Women In Juarez Aff

1AC
Irma Monreal like many others has experienced the loss of a loved one due to treatment of women in Ciudad Juarez. Althaus 10 Mexico City Bureau Chief for Houston Chronicle
Dudley Ciudad Juarez Women still being Tortured by Killers [http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Ciudad-Juarez-women-still-beingtortured-by-1703010.php] CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico From her mountainside neighborhood of dirt streets and cramped concrete houses, Irma Monreal can scan the lights of the city beyond, so pregnant with promise, so choked with sorrow. Monreal arrived penniless to this borderland mecca just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, toiling in its industrial bowels for 20 years. She scratched out a proud new life for herself and seven children a life that now shoulders an unquenchable pain. Tucked amid the lights below, an irrigation ditch slices bone-dry through a fallow cotton field. Three wooden crosses, pink and frail, cling to the trench's weed-choked lip. Fading sentinels to the horror this dirt embraces, the crosses mark where searchers recovered the defiled bodies of three young women. One of those girls was Monreal's 15-year-old daughter, Esmeralda. Savagely tortured and murdered in 2001, Esmeralda is among nearly 500 teenagers and young women factory workers, shop clerks, prostitutes who have been murdered here since 1993. Hundreds more have simply vanished. For years, Mexican authorities have promised an end to the slaughter and the disappearances. Movies have been filmed about the butchery, books and countless articles written, protest marches marched. Under intense public pressure, police investigations were launched, task forces formed, suspects arrested.

These rapes are not considered legitmate LAURA BARBERN REINARES in 2010 ("Globalized Philomels: State Patriarchy, Transnational Capital,
and the Femicides on the US-Mexican Border in Roberto Bolaos 2666" South Atlantic Review: The Journal of the Modern Language Association 75.4 (Fall 2010): 51-72.)

The U.S.-Mexican border es una herida abierta [is an open wound] Where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds- Gloria Anzalda the semantics of neoliberalism and subaltern Womens rape American readers may remember the dreadful case of a female jogger raped in Central Park in 1989; if only vaguely, you may perhaps recall that the incident prompted Donald Trump to take out
a full-page ad in ourNew York newspapers demanding that New York Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police (Crenshaw 184-5). Miraculously, the victim survived the brutal attack, but her case outraged the community and was widely reported and assiduously followednow there is even a Wikipedia entry

under Central Park Jogger case explaining the nuances of the horror that this white, Yaleeducated woman, who at the time worked in investment banking, endured. Without minimizing the completely undeserved violation this woman suffered, I am curious about the reactionmore specifically, whose reactionthis case generated, especially considering that there were 3,254 other cases of rape reported in New York that year, twenty-eight during

that fateful week alone (185): Many of these rapes were as horrific as the rape in Central Park,yet all were virtually ignored by the media. Some were gang rapes, and in a case that prosecutors described as one of the most brutal in recent years, a woman was raped, sodomized,and thrown fifty feet off the top of a four-story building in Brooklyn. Witnesses testified that the victim screamed as she plunged down the air shaft. . . . She suffered fractures of both ankles and legs, her pelvis was shattered and she suffered internal injuries. This rape survivor, like most of the other forgotten victims that week, was a woman of color [and, if I may add, of a different social class]. (185)Explaining why the Central Park jogger spiraled into a
media spectacle and prompted the intervention of a New York-based real estate mogul would be stating the obvious. The reason all the other cases generated little or no attention seems, admittedly, embarrassing. The above case, though utterly unfortunate, suggests a clear difference between victims of sexual violence who

receive attention and action and those ignored because of their worthlessness in terms of class and race within the current neoliberal model. The insignificance of the abject presence of subaltern third-world is paradoxical in light of the fact that they have now been turned into a key component for the global economic engine to run smoothlyan engine that, as suggested in Gloria Anzaldas metaphor, is being lubricated with subaltern womens (literal) blood. Readers may then be outraged to learn about the shockingly high rates of rape and murder of women that have occurred since 1993 on the US-Mexican border, one year after the signing of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This treaty facilitated the installation of maquiladoras--assembly plants for transnational corporations (80% of them American-owned) that mushroomed in the new export processing zones (EPZs). As a consequence, widespread migration to the border,especially female, skyrocketed. Taking signs for wonders, many saw these maquiladoras as a capitalist-God-sent blessing, feeling that they would bring a much needed boost to the Mexican economy. In fact,during their stay in Ciudad Jurez--the largest border city, literally within walking distance of El Paso, Texas--these plants allowed the municipality to boast the lowest unemployment rate of all Mexico (and, later, less glamorously, the highest incidence of domestic violence in the country). Like sweatshops, maquiladoras offered women the possibility of economic independence--at an appallingly exploitative price, of course,but some independence nonetheless. Looking for these new jobs,migrants from poor states such as Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Tabasco,and even poor countries like Guatemala, flooded Ciudad Jurez, forcing the city to accommodate the demands of a rapid population explosion. Ironically, part of the NAFTA agreement stipulated that the foreign assembly plants would be exempt from taxation in the host country, so the costs of social services and infrastructure generated by the influx of these migrant workers could never be met by the citys already meager budget. As a result, the citys slums grew exponentially, while basic services such as electricity, sewage, transportation, and public safety for these areas lagged behind, creating a breeding ground for the atrocious crimes for which Ciudad Jurez became notorious: the femicides. Mexico, a country
that during his stay in 1938 struck Andr Breton as the most surreal in the world, becomes the stage for gendered sexual terror in Bolaos narrative. Profoundly intrigued by the horror of the crimes and the impunity with which the perpetrators of the femicides operated, Bolao began steady correspondence with Sergio Gonzlez Rodriguez, one of the Mexican journalists covering the murders in Ciudad Jurez with courageous rigor. The result was 2666 (published posthumously in 2004), Bolaos monumental last novel in which the writer sheds a tenebrous light on the

way in which transnational capital,patriarchy, and the state have enabled the vicious deaths of subalterndisposable women. Here, the structural economic situation, with the majority of the population living in dire poverty and forced to migrate to the dangerous US-Mexican border in a quest for survival, combines with patriarchy and widespread impunity in a lethal concoction.
Basing his writing in the real crimes, Bolao finds a rather unusual way of linking neoliberalism and patriarchy with sexual violence against subaltern women, yet there lies one of the strongest lures of his novel: through impassive repetition of the horror, the author showcases an extreme example of an economic system that

privileges profits over lives, while the narrative opens up the spectrum of feminist interrogation as these femicides seem lost in a theoretical limbo. To this day, no responsible party has been found for the Jurez femicides and, as time passes and contexts change--if it wasnt for novels like the one under analysis--these women may very well end up lost in oblivion. After all, like New Yorks unimportant rape victims, they are poor and they are dark. This is not a just natural occurrence, but a product of a logic that condemns poor, women of color not only in Ciudad Juarez, but also in debate. There have been very few attempts at discussing women in debate, but even fewer instances where the focus was women of color in debate. Our activity adopts the logic of exclusion through the methods and tactics that we utilize in here in debate. Too often, this game of debate has marginalized the experiences of women in color because it cant understand those who cant separate themselves from their social location, nor can it require those women to defend an institution that has inherently been a primary cause of their oppression. The voices of these women startle me, but for some reason, many of us here cant hear them. They are just not here which is why our method of debate is to change the lenses in our pedagogical and political glasses to understand politics, the government, and the world from those who experience the most real aspect of it. From there we can understand that the problem is not the women, the government, but all of us who have attempted to move neutrally through society. Unfortunately, there is no such then as that neutral position because society is moving a direction that condemns and exploits women bodies so any productive method of engagement would have to be one that actively fights against the grain of society. Given this continual form of violence The role of the ballot in this debate is to vote for the team that best performatively and methodologically broadens the scope of debate. The women in Juarez and minority women in debate have been screaming the truth about their experiences; the question is will you listen?

Narratives are key to relating experiences of injustice that otherwise cannot be shared they are crucial to cross-cultural communication Young, Professor of Political Science, 2000 [Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy, p.70-7]
Another mode of expression, narrative, serves important functions in democratic communication, to foster understanding among members of a polity with very different experience or assumptions about what is important. In recent years a number of legal theorists have turned to narrative as a means of giving voice to kinds of experience which often go unheard in legal discussions and courtroom settings, and as a means of challenging the idea that law expresses an impartial and neutral standpoint above all particular perspectives. Some legal theorists discuss the way that storytelling in the legal context functions to challenge a hegemonic view and express the particularity of experience to which the law ought to respond but often does not. Several scholars of Latin American literature offer another variant of a theory of the political function of storytelling, in their reflections on testimonio. Some resistance movement leaders in Central and South America narrate their life stories as a means of exposing to the wider literate world the oppression of their people and the repression they suffer from their governments. Often such testimonios involve one persons story standing or speaking for that of a whole group to a wider, sometimes global, public, and making claims upon that public

for the group. This raises important questions about how a particular persons story can speak for others, and whether speaking to the literate First World public changes the construction of the story.22 While these are important questions, here I wish only to indicate a debt to both of these literatures, and analyse these insights with an account of some of the political functions of storytelling. Suppose we in a public want to make arguments to justify proposals for how to solve our collective problems or resolve our conflicts justly. In order to proceed, those of us engaged in meaningful political discussion and debate must share many things. We must share a description of the problem, share an idiom in which to express alternative proposals, share rules of evidence and prediction, and share some normative principles which can serve as premisses in our arguments about what ought to be done. When all these conditions exist, then we can engage in reasonable disagreement. Fortunately, in most political disputes these conditions are met in some respect and to some degree, but for many political disputes they are not met in other respects and degrees. When these conditions for meaningful argument do not obtain, does this mean that we must or should resort to a mere power contest or to some other arbitrary decision procedure? I say not, Where we lack shared understandings in crucial respects, sometimes forms of communication other than argument can speak across our differences to promote understanding. I take the use of narrative in political communication to be one important such mode. Political narrative differs from other forms of narrative by its intent and its audience context. I tell the story not primarily to entertain or reveal myself, but to make a pointto demonstrate, describe, explain, or justify something to others in an ongoing political discussion. Political narrative furthers discussion across difference in several ways. Response to the differend. Chapter 1 discussed how a radical injustice can occur when those who suffer a wrongful harm or oppression lack the terms to express a claim of injustice within the prevailing normative discourse. Those who suffer this wrong are excluded from the polity, at least with respect to that wrong. Lyotard calls this situation the differend. How can a group that suffers a particular harm or oppression move from a situation of total silencing and exclusion with respect to this suffering to its public expression? Storytelling is often an important bridge in such cases between the mute experience of being wronged and political arguments about justice. Those who experience the wrong, and perhaps some others who sense it, may have no language for expressing the suffering as an injustice, but nevertheless they can tell stories that relate a sense of wrong. As people tell such stories publicly within and between groups, discursive reflection on them then develops a normative language that names their injustice and can give a general account of why this kind of suffering constitutes an injustice. A process something like this occurred in the United States and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s, as injustice we now call sexual harassment gradually came into public discussion. Women had long experienced the stress, fear, pain, and humiliation in their workplace that courts today name as a specific harm. Before the language and theory of sexual harassment was invented, however, women usually suffered in silence, without a language or forum in which to make a reasonable complaint. As a result of women telling stories to each other and to wider publics about their treatment by men on the job and the consequences of this treatment, however, a problem that had no name was gradually identified and named, and a social moral and legal theory about the problem developed. Facilitation of local publics and articulation of collective affinities. Political communication in mass democratic societies hardly ever consists in all the people affected by an issue assembling together in a single forum to discuss it. Instead, political debate is widely dispersed in space and time, and takes place within and between many smaller publics. By a local public I mean a collective of persons allied within the wider polity with respect to particular interests, opinions, and/or social positions.23 Storytelling is often an important means by which members of such collectives identify one another, and identify the basis of their

affinity. The narrative exchanges give reflective, voice to situated experiences and help affinity groupings give an account of their own individual identities in relation to their social positioning and their affinities with others.24 Once in formation, people in local publics often use narrative as means of politicizing their situation, by reflecting on the extent to which they experience similar problems and what political remedy for them they might propose. Examples of such local publics emerging from reflective stories include the processes of consciousness-raising in which some people in the womens movement engaged, and which brought out problems of battering or sexual harassment where these were not yet recognized as problems. Understanding the experience of others and countering preunderstandings. Storytelling is often the only vehicle for understanding the particular experiences of those in particular social situations, experiences not shared by those situated differently, but which they must understand in order to do justice.25

Ciudad Juarez Conditions

Gender-based violence is significantly increasing in Ciudad Juarez. Ensalaco, 06 Professor at University of Dayton, Ohio
Jurez <http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/12/5/417.full.pdf+html> Beginning in 1993, the rate of homicides of women in Ciudad Jurez accelerated, and the ratio of female-to-male homicides increased. This marked the beginning of a decade-long wave of gender-based violence that involved abduction, sexual torture and rape, murder, mutilation, and disappearance. The exact homicide figures are disputed.3 The General Prosecutors Office of the State of Chihuahua reported the murder of 268 women between January 1993 and January 2002; the governmental National Human Rights Commission (Comisin Nacional de Derechos Humanos, CNDH) reported 233 murders between January 1993 and April 2003; the Special Prosecutor for the Investigation of the Homicide of Women (FEIHM), established in 1998 to investigate the crimes, reported almost exactly the same number, 232. The Chihuahua Institute for Women reported 321 murders in the same time frame (Crisis, 2004). The number of disappeared is more shocking than the number of dead, according to a source within the IACHR who spoke to us on background. That number approaches 300. This means there are as many women missing as there are known dead, with the implication that the true death toll could be near or above 600, an average of 60 murders each year. Moreover, beginning in 2000, the bodies of disappeared young women began to be discovered in the city of Chihuahua, some 230 miles from Ciudad Jurez. In an interview with the author, Esther Chavez commented, The murders simply changed addresses.
Mark, Murder in Ciudad

Conditions in Ciudad Juarez cause the gender-based violence. Ensalaco, 06 Professor at University of Dayton, Ohio
Jurez <http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/12/5/417.full.pdf+html> Several explanations have been offered as to the causes of the gender violence in Ciudad Jurez. These are general explanations, not theories of individual crimes. Observers point to a set of economic, social, political, and cultural factors that include (a) rapid population growth in a frontier city, (b) a transient population of economic immigrants and the breakdown of community ties, (c) low salaries and poor working conditions in the maquilas, and (d) weak or
Mark, Murder in Ciudad

corrupt government, police, and judicial institutions. All of these are postulated to create an environment in which criminal violence is likely to become widespread. But most observers emphasize cultural factors for both the violence against women and the impunity that accompanies it. Lydia Alpzar (2003), a member of the Stop the Impunity campaign steering committee, argues that womens entry into the labor market had an impact on gender relations and thus on increasing gender violence (p. 27). That is, the economic empowerment of women produced a violent backlash by men in a classically machista society. Her conclusion is that violence against women is legitimized in Mexican society because . . . it devalues 420 Violence Against Women women (p. 29). The IACHR concurs that the crimes in Ciudad Jurez have the attributes of gender-based violence, and that a significant portion of Jurez murders occur in the context of domestic or intra-family violence (IACHR, 2002, para. 36). The problem is pervasive. As Esther Chavez commented, I think there are 200 or 300 men out there that have killed women . . . . Theres impunity, its attractive (Stackhouse, 1999). Astrid Gonzalez, a

psychiatrist who formed the Committee against Violence, said, Jurez is the ideal place to kill women, because you are certain to get away with it (Dillon, 1998).

