Feminicidio, Transnational Feminist Human Rights Activism, and the Politics of Shaming

• In Event: 175 - Section on Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender Activism and the Global South

Abstract

In this paper, I analyze how feminicidio was turned into a frame to shame the Mexican state and how it responded to this shaming, especially in the aftermath of the 2009 landmark judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in the case of González and Others “Cotton Field” v. Mexico. The IACtHR declared that the Mexican state had failed to act with due diligence to effectively prevent, investigate, and punish the sexual abuse and brutal murders of three young women in Ciudad Juárez in November 2001. First, I discuss the transformation of feminicidio from an academic concept into a frame to shame the Mexican state through transnational feminist activism. I suggest that political and discursive opportunities produced in this process allowed feminicidio activists to seek the resonance of this frame nationally and internationally, with different degrees of success. I further examine the criminalization of feminicidio in Mexican law and Mexico’s efforts to introduce this concept in the agenda of the UN, especially in the aftermath of the Court’s decision. I ask whether Mexico’s politics toward feminicidio represent the co-optation of the term as a way to redeem its international image? Or can the institutionalization of feminicidio constitute genuine social change and thus a triumph of feminist transnational advocacy? I argue that the answers to these questions are not mutually exclusive and link my analysis to what Ferree (2003) calls the “costs of resonance” for feminist politics.

Author

• Paulina Garcia del Moral, University of Toronto