Femicide and Feminicide in Mexico: Patterns and Trends in Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Regions

• Author: Sonia M. Frías
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211029377
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/15570851211029377

Feminist Criminology

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DOI: 10.1177/15570851211029377

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Article

Femicide and Feminicide in

Mexico: Patterns and Trends

in Indigenous and

Non-Indigenous Regions

Sonia M. Frías1

Abstract

The killing of women in Mexico has attracted both national and international

attention. Many of these homicides are regarded as feminicides, which are defined

as the misogynistic killing of women for reasons of gender rooted in ideological

and structural gender inequalities. This study examines changes and continuities in

female homicides and femicides from 2001 to 2017 in indigenous and non-indigenous

municipalities. Female homicides have increased at a higher rate than femicides, but

the latter has increased at a higher rate in indigenous municipalities than in non-

indigenous municipalities. This is associated with an increase in gender equality

in a context of conflict and structural discrimination against indigenous peoples.

Implications for future research and public interventions are discussed.

Keywords

femicide, ethnicity, measuring crime, international issues, homicide

Introduction

Since Felipe Calderón’s inauguration as president of Mexico in 2006, national and

international news have been replete with stories of brutal murders happening in the

country. However, by the end of the 1990s, the killing of females for gender reasons—

also called feminicide—in Chihuahua had already captured both national and

international attention (Monárrez Fragoso, 2002). Femicide is the most extreme

expression of gender violence committed against women. The term was coined by

Diana H. Russell in 1976 at the first International Tribunal on Crimes against Women

1National Autonomous University of Mexico, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México

Corresponding Author:

Sonia M. Frías, Regional Center for Multidisciplinary Research, National Autonomous University of

Mexico, Avenida Universidad s/n, 2° Circuito, Col. Chamilpa, Cuernavaca, Morelos 62210, México.

Email: sfrias@crim.unam.mx

1029377

FCXXXX10.1177/15570851211029377Feminist CriminologyFrías

research-article2021

2023, Vol. 18(1) 3–23

4 Feminist Criminology 18(1)

and defined as “the killing of females by males because they are female.” Femicide

was a term already used in the Anglo-Saxon lexicon, but “Russell added critical politi-

cal meaning to it and placed it within a broader feminist politics framework” (Grzyb

et al., 2018, p. 20). Afterward, Radford and Russell (1992) refined the definition to the

misogynistic killing of women by men motivated by hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a

sense of ownership over women. It is a phenomenon that needs to be investigated in

“the context of the overall oppression of women in a patriarchal society” (Radford,

1992, cited in Corradi et al., 2016, p. 3). Since the 1990s, the definition of femicide has

evolved to “the killings of females by males because they are females”1 and “the kill-

ing of a female because she is a female.” This aimed at capturing the fact that some

women might be killed by other women.

In Mexico, Lagarde (2006) borrowed the term “femicide” and transformed it into

“feminicide.” In Spanish, femicide (femicidio) can be understood as the feminine of

homicide (homicidio). To emphasize that many female homicides are perpetrated for

gender reasons, Lagarde (2006, 2010) translated the term as “feminicide” and expanded

Russell’s definition to include the impunity of these crimes and the neglectful manner

in which the State addresses them.

Feminicidal violence is the extreme, the culmination of many forms of gender violence

against women that represent an attack on their human rights and that lead them to various

forms of violent death. In many cases, these forms of gender violence are tolerated by

society and the State; at other times, citizens live feminicidal violence with powerlessness,

for there are few channels available for the enforcement of rights (Lagarde, 2010, p. xxi)

Russell claims that the inclusion of the term “impunity” is problematic because “a

sound definition must separate the phenomenon being defined from the response to

it.” According to Lagarde’s definition, if the killing of a woman for gender reasons is

punished, it would not be considered “feminicide.” Nevertheless, I use the term femi-

nicide because it is broadly used in the Latin-American region (Toledo Vázquez,

2009).

In Mexico, feminicide has been addressed from different perspectives as a social

and public health problem. Qualitative research on feminicide is centered on either the

analysis of criminal files (Arteaga Botello & Valdés Figueroa, 2010), newspapers

(Alcocer Perulero, 2014; Martin & Carvajal, 2016), or both sources combined with

ethnographic data that offer an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon (Aguilar

Gutiérrez & Aguilar Hernández, 2019; Luna Blanco, 2019; Monárrez Fragoso, 2000).

Quantitative research uses either administrative records based on law enforcement

cases investigated as feminicides or mortality records, which tend to consider all kill-

ings of women as feminicides (Bejarano Celaya, 2014; Incháustegui, 2014; SEGOB

et al., 2016; Valdivia & Castro, 2013). These quantitative studies fail to reveal the true

scope of the phenomenon because not all feminicides are investigated as such (Luna

Blanco, 2019; Quintana Osuna, 2018), and not all female murders are perpetrated for

gender reasons. Expanding on this, Torreblanca and Merino (2017) explain that, based

on existent data, differentiating between female homicides and feminicides is