The Mexican government fails to investigate, prosecute, punish and prevent the gender-based crimes. Ensalaco, 06 Professor at University of Dayton, Ohio
Jurez <http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/12/5/417.full.pdf+html> The Failure to Exercise Due Diligence From the perspective of international human rights law, the situation in Jurez has human rights implications because of the Mexican governments failure to exercise due diligence. Every impartial observerthe Mexican CNDH, Amnesty International, the UN special rapporteurs on extrajudicial executions and the independence of the judiciary, and the IACHRhas criticized Chihuahua state officials for their failure to
Mark, Murder in Ciudad

investigate, prosecute, punish, and prevent these gender-based crimes. Moreover, the families of the murdered and disappeared have decried the government officials attitude toward the victims and treatment of their families. Failure to Respond to Missing Persons Reports Among the most egregious failures is the failure to launch an immediate investigation of a reported disappearance. Even after the pattern of abductions and murders became apparent, local police continued to wait days before mounting a search for the disappeared. In one especially troubling case, in January 1999, a resident telephonedpolice to report the sound of a womans screams coming from a drainage canal behind her home, only to be told that it was not that units responsibility to respond to emergencycalls. A womans body was found in a different location in Jurez the following day (Dillon, 1998). Two years later, police failed to respond to several residents reports that two men were raping a young woman in the back of a car until after the men had driven off (Amnesty International, 2003a). In yet another case, police did not begin to search for a woman reported disappeared on February 18 until March 2131 days after residents had already discovered her body (CNDH, 1998). The failure of authorities has had life and death consequences for some of the victims , as in the case of Lilia Garcia, who was held captive and subjected to brutal sexual violence before being killed. Families who reported a disappearance routinely reported that police instructed them to return in 48 hours to file an official missing persons report. Police sometimes provided legal reasons for the delay of an official investigation, but in very many cases police ignored the families pleas for prompt action, telling the families that the missing girls were probably spending the night with their boyfriends. This reflects the dismissive attitude of authorities, discussed below. Failure to Investigate Observers also criticize local and state officials for their failure to conduct competent investigations. The recommendation forwarded by the CNDH to the governor of Chihuahua details multiple failures beginning with the discovery of a body; police and forensic experts failed to secure the crime scene and to gather all the evidence. The failure continued during the postmortem examination. Although in a substantial number of cases police discovered skeletal remains or bodies in an advanced state of decomposition, in the majority of cases authorities were able to perform postmortem examinations. In one case documented by the CNDH, medical examiners failed to perform an autopsy for a full month after the discovery of a victim. In other cases, medical examiners failed to search for evidence of traces of semen or pubic hair on victims who were obvious victims of sexual assault; in other cases, medical examiners failed to mention sexual assault in their reports, perhaps to conceal the sexual nature

of these violent crimes. In fact, the CNDH observed that in the 36 cases it reviewed, authorities failed to perform many of the 37 separate procedures required in homicide cases involving sexual assault (CNDH, 1998). The states failure extended to the identification of victims; a substantial number of victims have yet to be identified and, in several troubling cases, authorities incorrectly identified a victim and misinformed the family. Federal prosecutors who agreed to investigate the cases of 14 women that appeared to fall within the jurisdiction of federal authorities complained that Chihuahua state officials ignored their requests for case files (Castillo, 2003). Failure to Prosecute As of March 2003, when the IACHR published its report, Chihuahua state officials could claim to have resolved 27 of the 76 homicides they categorized as serial killings and 152 of the crimes they categorized as situational murders. But as the commission pointed out, that figure was not only low, it was misleading: Chihuahua state officials declared a case resolved when prosecutors merely presented evidence to a judge ; resolution did not mean formal indictment, much less conviction. This was not just the result of insufficient resources or inadequate training. The IACHR (2002) criticized the overall inefficiency of the administration of justice (para. 34) as well as the the negligence of authorities and the lack of political will (para. 81). The commission concluded that there had been no real commitment to an effective response (para. 82).

Women are vulnerable to crimes, which will continue to persist. Targow, 04 Editor of BardPolitik
Risa, Femicide in Guatemala < http://www.marxsite.com/Femicide%20in%20Guatemala.pdf> Over half of Guatemalas population is indigenous, yet the indigenous people have a long history of marginalization within the country. The historical legacy of oligarchic land ownership in Guatemala remains intact, with a very small percentage of the population owning the land. The unequal land distribution has increasingly forced indigenous people to migrate to urban areas in order to survive. One of the most popular destinations for urban workers is Guatemala City, where factory jobs are available, particularly in maquilladora factories that are notorious for hiring only young women. Not coincidentally, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico is also the home of maquilladora factories. Professor Esparza suggests that the femicide is tied to the movement of indigenous labor into the city .Many women are uprooted from the rural areas, their communities, and families and migrate to urban areas for work. Once they migrate, they have no support network, and they become even more open and vulnerable to violence. Another factor contributing to this continuation of violence is the inability of the justice system to investigate the crimes and convict the perpetrators. In Guatemala, resources are scarce, with only a small percentage of state funding allocated to the Justice Department. This may be one explanation for the lack of investigation into the murders. Of the 383 murders committed in 2003, 306 are still awaiting investigation results.5 When the crimes first began, the police simply blamed the usual suspects: the youth gangs, known as the Maras .While it is highly probable that some of the murders are gang-related, new investigations are pointing to state actors as well. It is only recently that the widespread corruption of the National Civilian Police (PNC) has begun to be considered part of the problem. The Human Rights Ombudsman, Sergio

Morales, affirmed in March 2004 that many of the crimes are connected to organized crime circles that include the PNC and the army. Sadly, as long as the international community ignores Central America and the problems there, the crimes against women in Guatemala will most certainly persist. Even with international attention, they may not stop.Without it, however, there is little hope for the victims-to-be.

Authorities are not taking proper measures to investigate. Amnesty International, 05

Mexico: Justice fails in Ciudad Juarez and the city of Chihuahua < http://www.amnestyusa.org/node/55339> To say that it is international concern, and not the situation in the region, that is damaging the city's image is very clearly wrong-headed. Ciudad Juarez has a reputation for violence and brutality against women -- not because of international concern -- but because of the reality and the institutional failures to deal effectively with this reality. The reality is that since 1993 more than 370 young women and girls have been murdered in the cities of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua - at least a third suffering sexual violence - without the authorities taking proper measures to investigate and address the problem. Local media has reported that judges have suspended arrest warrants against state officials on at least three occasions over recent months. Charges against some of the officials have been dropped on the grounds that the statute of limitations has expired in relation to charges of negligence and other lesser crimes. The failure to address the deep seated problems in the local judiciary means it is unlikely that prosecutions would be likely to succeed even after passing the first hurdle of securing indictments.

Womens rights are not present in Juarez because of gender-based crimes. Alpizar, 03 Carnegie Council
Lydia, "Violence Against Women" <http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/archive/dialogue/2_10/articles/1056.html/:pf_p rintable > Since 1993, about 370 women have been brutally killed, and several hundreds more have disappeared, in the U.S.Mexico border city of Ciudad Jurez, in the state of Chihuahua. To date, only one personcharged with only one of the crimes has been sentenced. The victims are young women, generally under 29 years old. They are mostly poor, often workers in the maquiladoras (assembly factories), and live in the marginalized areas of the city. The womens killings in Ciudad Jurez began in the late 1980s and increased significantly in 1993. Since then, the total number of murders has been increasing monthly. Despite the systematic nature of these killings, authorities did not begin investigating until 1995, when they captured a man whom they continue to call the serial killer of the women. But the killings have continued, even spreading to nearby cities: in 1999 disappearances were reported in the state capital, Chihuahua City, four hours away from Jurez. By 2003, several women had been killed in that city, in much the same way as they had been in Jurez.

Violence against women is legitimized in Mexican society because, like other patriarchal societies, it devalues women, and the loss in particular of marginalized women often carries no political cost . The killings in Jurez are the product of a complex set of dynamics, and a number of characteristics of the city explain why Jurez presents the perfect environment for gender-based violence. The impact of free trade policies and the ensuing population growth have weakened the citys social fabric . Jobs in the maquiladoras are characterized by poor working conditions, low salaries, and rampant labor rights violations . Jurezs geographic location as a border city makes it an important point for the trafficking of immigrants and drugs. In addition, judicial and government institutions are often corrupt and infiltrated by interests representing the drug trade. These factors add up to a city with one of the highest levels of criminality in Mexico, with little sense of local identity or community. Womens organizations and victims families mobilized almost immediately following the escalation of violence in the 1990s. The organization for which I formerly worked, Elige Youth Network for Reproductive and Sexual Rights, became involved in 2000 because we were outraged by the record of impunity and also by the fact that the victims were so young. Involved organizations, together with the victims relatives, began pressuring state-level authorities to take concrete measures to stop the killings. Yet the response of local authorities was to blame the victims questionable moral behavior or dismiss them as prostitutes. In 2001, as the killings escalated, womens rights organizations joined with mainstream human rights organizations and unions to launch the campaign Stop Impunity: No More Murders of Women. We wanted to unveil the existing discrimination in traditional human rights work and emphasize womens empowerment. In Mexico, where the transition to democracy is an ongoing process and the human rights debate has focused on civil and political rights, womens rights remain marginal on the national agenda, in spite of such extreme cases as the systematic murders in Jurez. The campaign had one particular target in mind: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the regional human rights body. In the area of womens rights, the IACHR provides follow-up and advocates for the enforcement of some very progressive instruments, particularly the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (also known as the Convencin de Belem do Par); its track record of regional governments fulfillment of its recommendations has been quite good. In addition, we thought that the presentation of the killings as a paradigmatic case of gender violence could help pave the way for future cases of womens rights violations within this regional Commission. Campaign strategists believed that the involvement of the Commission would pressure the Mexican government to act effectively to stop the murders and bring justice to the pending cases, as well as hold it accountable at the regional and international levels The Stop Impunity campaigns adoption of a human rights framework has been very useful for pressuring government authorities, raising awareness, and mobilizing support. Human rights have been central in our efforts to highlight the responsibility of the Mexican state as a whole, and to show that the states inaction is a demonstration of sexism and discrimination. Beyond the complexity of these cases and the context itself, it is clear these people are being killed because they are women. The victims are underprivileged, they are not politically important for the authorities, and their bodies are targets not only for physical violence but for sexual violence too.

As the number of gender-based crimes in Ciudad Juarez, increases, police still fails to investigate. Robertua, 12
Verdinand, Violence against Women and Economic Globalization: Case Study of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico < http://liu.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:546942> Ciudad Jurez is located in the northern part of Chihuahua State in Mexico, bordering the United States, and has a population of 1,392,2008 inhabitants. It is an industrial, border city featuring an export processing industry ( maquiladoras ) and the transit of migrants, both Mexican and foreign. It forms an urban area together with El Paso, Texas. It contains nearly 40 per cent of the total population of the State of Chihuahua while 60 per cent of its population comes from other entities of the Mexican Republic. According to the Municipal Research and Planning Institute (CEDAW, 2005), 50 per cent of the streets in Ciudad Jurez are not paved, there is an 80 per cent deficit of green spaces and 200,000 families live in neighborhoods considered to be high-risk areas. Ciudad Jurez is a relatively new city when compared with the countrys other cities, and has in fact developed as a transit center between Mexico and El Paso, Texas. From the 1960s onwards, the national and international export processing plants (maquiladoras) settled in Ciudad Jurez because of its favorable geographic location. Thus 70 per cent of all the maquiladoras in the country are located in Chihuahua. This accelerated a process of urbanization in the area, which principally attracted young female job-seekers who were poorly educated and had little employment prospects . Employment grew rapidly in Ciudad Jurez, from 10,000 jobs in 1969 to 215,000 in 2003. In other words, jobs were created at a rate of 2150 per cent over 34 years, or 700 per cent per decade (CEDAW, 2005). During this time work opportunities for women increased considerably, to the point that 55 per cent of all people working in this sector today are women. During the 1990s this figure was 60 per cent. Ciudad Jurez became a city of ongoing migratory activity, with approximately 300 people arriving daily, and it has a mobile population of 250,000. Furthermore, approximately one sixth of the population of the State of Chihuahua, i.e. 431,850 people, was not born in Chihuahua, and the majority of this population lives in Ciudad Jurez. Public services in marginal and other areas of Ciudad Jurez did not keep pace with industrial and demographic growth, but emerged gradually and in an unplanned way. Lack of resources prevented the installation of water, electricity and drainage facilities and paved roads, in particular. The state government was caught short, overwhelmed by this growth. 15 While the situation of women in Ciudad Jurez shares many aspects common to other cities in the United Mexican States and the region generally, it is different in certain important respects. First, the homicide rate for women experienced an unusually sharp rise in Ciudad Jurez in 1993, and the rate has remained elevated since that time. Second, the extremely brutal circumstances of many of the killings have served to focus attention on the situation in Ciudad Jurez. The rate of homicides for women compared to that for men in Ciudad Jurez is significantly higher than for similarly situated cities or the national average. A significant number of the victims were young, between 15 and 25, and many were beaten and/or subjected to sexual violence before being strangled or stabbed to death. A number of the killings that fit this pattern have been characterized as multiple or serial killings. Third, the response of the authorities to these crimes has been markedly deficient. There are two aspects of this response that are especially relevant. On the one hand, the vast majority of the killings remain in

impunity; approximately 20% have been the subject of prosecution and conviction (IACHR, 2003). On the other hand, almost as soon as the rate of killings began to rise, some of the officials responsible for investigation and prosecution began employing a discourse that in effect blamed the victim for the crime. According to public statements of certain highly placed officials, the victims wore short skirts, went out dancing, were easy or were prostitutes (Ibid). Reports document that the response of the relevant officials to the victims family members ranged from indifference to hostility. According to newspaper survey conducted by UN CEDAW Committee (CEDAW, 2005), a total of 321 women were murdered between January 1993 and July 2003 in Ciudad Jurez. The Chihuahua Women's Institute raised the figure to 326 during the experts' visit, while the Chihuahua Interior Department, the Special Prosecutor and the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Department/Office of the Attorney-General of the Republic all raised it to 328 during the same period (Ibid.). Other official sources, particularly the Public Prosecutor's Department, had referred to 258 cases for the same geographical area up to the end of February 2003, while Amnesty International, in its August 2003 report, gives the figure of 370 murdered women in Ciudad Jurez and Chihuahua City. The most notorious case unfolded in November 2001, when the bodies of eight women and girls, who had clearly been tortured, were discovered in an old cotton field in the city (Campo Algodonero). The Mexican government's initial response was rapid, but the case faltered for various reasons. Only four days after the shocking discovery of the bodies, two men were charged for the homicide and rape of the eight women. However, in February 2002, one of the defendants died in prison. The other man was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2004, but in July 2005 the court of appeals acquitted him for lack of evidence (Heinrich Bll Stiftung, 2011). As a result, in 2006, the investigation to find the murderers of the eight women found in the cotton field was reopened, with no further progress. In March 2002, the mothers of three of the women, with the help of individuals and organizations that belonged to the Red Ciudadana de No Violencia y por la Dignidad Humana, filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requesting an investigation of the crimes. In February 2005, IACHR declared the petitions admissible and in 2007 consolidated the three cases into one, identified as the Campo Algodonero/Cotton Field case. In July 2007, the Mexican government requested a hearing for a friendly settlement, but the mothers of the victims asked that the case be transferred to the Inter-American Court, stating that they sought justice, not monetary compensation. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights (2009) accepted the case in December 2007 and in November 2009, the Court ruled (in a judgment totalling over 150 pages) that Mexico was guilty of discrimination and of failing to protect the women murdered in 2001 in Ciudad Jurez or to ensure an effective investigation into their abduction and murder. Mexico was also found responsible for failure to comply with its obligations to legislate and act with due diligence to prevent, investigate and sanction violence against women . The Court ordered a new investigation and listed remedies that the State must implement for the Court to close the case (Ibid). These remedies include measures for reparation and in remembrance of the victims, measures for reparation for the violations of the rights of their families, and measures to prevent discrimination and measures to prevent and investigate cases of abduction and murder of women and girls. The Court's judgment is potentially of major importance. When the Assembly of American States approved the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women in 1994, it made the region the first continent with a binding normative instrument on violence based on gender discrimination against women. However, legal interpretation had been lacking. As a result, the judgment

establishes the first basis for interpreting the right of women to live free from violence and the responsibilities of States to guarantee this right. It is also important because the cases are about a specific type of violence against women, documented using the concept of femicide. At the same time, it has been noted that the follow-up to the Court's judgment is now of utmost importance, because the implementation process will also be first of its kind and is therefore likely to establish a precedent.

