ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comprehensive, historical overview of feminicidio in Ciudad Juárez since 1993, and I argue that the horrors of the crimes are best communicated when viewed through distinct conceptual and thematic frameworks. These include ideas rehearsed extensively in the media, academy and public sphere around the corrosive impact of globalized labour practices and the notion of Ciudad Juárez itself as a monstrous, grotesque entity that, in the words of its critics, is devouring its children. I also consider necropolitics, frequently isolated as a framework through which the crimes against women might be evaluated. In alignment with these strands of thinking is the constant mediatic, legal and societal reframing of women through narratives of contaminated femininity interlaced with anxiety about the enhanced presence of women in the local workforces, symbolized by the maquilas, or the assembly plants that span the length of the US-Mexico border. The chapter concludes by evaluating perspectives on masculinity from within scholarship on feminicidio, arguing that it is central to any understanding of the levels of violence against women in this northern border city.
