32 12%1998 242 36 15%1999 176 18 10%2000 250 32 13%2001 247 37 15%2002 276 36 13%2003 205 28 13%2004 202 19 9%2005 207 33 16%2006 253 20 8%2007 316 25 8%2008 1623 98 6%2009 2754 183 7%2010 3622 325 9%2011 2086 196 9%2012 797 91 11%

14,696 1,350 9%

Juárez Homicides 1988-2012

Women are 9 percent of victims averaged over 24 years

In the U.S. 1999-2012, about 22 percent of homicide victims each year are women.Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports

Juárez homicide statistics from published research by Julia Monarrez Fragoso and El Diario de Juárez

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 20070

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

Philadelphia MALE HOMICIDES Philadelphia FEMALE HOMICIDESJuarez MALE HOMICIDES Juarez FEMALE HOMICIDES

Juárez / Philadelphia homicides compared Source: Philadelphia Inquirer “Since 1988, over 9,000 people have been slain on the streets of Philadelphia, affecting every neighborhood in the city. To put that deadly toll in perspective, during the length of U.S. combat operations in the Iraq war, 3,517 American troops were killed in action - and 3,113 people were killed in Philadelphia.

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

Philadelphia MALE HOMICIDES Philadelphia FEMALE HOMICIDESJuarez MALE HOMICIDES Juarez FEMALE HOMICIDES

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

22.4%

18.7%17.7%

13.0%

15.6%15.1%

19.0%

14.3%

12.2%

14.7%

17.1%

12.8%

14.7%14.2%

15.3%14.6%

11.8%

9.4%

11.6% 11.2%

9.9%

15.4%

13.1%

11.0%

12.3%

3.8%

15.9%

6.8%

4.3%

10.9%

18.7%

8.1%

12.2%

14.6%

12.3%

14.9%

10.2%

12.8%

15.0%

13.0%13.7%

9.4%

15.9%

7.9% 7.9%

6.0%6.6%

9.0%9.4%

11.4%

% of female murder victims

Philapelphia Juarez

1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

50

100

150

200

250

300

Murder Rate (deaths per 100,000)

Philapelphia Juarez

570. Juárez killings: Women victims are new aspect of ongoing violence across border…El Paso Times (Texas), October 15, 2009 Thursday, OPINION, El Paso Times Staff

602.FEM

Court blasts Mexico for Juárez women's murders El Paso Times (Texas), December 12, 2009 Saturday, NEWS, 1057 words, By Diana Washington Valdez and Aileen B. Flores / El Paso Times ... rez in 2001, the violence against women and girls ...

1000. 'They have been tortured and - in every case - raped'; Since 1993, up to 400 women have been sexually assaulted and murdered in the Mexican city of Juárez and while the attacks continue to this day, the police are no longer even bothering to investigate them. Valerie Shanley reports…Sunday Tribune (Ireland), November 28, 2010

140 / 1,511 are about murders of women9.2 percent = % of female victims 1988-present

Source: Lexis/Nexis searchALL NEWSPAPERS Juárez in HEADLINEAND violence

Academic search (Academic Search Premier, Criminal Justice Abstracts,SOCIndex, MLA…)

Search strategy: Juárez AND violen*Limited to Scholarly/Peer-reviewed journals

Total results: about 111

49 articles (44 percent) are about violence against women; and in the pre-2009 results, almost ALL are about violence against women and Femicide

Cimbran a Juárez 25 masacres en cinco añosMartín OrquizEl Diario | 2013-09-24 | 22:14

Durante los últimos cinco años los fronterizos se han conmocionado por una serie de masacres, donde las víctimas fueron aniquiladas a balazos en ataques perpetrados por igual en viviendas, canchas deportivas, sepelios, restaurantes, centros de rehabilitación, prisiones, bares y la calle.

243 victims in 25 separate mass murder events from August 2008-present in which 6 or more people shot to death at one crime scene

FALLACIES

THOUSANDS of young “factory girls” have been raped, mutilated, murdered and tossed in the desert…women are murdered simply for being women…• Since 1988, about 1,400 women have been killed…about ¾ of them victims of domestic

violence• Many of them were young, but more than half were women older than 25• Only a small percentage of the murder victims were maquiladora employees• Of the 427 cases documented by Esther Chavez between 1990 and 2007, only 12 bodies

showed signs of mutilations• Since the hyperviolence began in 2008, women have been killed in all of the same ways and for

the same reasons that men were killed: shot to death on the street, in their homes… men are assumed to be connected to narco-trafficking and so deserve their fate

• Since 1988, MORE THAN 14,000 MEN HAVE BEEN MURDERED IN Juárez

NONE of the crimes have been solved…authorities don’t care about the murders of young women• Impunity in Juárez is about 98% and applies to ALL crimes, not just the murders of women…• More of the women’s murders have been investigated, some have been solved, some

perpetrators have been jailed…

Impunity for the crimes against women led to the massive numbers of killings in the “drug war” that began in 2008• Impunity is the norm for crimes in Mexico. After 2007, there was less media attention to the

femicides. • This statement was a way to keep telling the same story and to ignore the exploding human

rights catastrophe that had nothing to do with gender.