Government is not helping, theyre covering up the femicides. Barnstable, 09

Rachel, Women's Organizational Response to Gender Violence and Femicide in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico < http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?acc_num=ohiou1237480001> Women's Organizational Response to Gender Violence and Femicide in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico Since 1993, more than four hundred women have been brutally mutilated and murdered, their bodies dumped in the sandy periphery of the city (Marn 2007; Pearson 2007). These systematic murders have been termed femicides, the misogynous killing of women by men (Radford and Russell 1992, p. 3). Though the city also has an unusually high male homicide rate, the methods of and motivation for killing these women have been disturbingly dissimilar. Firstly, the majority of the murder victims fit a profile. They are young (usually between twelve and thirty years of age), coming from poor families and neighborhoods, and are abducted as they shop or wait for/travel via public transit (Pearson 2007; Rodriguez 2007). Many of them have even shared similar physical traits, such as long, dark hair, a petite frame, and attractive facial features (Hellard 2007; Rodriguez 2007). One in five of the femicide victims work in one of the citys maquiladoras, but victims have ranged from students to housewives, store clerks and small business owners (Washington Valdez 2002). Despite intense outrage and public protests within the country and throughout the international community, the Mexican federal government has taken little decisive action in investigating the murders and preventing future ones. The state government of Chihuahua, in which Ciudad Jurez is located, has reportedly bungled investigations, and have even been implicated in covering up and/or playing a role in the occurring femicides

Cuidad Juarez Inherency

Ciudad Jurez is a city historically known for its prostitution. Wright 08tenured professor of geography and womens studies at Penn State
Melissa M., From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women's Worth, and Ciudad Jurez Modernity-cut by CJC In late October 2001, some 20 sex workers in the centro histrico (historic district) of Ciudad Jurez met with top officials in the police department to demand that they be able to do their jobs without police abuse (Ramos and Soza 2001, 11B, author translation). These women work along the city's congested streets and pedestrian walkways where the street La Noche Triste meets the one called La Paz, behind the Cuuhtemoc market. There, people buy and sell everything imaginable: from sex to smoked chilies, parakeets and avocadoes, electrical gadgets, carne asada, and pirated CDs to dried rattlesnake and knock-off Nike sneakers. Women have sold sex for years in la zona de La Paz (the zone of peace). Their clients are generally workingclass Mexican men, who pay 30 pesos (US $3) for 15 minutes in a rented room with a bed and a bowl of water. Among maquiladora 1 workers trying to buy food or sex with the earnings of $6 a day, day laborers who have risked INS detention toearn a few dollars more in the U.S., and kids selling the cheapest forms of cocaine and heroin, the women of La Paz are resisting police attempts to remove them from the brick streets and walkways of the centro histrico. This effort to purge sex workers from the downtown creates irony on many levels. For most of 20th century, Ciudad Jurez lured tourist dollars with the promise of free-flowing alcohol, nightclubs, and easy sex. Unlike many other Mexican cities, where local governments regulate prostitution by limiting the activity to zonas de tolerancia (red-light districts), Ciudad Jurez has no such restrictions (Curtis and Arreola 1991). Indeed, much of this city's commerce has rested on the ready availability of sexual services across its sprawling landscape, and sex workers have long constituted part of the city's promotional face to tourists, to businessmen, and to military personnel stationed in the U.S. Southwest. In fact, Ciudad Jurez has been known historically as a city of women who have comprised two significant parts of the economy, as prostitutes on the city's streets and as maquiladora laborers. During the initial stages of the maquiladora industry, corporations attracted poor women from the countryside and interior cities who established the city's fame as one of the best places in the world to find inexpensive laborers and quality labor (Cravey 1998; Carrillo 1990). Thus, for much of the city's history, women workers, on the street and in the factory, have symbolized economic prosperity.

Female disappearance has become legal in Ciudad Jurez. Wright 08tenured professor of geography and womens studies at Penn State
Melissa M., From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women's Worth, and Ciudad Jurez Modernity *http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2004.09402013.x] February 29- cut by CJC By female disappearance, I mean the removal of women and girls from some place where they once were. The efforts to make women disappear can be legalmaking female

presence illegal in some placeor can operate beyond the law, through such practices as kidnapping and harassment. Today, in Ciudad Jurez, women and girls vanish from the corporate-sponsored publicity as evidence of technological progress in a masculinizing industry. As more women and girls are kidnapped, the numbers now reach into the hundreds over the last few years.

Murders and trafficking in Ciudad Jurez have been prevalent for a long time, yet the government has been largely ineffective. Paniagrua 10- Reno Conservative Examiner
Daniela, Ciudad Jurez: An untold history of femicide and violence in the Western hemisphere [http://www.examiner.com/article/ciudad-ju-rez-an-untold-history-of-femicide-and-violencethe-western-hemisphere]- March 20-cut by CJC Nonetheless, as industry brought prosperity to dust-laden Ciudad Jurez, an increase of murders related to drugs and human trafficking occurred. However, in 1993 the pattern of murders changed drasticallythere was a dramatic upswing in the number of young women found slain throughout the outskirts of the city. These women had been raped, mutilated, crushed, strangledsome were even dismembered or burned alive, (Washington). Their skin was marred with bite marks & they had deep slashes across their breasts. Bound with their own shoelaces & partially clothed, their shoes would be placed almost sentimentally beside their corpsesoccasionally just bones, after desert jackals picked the flesh from their fragile bodies. If you want to rape and kill a woman, there is no better place to do it than in Jurez , said Esther Chvez Cano, founder of 8 de Marzo, in an opinion column during the fall of 1995. 8 de Marzo is a Jurez-based womans advocacy organization dedicated to rousing awareness of not only the killings, but also the corrupted officials (Rodriguez 72). Alma Mireya Chavirria Farels name rings in infamy just across the southern border. Her tiny, brutalized body was discovered on January 23, 1993, making her the first documented victim of the Jurez serial murders (Newton 4). Alma was a 5 year-old child, found in the Campestre Virreyes district of Ciudad Jurez with deep slashes across her chest, evidence of sexual assault, and severe strangulation. The people of Jurez were so aghast at the brutality of the crime, that the authorities were essentially forced to acknowledge the presence of a predatorEl Depredador Psicpata, who would become known as the Jurez Ripper (Newton 4). Twentyone other women and young girls would meet their end that year, including a young woman who was set on fire and left to die (Valdez Appendix 2). In 1994, police claimed there were eight murders in Ciudad Jurez with a similar modus operandi, and advised local women not to venture out alone (Newton 5). Just as had occurred during the previous year, an unidentified victims smoldering body was discovered semi-nude and strangled. Her shoes were placed tenderly beside her charred remains. The families of the murdered women were incredulous that authorities were not taking the cases more seriously. When a woman would go missing, the police would simply ask the family to come back in fortyeight hours and fill out paperworkthe investigations largely concluded at that point and the families were left to their own devices. Even after Chihuahuan officials were warned by their very own criminologist, Oscar Maynez Grijalva, that a group of serial killers were responsible for the slayings, police refused to take direct action. Between March and September of 1995, nineteen young women were found brutally raped and mutilated; consequently, the police

department and Federal prosecutors came under extreme scrutiny from local families for brushing off the cases as the numbers continued to rise (Newton 5). Oscar Maynez Grijalva, who previously warned of the danger in ignoring the signs of serial murder, began to notice a distinct pattern in the bodies of the victims he was examiningin eight of the nineteen cases prior to September of that year, the victims right breast was removed and their left nipple bitten off (Newton 3). In the remaining months of 1995, another twenty-nine women would be murdered, bringing the grand total to forty-eight. As of July 2009, eight of the victims from 1995 remain buried in graves simply marked Unknown, (2009-Femicides). As pressure mounted, authorities made a stunning announcement in December 1995, sending a ripple of relief, although short-lived, through the communities of Jurez. Officials boasted to news outlets that an Egyptian-born scientist had been arrested for the murder of young Elizabeth Castro whose body had been found on August 19 alongside the Casas Grande Highway, just outside of Lote Bravo. They would subsequently name him as the intellectual author of at least thirteen other slayings (Rodriguez 43). Seventeen year-old Elizabeth Castros autopsy revealed wounds congruent with the previous victims injuries, as well as ligature marks from being bound with her own shoelaces. Sharif was charged with Castros rape and murder authorities would announce that the female slayings were solved. Unfortunately, less than a month after solving the case of the Jurez Ripper, a stunning statistic was released to the media: in the past eleven months, 520 people had vanished from Jurez and an alarming, yet important percentage of them *were+ female adolescents, (Newton 4). By April 1, 1996 at least fourteen more girls were slain, including a fifteen year-old, again with identical injuries to those of the previous victims: a right severed breast, bitten-off left nipple, and a broken neck which had literally been yanked apart (Valdez 11). Police scrambled for answers as the people of Jurez grew impatient and they soon opted for placing additional blame on Abdel Latif Sharif, implying that he was the mastermind behind the murders. Curiously enough, a young woman identified merely as Blanca came forward to accuse Sharif of raping her in his home and threatening to dispose of her corpse in Lote Bravo, (Rodriguez 44). Unfortunately for Sharif, Lote Bravo was the dumping ground for multiple mutilated women in 1995, forty-five to be precise (Valdez 11). Blanca stood before the media and claimed to have been held hostage in Sharifs home for at least three days. She described being raped repeatedly and later escaping through an upstairs window to contact authorities from a neighbors home (Rodriguez 13). Her story was never verified. Evidence against the Egyptiannational continued to mount when another woman, Erika Fierro, told police shed introduced Sharif to nine of her girlfriends and hadnt seen or heard from any them in months. Fierro would go on to claim that Sharif later told her hed murdered them all, burying their bodies at Lote Bravo and threatening to do the same to Fierro if she disclosed his secret(Valdez 215). Both women would disappear within a few weeks of releasing their statements, never to be heard from again. As families of the missing women began to question the validity of the authorities sources, the local police grew frantic. They were struggling to maintain their storys plausibility, not wanting to come across as incompetent investigators, but their efforts to calm the population would quickly be snuffed out. On April 8, 1996, Rosario Garcia Leal was found raped, strangled, and mutilated in a vacant lot. During the course of the investigation, Hector Olivares Villalba, a member of the local street gang Los Rebeldes, was brought in for questioning. Within a few short days Olivares Villalba would confess to the young womans murder. Only later would it come to light that rather than endure the torture that ran rampant through the police forces, Olivares would confess and claim that six other Rebels helped him dispose of her body,

(Rodriguez 60). His confession would ultimately land El Diablo, the leader of the Rebels, in Mexican Federal prison. Sergio Armendariz Diaz, El Diablo, would remain in police custody for almost nine years, awaiting trial (Rodriguez 122). Eventually, two of the eight Rebels were released and in January of 2005, the six who remained were convicted of the murders of eight women who had been found in 1995 (Newton 8). The authorities also informed the media that Armendariz, whose bite impressions matched those found on multiple victims, plotted and conspired with the imprisoned Sharif to make it seem as if the Jurez Ripper was still at large (Rodriguez 123). With the help of local womens groups, poor practices in evidence collection were exposed and the Mexican government writhed under the pressure, blaming anyone they could . As the brutal killings continued, news outlets found their hands tied when they covered the murders and they were ultimately forced to report lower body counts for fear of retaliation by highranking members of the Mexican government (Newton 8). The media published each story with a statement declaring that an unspecified number of women were still missing, affectionately naming them Los Desaparecidos, or the Disappeared (Newton 8-9). Officials, thoroughly defensive, refused to allow the families of the Desaparecidos into view the bodies and identify their loved onesMeanwhile the corpses continued to pile up like cordwood, (Rodriguez 69).The stultifying desert heat and hellacious sand storms made searching for the missing women extremely perilous, but dedicated family members and concerned citizens continued to push forward. While conducting a community-organized searche during the summer of 1996, a small group made a stunning discovery when they stumbled upon a wooden hut in the middle of the desert (Rodriguez 134). The search party entered the shack to discover red and white candles, several womens undergarments, and fingerprints which had been left behind in fresh blood. They also discovered a large wooden board with sketched pictures depicting gruesome scenes of torture and blood-letting of naked women with flowing, dark hair. An additional shrine backdrop depicted a group of officialsmost prominently policemen and soldierssurrounding a group of exposed women in a menacing fashion (Rodriguez 135). Their discovery would again shed light on a secret world within Mexico, a world America had long forgotten. In 1989, a Texas pre-Med student, Mark Kilroy, who had been vacationing for Spring Break, was found sacrificed, dismembered, and publicly displayed at a cult ranch, (Rodriguez 138). Authorities would later capture the killers only to discover that they were just the beginningRitualistic killings in Mexico, and most superstitious cultures, include switching the victims heads as well as mutilating their hearts and unfortunately, what was discovered in that tiny shack did nothing to disprove that horrifying reality (Rodriguez 140).

The victims of Jurez have many similarities. Paniagrua 10- Reno Conservative Examiner
Daniela, Ciudad Jurez: An untold history of femicide and violence in the Western hemisphere [http://www.examiner.com/article/ciudad-ju-rez-an-untold-history-of-femicide-and-violencethe-western-hemisphere]- March 20- cut by CJC The young victims of Jurez were all petite and pretty with full lips and flowing dark hair. Their abductions, some during broad daylight, continued to frighten the people of Mexicos leading industrial city. As investigators and families began to search for more distinct patterns in the disappearances, they noticed additional similarities between the casesA sizable

amount of the victims had been abducted from the lines of workers waiting to gain entrance to the maquiladoras.

The number of murdered women continues to increase yet the Mexican government has failed to do anything. Paniagrua 10- Reno Conservative Examiner
Daniela, Ciudad Jurez: An untold history of femicide and violence in the Western hemisphere [http://www.examiner.com/article/ciudad-ju-rez-an-untold-history-of-femicide-and-violencethe-western-hemisphere]- March 20// CJC As the years passed with no significant strides of progress, frustrations grew astronomically among the families. They began to reach out to media sources, loudly expressing their belief that some people in power *were+ more interested in covering up the crimes and shielding the perpetrators than in resolving the cases in any way that [could] bring peace of mind to thebereaved, (Rodriguez xi). The families also began to contact non-governmental organizations (NGO) outside of the State of Chihuahua, really stepping up the pressure for international recognition. Their efforts would prove partially rewarding on March 9, 2002, when a bi-national protest was organized by Texas lawmakers. The march began in the United States and continued over the Paso del Norte Bridge (Rodriguez 224). Nearly 2,000 people would participate In 2004, the number of slain women increased over 58% from the previous year drawing outrage from womens organizations across the globe. On Valentines Day, big-name stars from Hollywood marched with thousands of Mexican protestors across the Santa Fe/Paso del Norte international bridge. V-dayhad been a worldwide event staged in tumultuous countriesto call attention to violence against women, (Rodriguez 262). More astounding than international recognition alone, however, was that this protest involved two of Mexicos top Federal prosecutorsGuadalupe Morfn and Mara Lpez Urbina. The V-Day March was the first time two officials would publicly display their support for the people they were supposed to represent. As an active Federal prosecutor, Mara Lpez Urbina would later identify more than 125 former and current Chihuahua State Police officersguilty of torture, abuse of power, and negligence throughout the course of the investigations they conducted for the Jurez murders (Rodriguez 264). While reviewing 233 cases (104 of which had gone to trial), Urbina named only mid-level officials, twenty of whom quickly lost their jobs or were reassigned. As disappointing to the families as it was, Urbina would still fail to name any high-ranking officials who were, by law, responsible for negligence oversight and all other aspects of active investigations (Rodriguez 265). The American media has largely neglected to mention the femicide occurring so close to home over the past decade. On October 16, 2009, TheAmericano.com published an article announcing the first publicly displayed female decapitation in the City of ViolenceCiudad Jurez. As horrifying as the recent events have been and even after desperate pleas for help from Mexican womens groups, calls for aid have remained largely unnoticed

The number of murders in Ciudad Juarez continue to rise yet convictions and arrests are rare. Cave 12- foreign correspondent for The New York Times
Damien, Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Jurez [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-morewomen-in-juarez-mexico.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]- June 23//CJC Ciudad Jurez became infamous for a wave of attacks beginning in the 1990s that left hundreds of women dead over the course of a decade. International attention moved on, but the killings have continued, with a second wave even larger than the first. Even as overall violence here declines, new clusters of slain women are continually being discovered. Roughly 60 women and girls have been killed here so far this year; at least 100 have been reported missing over the past two years. And though the death toll for women so far this year is on track to fall below the high of 304 in 2010, state officials say there have already been more women killed in 2012 than in any year of the earlier so-called femicide era. This time, though, the response has been underwhelming. People havent reacted with the same force as before, said Gustavo de la Rosa, a human rights investigator for Chihuahua State. They think its natural. Mexican authorities have made promises to prioritize cases like these for years, and in the wake of international pressure, prosecutors now argue that more of the killings are being solved. But arrests and convictions are exceedingly rare. For the victims found in the mass grave in the Jurez Valley, even the most basic details were still a mystery months later: forensic teams said they were not even sure how many women were buried there.

