Browsing by Author "Barker, Julie"

In 1993, the kidnapped, tortured, humiliated, mutilated and raped bodies of women started appearing in the streets, desert and open spaces of Ciudad Juárez. This marked the beginning of a feminicidal outbreak in Ciudad Juárez which has yet to cede. The outbreak of the feminicide epidemic of Ciudad Juárez coincided with the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Mexico, the United States and Canada. I have approached the subject by bringing together contemporary feminist, economic, judicial and political theory. By examining how transnational, national and local processes have interacted, and as a result shaped, and re-shaped traditional gender roles in Mexico, we are able to understand how global processes that involve rapid neoliberal transformations in patriarchal societies create conditions of vulnerability and dispossession – and ultimately, a landscape that fosters gender-based violence, and feminicide, affecting not only women, but entire communities. I find that the causes of the feminicidal outbreak in Ciudad Juárez is inseparable from various forms of systemic abuse that women have been subjected to by transnational corporations operating in Ciudad Juárez. In addition, I find that the feminicides of Ciudad Juárez are a direct result of the investor privileges that have been guaranteed under the NAFTA that virtually immunize the transnational investor from accountability to harm to the employee, anticipated or not, when conducting business in Mexico.