ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses activists’ responses to feminicide in northern Mexico from the late 1990s to the present. Specifically, I examine the mothers’ cross campaign, which was launched in 1999 to protest the way in which state authorities handled feminicide cases. Over the years, the mothers’ cross campaign has become a prominent symbol of the fight to end impunity. While most families have yet to see justice delivered in their daughters’ cases, the cross campaign is as a permanent reminder of the cruelty of the patriarchal state and its attempt to expunge the victims from our present and future memory. Thus, in addition to serving as a powerful reminder of feminicide victims, the mothers’ cross campaign challenges dominant narratives that have simultaneously silenced and celebrated the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez in the last decades. By offering these reflections, this chapter expands existing scholarship on feminicide and memory studies by theorising the mother’s cross campaign as an enactment of mnemonic justice.