Justice is not served to the perpetrator of the Ciudad Juarez murders because of the machismo culture and bribery. Newton 3- author of The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes
Damien, Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Jurez [http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/10.html]//CJC

Those who stay behind often work in maquiladoras--sweat-shop factories producing goods for sale abroad--at wages averaging five U.S. dollars per day. Thousands of those workers are young women from outlying towns and villages, collectively described by adding an l to the name of their workplace: maquilladoras. They come hoping for the best, but often find the worst. Squalid work conditions and sexual harassment can become mere annoyances in a city where life is cheap. Machismo is an element of the problem. It exalts men over women to the detriment of both. Spanish-language dictionaries define it as behavior of the man who believes himself superior to women, and it manifests itself in forms ranging from casual insults to, according to some, ritualistic murder. Corruption plays its part, too. The legal system thoroughly corrupted by drug money. Police earn so little that bribery (mordida) is an accepted practice. Any crime can be overlooked for a price.

USFG Is Sexist
Females have historically been excluded from Congress and the implementation of the Constitution. Ireland 97- former president of the National Organization for Women
Patricia, Women's Less Than Full Equality Under The U.S. Constitution [http://www.now.org/issues/economic/cea/ireland.html]//CJC At a time when women are astronauts and truck drivers, it is hard to believe that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee women the same rights as men. For most women, equality is a bread-and-butter issue. Women are still paid less on the job and charged more for everything from dry cleaning to insurance. The value of a woman's unpaid work in the home is often not taken into account in determining divorce settlements and pension benefits. When women turn to the courts to right these wrongs, they are at a distinct disadvantage because of what has and hasn't happened to the Constitution. In 1776 Abigail Adams urged her husband, John, that he and other framers of our founding documents should, "Remember the ladies." John, who went on to become our second president, responded, "Depend upon it. We know better than to repeal our masculine systems," and women were left out of the Constitution. Nearly a hundred years later, Congress adopted amendments to the Constitution to end slavery and provide justice to former slaves. The 14th Amendment, passed in 1868, guaranteed all "persons" the right to "equal protection under the law." However, the second section of the amendment used the words "male citizens," in describing who would be counted in determining how many representatives each state gets in Congress. This was the first time the Constitution said point blank that women were excluded. Similarly, the 15th Amendment in 1870 extended voting rights to all men -- but not to any women. It wasn't all doom and gloom for women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, though. Two women active in world anti-slavery efforts, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were leaders at the first-ever "Women's Rights Convention" in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848. Their "Declaration of Sentiments" included this play on the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." These women and others went on to form what became known as the suffrage movement. We now consider the suffragists the "first wave" of the U.S. feminist movement. During their long campaign to win women the right to vote, they used strategies including marches, pickets, arrests and hunger strikes. They triumphed in 1920 when the states ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which corrected the long-time injustice the 15th Amendment had put into writing. Suffragist leader Alice Paul authored the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to remedy women's exclusion from the 14th Amendment. Introduced in 1923, the ERA was buried in Congress for nearly 50 years. In the late 1960s, the "second wave" of feminist activists took up Alice Paul's cause. After getting the ERA voted out of Congress, we held marches, organized boycotts, lobbied and worked on election campaigns to try to get it passed by the necessary three-fourths of the states. When an arbitrary time limit expired in 1982, the ERA was just three states short of the 38 required for ratification. The history of Supreme Court rulings on women's rights makes clear why a constitutional guarantee of women's equality is needed. During the first 200 years of our country's history,

the Supreme Court justices never saw a discriminatory law against women they didn't like. Illinois wanted to keep women from practicing law? The court in 1873 cited "the law of the Creator" as good enough reason to protect these delicate creatures -- grown women -- from being sullied by the corruption of legal and business practices. Time and again, women were really being protected from making too much money. Oregon wanted to limit the number of hours women could work? The court in 1908 ruled that women must "rest upon and look to (men) for protection" and also -- in a contradictory view of men -that the law was needed "to protect (women) from the greed as well as the passion of man." Michigan wanted to allow women to work as waitresses but keep them out of higher-paid bartender jobs? The court in 1948 did not see this as a violation of the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection." In modern times, Supreme Court rulings on women's rights have zigged and zagged, backward and forward. In a 1961 case, the justices upheld Florida's virtual exclusion of women from juries because "women are the center of home and family life." The defendant had bludgeoned her husband to death and wanted jurors who might understand how she could be driven to such a deed. Finally, in 1971, pioneering feminist attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg made the first breakthrough in the court's "anything goes" attitude toward sex discrimination. She convinced the court to throw out an Idaho law that automatically gave preference to a man over an equally qualified woman when appointing the person responsible for disposing of the property of someone who has died. Ginsburg went on to become the second woman appointed to serve on the Supreme Court. In 1973, the Court struck down a U.S. Air Force policy that automatically gave a married man family housing and medical allowances, while a married woman had to prove she was the "head of household," ie, that she provided all of her own expenses plus at least half of her families in order to qualify for the family benefits. But in 1977 the justices were back to an old-fashioned view, a more narrow reading of women's equality. A bright eighth-grade girl, named Susan, who'd won science awards wanted to attend Philadelphia's all-boys Central High. It was an academically superior public school; even the school board admitted Girls High had inferior science facilities. But the Supreme Court upheld Central High's exclusion of Susan solely because she was a girl. More recently, in a 1987 decision that is the only Supreme Court case dealing with affirmative action for women, the justices upheld a county's voluntary plan. The justices allowed the promotion to stand, and the women became the first ever promoted to one of the country's 238 skilled craft jobs. A qualified woman was promoted over a man who had a slightly higher score based on interviews with a team of three men. One of them had called the woman a "rabble rousing skirt" and another had refused to issue her the required coveralls for a previous job. A case that was before the court in its 1996-1997 term drove home the inequities that still exist at the dawn of the 21st century. A jury had convicted a judge of violating the civil rights of five women by raping, sexually assaulting and harassing the women. An appeals court overruled the jury. Even though courts have ruled repeatedly that it is a violation a person's civil rights to be beaten by a police officer, the appeals court could not see anything in the Constitution that would put this judge on notice that it is just as wrong to rape a woman. Without a constitutional guarantee of women's equality, even favorable rulings and good laws on women's rights can be ignored, revoked or overruled. Feminist activists have not given up on a women's equality amendment. We know that to get women into the Constitution we will have to elect a lot more people who support that idea. We look to the young women and men who are addressing issues of equality and justice in high schools across the country . We are confident that this "third wave" will soon be ready to accept the baton.

When a female figure (Clinton) ran for presidential office in a major party, her female supporters feared that her bid would unleash a sexist backlash Hymowitz and Kaufman 8 editor-at-large for Bloomberg Business week and Pulitzer Prize winning author
Carol and Jonathan, At the Barricades In the Gender Wars [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120674839234873285.html?mod=hps_us_pageone#articleTab s%3Darticle]- March 29//CJC Valerie Benjamin, a human-resources manager for a consulting firm here, was driving to work recently in her red minivan with a Hillary bumper sticker when a man pulled up alongside and rolled down his window. "You can be for Hillary all you want," he shouted, "but there is no way that thing is going to become president." "I couldn't believe this guy was shouting at me in my car," says Ms. Benjamin. "I am continuously surprised by the level of venom." When Sen. Clinton started her presidential campaign more than a year ago, she said she wanted to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling. But many of her supporters see something troubling in the sometimes bitter resistance to her campaign and the looming possibility of her defeat: a seeming backlash against the opportunities women have gained. Just as Barack Obama's campaign has been empowering for African-Americans, Sen. Clinton's run has inspired women across the country, drawing millions to the polls and putting her in a neck-and-neck battle for the nomination. She has already gone farther than any woman before her -- a source of great pride for her women supporters. But her campaign has also prompted slurs and inflammatory language that many women thought had been banished from public discourse. Some women worry that regardless of how the election turns out, the resistance to Sen. Clinton may embolden some men to resist women's efforts to share power with them in business, politics and elsewhere. Sen. Clinton, the onetime front runner, has had to recast herself as the fighting underdog. There are many reasons for that beyond gender, of course. Among other things, she faces the perception, shared by many women, that she is a politically polarizing figure. And her opponent, Sen. Obama, has galvanized young people, including many women who don't see gender as a defining issue. But even some women who don't support Sen. Clinton express unease about the tone of some attacks on her. "Why is it OK to say such horrible things about a woman?" asks Erika Wirkkala, who runs a Pittsburgh public-relations firm and supports Sen. Obama. "People feel they can be misogynists, and that's OK. No one says those kinds of things about Obama because they don't want to be seen as racist." Share Your Thoughts What's your take on women today? Are they more empowered than they used to be or less empowered? What effect has the Clinton campaign -- positive or negative -- had on the state of women's progress? Join the discussion. The concern among some women about sexism comes amid signs that women's progress in the workplace has stalled or even regressed. In 2007, women earned median weekly wages of 80.2 cents for every dollar earned by men, down from 80.8 cents in 2006 and 81 cents in 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic.

At the nation's largest 500 companies, women account for 50% of managers, but hold just 15.4% of senior executive jobs, down from 16.4% in 2005, according to a survey by Catalyst, the New York research firm and women's advocacy group. Almost three-quarters of these senior women are in jobs that rarely lead to the corner office. The number of senior women in "line" jobs that involve running a business, with responsibility for profits and losses, dropped to 27.5% last year from 29% in 2005, according to Catalyst. At U.S. law firms, women accounted for 17.9% of partners in 2006, up from 14.2% of partners 1996, according to the directory of legal employers compiled by the National Association for Law Placement, even though women received 48% of law degrees granted in 2006 and 43.5% in 1996. Katherine Putnam, president of Package Machinery Co., a West Springfield, Mass., equipment manufacturer, recalls that at a lunch she attended recently, a group of male chief executives "started talking about what an awful b---- Hillary was and how they'd never vote for her." She says she kept quiet. "I didn't want to jeopardize my relationship with them," she says. "But their remarks were a clear reminder that although I could sit there eating and drinking with them, and work with them, instinctively their reaction to me isn't positive." Women make up the enthusiastic core of Sen. Clinton's supporters. She won almost 60% of women voters in the Democratic primaries in Texas and Ohio, fueling her comeback, and she is counting on them in the coming Pennsylvania primary. Recent polls show her with a double digit lead in that state, and support from 60% of women. "Every time Sen. Obama tries to close out the campaign, there are a ton of women who say, 'Here is a woman trying to get her shot and they are going to elect a guy,' and they rally to her," says pollster William McInturff. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, conducted this week, Democratic women favored Sen. Clinton over Sen. Obama, 52% to 40%. Among Democratic men, the results were reversed: Sen. Obama garnered 52%, versus 36% for Sen. Clinton. Negative views about Sen. Clinton were more prevalent among Democratic men than women. Fifty-one percent of men said they had negative views of Sen. Clinton, while 32% reported position views. Among Democratic women, 44% reported negative views about her, and 42% reported positive ones. Many factors, of course, shape how voters view the two candidates: their positions on the issues, Sen. Obama's rhetorical skills and message of change, and Sen. Clinton's personality and record. But the tenor of the campaign is unsettling many women. "No one can say that the male vote is all gender-based," says Beth Brooke, global vice chair of strategy and regulatory affairs at Ernst & Young, and one of four women on the company's 21person America's Executive Board. "But it reinforces among women of my generation the feeling that every day we walk in the door [at work], we are walking into an environment that is still biased. I'm feeling a tension I don't normally feel." One reason women have faced difficulty ascending the corporate ladder in recent years is that the number of management jobs has declined as companies have gotten leaner. The total number of corporate-officer positions has declined 21% since 2002, according to a Catalyst study. The ranks of women in senior-executive jobs are so thin that when a woman retires, switches jobs or is ousted, gains are often reversed. When Meg Whitman steps down as CEO of eBay EBAY -0.30% on March 31 after 10 years at the helm to pursue other interests, she'll be replaced by John Donahoe, president of eBay's marketplaces division -- and the number of female CEOs at the top 500 companies will decline to just 12. A few weeks ago, Sheryl Sandberg, former Google GOOG +0.47% vice president of global online sales and operations, moved to Facebook, the privately owned social-networking site, to

become chief operating officer; she was replaced at Google by her former deputy, David Fischer. When Morgan Stanley co-president Zoe Cruz was ousted last December, her position was eliminated. On the other hand, women this week snagged two top finance jobs: Terri Dial was named global head of consumer strategy at Citigroup Inc., C -1.00% and Jane Mendillo was chosen to manage Harvard University's endowment. Heather Arnet, a Clinton supporter who runs a Pittsburgh organization that lobbies for more women on public commissions and corporate boards, recently surveyed the Internet and found more than 50 anti-Hillary Clinton sites on Facebook. One of them, entitled "Hillary Clinton Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich," had more than 38,000 members. "What if one of these 38,000 guys is someone you, as a woman, have to go to and negotiate a raise?" she asks. Here in Pittsburgh and surrounding blue-collar areas, Sen. Clinton's run is stirring discussion among women about sexism in politics and in the workplace. The pay gap between male and female professionals in the Pittsburgh area exceeds the national average across most industries and occupations, according to a new University of Pittsburgh study. Women managers earned just 58.3% of what male managers made, and 89.5% of what women managers around the country made, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. In the political arena, Pennsylvania ranks 45th among states in number of female officeholders. Even in the nonprofit sector, where women have been faring better nationwide, women in Pittsburgh earn less than two-thirds what men do, which is larger than the national gap. Four large nonprofits in the area recently had CEO openings; all the jobs went to white men, including two positions formerly held by women. "I'd like to think that doesn't reflect a trend, but just a periodic wrinkle," says Frederick W. Thieman, who recently succeeded a woman as head of the Buhl Foundation. An hour away in Indiana, Pa., a working-class town, Jill Fiore, who teaches part-time at a local college and has a doctorate in English, says she constantly has to remind students to call her "Dr. Fiore" -- the same way they address male professors -- rather than "Jill" or "Mrs. Fiore." Unable to get a full-time college teaching job, she made just $8,000 last year cobbling together parttime work, and she recently decided to open a yoga business. "The sexism aimed at Hillary is astounding me," she says. "We want to let our daughters know that we can be anything. It's a lie. If even Hillary Clinton can't make it, what chance do we have?" Exit polls indicate that Sen. Clinton has run strongest among working-class women and women in low-paying professional jobs such as nursing and teaching -- women who work on their feet, who often have faced wage discrimination and have struggled economically. Jean Yarnal, who has worked in local government for 41 years, says she was unnerved recently when a man she knew came into her office and asked for help with a zoning issue. When talk turned to politics, she says, he denounced Sen. Clinton as a "lesbian" and used several slurs. Ms. Yarnal says she didn't respond, but thought to herself, "That's the last time I do you a favor."

Women in American politics have historically not been treated with equal respect as men. Staff writer at Time Magazine 84
Sexism is Alive *http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,951441,00.html+December 31//CJC Her topic was sexism in politics, and it was appropriate for the audience that had invited her to speak on the subject: the Women's Forum, a group of New York City's most influential women in business and politics. United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick claimed that "sexism is alive in the U.N in the U.S. Government... in American politics." As evidence she noted the reported comments of unnamed White House critics who had contended that she was "too temperamental to occupy a higher office." That, she argued, was a "classical sexist charge." She complained that she has been described as "schoolmarmish" and "confrontational," and that while former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was often referred to as "Dr. Kissinger," she is usually called "Mrs. Kirkpatrick," despite her Ph.D. in political science.

