NAFTA’s Dark Side, and the Bloody Link Between Economic Exploitation and Femicide

Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border town just South of El Paso has become one of the most prevalent and horrifying sites of gender-based killings, taking the lives of over fifty thousand women since 2001.

But how did this perilous town become such a hotspot for femicide? The answer can be found in the seemingly harmless trade agreement known as the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enacted in 1994, creating a bloody link between economic exploitation and femicide.

At first glance, NAFTA may seem like a list of productive policies enacted to further economic integration, yet the reality is far more jarring. This agreement lifted tariffs on most goods produced in North America, allowing for free trade between Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

After NAFTA went into effect, companies, such as General Motors, General Electric, and Philips, established factories in Ciudad Juárez. The expansion of such factories allowed these companies to obtain cheap labor and tax incentives, motivating more and more companies to expand to Ciudad Juárez.

These export factories, known as maquiladoras, employed mainly women workers, so much so that in certain assembly lines the ratio of women to men is five to one. Unfortunately, the working conditions of these factories were abysmal at best, paying an average of only five dollars a day and consequently forcing most workers to live in areas known as “colonias” with poor housing conditions and no running water or electricity.

As these issues progressed, companies didn’t enact policy to improve the poor working and living conditions of their workers. With no one to advocate for these women, crimes against them went largely undocumented and untouched. Killings and rapes increased, and the perpetrators were rarely prosecuted or punished. In fact, only about two percent of cases regarding femicide in Ciudad Juárez end in criminal sentences, highlighting the lack of justice for this violence. This process began a dangerous cycle of femicide, with women continuing to be killed without justice.

However, in 2020, the US, Mexico, and Canada replaced their agreement with the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) which implemented a tangential goal to create more labor protections for workers in factories. However, as of now there is little evidence that this agreement has significantly decreased the femicide occuring in Ciudad Juárez.

Amnesty International documented 370 cases of women murdered in and around Ciudad Juárez over a 10 year cycle, they found that at least 137 victims also faced some sexual violence and at least 70of the women murdered were never even identified.

However, interestingly, it may not just be the factories at blame for these killings, but also a subset of cultural attitudes toward women within (some) Mexican communities. For some, women becoming factory workers was viewed as a sort of defiance to traditional gender roles, meaning that a majority of the women working at maquiladoras have left their families or had little family in the first place. Some individuals, including the police force, considered these women to be “invaluable” because they did not fit into traditional society, leading to a lack of true investigation and protection effort from the police force.

As these killings continue to go unnoticed, the number of deaths only continue to rise. Norma Andrade, an activist for femicide who lost her daughter, Lilia Alejandra, to the factories of Ciudad Juárez describes this phenomenon of hidden femicide, stating that, “In Mexico, the growing number of disappearances is real, but this boom in organized crime and drug trafficking has erased what is happening to women, not that it stopped happening, but it is becoming invisible…”

Ms. Andrade’s story is not unique. As thousands of family members continue to grieve, justice continues to seem like a far away dream, the lack of transparency and visibility for these women furthering barriers toward change.

As of now, one of the most important actions that can be taken is spreading activists’ stories and continuing to share the truth of femicide within Ciudad Juárez with the media. Garnering public support, which is not yet strong enough, is vital to eventually urge companies to enact more habitable working conditions and the police force to take a more aggressive approach to protecting women.

If Ciudad Juárez femicides continue to be pushed into the shadows of society, there is no telling how many more victims could go unnoticed. Now is the time to act. It is time to address the justice that so many Ciudad Juárez women have been deprived of for decades and end the femicide once and for all.