The gender-based violence that runs through Mexico is expressed in the most extreme form in the high rate of femicides in its border areas. According to a report by Mexico’s Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, there are at least 10 femicides a day in the country. Ciudad Juarez is a border city with the United States, with 1.5 million inhabitants, and is marked by gender violence and organized crime. In the last three decades the city has registered more than 2,300 femicides and in January 2022 there were 11 femicides.

Previously, the murders of women were classified as passional crimes, which was a mitigating factor in their conviction. The Ciudad Juarez cases gave rise to the term femicide, allowing it to be classified as a gender-based homicide of a woman. 

The women who disappear or are murdered in Ciudad Juarez share certain common traits: they are between 15 and 25 years of age, have a low socioeconomic level, straight hair, an average height of 1.60 cm, live in the outskirts, are migrants and work in maquila industry, factories that assemble raw materials for the manufacture of tariff-free products.

These femicides have been linked to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the intensification of gender violence, the increase in drug trafficking and the organized crime attracted to this strategically located zone disputed by drug gangs.

The signing of NAFTA in 1992 enabled the installation in Ciudad Juarez of tax-exempt U.S.-owned maquiladoras, which attracted rural populations in search of job opportunities, especially low-income women. The maquiladoras constantly demand temporary workers who are subject to exploitative and precarious labor conditions. Far from generating an improvement in the development of the area, the demographic increase led to a surge in drug trafficking, organized crime and femicides. In fact, many of the femicide victims were employed in the maquiladoras.

The first femicides in Ciudad Juarez were recorded in 1993 and were followed by an increasing trend of femicides. Concern about the issue became widespread with the “Campo Algodonero” case. In 2001, the bodies of eight women between 15 and 20 years of age were found with clear signs of violence and rape. Given the lack of response, the victims’ relatives filed a complaint with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which held the State of Mexico responsible for failing to comply with the Convention to Prevent, Punish and Eradicate Violence against Women and for violating the Right to Life, Right to Personal Integrity, Judicial Guarantees, Rights of the Child and Judicial Protection. 

Later, in 2012, the skeletal remains of at least 24 women were found in a clandestine cemetery near El Navajo Creek in the Juarez Valley, 94 km from the U.S. border. The Attorney General’s Office claimed that the women were kidnapped and subjected to sexual exploitation in Ciudad Juarez and then murdered and abandoned in clandestine cemeteries far from the city. The Hotel Verde was also identified as the building where the trafficking ring operated and where the victims were sexually exploited between 2008 and 2011. 

Although five people were held responsible for the kidnapping, sexual exploitation and murder of 11 of the women, experts, family members and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights pointed out irregularities in the investigations and demand justice for the women who were excluded from the judicial process. 

Femicides continue to grow, the search for justice has not ceased and several international veredicts pointed out the lack of rigor in the investigations and the absence of an adequate response from the Mexican Government.