Our own president has judged women in the government by their appearance. Weber, senior editor for The Week news website, 13
Peter, Was Obama's 'best-looking attorney general' comment a sexist gaffe? [http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-best-looking-attorney-general-sexist-gaffe-085000032.html]April 5//CJC Thursday morning, few people outside of California could even name the Golden State's attorney general. By the end of the day, everyone who reads Twitter and political blogs not only knew who Kamala Harris is, but also had an opinion about her looks. The question isn't whether California's Indian-Jamaican-American attorney general is attractive, but whether President Obama should have noted her beauty during a San Francisco Bay Area fundraiser. Here's what Obama said, according to a White House transcript: You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake. She also happens to be by far the best-looking attorney general in the country Kamala Harris is here. (Applause.) It's true. Come on. (Laughter.) And she is a great friend and has just been a great supporter for many, many years. [via The Los Angeles Times] For those who don't see the problem here, the degree to which women are judged by their appearance remains an important hurdle to gender equality in the workforce. Women have a hard time being judged purely on their merits. Discussing their appearance in the context of evaluating their job performance makes it worse. It's not a compliment. And for a president who has become a cultural model for many of his supporters in so many other ways, the example he's setting here is disgraceful. [New York] What's also true is that Obama and Harris are longtime friends. She was a featured speaker at the Democratic Convention in Charlotte. And Harris was a guest at the state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron.... Judging by some of the comments I've seen on Twitter you'd swear the president was guilty of luridly cat-calling a woman he doesn't know. If I thought for

one moment that's what was going on, you better believe I'd hammer him for it. But that's not the case here. Far from it. There's research out there that claims even mildly sexist talk aimed at a female politician can do disproportionate damage to her public image. Obama's comment is so mild and so tempered by praise for her intelligence that it might not even count the audience laughed, didn't they? but now that the most famous man in the world has made an issue of how she looks, so will everyone else who stumbles across this story. She'll be objectified by millions of people in the next day or two as they find out what he said and then Google her to render their own hot-ornot verdict. Who knows if that'll hurt her politically or no? [Hot Air]

Drug Cartels
Cartels Killing Every Single Day. Deborah Hastings, May 6, 2013.
[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mexico-deadly-journalists-targeted-cartels-article-1.1334310]

In the country of Mexico, there is no such thing as freedom of the press. There is, however, widespread freedom to simply kill or kidnap journalists who dare to report on the vicious drug wars that make Mexico one of the worlds most dangerous places for residents and reporters alike. Theres no real hope there for journalists, Anthony Coulson, a former DEA agent stationed in Arizona, told The Daily News. And, he added, its getting worse. Mexico is the fourth most deadly country for reporters, topped only by battle-plagued Syria, Somalia and Pakistan, according to the most recent survey by media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders. Mexicos violence, which has grown exponentially ... targets journalists who dare to cover drug trafficking, corruption (and) organized crimes infiltration of local and federal government, the report said. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 50 journalists in Mexico have died or disappeared since 2006, when
incoming president Felipe Calderone declared war on drug cartels and launched a high-profile media campaign that paraded arrested drug thugs and seized heroin, guns and cocaine before the public. The

organization maintains a list of

names of the murdered. Calderones term ended in December, and so did the much-hyped perp walks of drug suspects.
New president Enrique Pena Nieto has a markedly different stance on drug cartels. Earlier this year, it announced that local and state authorities would no longer work directly with U.S. agencies, including the FBI and the DEA, when it came to sharing drug tracking intelligence. Arriving in Mexico Thursday for private talks, President Barack Obama side-stepped the controversial policy change, saying it was up to the Mexican people to determine its own security issues. Meanwhile, the atrocities against journalists have mounted. Two

sons of prominent Mexican journalists were shot to death over the weekend in the northern city of Chihuahua, a spokesman for the state attorney general's said Sunday. Alfredo Paramo, 20, and Diego Paramo, 21, were shot dead early on Saturday after being chased by gunmen in a car, said Carlos Gonzalez.

Mexican Drug Cartels into Human Trafficking, Elite Daily News, 6-7-13.

[http://elitedaily.com/news/world/mexico-rescues-165-people-sold-to-a-drug-cartel-by-human-traffickers-a-mile-from-u-sborder/]

Mexican soldiers have rescued 165 people, primarily children and pregnant women from Central America, who were kidnapped by a gunman in northeast Mexico and held captive less than a mile from the U.S. border. The group, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras was trying to cross the border from the notoriously dangerous state of Tamaulipas
about 2-3 weeks ago when they were taken by gunpoint. The gunman then held them hostage in a house in the municipality of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.

They were rescued on Tuesday. Everything indicates that these migrants were contacted by human traffickers and these criminals handed them over to criminal gangs instead of taking them to the border, said government security spokesman Eduardo Sanchez. They were found kidnapped by an armed individual and held against their will in precarious, dirty, overcrowded conditions, he added. Tamaulipas has long been the site of kidnappings and violence caused by major Mexican drug cartels. In 2010, 72 corpses thought to be the bodies of migrant workers were found in a Tamaulipas ranch. This drug war has taken the lives of nearly 75,000 people since these massive killings first erupted in 2006. Mexican drug cartels have been known to kidnap migrant workers before either taking their money and then killing them, or forcing them transport drugs into the United States.

Murders not investigated in Mexicos brutal drug wars, NY Daily News, 5-13-13. [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mexican-authorities-criminalize-victims-cartel-drug-warsarticle-1.1340591]

In Mexicos savage drug wars, the innocent are not only shot, dismembered or hanged from overpasses. They are also falsely accused of crimes and their deaths are never investigated.
The authorities will allege that the people being murdered are related to drug cartels, and its just not true, said Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a professor at the University of Texas in Brownsville, who also does cartel violence research in Mexicos troubled border areas. Most

often, she said, the authorities are getting their information straight from the killers, in the form of grisly notes left near the bodies or sometimes stuck to them with ice picks. This is like a marketing tool for groups like Los Zetas, which is considered one of the countrys most violent syndicates, she told the Daily News. Because corruption runs so deep in virtually all law enforcement agencies, authorities simply parrot what the notes say and consider the case closed, according to Correa-Cabrera and other human rights advocates. A recent example is Daniel Martinez Bazaldua, 22, a photographer for the Mexican newspaper Vanguardia. His chopped-up remains were found late last month on a busy street in Coahuila state, across the border from Texas, alongside the remains of a 23-year-old college intern Notes near the bodies said the victims were linked to organized crime. The state attorney generals
office in Coahuila repeated that claim in public statements. This infuriated the newspapers editors, who ran a front-page article denouncing those claims. "We think it is sad and alarming that Coahuila has become a state in which the authorities condemn murdered people, converting them into criminals, without offering the least evidence," the newspaper wrote. "Only a serious, professional investigation can find out the truth that society deserves," Vanguardia said. What happened with Daniel can't happen again, Ricardo Mendoza, the papers editorial director, told the Daily News. The

authorities, which must be an advocate for the people and the law, can't act irresponsibly to criminalize victims without proof, he said. From the very beginning, this was the major complaint our newspaper had, and we started a fight to not criminalize the victim, something which unfortunately happens every day in this corner of Mexico in recent years , Mendoza told The News. Law enforcement officials dont usually release a verbatim account of the notes accompanying victims. But sometimes the messages are left on huge banners displayed in public, as was the case in an especially gruesome mass killing last year in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. The bloodied bodies of nine people, some with their pants pulled down to their ankles, were hanged from an overpass leading to a main highway. "F-----g whores, this is how I'm going to finish off every a--hole you send to heat up the plaza, read that sign, an apparent reference to a turf battle between cartels. Hours later, 14 severed heads were found in coolers outside City Hall. Their bodies were found inside a minivan parked near a bridge to the U.S. A note accompanied the heads, but its contents were not disclosed.

Mexicos Drug Lords Ramp Up Their Arsenals with RPGs, TIME, Oct. 25, 2012. [http://world.time.com/2012/10/25/mexicos-drug-lords-ramp-up-their-arsenals-with-rpgs/]
When a Mexican SWAT team stopped a stolen Cadillac van in the border city of Piedras Negras, it was not a surprise when they were greeted by a tirade of bullets as the criminals blasted and ran. But after they kicked open the trunk, the officers realized they could have been victims of more catastrophic firepower. The gunmen had been in possession of an arsenal of weapons that included three Soviet-made antitank rockets complete with an RPG-7 shoulder-fired launcher. If the criminals had got a rocket off, they could easily have blown the

SWAT vehicle to pieces. RPG-7s can also take out helicopters and were used in the Black Hawk Down episode in Somalia in 1993. The rockets, found on Saturday, are part of an increasingly destructive array of weaponry wielded by Mexican drug cartels, like the feared Zetas, in reaction to attacks on them by police and soldiers. While security forces have taken down several key cartel bosses this year, gunmen have struck back, setting off five car bombs, hundreds of fragmentation grenades and several shoulder-fired rockets. Soldiers even seized one homemade three-ton tank with a revolving gun turret. When
Mexican marines on Oct. 7 claimed to have killed Zetas leader Heriberto Lazcano, he was also alleged to be found with an RPG-7. (Lazcanos corpse was stolen from the morgue, and the Zetas are now believed to be led by his No. 2, Miguel Trevio.) The shoulder-fired rockets cause particular worry because of their range and explosive power. Mexican dignitaries often move in helicopters with the army flying Black Hawks supplied by the U.S. under the Mrida Initiative.

The RPG-7 is a weapon that causes incredible devastation from Iraq to Afghanistan, says Rachel Stohl, an expert on arms proliferation at the Stimson Center in Washington. When they fall into the hands of criminal groups, it changes the dynamics and escalates the conflict. Instead of just a gunfight on a street, you have military firepower. Combatants normally use RPG-7 rockets to target nearby vehicles, but they can reach up to
3,000 ft. (900 m) and are sometimes wielded as a form of artillery, scattering shrapnel at anyone close by. Those fearing spillover were quick to note that gunmen in Piedras Negras could potentially fire a rocket over the Rio Grande into the neighboring U.S. city of Eagle Pass. There

have been sporadic gunfights across the river over the years, with gunmen recently firing at U.S. Border Patrol agents near the Texas town of Los Ebanos. (More often, Mexicans have been the victims, like when Border Patrol agents shot dead a 16-year-old boy in Sonora state this month.) The gun trade has been a long-running bone of contention over the Rio Grande, with Mexico complaining that most of the firearms used by cartel assassins are purchased from U.S. stores. Of almost 100,000 guns seized at Mexican crime scenes since 2007, 68% have been traced to the U.S. The U.S. gun lobby argues that heavier weapons such as the Soviet rockets and fragmentation grenades come from the other direction, smuggled from Central America. Thousands of RPG-7s were used by all sides in the regions Cold War conflicts in the 1980s. Since then, gangs have stolen many from lingering stockpiles in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras to sell them on the black market. The Honduran government reports that it lost 22 RPG-7s and several
rockets in a single 2010 theft. On a visit to Honduras earlier this year, a senior police officer said he had intelligence of Zeta operatives going to the capital, Tegucigalpa, to buy hardware. When groups like the Zetas wield rockets and tanks, some pundits question whether they should continue to be labeled as drug traffickers or need a more martial description. The cartel was founded in 1998 by 14 Mexican army defectors, and they carried their battle tactics into the crime world. The Zetas are a criminal paramilitary organization that is spreading through Mexico and Central America like the bubonic plague, says Mike Vigil, former head of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Zetas have used their firepower to make their stronghold in northeast Mexico, by the Rio Grande Valley, the countrys most violent corner. While other regions, like the area

Coahuila state, home to Piedras Negras, has witnessed its bloodiest year on record, with more than 640 gangland killings ; neighboring Nuevo Len has recorded over 1,000 such deaths since January. In total, almost 60,000 people have fallen in drug-related violence since President Felipe Caldern took power in 2006 and declared a military offensive on cartels. In the same period, 25 of Mexicos 37 most wanted cartel bosses have been killed or arrested. The buildup of cartel weaponry could also be a problem for incoming President Enrique Pea Nieto when he takes office in December. Pea Nieto, who returns the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to power after 12 years in the wilderness, has promised to halve the number of homicides in Mexico in his first year.
around Ciudad Jurez, have seen significant decreases in murders since 2010, While all applaud the target, Pea Nieto has given little concrete information about how he will achieve the goal. When Zeta squads roam the countryside with RPG-7s, some say Pea Nieto could be forced to continue a military line similar to Calderns. There will probably be a change in rhetoric, says political analyst Jorge Chabat, but there is a little room for maneuver in tactics.

Human Trafficking getting worse and worse, and destroys families. CNN, 10/15/2010 [http://www.thehrf.org/news/documents/082710_CNN_Humanttrafficking.pdf]

Mario Santos likely never made it to the United States The 18-year-old set out 10 years ago from his native El Salvador in search of opportunity and a better way of life. But he had to travel north through Mexico first. A short while after leaving, he called his parents to tell them he had been beaten and robbed in Mexico, left penniless and without shoes or clothes. It was the last they heard from him. While it's not certain that Santos is dead, he probably suffered the same fate as 72 migrants from Central and South America whose bodies were found this week in a ranch in northern Mexico, just 90 miles from the U.S. border. Officials are investigating whether they were the victims of human traffickers or drug cartels that prey on migrants. It's a fate that officials say befalls thousands of Central and South Americans every year. "It's brutal," says Peter Hakim, president emeritus of the Inter-American Dialogue, a non-partisan Washington policy institute. "This is very big business. It's very brutal." It is indeed big business. Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative forms of crime worldwide after drug and arms trafficking, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in April. In Mexico, it is a $15 billion- to $20 billion-a-year endeavor, second only to drug trafficking, said Samuel Logan, founding director of Southern Pulse, an online information network focused on Latin America. "And that may be a conservative estimate," Logan said. That money, which used to go mostly to smugglers, now also flows into the hands of drug cartel members. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan, nonprofit
policy institute based in Washington, noted in an August report that human smuggling and other illegal activities are playing an increasingly important role as narcotraffickers diversify their activities. "The

drug cartels have not confined themselves to selling narcotics," the report said. "They engage in kidnapping for ransom, extortion, human smuggling and other crimes to augment their incomes." Some cartels have come to rely more in recent years on human smuggling. "For the Zetas, it's been one of their main revenue streams for years," Logan said about the vicious cartel, which operates mostly in northeastern Mexico. Cartel involvement has increased the risk for migrants crossing through Mexico to get to the United States, said Mexico's 10/15/2010 Human trafficking second only to drugs www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?a 1/4National Commission for Human Rights. An investigation by the commission showed that 9,758 migrants were abducted from September 2008 to February 2009, or about 1,600 per month. No one knows exactly how many people try to make the passage every year. The human rights organization Amnesty International estimates it as tens of thousands. More than 90 percent of them are Central Americans, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, Amnesty International said in a report this year. And the vast majority of these migrants, the rights group said, are headed for the United States. "Their journey is one of the most dangerous in the world," Amnesty International said. "Every year, thousands of migrants are kidnapped, threatened or assaulted by members of criminal gangs," the rights group said. "Extortion and sexual violence are widespread and many migrants go missing or are killed. Few of these abuses are reported and in most cases those responsible are never held to account." An indication of how many people attempt the trip can be found in
statistics compiled by Mexico's National Migration Service, which tracks how many migrants are detained and returned to their countries of origin each year. Experts even most -- are

note that these are only the migrants who get caught, and that many -not apprehended. Nonetheless, the Mexican agency said it detained 64,061 migrants last year, 60,383 of whom were from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. About 20 percent of them were females and about 8 percent were under the age of 18. Some were under 10. Officials in El Salvador, where the teen-aged Santos started his trip, estimate that about 10,000 Central American migrants suffered some kind of abuse in 2009. "The vast majority has been committed by these organized crime gangs, such as the Zetas for example, in the route along the Gulf (of Mexico), which is where they operate most frequently," said Juan Jose Garcia, the Salvadoran vice minister for citizens living abroad. "But we also have found events in which (Mexican) authorities have participated," Garcia said. The Salvadoran Foreign Ministry estimates up to 150

citizens leave each day for Mexico. Some analysts put that figure at closer to 300. For most Central Americans, that journey begins with a human smuggler, commonly called a "pollero." In the United States, the smugglers are better known as "coyotes." For a set fee, usually ranging from $850 to $5,000 a head, a smuggler will deliver a migrant to the border of the United States or even offer passage across. Problems often arise when smugglers and migrants approach the
border and organized crime organizations get involved. "This is where things get complicated," said Logan, who is writing a book on the Zetas and is the author of "This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13 America's Most Violent Gang." The drugtrafficking organizations charge the "polleros" a price per person for the right to cross over their territory, a practice called "derecho de piso," or right of passage. Or they will abduct the migrants and hold them for ransom from their relatives and friends in the United States or family back home. Often times, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said, migrants who are abducted are subjected to sexual or labor exploitation. If the migrants are being held for ransom and the money is not paid in time, the situation can get ugly. "Sometimes the

Mexican organized crime group says, 'The hell with it. We're not going to deal with these people,' and they kill them all," Logan said. That's what may have happened, Logan said, to the 72 people whose bodies were found Tuesday in a ranch building in Tamaulipas state, about 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the town of San Fernando, near the border with Texas. Or the migrants may have refused to work for the cartel, which is one possibility that has been mentioned in news accounts. 10/15/2010 Human trafficking second only to drugs
www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?a 2/4A bloody turf war between the Zetas and the Gulf cartels also may have complicated matters because the smugglers may not have known who to pay or may have paid one group and angered the other. "In Tamaulipas, it's very hard for a pollero to know who is who," Logan said. "The Zetas and Gulf cartels were once allied and now have split." At any rate, the involvement of the drug cartels has changed the dynamics of human smuggling in Mexico, said Andrew Selee, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute. Selee remembers living in northern Mexico a few years back and knowing that a father-son duo who lived on his block were "polleros." "That's gone," Selee said, noting that the costs of having to pay cartels for the right to cross their territory has driven out smalltime smugglers. "They now have to be big enough to handle those costs," Selee said. Selee and the Inter-American Dialogue's Hakim point out that increased border security and interdiction by the United States also has led to cartel involvement because of the level of sophistication and complexity now often involved in getting someone across the border. The cartels already have the routes and other facilities in place they use for smuggling drugs. "We're no longer talking about a simple process that involves one or two individuals," Selee said. "This has become much more dangerous." As always, profit is the motive. "The smuggling became profitable the more the United States began to build barriers to immigration," Hakim said. On Thursday, Amnesty International called on the Mexican government to take swift action about the slayings of the 72 people in Tamaulipas. "Amnesty International issued a report in April highlighting the failure of Mexican federal and state authorities to implement effective measures to prevent and punish thousands of kidnappings, killings and rape of irregular migrants at the hands of criminal gangs, who often operate with the complicity or acquiescence of public officials," the rights group said in a release. "This

case once again demonstrates the extreme dangers faced by migrants and the apparent inability of both federal and state authorities to reduce the attacks that migrants face. The response of the authorities to this case will be a test." It's too late for the families of the victims. For the parents of Mario Santos, the Salvadoran who disappeared 10 years ago, much of the anguish lies in not knowing what happened. "If only he would call me on the telephone and I would know he is alive, even if I never saw him again, that would satisfy me," said his father, Daniel Santos. For thousands of Central American families, the phone does not ring.

