Mexico’s drug cartels are sometimes described as highly effective rivals to the state, with their affect measured in weapons, cash and murdered officers. However this framing misses a elementary fact. Organised crime in Mexico can also be a system of gendered governance – one which disciplines, controls and generally eliminates ladies to consolidate energy.
The time period “narco-femicide” captures this brutal dynamic. Narco-femicide refers not merely to the killing of girls, however to the strategic use of gendered violence by prison organisations to implement social norms, keep management and assert dominance within the absence – and even with the complicity – of the state.
Based on a research by Lantia Intelligence, a Mexico-based information intelligence agency, organised crime was liable for 60% of femicides in Mexico in 2020. That yr, 1,891 ladies have been violently murdered by drug cartels – a rise of practically 40% in comparison with 2018.
These murders should not non-public tragedies, nor are they collateral injury. They’re political acts, central to how prison sovereignty in Mexico is exercised and reproduced.
Mexico has one of many highest charges of femicide in Latin America. Based on Amnesty Worldwide, roughly ten ladies have been murdered there daily all through 2020. In cities such because the border city of Ciudad Juárez, which was as soon as labelled the “femicide capital of the world”, these deaths are marked by sexual violence, mutilation and public show.
The causes of femicide in Mexico do differ. However a big proportion of those murders happen in areas reminiscent of Jalisco, Guerrero and Chihuahua, the place there’s a robust cartel presence. The correlation isn’t any coincidence.
Because the Atlantic Council, a world affairs thinktank, noticed in 2024: “in areas [of Mexico] controlled by drug cartels, violence against women intensifies”. It added that households usually gained’t report abuse or rape “out of fear of retribution”.
The identical article mentioned that cartels flip assaults on ladies into “a tool of intimidation and a display of dominance”, warning the group to not defy them. The impunity of cartel violence, and examples of brutal public punishment, implement an unwritten code that girls should “know their place”.
Femicide in cartel-run areas follows a definite sample. Ladies are punished for being too seen, unbiased or defiant of the patriarchal order imposed by prison teams. The victims embrace journalists, enterprise house owners and others who pose no army menace however symbolize a problem to social management by ultimately defying the cartels.
A member of Mexico’s nationwide guard on the web site of a cartel capturing in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, on February 16.
Roberto Ricci Arballo / Shutterstock
One outstanding instance is Marisol Macías, a journalist who was killed in 2011 within the border metropolis of Nuevo Laredo after denouncing native gangs on the web. She was decapitated and a handwritten signal was left beside her physique saying she was killed in retaliation for her social media posts.
Extra lately, in July 2024, Minerva Pérez Castro, the president of an advocacy group for Mexico’s fishing trade, was shot useless hours after making public feedback in regards to the presence of unlawful fishing within the state of Baja California. Organised crime teams have lengthy participated in unlawful fishing in northern Mexico.
Even when ladies are concerned in organised crime, their roles stay precarious. They’re valued solely insofar as they serve the cartels’ pursuits, and are simply disposed of in the event that they change into liabilities.
A 2016 report by Amnesty Worldwide discovered that gangs routinely recruit weak younger ladies to do “the lowest and most dangerous tasks”, reminiscent of smuggling medication or performing as lookout, exactly as a result of they’re “considered expendable if arrested”.
The place is the state?
What makes narco-femicide in Mexico so devastating is not only the violence itself, however the vacuum on the subject of accountability – or worse – the precise collusion of the state. In lots of areas of Mexico, regulation enforcement is unwilling or unable to analyze femicides.
Disappearances go unrecorded and households face indifference or hostility when demanding solutions. Actually, in response to Amnesty Worldwide, greater than 90% of femicides in Mexico go unpunished. This impunity is a structural failure.
The boundary between prison and state energy is blurred in areas the place there’s a robust cartel presence. Police, politicians and prison teams usually function in overlapping networks, leaving little house for real accountability.
In the meantime, Mexico’s safety technique has been closely formed by the US-funded Mérida Initiative. Signed in 2007, the initiative deepened safety help from the US to Mexico to combat organised crime.
The Mérida Initiative formally led to 2021, however Mexico’s technique stays centered on army operations towards crime teams and the arrest of cartel kingpins. This has diverted consideration from much-needed reforms in native policing and justice, perpetuating impunity and weakening belief in establishments.
By failing to guard ladies, the state successfully legitimises the cartels’ patriarchal rule. In consequence, many Mexican ladies live below a shadow authorized system enforced by cartel violence, one the place stepping exterior the traces can carry lethal penalties.
Ladies march in Mexico Metropolis in 2022 in protest towards hovering ranges of gender-based violence.
artcgix / Shutterstock
Narco-femicide calls for a response that strikes past militarised crackdowns and technocratic reforms. Mexico wants insurance policies that prioritise community-based justice, survivor-led advocacy and gender-sensitive policing. The experiences of girls and frontline defenders have to be central in each analysis and public the talk.
The issue additionally must be named for what it’s. Narco-femicide will not be a non-public horror or a cultural anomaly. It’s political violence that’s perpetrated systematically and strategically.
If organised crime governs by the management and erasure of girls, then any significant resistance should start by making that violence seen. Cartels and the state should each be held accountable, and these deaths should not be handled as inevitable.
