***
"Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez." By Kathleen Staudt. University of Texas Press; 160 pages. [excerpt] [barnes & noble] [amazon]
Kathleen Staudt, who is a Professor of Political Science at UTEP and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement, has written previous books on cross-border collaboration, elections, primary education, and women in politics. In "Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juarez," she turns her attention to violence against women in Juarez, from a unique perspective that examines cultural, structural and political factors that contribute to this ugly phenomenon. Staudt gives us great information through a decidedly feminist lens, without sensationalism or any voyeuristic tint.
One of the principal goals of this book was to empirically demonstrate the incidence of violence against women in Juarez. With scant past research to build on, Staudt first submitted proposals for funding in 2002. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was working as the Executive Director of the FEMAP Foundation at the time, and was a co-investigator with Staudt in the study ultimately funded by the Center for Border Health Research, and detailed in Chapter 3. I previously wrote about some of the results in Newspaper Tree. [link] "Promotoras" queried a sample of women aged 15-39 across different geographic and socioeconomic strata, and found that many had direct experience with physical violence. If the sample is generally representative of the larger city, one can extrapolate that there are some 73,000 physically abused women in the city, as well as 26,000 rape victims.
With much media attention focused on the sensational serial murders, many have often ignored or minimized the women killed by their partners. In the fourth chapter, Staudt chronicles the political activism that has surrounded the femicides in Juarez, and its transformation into a general movement for anti-violence. Staudt takes an expansive look at the demonstrations, the theater, the frustrations and sometimes infighting of organizations, and even the accusation from victims’ families about profit being derived from their tragedies. Activism, at times through overly dramatized symbols, is clearly a motivation for change and has been a key component to furthering “insider” response.
The final chapter contrasts the legal systems between the U.S. and Mexico, and the institutional flaws that exist in documenting and prosecuting violent crimes. This was by far the most eye-opening part of the book for me, and if one can find any hope in her findings, it is that there is such great room for improvement. Few women in Juarez report violent incidents to the police, and there is little if any follow-through. However, governmental awareness has steadily increased since Chihuahua reformed its rape laws in 2001, and the local violence has helped to shed light on what is a national problem.
Juarez remains beset with instability and fear, and although the femicides have persisted since publication of this book, they have been drowned out by the carnage from the drug wars between and within cartels. More than 700 people have been murdered in Juarez this year alone. Yet Juarez is booming; the U.S./Mexico border is more and more attractive given its proximity to the world’s largest market, especially as shipping costs from Asia rise. San Jerónimo is positioning itself as a magnet for new factories, and the regional population keeps growing. Any perception of instability is a threat to economic development, so the business community clearly has a stake in making Juarez safer, and NGO’s need its support. Yet Staudt points out that at some level, the business community has often been more concerned about the image of Juarez than the reality, as is exemplified in the wording of one of the goals of Plan Juarez, “to change the image of police impunity.”
This book raises some uncomfortable questions about the kind of community being created through globalization, as well as the American consumer’s complicity in a system that Staudt terms neocolonial. She does not shy away from a discussion on economic violence. Some clearly will not agree with this framework, but her findings are difficult to dispute. And few people would be able to sit through some of the sessions held throughout her study and listen to stories of women without being profoundly moved.
For me, this book showed empiric evidence of two disturbing realities in Juarez: a pervasive sadness and fear among women, and a system of law enforcement that is broken. Staudt is ultimately interested in prevention. Her work with the El Paso Police Department and the El Paso Center Against Family Violence has shown that proper training and education are factors in reducing the incidence of violence. Juarez is tragically lacking many of the resources that could help reduce a terrible human toll. Yet with a further understanding of the magnitude of this problem and a look at tools that have worked elsewhere, her hope is that our two communities can come together with solutions, teach preventive strategies, and ultimately save lives. This should be a unifying and noncontroversial theme as Juarez grows and moves further into the 21st century.
***
Vanessa Johnson is the former publisher of Newspaper Tree. She is currently living in Douglas, Alaska.
