Making a Killing - 9780292723177

"The editor has done a superb job of collecting essays that examine the murders of women in Jußrez within a feminist framework. All of the essays demonstrate in some way the manner in which a severely harsh, patriarchal order in Mexico permits the horrific 'femicides' to continue into the twenty-first century."-Emma PTrez, Associate Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder

Since 1993, more than five hundred women and girls have been murdered in Ciudad Jußrez, across the border from El Paso, Texas. At least a third have been sexually violated and mutilated as well. Thousands more have been reported missing and remain unaccounted for. The crimes have been poorly investigated and have gone unpunished and unresolved by Mexican authorities, thus creating an epidemic of misogynist violence on an increasingly globalized U.S.-Mexico border.

This book, the first anthology to focus exclusively on the Jußrez femicides, as the crimes have come to be known, complies several different scholarly "interventions" from diverse perspectives, including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, semiotics, and textual analysis. Editor Alicia Gaspar de Alba shapes a multidisciplinary analytical framework for considering the interconnections among gender, violence, and the U.S.-Mexico border. The essays examine the social the social and cultural conditions that have led to the heinous victimizations of women on the border-from globalization, free trade agreements, exploitative maquiladora working conditions, and border politics, to the sexist attitudes that pervade the social discourse about the victims. The book also explores the evolving social movement that has been created by NGO's, mothers' organizing efforts, and other grassroots forms of activism related to the crimes. Contributors include U.S. and Mexican scholars and activists, as well as two mothers of femicide victims who offer personal testimonies.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a native of the El Paso/Jußrez border, is Professor and Chair of the CTsar Chßvez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UCLA. She has published eight other books.

Geogina Guzmßn is a PhD candidate in English at UCLE. Her dissertation explores Chicanas/os' relation to "menial" and/or immigrant labor and their working-class parents' labor as reflected in Chicana/o Literature.