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Feminist theologian Nancy Pineda-Madrid remembers Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, before it became one of the most violent cities on earth.
During her childhood, Pineda-Madrid lived in El Paso, Texas, directly across the border from Juárez, which she recalls as “a bustling, active and vibrant city” with streets full of people. Her memories include shopping trips, weekly family dinners at a local restaurant, and a large high school graduation party that brought together families from El Paso and Juárez.
“I had a connection and love for Juárez that was very significant throughout my childhood and young adult years. There was a real sense of community,” said Pineda-Madrid, an assistant professor in the School of Theology and Ministry.
So when she returned there last October for a conference on the high number of women murdered in Juárez, she was stunned at the emptiness she saw.
“It was eerie. You see a lot of buildings boarded up. It’s clear there is a fear in the city. Any woman walking around the streets of Juárez feels a sense of tension and anxiety.”
According to international crime data, Juárez — with more than 3,000 murders in 2010 — is one of the most dangerous places in which to live. It is particularly unsafe for young girls and women, hundreds of whom have been systemically beaten, raped and murdered. The violence in Juárez against women — typically poor females aged 10 to 30 — is classified by many scholars as “feminicide” because it is a widespread killing based on gender, conducted in a very brutal and gruesome manner with impunity.
In her new book Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Juárez, Pineda-Madrid takes a look at the violence against women in Juárez and seeks to identify messages about salvation that can be found in the actions of women who are resisting the violence.
“Any experience of extreme suffering and any form of mass killing forces questions of faith and hope,” said Pineda-Madrid, the first theologian to write a book about the feminicide in Juárez. “Many theologians remarked after Auschwitz that Christian theology could not be done the same way. I don’t think we can look at the Christian faith and Christian theology in the same way in light of this incidence of feminicide in Juárez.”
The feminicide in Juárez shows no signs of abating, says Pineda-Madrid: In the first 10 months of 2011, 220 women are known to have been killed. “It is not simply a gunshot to the head. The women are raped. Their bodies are disfigured. It is a clear attack on gender.”
Most human rights watchers, scholars and journalists trace the beginning of the feminicide to 1993, just prior to the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). According to Pineda-Madrid, NAFTA precipitated two critical trends: The US-Mexican border became very porous, and hundreds of maquiladora factories — factories in Mexico manufacturing goods for US corporations — were established in Juárez.
While a more accessible border suited business interests by easing the entry of maquiladora-made goods into the US for distribution, it also attracted drug traffickers looking to establish supply routes into the United States, explained Pineda-Madrid. “That shifted the climate in the city very dramatically. The violence in the city as a whole escalated.” Evidence indicates girls and women were killed for sport or as a way for drug cartels to mark their territory or celebrate a successful drug run across the border, she said.
But not all of the blame for the changes in Juárez can be placed on the cartels and drug traffic, said Pineda-Madrid, pointing to other complex economic and social shifts. “When the maquiladora factories came to Juárez, the owners hired women because they felt they were less likely to demand a just wage and more willing to work in conditions that were not ideal. Unlike men, they were docile and wouldn’t complain. So there is social tension in the household now, because men typically have been the breadwinners.”
And because there are so many women, the factory owners can easily replace them when they become burned out. “There is this notion that women are disposable that leads to the devaluation of female lives,” said Pineda-Madrid.
In Suffering and Salvation, Pineda-Madrid offers a “sharp critique of patriarchy, the underlying ideology which really sustains and supports a lot of what is going on. Patriarchy is a problem around the globe and what we are seeing in Juárez is its most horrific and extreme expression.”
A turning point in the violence against women came in November 2001, according to Pineda-Madrid, when over two days the bodies of eight murder victims were deposited at a busy intersection. “That became a horrific example of the impunity that the perpetrators felt they had. As a result, many of the groups that had been protesting came together under one umbrella group called Ni Una Mas (Not One More).”
Hundreds of people carrying pink crosses participated in a 230-mile march, called Exodo por Vida (Exodus for Life), from Chihuahua City to Juárez. At the end, the marchers erected a very large pink cross at the Paso del Norte Bridge that connects Juárez and El Paso, and hung white strips of paper bearing the victims’ names on a board.
“I feel there was a theological connection clearly being made to the crucifixion of Jesus and the recognition that many women are being crucified through this feminicide.”
Since then, says Pineda-Madrid, pink crosses have gone up all across Juárez; every time another body is found, a cross is erected with the name of the victim.
“It’s making, I think, a radical statement linking female humanity to crucifixion in a way that jars the imagination. We don’t imagine crucifixion in this way. My theological interpretation is that there’s also a linking not only to the crucifixion but ultimately to the resurrection. There is an affirmation of life that extends beyond the suffering they know. They’re recognizing that these brutal deaths that their daughters have experienced are not the last word and ultimate meaning of their daughters’ lives.”
But there is additional reason for concern in Juárez, according to Pineda-Madrid, as “the powers that be are trying to intimidate and silence those individuals — activists and journalists — who want to make the feminicide more publicly known. The violence against activists and resisters is making people in Juárez pull back and the hope now is that international pressure will be put to bear on the situation.”
Pineda-Madrid sums up the message that is at the heart of her book: “Suffering brought on by collective evil, and our corresponding drive for release from such suffering, reveals that community is a necessary condition for the possibility of salvation.”
Pineda-Madrid, who received funding from the Louisville Institute to write Suffering and Salvation, also credits support from the Theology Department, of which she was a member when she did her research, and the influence of a course on social suffering taught by Theology Associate Professor Shawn Copeland.