“If It’s Not Femicide, It’s Still Murder”: Contestations Over Femicide in Nicaragua

• DOI: 10.1177/15570851211037271
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Pamela Neumann
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2022, Vol. 17(1) 139–159

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/15570851211037271

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“If It’s Not Femicide, It’s Still

Murder”: Contestations Over

Femicide in Nicaragua

Pamela Neumann

1



Abstract

Nicaragua has the dubious distinction of being one of the only countries in the world

that has intentionally weakened its existing legislation penalizing the crime of femicide

(femicidio), the murder of women due to their gender. Drawing on ethnographic

fieldwork and content analysis of over 250 newspaper articles, this study examines how

these legal changes occurred and their implications for women’s access to legal justice

in Nicaragua. Through an analysis of the competing claims of state officials and feminist

actors, I demonstrate how femicidio became a contested legal and political category in

Nicaragua, to the detriment of women’s lives.

Keywords

femicide, human rights, law, Nicaragua, qualitative methods

Introduction

Nicaragua is one of the eighteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that has

criminalized femicidio or feminicidio (femicide or feminicide) to date. Femicidio refers

to the murder of women “because they are women,”(Russell, 1992), while feminicidio

encompasses the murder of women because of their gender and the complicity of the

state in these acts (Lagarde, 2010). However, Nicaragua has the dubious distinction of

being one of the few, if not the only, country to intentionally weaken its existing

1

Texas A&M International University, Laredo, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Pamela Neumann, Social Sciences, Texas A&M International University, 5201 University Blvd, Laredo, TX

78041-1900, USA.

Email: pamela.neumann@tamiu.edu

legislation on femicidio. In 2012, Nicaragua passed the Ley Integral Contra La Vio-

lencia Hacia Las Mujeres (hereafter Law 779), which included a provision (Article IX)

codifying femicidio,defined as the murder of a woman committed in the public or

private sphere, by an intimate partner, family member, or a stranger. Just 2ye ars later,in

2014, current President Daniel Ortega (2007–present) issued an executive order de-

limiting the definition of femicidio to those murders of women committed only in the

context of a pre-existing relationship. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted

between 2012 and 2014, and content analysis of over 250 newspaper articles during this

same period, this article chronicles the process by which these legal changes occurred

and analyzes their implications for women’s access to legal justice in Nicaragua. In

particular, I examine the competing claims of state officials and feminist actors

concerning the relative importance or significance of femicidio as a category of social

and political analysis, and as a codified crime distinct from other crimes like murder or

homicide. Ultimately, I argue that these legal and discursive battles have been det-

rimental to women in Nicaragua because they have shifted the focus away from

enhancing Nicaragua’s legal justice system and have further invisibilized the murders

of women in the Central American nation.

Femicide/Feminicide in Latin America

The term femicide was originally coined by Jill Radford and Russell (1992) to refer to

“the misogynist killing of women by men”and later as “the killing of females by males

because they are female”(Russell, 1992). Mexican feminist and legislator Marcela

Lagarde (2005) first proposed the concept of feminicidio (feminicide), a term meant to

encompass both the murder of women on the basis of their gender and the complicity of

the state in these acts. Lagarde’s main contribution with her conceptualization of

feminicidio was to highlight state responsibility for the killings of women, and

therefore, the necessity of state accountability for these murders. Both terms, however,

have served an important legal and political function in Latin America by making

visible the gendered dimensions and characteristics of violence that can be rendered

invisible by the use of non-gender-specific language (Chiarotti, 2011).

Criminalizing femicide/feminicide was not the initial focus of most Latin American

governments. The region’sfirst wave of legislation related to gender-based violence

occurred following the ratification of the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the

Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (Bel´

em do Par´

a).

Under the Bel´

em do Par´

a Convention, states can be held accountable for failing to act

with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish violence against women, whether

committed by state or nonstate actors in the private or public sphere (Benninger-Budel,

2008;Garc´

ıa-Del Moral & Dersnah, 2014). By the end of the 1990s, almost all Latin

American countries had ratified the Bel´

em do Par´

a Convention and passed new

legislation to address domestic violence (Friedman, 2009;Macauley, 2006).

However, the rampant killing of women in Mexico and Central America throughout

the 1990s and early 2000s intensified feminist mobilization, leading to a second round

140 Feminist Criminology 17(1)