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ERIC Number: EJ760976
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007
Pages: 34
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0005-2604
EISSN: N/A
Gender, Order, and Femicide: Reading the Popular Culture of Murder in Ciudad Juarez
Volk, Steven S.; Schlotterbeck, Marian E.
Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, v32 n1 p53-86 Spr 2007
More than 400 women have been murdered in and around Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over the past decade. As the murders continue unabated and unsolved, and with the likely complicity of state authorities, they have triggered a dynamic cultural response from writers, filmmakers, singers, and others who deplore the murders while suggesting the underlying causes of the femicides. Our article examines three of these responses: the photojournalism of Julian Cardona, a novel by Carlos Fuentes, and a song by Los Tigres del Norte. We conclude that even as these artists express a profound sympathy for the victims' plight, their representations, which are based on patriarchal binaries of male dominance and female submissiveness, act to revictimize the women. Since for these cultural producers, it was women's active incorporation into the wage labor force as assembly plant workers that generated Juarez's "disorder," then it follows that "order" will only be restored when female passivity is reasserted. We also explore how the work of feminist critics, specifically Alicia Gaspar de Alba, challenges this approach by highlighting female/subaltern resistance, addressing the victims' basic rights, and raising vital questions about gender identity on a highly militarized border. (Contains 4 figures, 6 notes and 12 resources.)
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. 193 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1544. Tel: 310-794-9380; Tel: 310-825-2642; Fax: 310-206-1784; e-mail: press@chicano.ucla.edu; Web site: http://www.chicano.ucla.edu/press
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Mexico
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A