Extortions By Drug Cartels In Mexico On The Rise, HuffPost, 5-29-13

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/30/drug-extortions-mexico_n_3360500.html] MEXICO CITY -- There

has been a huge increase in the number of businesses reporting extortion

attempts by drug cartels in Mexico, according to a survey by the American Chamber in Mexico. The survey of 541 members of the American group as well as the British and Japanese chambers of commerce in Mexico showed the percentage of firms reporting cartel extortions has doubled.

Such problems were reported by 18 percent in 2012, but the number jumped to 36 percent this year even as reports of most of other types of crimes declined. "Obviously that's one of the ones that really jumped out when we were studying the graph, because almost all of the other tendencies were down," Thomas Gillen, chairman of the AmCham Security Committee, said Wednesday. Companies reported fewer thefts of shipments or supplies and fewer threats or attacks on employees in the most recent survey. As for the rise in reported extortion cases, "People might be

becoming more comfortable in reporting it, or criminals might be getting better at extorting businesses," Gillen said. It wasn't known how many businesses actually made protection payments because the survey didn't ask that question, but 3 percent of firms said they had "negotiated" extortion demands, something that could include payments. Mexican authorities discourage businesses from making such payments. Drug gangs have increasingly turned to demanding protection money from businesses in Mexico because it is a relatively easy way for them to supplement income from drug trafficking in areas they already control. Business owners who refuse to pay are often kidnapped or killed or see their businesses burned. The problem has gotten so bad that residents in the western state of Michoacan took up arms earlier this year against systematic extortion demands by the Knights Templar cartel, forming community self-defense squads to kick the cartel out. In 2012, the Knights Templar burned five warehouses and dozens of vehicles belonging to the Sabritas snack company, a Mexican subsidiary of PespsiCo. Banners signed by the cult-like drug gang said the firebombing attacks were conducted because the gang believed the snack company let lawenforcement agents use its trucks for surveillance, something the company denied. Drug cartels
had long appeared to prefer to shake down money from local, family-owned businesses in Mexico, in part because it's easier for criminals to identify who controls the finances in such firms and who can be pressured into making a payment. But the survey suggests that extortion of foreign firms may be much more widespread than previously thought. While some Mexican firms and smaller businesses are members of the American Chamber, the majority of its members are foreign or transnational companies with operations in Mexico. Most of the firms surveyed said the overall security situation in Mexico isn't getting worse:

84 percent said their companies were as safe or safer than they were in 2012. However, it was unclear whether that was a result of increased investment by the companies themselves in private security measures or because of a general improvement in public safety. Twenty-eight percent of the firms said they had hired additional private security forces or consultants over the last year, and security spending averaged about 4 percent of total costs for firms responding in the survey. Gillen said that was in line with average outlays in Latin America. "The study for me reflects optimism on the part of the business community here, but it's not unfounded, unrealistic optimism," Gillen said. "They're well aware of the problems they face." Forty-two percent of companies said they restricted corporate travel by employees in Mexico for security reasons. That is a stance adopted even by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico, which limits nonessential travel by embassy
personnel in certain regions of Mexico. Two percent of companies said they had moved operations out of Mexico for security reasons. Five percent said they had moved, or were considering moving, operations from one Mexican state to another because of security concerns. That is a bit lower than in 2012, when 9 percent said they had moved from one state to another. The state that lost the most firms was the northern border state of Nuevo Leon, where the industrial hub of Monterrey, Mexico's second-largest city, is located. Monterrey

saw a huge increase in drug-related violence starting in 2011.

Drug Cartels Running Command and Control Operations Out of North Texas, NBC5, 5-17-13. [http://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/Drug-Cartels-Running-Command-and-Control-Operations-Out-ofNorth-Texas-207595631.html]

Trouble came rolling into town and landed squarely in one Seagoville neighborhood. One neighbor told NBC 5 Investigates he saw federal agents surround a neighbors home and then, a short time later, carry out bags full of cash. The men that lived at the home were not your average street-level drug dealers. The current residents of the house showed NBC 5 Investigates a crawlspace hidden in a back closet where the DEA said the cartel hid drugs and money. According to recently unsealed court records obtained by NBC 5 Investigates, prosecutors say they were members of a high-level cell of La Familia, a violent Mexican drug cartel. For the Drug Enforcement Administration, the case was one example of a dramatic change theyve seen in Dallas over the last six years. Cartels now send trusted members to North Texas to set up

what the DEA calls command and control, directing drug shipments from Dallas to cities all over the country. You name it. Theres no city limits sign for these guys. Wherever they can fit in, theyll move in, sometimes as normally as a normal family, said Daniel R. Salter, the acting special agent in charge of the Dallas DEA office. Using wiretaps, agents recorded mobile phone conversations that tracked cartel operatives to neighborhoods across the Metroplex. Its alarming to us to think they would bypass cities they used previously, because we werent exactly ready for it, said Salter. Investigators are now. Recent investigations have led agents to suburbs including Carrollton and Duncanville. Agents have uncovered ranch properties used by cartels in rural areas on the edges of the Metroplex. The DEA snapped surveillance photos of one cartel meeting outside the Harry Hines Bazaar in Dallas and they found one operative working from a home in Felicia Wilsons neighborhood in Richardson. It is frightening. It is frightening because you close your door and go to bed at night and you don't know what's going to happen, said Wilson. Fred Burton is a
former state department counterterrorism agent. He's tracked Mexican cartels in the past when he worked for the Texas Department of Public Safety. Now he works for Stratfor Global Intelligence, a security firm in Austin. He said recent investigations show cartels now use Dallas to move drugs to major cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta. Burton said the cartels are attracted to Dallas by the same things that attract many major companies -- including a highway network with easy connections to points across the country, and Dallas has become an essential place that cartels have to control to run their business effectively. I think, from a geography perspective, they pretty much have to own that territory if they're going to have an effective distribution network, said Burton. It's very interesting. Very profit motivated, just like a business organization. The only aspect tha t's different is its fully criminal activity and can be very violent, said Sarah Saldaa the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas. Saldaas office has already won convictions of more than 160 people tied to La Familia alone. But

when one cartel cell is shut down, another often pops up. We're not breathing easily. We're still going with our investigations and trying to make sure we're getting as many as we can, said Saldaa. And they never know where they may turn up. There has been one shooting in Dallas involving a suspected cartel hit-man. Cartel kidnappings have been reported in the border region of Texas. But the victims have also had ties to the cartels. Prosecutors want to stay on top of this so it doesn't reach a point where ordinary people end up in the middle of it.

Activists Group
Mexican agency, group seek protection for Jurez activists, El Paso Times, 1-21-10. [http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_14169144]
A Mexican government agency and Amnesty International have urged authorities to protect other activists in Jurez after the recent murder of a woman activist. The federal Mexican National Commission on Human Rights asked Chihuahua officials to provide safety for the activists, including Cipriana Jurado, a longtime labor advocate. Jurado said federal officers detained her in 2008 while she was investigating the death of Saulo Becerra Reyes, who was among a group of men who were picked up by federal authorities on Oct. 21, 2008, on suspicion of ties to drug-trafficking. Amnesty International said a death certificate states Becerra died from a brain hemorrhage a day following his detention. However, authorities never acknowledged Becerra's detention, and Becerra's body was not found until March 2009. Mexican authorities freed Jurado after several nongovernmental groups came to her aid. Amnesty International said Jurado also accompanied the late Josefina Reyes in marches and other protests involving alleged abuses by soldiers and federal agents, who were sent to Chihuahua state to battle the drug cartels. Josefina Reyes, who was shot to death Jan. 3 in her Valle de Jurez community, was the mother of Miguel Angel Reyes Salazar, one of several suspects federal authorities detained last September with Rodolfo "Rikin" Escajeda, a man U.S. and Mexican investigators said was a dangerous drug dealer. Mexican authorities presented Escajeda and Reyes Salazar at a press conference in Mexico City, but Reyes' mother claimed she had no contact with her son and therefore could not verify he was still alive. Julio Cesar Reyes, another one of her sons, was killed in 2008 in Valle de Jurez

Ciprano Jurardo; Mexican Woman Activist, RothkoChapel.org, 6-28-13.

[http://www.rothkochapel.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=123%3Acipriana-jurado-mexican-activisttells-her-story&Itemid=44]
This summer, the Rothko Chapel continues its exploration of the key issues facing people living on the U.S.-Mexico border by presenting

Cipriana Jurado Herrera, a Mexican human rights activist who was recently awarded political asylum in the United States. She will speak on Tuesday, June 28 at 7pm at the Rothko Chapel, 3900 Yupon Street. The program is free
and open to the public. Seating is limited and is first-come, first serve. The public is invited to meet the speaker at a reception after the talk.

Cipriana Jurado has been an activist in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, for over twenty years, since she arrived in the city at age 14 to work in the maquiladoras to help support her family. It was then that she first began to fight for dignity and on behalf of her fellow workers. In the late 1980s she co-founded Centro de Investigaciones y Solidaridad Obrera (Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity), and in 1990 she became its director. Much of her work has centered on complaints, victimization, kidnappings, and disappearances related to the militarization of northern Mexico and the abuses and brutality carried out by the Mexican military. In 2008, after she had publicly opposed and denounced the militarization, Cipriana Jurado was arrested by unidentified officers without a search warrant. Thanks to the efforts of Mexican congressman Victor Quintana and human rights organizations in Ciudad Juarez, she was released the next day, but not before witnessing first-hand the brutality others had suffered at the hands of the Mexican military. She continued to be harassed by the military even as good friends and human rights colleagues were brutally murdered. In 2010, fearing for her life, she left Mexico with her two children and went to Chicago under the protection of the

Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America. On July 11, 2011, she was granted political asylum in the United States.

Mexican Womens Rights Activist Shot in Ciudad Juarez, (Latin American) Herald Tribune. (Date not specified).
[http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=449369&CategoryId=14091] CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico A

group of gunmen shot and wounded a womens rights activist in this northern Mexican border city, civil society groups said. Norma Andrade, one of the leaders of the May Our Daughters Return Home non-governmental organization was shot several times Friday by a group of armed men while leaving work in Ciudad Juarez, the All Rights for All national network of human rights organizations said in a statement. The network added that Andrade, listed in serious but stable condition at a hospital, is the mother of Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrade, who was murdered in February 2001. She also is the mother of the director of the May Our Daughters Return Home group, Malu Garcia, who was forced to flee to Mexico City due to threats from suspected drug traffickers. The Attorney Generals Office in Chihuahua state, where Juarez is located, confirmed in a preliminary report that the social activist was shot at least five times while she was getting into her car, attributing the attack to attempted auto theft. But sources close to the activist said that Andrade was the victim of an attempted homicide carried out by members of a Juarez-based drug cartel. For its part, Chihuahuas State Human Rights Commission, or CEDH, denounced the attack on Andrade and urged the state AGs office to ramp up security at the hospital where she is being treated. The commission whose president, Jose Luis
Armendariz, said Andrade was in stable condition also demanded that authorities conduct a thorough investigation into the attack and bolster protection for the activist and her family. Over the past two years, five activists have been killed by suspected members of organized crime gangs in Chihuahua state and 12 others have fled the country, the commission said. The most recent case was that of Susana Chavez, a poet and womens rights activist who led efforts to seek justice for the mainly unsolved slayings

of more than 500 women in Ciudad Juarez since 1993. Most of the victims were young women from poor families who worked in the assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, that sprung up around the city to take advantage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Many were sexually assaulted before they died. Chavez was raped, mutilated and killed on Jan. 11 of this year by three people, including a minor. A month earlier, Marisela Escobedo was slain while staging a demonstration outside the Chihuahua governors office to demand justice for the murder of her daughter, whose confessed killer had been released by a three-judge panel due to lack of evidence. Another killing that rocked Juarez, located across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, was that of Josefina Reyes, a former municipal official in a Juarez suburb and longtime social activist who was gunned down on a road outside the city. In November 2010, activist Flor Alicia Gomez, a member of the Justice for Our Daughters and the Womens Human Rights Center groups, was raped and murdered. Finally, in September 2009, Paz Rodriguez Ortiz, founder of a human rights association, was shot and killed in front of his wife. The northern state of Chihuahua has accounted for about 30 percent of the nearly 50,000 murders committed in Mexico since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon militarized the struggle against Mexicos drug cartels. Juarez, a coveted drug-smuggling corridor that is being fought over by the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels with backing from hit men from local street gangs, is considered Mexicos murder capital .

Wave of Violence Swallows More Women in Jurez, NY TIMES, June 23, 2012. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/world/americas/wave-of-violence-swallows-more-women-in-juarezmexico.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]

CIUDAD JUREZ, Mexico First,

there were just a few bones and body parts, found in a valley beyond the sprawl of this wild city. At least four women had been killed and dumped, the authorities said. Then, in the same area, investigators made another discovery early this year: a dozen more dead women and girls. Most disappeared in 2009 and 2010, and when last seen alive many were teenagers, good students with bright smiles of possibility. In death, however, they have
become apparitions. Idal Juaches mother still insists her daughter is missing, though the police linked her DNA to cranial fragments in the valleys grave. Elvira Gonzlez said she felt what seemed like her daughters spirit at home, before finding out she had been dumped in the grave. I

never believed this was how she would be brought back to us, Ms. Gonzlez said, fighting tears in her modest kitchen. I always believed shed be given back to us alive. Ciudad Jurez became infamous for a wave of attacks beginning in the 1990s that left hundreds of women dead over the course of a decade. International attention moved on, but the killings have continued, with a second wave even larger than the first. Even as overall violence here declines, new clusters of slain women are continually being discovered. Roughly 60 women and girls have been killed here so far this year; at least 100 have been reported missing over the past two years. And though the death toll for women so far this year is on track to fall below the high of 304 in 2010, state officials say there have already been more women killed in 2012 than in any year of the earlier so-called femicide era. This time, though, the response has been underwhelming. People havent reacted with the same force as before, said Gustavo de la Rosa, a human rights investigator for Chihuahua State. They think its natural. Mexican authorities have made promises to prioritize cases like these for years, and in the wake of international pressure, prosecutors now argue that more of the killings are being solved. But arrests and convictions are exceedingly rare. For the victims found in the mass grave in the Jurez Valley, even the most basic details were still a mystery months later: forensic teams said they were not even sure how many women were buried there. To many, these women are now part of what looks like a slaughter with
peaks and valleys, but no end. In the state office opened a few years ago to investigate violence against women, desks are perpetually covered with stomach-turning case files. Its

a more vulnerable group, said Hector Hawley, the forensics investigator charged with documenting the crime scenes of most of the women killed in Ciudad Jurez. These are not people we expect to see killed. Mr. Hawley has been working murder cases since 2003. He started specializing in women in recent years, and in his view, the stunning tally
of women killed is mostly caused by the increased local involvement in gangs and drugs; and jealous men. Often, both gangs and jealousy come together in a single case. He opened a file on his computer showing one of the 18 women killed in April. Photographs showed that she had been dumped in a public street, and found around 8 a.m. She was stabbed 63 times, Mr. Hawley said. Her pink shirt, featuring an image of a heart, was stained with blood. Based

on the number of stab wounds, he said, The killer had to be on drugs. He opened another file, showing a woman, shot dead, at the bottom of a garbage pile. She was pregnant, he said. We think she owed her bosses money for something, drugs maybe. He clicked through several other cases showing women young
and old, mostly shot and killed at close range. He and two investigators in his office said they did not have any specific information about the women found in the mass grave, but they warned against seeing their deaths as the product of a single cause. In Jurez, theres everything, Mr.

