As reported by United Nations, “violence against women could not be part of an abstraction, reducing it to an individual action, of a determined person, in specific circumstances”. Violence against women is much more than that: “It is a mechanism to maintain the authority of men, reinforcing the patriarchal norms prevailing, and, consequently, to track their causes, one should think in a wider social context as the power relations”. In this sense, the role of culture is one of the main causes of violence against women in its different manifestations. One of these expressions is femicide, which could be phased through culture, as a series of processes, behaviors, power relations, and changing speeches.

Women are murdered every day and every where. They are murdered in armed conflicts or wars; in the streets, related to rapes or with organized crime, prostitution, or snuff pornography; or perpetrated by their husbands, partners or, former partners, all crimes linked to their sexuality or gender related, where the risk factor is to be a woman or a girl.

Meanwhile the concept of violence against women has been adopted and visualized for several decades; that of femicide is more recent, and is equivalent to the concept of genocide: the intention to control or destroy a group totally or partially, in this case, women and girls.

The concept is useful because it indicates the social and generalized character of violence based on gender inequalities and criticizes the arguments that tend to apologize and represent the perpetrators as insane or to qualify these deaths as “passionate crimes”, or to give little importance in situations of conflagrations or war. Both concepts, the “war rapes” and “passionate crimes” perpetuate the idea that aggressor acts possessed by external forces, which are not under his control, --such as love, passion, revenge— meaning that the situation surpasses his control, committing actions which are not under his will, or commonly are justified in the frame of other crimes or offenses.

Femicide or gendercide should be understood in the widest context of domination and masculine control over women, relations normalized in the patriarchal culture, in its multiple forms and ways of perpetrating violence, and permitting its impunity. And in the same manner society forgives; who interprets and applies the laws also forgives.

Some of these crimes are perpetrated in the framework of personal relations, the intimate femicides are forgiven under the argument of violent emotion, passion, etc. This situation only induces and reinforces gendercides with impunity. Consequently, until this is not visible enough and its gravity understood, there will not be effective sanctions.

The feminist movement's struggles of more than three decades have culminated with the recognition that violence against women is an obstacle for development, democracy, and peace. Some important steps have been accomplished on some issues –marital or domestic violence, rapes—but in other fields like prostitution, are still completely vandalized, even though this is a grave form of violence against women and girls, that in countless cases ends in death, or trafficking in persons with sexual commercial exploitation purposes, labor exploitation or trafficking in organs. The United Nations Organization for Drugs and Organized Crime, in its last report, estimated that 87% of trafficking victims are for the sex industry and 90% of such victims are women and girls, most of them poor young women and girls, living in extreme poverty, lacking opportunities and are victims of previous gender violence and discrimination. Prostitution and pornography are, by themselves, manifestations and forms of violence against women. They are an outrageous manifestation of the patriarchal culture that perpetuates stereotypes that reduces the bodies of women and girls to sexual objects for men’s pleasure. Prostitution is the most ancient violence perpetrated against the bodies and lives of women and girls. It is a violation against their dignity and corporal integrity, a power abuse that provokes in the victims severe physical and psychological damages. In sum, the patriarchal social system is based on the differences of sex, gender, economic position, ethnicity, age, disability, or sexual diversity, and all these are experienced as forms of violence against women. We used to say that there were only two forms for colonizing women’s bodies: through the individual property of their bodies, woman-wife, women-mother, women-daughter, --marriage/family – and through the collective property of their bodies, prostitution. Today,however, there are myriad ways and neoliberalism has created these as opportunities for men who see women, or at least particular women as fodder for their use.

Being here, at the First USA Social Forum, we cannot omit to mention one of the most recent known forms of violence against women, femicides during wars, even war against terrorism, war against smuggling, that frequently are associated with mass rapes, as those documented in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, or the Democratic Republic of Congo, to offer just three examples, that have been presented before international organizations and had received recommendations pretending to make an end to impunity.

As per a study undertaken by the Special Commission on Femicides of the Mexican Congress, chaired by the feminist Dr. Marcela Lagarde, 1,205 women and girls were murdered in Mexico during 2004, as established in the data produced by the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Information. Four women and girls were murdered every day during that year. More than six thousand women and girls were murdered during six years, 1999-2005, as reported by the prosecutors of 10 State Governments, under investigation by this Special Commission.

Three women and girls were murdered every day according to the Ander study in the State of México, Veracruz, Chiapas, Guerrero, Federal District, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Sonora, Morelos, and Baja California.

The women and girls murdered in Mexico were of different ages, belonged to all social classes and socioeconomic sectors, but a great majority were poor or marginalized. Others were rich women, of higher classes. Between these we find illiterates, some with only basic education, others were students, technicians, collage students, postgraduates and with academic excellence, even though the majority have very little studies.

In their relation with the perpetrator or perpetrators they were: unknown, known, spouses, relatives, and friends; they were single, married, ex-wives, couples, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, daughters, stepdaughters, mothers, sisters, daughters-in-law, cousins, and mothers-in-law; neighbors, employees, bosses, subordinated, formal and informal workers, common citizens, activist, politicians, and government officials. Most of them were Mexican, and, between them we found Tzotziles, as the Moons of Acteal, other were Raramuris, others Nahuatls; other foreigners.

Most of them were murdered in their houses, others in a variety of places, who knows where. Some of them had signs of sexual violence, in the majority of the bodies there were no signs at all. Some of them were pregnant. Others were disabled women.

Some of them were kept captive, others kidnapped, all of them were tortured, mistreated, they felt fear and were humiliated. Some were beaten to death, others strangled, decapitated, hanged, stabbed, bullet wounds. All were captive, isolated, and unprotected, felt extreme fear, living the most extreme powerlessness, helplessness. All were attacked and suffered violence up to their deaths. Some of their bodies were mistreated even after they had been murdered. Most of the crimes remain in impunity.

Even though official information has been gathered, a great confusion prevails. Some basic data are missing. There is no correspondence between the official data of different governmental agencies, of the civil society organizations, and the data reported by the mass media.

The results are partial and a great majority of the States have yet to be investigated, as well as an ample universe of factors to be considered. In spite of all this, the Special Commission of the Mexican Congress made an outstanding contribution with this investigation. An investigation like this was never before undertaken in Mexico on the femicide violence in these many areas of Mexico.

The results of the research confirm that there is femicide violence in Mexico. ¿Do you have the slightest idea of what is the situation of such an issue in the most patriarchal and violent country of the world? This is not Mexico, but the USA. As Lydia Cacho said: “Until our societies recover compassion. Until the perpetrators pay with jail convictions. Until the education changes the idea of what men should be and what women should be to equality, liberty, love, and respect.”^⁴ UNTIL THEN, WE HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING.

1Presented to the Court of Women, on the occasion of the First USA Social Forum, June 28, 2006, Atlanta, Georgia.

2Regional Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC).

3Lagarde, Marcela. Resumen Informe General de la Comisión Especial de Feminicidios del Congreso de la Unión, México, Septiembre, 2006.

4Cacho, Lydia. Los Demonios del Edén. El poder que protege a la pornografía infantil. Editorial Grijalbo. Colección Actualidad. México, D.F. 2005. pp. 193-198.

Teresa Ulloa Ziáurriz, Regional Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean (CATW-LAC) on Violence Against Women