It does not mean that thesmaller percentage of female victims do not matter, but rather thatALL of the lives—of women, men, boys and girls—ALL of them matter.And that in the current explosion of crime and violence, all of thepeople of Juárez are victims, not only the women. What is happening inJuárez is much more than “femicide.” It is a human rights disaster.

Ni el frío los detiene: matan a cuatro ayerStaffEl Diario | 03-02-2011 | 00:24

The freezing temperatures did not frighten the sicarios who yesterday executed 4 people in separate incidents.

No one was arrested in any of the cases.

Dejan cadáver en terreno baldío; le dejaron caer block en la cabezaStaffEl Diario | 2013-03-04 | 07:27

The body of a man was found this morning in a vacant lot located 100 meters from the intersection of Libramiento Independencia and Ave. de las Torres.

The body was wearing black pants, red plaid sweater and white tennis shoes.

It appeared that the victim died after being struck in the head with a concrete block.

“People are interested in the dead women of Juárez because it's a way not to look at Juárez. If you say it's young girls, 16 to 18, being killed by a serial killer or rich guys for fun or whatever, then you have a finite problem and you don't have to look at the city. And you can ignore the fact that…some 300 women have vanished, depending on who's counting; 2,800 people have died. You can ignore the fact that 700 men have disappeared in the same period. You can pretend that the only problem in Juárez is this bizarre slaughter of young girls, and then you're safe. …And you don't have to deal with the fact that this economic idea we had of border factories… is a goddamned disaster, that it's killing people, that no one can live on the wages, that workers leaving American factories spend two hours getting home to a cardboard shack and they're working 44 to 48 hours a week and you wonder why they get violent.”

Charles Bowden, Interviewed by Scott Carrier on NPR, Day-to-Day, broadcast June 21, 2004

Mother, relatives mourn Eduardo Villalobos Jáquez, 16, killed at the Anexo de Vida rehab center, along with 10 other inmates, September 15, 2009.

She was talking to her son about how he is growing up and how proud she is of him. He became hysterical. He told her he was going to be like Peter Pan and the lost boys and he was never going to grow up. She asked him why he doesn't want to grow up: He said that when a boy becomes a young man then they kill him and no one cares. There are no crosses for the boys like the girls. They blame the boys just because they grew up.

She is from Guadalupe Distrito Bravo. Two of her brothers were murdered. A nephew was disappeared and later found in a mass grave. Another nephew was disappeared, assumed dead, but they have no body to

bury. She has two children, one boy and one girl. Her son suffers from severe anxiety disorder and depression for almost 4 years now. He is 11 years old.

References for getting to the truth of death in Juárez and revealing the femicide fallacy:

Pedro Albuquerque and Prasad Vemala, “A Statistical Evaluation of Femicide Rates in Mexican Cities along the US-Mexico Border,” (Canadian Law and Economics Association (CLEA) 2008 Meetings, 2008.) Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1112308 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1112308 Esther Chavez Cano (d. 2009) and the Esther Chavez Cano Collection. Rio Grande Historical Collections, New Mexico State University Library, Las Cruces, NM. http://lib.nmsu.edu/exhibits/chavezcano/

Scott Carrier, Juárez: City on the Edge. Part 1: Poverty in the Global Economy, Broadcast June 21, 2004, Day-to-Day, National Public Radio. http://hearingvoices.com/transcript.php?fID=119

Jose Perez Espino, Homicidios de Mujeres: La invencion de mitos en los medio y la lucrative teoria de la conspiracion. Al Margen, 20 Feb 2006, http://almargen.com.mx/and, Homicidios de mujeres: nombres, rostros y móvil de los asesinos. Al Margen, 26 April 2009, http://almargen.com.mx/

Erin Frey, “Femicide in Juárez, Mexico: The Hidden Transcript That No One Wants to Read,” (Honors’ Thesis, Branford College Department of History, Yale University, 2008). and “While you were watching: How four hundred murders hid the deaths of thousands, (Unpublished manuscript), 2008.

Adam Jones, “The Murdered Men of Ciudad Juárez,” (published in Spanish Published in Spanish translation in Letras Libres (Mexico), April 2004. http://adamjones.freeservers.com/Juárez.htm Robert Andrew Powell, “The Dead Women of Juárez” (published as a Kindle Single), 2011.  and This Love is Not for Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez, New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.

And: Debbie Nathan, Julia Monarrez Fragoso, Sandra Rodriguez Nieto, Julian Cardona, Charles Bowden, Theresa Westbrock, Felipe Castillo