Hawley said. There are jealous husbands, jealous fathers-in-law, there are women killing women. A government committee found a similar array of causes for the earlier wave of killings. After surveying 155 killings out of 340 documented between 1993 and 2003, the committee found that roughly half were prompted by motives like domestic violence, robbery and gang wars, while a little more than a third involved sexual assault. Victims advocates, however, argue that the killings of the women found in the valley fall on the more bizarre end of the spectrum. Francisca Galvn, a lawyer who has been working with the parents of missing
girls, said that Ms. Gonzlezs daughter, Perla, 15, was last seen downtown talking to a middle-aged man around lunchtime. Several other girls from the grave, along with some still missing, have also disappeared from locations nearby, Ms. Galvn said. All were around the same age and several looked very similar: posters hanging all over the city show that they had long, straight dark hair and skinny frames. The authorities, they dont want to see the truth, Ms. Galvn said. Life

here just has so little value. Her own theories run the gamut: maybe the girls were targeted for organ theft, maybe the killers arrived as part of the surge in deportations that has sent thousands of

immigrant criminals to Ciudad Jurez from the United States. Though it is unclear if the victims had been raped, she added, maybe the killings started as sexual assaults. American officials in El Paso
said they were shaking their heads, too; when drug gangs are involved in high-profile killings, paid informers usually call with tips. But not in the case of the Jurez Valley grave. For the parents, grief has been compounded by the authorities, who, in the parents view, have done far too little explaining. Several mothers of missing girls said that prosecutors had refused to let them visit the morgue, even as officials offered up conflicting tallies for how many female bodies were held there. Theyre liars, said Norma

Laguna Cabra, Idals mother. Ms. Gonzlez said that one state investigator even claimed to speak to the spirit of her missing daughter. She said he came to her house after the grave was found but before the identifications were announced. After
lingering in Perlas room, he told her she wanted to give her a message: Im on my way. Tell me where you are where should we look for you? Ms. Gonzlez said she shouted. But it was no use: I cant say, came the reply from the investigator. Two weeks later, the authorities told Ms. Gonzlez that Perla was dead. A deeply religious woman, she said she had concluded that the message whether real or fake could only have come from the devil because it increased her pain. Here,

the only one who gives us justice and obedience to the law is God, she said. And theres no escaping.

Authorities Urged to Stop Escalating Violence, Amnesty International, 712-12. [http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/mexico-fails-to-tackle-increased-levels-of-violence-againstwomen]

(New York) -- Amnesty

International today called the state of womens rights in Mexico "alarming" and urged the Mexican government to protect women from increasing levels of violence and discrimination and ensure that these crimes are investigated and those responsible brought to justice. "The state of womens rights in Mexico is alarming," said Rupert Knox, researcher on Mexico at Amnesty International. "In recent years we have witnessed not only an increase in killings of women but a continuing routine lack of effective investigations and justice." In the first six months of 2012 there were more than 130 killings of women in the state of Chihuahua. In 2009 alone, public prosecutor's office round the country received 14,829 reports of rape an alarming number considering that most women do not report these crimes. Only 2,795 convictions were achieved in the courts, illustrating that most cases are not effectively investigated and insufficient measures are taken to protect the survivors. "In the past years, Mexico has approved a number of laws and institutions designed to protect women from discrimination and violence," said Knox. "Much of the problem, however, lies in the lack of effective implementation of these laws and the weakness of the institutions." Amnesty International submitted a report about its concerns on women to the U.N. Committee on the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which on July 17 will evaluate Mexicos compliance with the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The U.N. committee will publish its conclusions and recommendations after the session finishes on July 27. The

2006 case of sexual assault by police of more than 26 detained

women in San Salvador Atenco is symbolic of the widespread denial of access to justice by both state and federal authorities. The women were arrested without explanation during protests by a local peasant organization, many of them subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence. In spite of enquiries and recommendations by the National Human Rights Commission and the National Supreme Court, the unjust circumstances have forced nine of the women to take their case to the Inter American Commission of Human Rights. Amnesty International's report said the Mexican state is failing women on gender discrimination, threats and attacks against women activists, violence suffered by women migrants, failure to fully comply with Inter American Court of Human Rights judgments on the rape of two indigenous women in Guerrero state and the Cotton Field abduction and killing of young women in Ciudad Juarez as well as identifying obstacles to effective access to sexual and reproductive health. Also detailed are

the increased level of threats and attacks against women human rights activists who worked to ensure justice for their murdered relatives.

Mexico Failing to Tackle Violence, Amnesty International, 7-11-12.

[http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/mexico-fails-tackle-increased-levels-violence-against-women-2012-07-11]

On 17 July, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women will evaluate Mexicos compliance with the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The UN body will publish their conclusions and recommendations after the session finishes on 27 July. The state of womens rights in Mexico is alarming, said Rupert Knox, Researcher on Mexico at Amnesty International. In recent years we have witnessed not only an increase in killings of women but a continuing routine lack of effective investigations and justice. In the past years, Mexico has approved a number of laws and institutions designed to protect women from discrimination and violence. Much of the problem, however, lies in the lack of effective implementation of these laws and the weakness of the institutions, said Rupert Knox. Amnesty Internationals submission details some of the areas in which the Mexican state is failing womens rights, including: gender discrimination, threats and attacks against women activists, violence suffered by women migrants, failure to fully comply with Inter American Court of Human Rights judgments on the rape of two indigenous women in Guerrero state and the Cotton Field abduction and killing of young women in Ciudad Juarez as well as identifying obstacles to effective access to sexual and reproductive health. According to a report published by UNIFEM and local human rights organizations, at least 34,000 women were murdered in Mexico between 1985 and 2009 -- 2,418 in 2010 alone. In the state of Chihuahua, where there was a sharp increase of murders, in 2010 one of every 11 victims was a women -- up from one in every 14 in 2008. In Ciudad Juarez, 320 women were murdered in 2010. The number of killings fell back slightly in 2011. In the first six months of 2012 there were more than 130 killings of women in the state of Chihuahua. In 2009 alone, public prosecutors office round the country received 14,829 reports of rape an alarming number considering that most women do not report these crimes. Only 2,795 convictions were achieved in the courts. Most cases are not effectively investigated and insufficient measures are taken to protect the survivors. The case of San Salvador Atenco is emblematic. More than 26 women were sexually assaulted by police when detained during demonstrations in 2006. The denial of access to justice by both state and federal
authorities in spite of enquiries and recommendations by the National Human Rights Commission and the National Supreme Court has forced 9 of the women to take their case to the Inter American Commission of Human Rights. Amnesty Internationals submission also details the increased level of threats and attacks against women human rights activists who worked to ensure justice for their murdered relatives. The

Mexican authorities, led by both the actual and new government to take office in December, must move to implement commitments to protect women's rights to end abuses and impunity, said Rupert Knox.

Grassroots key to solving Cap

Social Movements Key to Break Capitalism, the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum, 3-29-13.
[http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/declaration-social-movements-assembly-world-social-forum-2013]

As the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum of Tunisia, 2013, we are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of peoples of Maghreb-Mashrek (from North Africa to the Middle East), in the construction of human civilization. We affirm that decolonization for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance. Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we come together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We have built a common history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America, where we
have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create several alternatives for just development that truly honors nature.

Together, the peoples of all the continents are fighting to oppose the domination of capital, hidden behind illusory promises of economic progress and the illusion of political stability.

Now, we are at a crossroads where retrograde and conservative forceswant to stop the processes initiated two years ago with the uprisings inthe Maghreb-Mashreq region that helped to bring down dictatorships andto challenge the neoliberal system imposed on the peoples. These uprisings have spread to all continents of the world inspiring indignationand occupation of public places.

People all over the world are suffering the effects of the aggravation of a profound crisis of capitalism, in which its agents (banks, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, international institutions, andgovernments complicit with neoliberalism) aim at increasing their profits by applying interventionist and neocolonial policies. War, military occupations, free-trade neoliberal treaties and austerity measures are expressed in economic packages that privatize the common good, and public services, cut wages and rights, increase unemployment, overload womens care work and destroys nature. Such policies strike the
richer countries of the North harder and are increasing migration, forced displacement, evictions, debt, and social inequalities such as in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Italy, Ireland and the Spanish State. They

re-enforce conservatism and the control over womens bodies and lives. In addition, they seek to impose "green economy" as a solution tothe environmental and food crisis, which not only exacerbates the problem, but leads to commodification, privatization and financialization of life and nature. We denounce the intensification of repression to peoples rebellions, the assassination of the leadership of social movements, the criminalization of our struggles and our proposals. We assert that people must not continue to pay for this systemic crisis and that there is no solution inside the capitalist system! Here, in Tunes, we reaffirm our committment to come together to forge a common strategy to guide our struggles against capitalism.

Efforts In Feminicide Happening Now

Tag Goes Here Albuquerque and Vemala in 2008 (http://texascenter.tamiu.edu/pdf_br/v7/v7Albuquerque.pdf) The United Nations defines violence against women as any act of gender based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women (United Nations General Assembly, 1993). Campbell et al. (2003) discuss femicide in the US and report that femicide is the leading cause of death among African-American women aged 15 to 45 and the seventh cause of death for women in general. Homicides perpetrated by intimate partners represent in between 40% and 50% of all femicides. Male homicides by intimate partners on the other hand are relatively less common, representing approximately 6% of overall male homicides. Homicides perpetrated by intimate partners are usually preceded by physical abuse. The authors conducted a multisite controlled experiment to identify risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships and found out that a partner unemployed and not looking for a job and partners that never lived together were the two most important predictors of fatalities. Bott et al. (2005) consider the case of low and middle income countries, and find that gender-based violence is a complex phenomenon, affected by many factors that work at different levels. According to the authors, a characteristic of the research in the field of gender-based violence prevention is the methodological weaknesses of most studies, despite recent progress. Glaeser & Sacerdote (1999) find that the main reason for higher crime rates in big cities, when compared to small cities and rural environments, and after controlling for many other variables, is the higher percentage of female-headed households, which are more prone to victimization than other types of households. Less efficient law enforcement and higher economic returns to crime have a less important impact but are also significant factors. In the case of the Mexico-US border region, fast industrialization and increased trade following the NAFTA led to large scale migration of Mexicans towards cities along the border. Job opportunities abound in the region; yet, high population densities and chaotic urbanization resulting from fast growth have tended to exacerbate crime rates, with expected impacts on femicide rates. Albuquerque (2007) found that disparate outcomes regarding homicide rates on the Mexican and American sides of the border originate not only from high population densities on the Mexican side but also from deficiencies in their law enforcement and justice systems, while cultural and economic factors do not seem to play a significant role.

Feminicide
Femicide has become an epidemic in more places than just Juarez, or even Mexico as a whole. All the while it is being overlooked by society. Diego 2006 (http://www.ipsnews.net/2006/11/mexico-central-america-juarez-femicides-justa-drop-in-the-ocean-of-blood/) CIUDAD Juarez in Mexico has been dubbed 'the femicide capital' of the world by human rights organisations because about 400 women have been killed there in the last 13 years. But murders of women are also frequent elsewhere in Mexico, as well as in Guatemala and El Salvador, and so far there is little public discussion about them. An average of 1,000 women a year were murdered in Mexico, a country of 103 million, between 1995 and 2005, according to official figures. Ciudad Juarez does not even appear on the list of the places where the largest number of killings occurred - instead, they are Toluca, a city close to the capital, and Guadalajara, in the central state of Jalisco. And across the border in Guatemala, which has a population of 13 million, 566 women were killed in the first 10 months of this year, while in El Salvador, a country of 6.9 million, 286 were killed between January and August. Despite the high numbers, these crimes have not enjoyed the same notoriety as in Ciudad Juarez, on Mexico's border with the United States, where they have been the object of an outcry by human rights groups, investigations by United Nations rapporteurs, films, documentaries and books. 'Juarez has become a byword as a result of all the denunciations and demonstrations that the femicides there have provoked, but in other Mexican cities, and particularly in Guatemala, the situation now is extremely serious,' Teresa Rodriguez, head of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) for Mexico, Central America, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, told IPS. 'We are very concerned about these murders, which for the most part go unpunished,' Rodriguez said ahead of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which since 1999 is commemorated on 25 November. 'There is a culture that continues to turn a blind eye to this situation, and we cannot tolerate it. It must be combated and prevented by means of public policies, but also, as has happened in Ciudad Juarez, it must be exposed and denounced, and we have to make it clear that these killings are not normal, just as violence against women and girls in general is not normal,' she said. Femicide is a term that has been coined for misogynist or gender-motivated murders of women, sometimes accompanied by sexual violence. In Ciudad Juarez, located next to the US border town of El Paso, about 400 women have been murdered since 1993. Sexual violence was involved in 78 of these crimes, according to official reports. The Special Prosecutor's Office Investigating Crimes Related to Violence Against Women, created by the outgoing Vicente Fox administration, reported in February that there is no pattern indicative of serial killings in Juarez, contrary to what human rights organisations have claimed. The report also said that 125 women died in their own homes, at the hands of relatives or acquaintances. UNIFEM estimates that between 20% and 30% of murdered women in Mexico and Central America are killed by their partners or relatives. In Juarez, most of the murdered women were in the 15-30 age group, and many were from the low-income social strata and worked in maquiladora factories, which operate in tax-free zones and assemble products for export using imported materials. These factories are concentrated in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican cities along the US border. Their

workforce mainly consists of young women, many of whom are living away from their families. Although the Guatemalan context is different, the killings are similar. Deputy Nineth Montenegro, chair of the Guatemalan Congressional Commission on Women, said on 20 November that 566 women had been murdered in her country between January and October. Femicides in Guatemala are attributed mainly to drug trafficking, organised crime and youth gangs. Montenegro said that in most of these deaths the motive remained unknown, and it was evident that these crimes were treated as of little importance, as they were spreading and taking root in society. UNIFEM's regional director said that there was a lot of work to be done to curb and prevent the killing of women. 'Better training is needed for the police and in the justice system. These sectors are especially lagging in Central America, but now draft laws towards that end are being debated,' she said. The 'In-depth study on all forms of violence against women', published in July by the United Nations, mentioned the Ciudad Juarez murders, but also referred to the killings in Guatemala. 'Femicide occurs everywhere, but the scale of some cases of femicide within community contexts - for example, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and Guatemala has drawn attention to this aspect of violence against women,' the report said. In line with the complaints by human rights groups and women's organisations, the UN states in its report that 'impunity for these crimes is seen as a key factor in these occurrences'. The report does not mention El Salvador, but the situation there is also very serious. Between January and August, 286 murders of women were reported in El Salvador, indicating an increase in the annual average of such deaths. From 2001 to the end of 2005, 1,320 women were killed, according to a study by the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsperson (PDDH). Rodriguez hopes that the exposure and denunciation of femicides in El Salvador, Guatemala and several cities in Mexico will encourage civil society and governments to create new programmes and actions to combat them, for what is happening 'is totally unacceptable'.

Trafficking causes degradation and results in abuse for women Acharya 08

Arun Kumar Sexual Violence and Proximate Risks: A Study on Trafficked Women in Mexico City [http://gtd.sagepub.com/content/12/1/77.short] DE Trafficking in humans is an integral part of the social and economic fabric in Mexico as in other parts of the world. This practice causes intolerable degradation and suffering for the girls and young women involved and are treated as a commodity. The process results in a risk to their physical and mental health, and in particular, to their sexual health, which I have explored in this research. Sixty trafficked women currently working as commercial sex workers were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire, and 13 in-depth interviews were conducted in the La Merced red-light area of Mexico City. Trafficked women in Mexico are basically young women, have little education and are mostly unmarried. The women I interviewed were working in cheap hotels and were living with a pimp. In the week prior to the interviews, 70 percent were beaten with objects, 100 percent were abused verbally, 28 percent were burned by lighting cigarettes, 36 percent were threatened with being killed and 22 percent were raped by clients and traffickers. Unwanted pregnancies and forced abortions were common; 65 percent had had at least one abortion. Almost all women had been infected by sexually transmitted diseases. The present research concluded that sexual violence has serious physical and mental health risks on trafficked women and it needs an urgent response from the government not only to provide health facilities to these women but also to eradicate women trafficking in Mexico.

