Feminicidio, narcoviolence, and gentrification in Ciudad Juarez: the feminist fight

The fight against impunity continues along Mexico's border, especially in the industrial hub of Ciudad Juarez. In the 1990s feminists brought this fight to international attention as they launched a transnational justice movement against feminicidio, the killing of women with impunity. In this paper I create a feminist and Marxist frame to show that there is much to be learned from the fight against feminicidio for the ongoing struggles in a border city that is now also notorious for juvenicidio, the killing of youth with impunity, which is occurring in relation to the Mexican government's declaration of war against organized crime. By situating these justice struggles within a context of North American securitization and neoliberal gentrification along the Mexico-US border, I argue that the feminist fight against impunity exposes the synergy of symbolic and material processes within the drug war. And I argue that this synergy seeks to generate value through the extermination of whole populations, especially of working poor women and their families in this border city today.