There are two parts to feminicide, the ones committing the action and the government who allows it to happen Santos 09
Stephanie, The Death of Eugenia Baja: Feminicide and Transnational Feminist Organizing among Filipina Migrant Workers
[http://aascpress.metapress.com/content/c263342l51q7723q/fulltext.pdf] DE What makes the death of a migrant worker a feminicide, as opposed to murder or a suicide? How does the framework of feminicide help to analyze the growing number of Filipina migrant women who are displaced from their communities, to end up murdered in different parts of the world? Victoria Sanford, in her essay From Genocide to Feminicide: Impunity and Human Rights in Twentieth Century Guatemala, provides a good working definition of feminicide:

Feminicide is a political term. . . . It holds responsible not only the male perpetrators, but also the State and judicial structures that normalize misogyny. Feminicide connotes not only the murder of women by men because they are women, but also indicates government responsibility for these murders, whether through the commission of the actual killing, tolerance of the perpetrators acts of violence, or omission of State responsibility to ensure the safety of its female citizens. In Guatemala, feminicide exists because of the absence of State
guarantees to protect the rights of women. Impunity, silence and indifference each play a role in feminicide.9

Feminicide is ONLY illegal in 13 states of Mexico Catlicas por el Derecho a Decidir CDD Comisin Mexicana de Defensa y Promocin de los Derechos Humanos CMDPDH 2012
[http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cedaw/docs/ngos/CDDandCMDPDH_forthesession_Me xico_CEDAW52.pdf] DE Finally, Mexico has not concluded to include the crime of femicide in the Criminal Codes of each entity in accordance with the definition provided by the GLAWLFV and with the highest international standards in this matter. Currently, only 13 states have criminalized femicide in their criminal codes. Furthermore, some Criminal Codes consider certain mitigating circumstances to the sanction, such as having committed the murder as a result of a duel or a fight, or the state of violent emotion of the perpetrator, which is often equated with jealousy and infidelity Moreover, various states have not yet equated the crime of femicide with other related offenses. The crime of femicide will not be effective without a comprehensive reform to other laws and regulatory frameworks that order the creation and implementation of investigation protocols with a gender and human rights perspective, as well as the development of databases and statistical records. Therefore, we present the problems currently faced by Mexico to address the increasing rates of violence against women around the country, as well as the lack of institutional guarantees for its prevention, treatment, punishment and eradication. We also include a series of recommendations that we hope the Committee may take into account for its concluding observations in relation to the reports submitted by Mexico.

Although Feminicide is illegal, the authorities dont enforce it Lvesque and Labrecque 07
Carole, Marie France Aboriginal women of Quebec and Canada: Path Toward Equality

[http://www.reseaudialog.ca/docs/CahiersDIALOG-200704.pdf#page=27] DE Feminicide is the misogynous murder of women committed by men based on their supposed gender superiority. For feminicide to happen, there must be a reprehensible combination of silence, omission, negligence and collusion on the part of the authorities responsible for preventing and eradicating such crimes. Feminicide happens when the State does not ensure the safety of women in their community, home, at work, on public transit and in the places where they enjoy their leisure. Marcela Lagarde, an anthropologist and Mexican government representative who described the events to me, affirms that feminicide is a State crime. In August 2003, Amnesty International reported on some 370 cases of women murdered since 1993 in Ciudad Jurez and on thousands of cases of women who had disappeared or were missing, and for which no one had ever been convicted. The bodies of these women have been found on the edges of the city, in vacant lots or dumps, and the crimes continue to this day. Murders of women happen everywhere in the world. But what is particular to Ciudad Jurez is that it is located on the border between Mexico and the United States. The history of Mexican border towns has always been associated with disorder. We only need think of the Prohibition era when Americans went to buy alcohol in these places, because they were unable to do so at home.

If Action Is Taken
If action is taken, we can pull through and solve the problems of femicide in Juarez, and the country of Mexico Marn 2007 (http://www.genderforum.org/print/issues/working-outgender/staging-femicideconfronting-reality/?print=1)
1 There will be no answers at the end of this paper. The answers are out there; someone knows who is killing women along the border between Mexico and the United States. Some say this is the resulting phenomenon inevitably plaguing global border cities, " where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds " (Anzalda 25). Examining the localized examples of Ciudad Jurez, Chihuahua, and Chihuahua City in Mexico, we find that for every young woman ferociously cut down in the flower of her youth, hundreds more seem to flock from around the country to take her place in the Third World "industrial complex," the maquiladora. I intentionally use the term flock to convey the brutal carnage to which these women, after almost fifteen years of an ongoing femicide[1], [they] come willingly, like lambs to the slaughter. In her 2001 documentary film, Seorita Extraviada, Chicana filmmaker Lourdes Portillo claims, "Jurez is the city of the future. As a model of globalization, Ciudad Jurez is spinning out of control." 2 It is nearly impossible to imagine, with the international exposure of this fatal trend, that women would still come, knowing what they must. The workers who come are described in many sources, spanning the fields of law, border studies, gender studies, and popular culture. One law professor explains, "they are often extremely poor, having left barren farmlands in Mexico's interior or impoverished regions that lack adequate health, education, and public services" (Arriola 735). And although one might argue that televisions and Internet access are scarce in the poorest communities scattered throughout the countryside, the news of more than 400 women brutally raped and murdered is ubiquitous in Mexico. But work is work; a salary, no matter how meager, is better than nothing.

Machismo Culture
Women were and are ignored because of their place in Mexican society Armstrong No Date
Jeanne Globalization, Violence against Women in Border Communities and Cultural Studies [http://faculty.wwu.edu/jeannea/ArmstrongViolenceAgainstWomen.pdf] Disruption of male authority within the culture may generate a backlash of masculine fundamentalism that tries to reestablish traditional gender hierarchies (Connell 2000). These processes play a role in the violence against women in both Ciudad Jurez and the ethnic ghettos of French cities. From 1993 to 2005, approximately 450-500 young women have been brutally murdered and many more have disappeared in Ciudad Jurez, a border city whose factories, known as maquiladoras, attract women laborers from small towns throughout Mexico (Flores 2005). Many of the murdered women were brutally and repeatedly raped, horribly mutilated, and their bodies discarded in dumps. Last seen in February 2001, Lilia Andrade's body was found days after police ignored calls of a woman seen being raped and beaten in a dump (Osborn 2004a). The women workers are poorly paid, live in shanty towns with inadequate street lighting, and may be targeted while walking to or from work in the dark.

Women have to take the abuse given to them because of their culture Global Security 11
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/mexico/machismo.htm] The Mexican mestizo culture places a high value on "manliness." A salient feature of the society is a sharp delimitation between the roles played by males and females. In general, men are expected to be dominant and independent and females to be submissive and dependent. The distinct boundary between male and female roles in Mexico appears to be due in part to a culturally defined hypermasculine ideal referred to as machismo. In the machista perspective, a man's greatest offense against the norm is to not act like a man. But machismo is as much about power relationships among men as it is about establishing the dominance of men over women. It is not exclusively or primarily a means of structuring power relations between men and women. It is a means of structuring power among men. Like drinking, gambling, risk taking, asserting one's opinions, and fighting, the conquest of women is a feat performed with two audiences in mind: first, other men, to whom one must constantly prove one's masculinity and virility; and second, oneself, to whom one must also show all signs of masculinity. Machismo, then, is a matter of constantly asserting one's masculinity by way of practices that show the self to be "active," not "passive"...yesterday's victories count for little tomorrow. One of those practices is an ongoing game of verbal sparring and one-upmanship, a constant attempt to force masculine rivals into the feminine role, in a never-ending quest to avoid adopting the role themselves. Each of the speakers tries to humiliate his adversary with verbal traps and ingenious linguistic combinations, and the loser is the person who cannot think of a comeback, who has to swallow his opponent's jibes. These jibes are full of aggressive sexual allusions; the loser is possessed, is violated, by the winner, and the spectators laugh and sneer at him.

The Mexican government doesnt protect its women from rape and murder Jor 04
Sierra The Systematic Destruction of Women's Agency in Ju [http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/forum/viewforum.php?forum_id=304] Mexican culture has always placed the women in the home. Placement in the private sphere without the opportunity to earn money has always limited women's agency and freedom. Men have typically held the position of power because of their economic independence. As the holders of power in the public sphere, men have created a patriarchy in which the opinions have governed the laws that are passed within Mexico. Before the murders in Jurez began, and even still, women were offered very little protection by the government especially when it came to violence and rape. The machismo culture in Mexico sets up a climate in which young women can be beaten raped and murdered with little to no consequences. Domestic abuse laws in Mexico, state that a woman may not file domestic abuse charges if her wounds heal before the end of 15 days. Women are constricted to the private sphere according to Mexican culture. The women give up their rights to be in the public sphere with the hope and understanding that they will be protected in the private sphere. They, however, do not receive this protection. Men can essentially beat their wives with no consequence. Additionally, rape laws are very lax. In 2002 a new state law in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Jurez is located, proposed that the sentence for rape would be reduced from four years to one year if a man could prove that a woman had provoked him. This proposed law "Chvez and her allies argue, shows the root problem behind the Ciudad Jurez murders -- that, in a society where men cannot be charged with raping their wives and domestic abuse is rarely prosecuted, authorities simply do not take violence against women seriously enough." Laws similar to these set up a very restricting climate for women and a very comfortable climate for men. Men are assured that the law is on their side and that they are guaranteed a huge amount of agency.

The abuse of the female Mexican worker is not ignored, rather it is encouraged by the elites of Mexico Wright 2004 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.14678306.2004.09402013.x#.UdQ-DqvwJk8) I find a similar logic at work in the issues I investigate in Ciudad Jurez today. Urban boosters, corporate executives, and political elites frequently refer to tales of the degraded woman worker, emblematic of premodern traditions and prostitution, to generate an image of a cleaner and safer city and more modern industry in the spaces where we find her missing. 2 Following such logic, if women represent a low-tech sector, then the sectors marked by her absence reveal a high-tech potential. If women on the street indicate urban decay, then their removal indicates urban renewal. In short, by equating female disappearance from the city's workspaces, both in factories and on the street, with a vision of industrial and urban progress, the city's elites are transforming the meaning of Mexican woman worker for the political economy of Ciudad Jurez. At one time she signaled prosperity as emblematic of the much-lauded feminization of the international division of labor that attracted maquiladora industries during their explosive growth from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. And she

also represented the city's main tourist attraction for Mexican and U.S. male tourists who wanted inexpensive and easy sex. Now , however, she represents, under discourses that link her to industrial obsolescence and urban vice, the opposite of prosperity. She has been devalued. Yet, as with any process of devaluation, there is value still to be gained from her, if her image as value's antithesis can be put into motion toward the production of more value. And today in Ciudad Jurez, corporate and political boosters are indeed attempting to generate value via the circulation of a discourse of the depreciated Mexican woman worker. By representing what value is not, she establishes the contours for what value is. In her opposition, therefore, we find value's positive condition. And, following this logic, we find progress in the places where she once worked, in the spaces she once occupied, in the city she once inhabited. The city's elites are thus keen to turn this representation of progress, indicated by female disappearance, into something that generates further investment in the city's capital base. In other words, they are banking on the value generated from the recognition of this progress at a time when international investors are increasingly skeptical over the city's ability to support further industrialization(see Cruz Senz 2003; Wright 2001a). And this kind of valuethe valorization of a progress symbolized by female disappearancestalks women throughout the city, such that to be a woman in Ciudad Jurez today is to be in grave danger.

Media Bad
The status quo of media tries to create impossible standards for women to meet, all the while allowing the upperclass male to gain empowerment Chapman 11 (http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/548/women-in-americanmedia-a-culture-of-misperception)
American culture is saturated with messages propagated by mass media. What was originally created for encouraging consumerism is now being promoted to a society that is being consumed by the messages themselves. Mass media is especially harmful to women because it constructs negative perceptions of women and reinforces them on a daily basis. Actions employed by the media are not always what they seem, but instead they act as catalysts for dangerous effects on women and society as a whole. This paper will address the tools used by media against women and will analyze the consequences of their use. Mass media is a potent tool used to influence its audience in many ways, although most people would like to believe that they are not affected by advertising. This is because advertisings influence is quick, its cumulative, and for the most part, its subconscious (Killing Us Softly). The standard that advertising creates affects women deeply and it is absolutely inescapable. According to Rosalind Gill, we live in an era of 360 degree branding (75). Advertisements are found on televisions, buses, on the sides of buildings, and in the magazines people read. Gill also stated that she was concerned with the currency of advertsthe way in which they permit the meaning of one thing to be expressed in terms of another, because it suggested a direct correlation between someones worth as a person and that of owning a specific product or looking a certain way (49). Although the media are hardly hypodermic needles injecting a passive and unsuspecting culture with messages that people accept openly and willingly, they certainly help to shape the most important aspects of being human, like our identities, our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions, and our fear s (Douglas 18). Mass media affects each member of society because its reach is vast, its bite is quick, and its message seeps into the very fibers that are woven together to create a culture of misperceptions about women. Indeed, it is the effect that the mass media has on a persons identity that is most profound because without an identity, a persons value lessens in a culture made up of consumers serving as the target audience. The message that advertisements are quite literally sending out is that people are equivalent to the products they purchase. These products are given an exchange value, and the descriptions of these products are translated into statements about who we are and who we aspire to become (Gill 50). This turns a persons identity into a product, instead of a composite of thoughts and feelings, in an attempt to turn human worth into that of what can be found in a store. The effect of this is that a persons actual identity and the way that person is perceived by others becomes skewed. This endangers people because society regards these messages about what people are and what people should be as absolute truths, instead of culturally constructed standards of what it means to be successful (Murray). Identity is the heart of humanity. When identity is taken away from people or is transformed into a thing, their humanity is subsequently stripped from them. While the media attempt to target every person, the level of exposure is dictated by gender, and the majority of harmful messages are focused more toward women. For instance, in

media such as magazines where a person relies on an image to relate a feeling, girls are often made to look inferior. Jean Kilbourne notes that the body language of girls is usually passive, vulnerable, and very different from the body languages of boys and men. This perpetuates the idea of weakness in women whereas men are given dignity and strength (Killing Us Softly). Even more significant is that while media are larger for women, they attempt to make womens value and worth smaller. Gill states that there are clear differences in the kinds of touch that women and men in adverts employ. She goes on to say that mens touch is used for purpose, such as reaching out to grab products or building and creating. Womens touch, however, is light and caressing and often seemed to have no purpose at all (79-80). This type of media is what Theresa de Lauretis refers to as technologies of gender which means that the representation of gender is its construction (12). In other words, the way women are perceived is not necessarily truthful. They are seen a certain way, because they are made to be seen that way (Mendible 7). This fallacy perpetuated by gender-divided media affects women more harshly because women are more harmfully depicted than are men. Being a woman in Americas media-obsessed culture also means living up to the beauty standard that advertisers set in place. Being beautiful is, in American society, the most important role a woman should fulfill. Naomi Wolf believes beauty is a currency system like the gold standard (3). The products that were previous determinates of self-worth become second to that of beauty. This is incredibly problematic because beauty is not universal, or changeless, though the West pretends that all ideals of female beauty stem from one Platonic Ideal Woman (Wolf 4). Furthermore, media couples the idea of beauty with that of morality. The reason for this can be found within television shows and movies. Sharon Hayes and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn found that good characters are generally attractive and kind, whereas the concept of evil is linked with cruelty and general unattractiveness (415). Subsequently, these beauty ideals are internalized, rationalized, and socially legitimized. Meaning women are simultaneously being told that they are only valued for their beauty, yet beauty codes make clear that most women do not measure up aesthetically (Johnston and Taylor 954). Toni Raiten-DAntonio claims by adding these moral assumptions to the evaluation of a persons appearance, we amplify the shame they are supposed to feel (111). Beauty in reality is subjective, but the mass media constructs and upholds a narrow standard for what it means to be beautiful. Therefore, mass media is no longer solely attacking the product choices that consumers make, but also the consumers themselves. In lieu of beauty being so highly regarded, women are expected by society to adhere to the beauty standard. When women do not naturally fit the standard or do not constantly strive to fit the standard, they are considered to have failed themselves, and most often, are told that they should be ashamed. Although, no one is marched off for electrolysis at the end of a riflethe disciplinary practices of femininity produces a subjected and practiced, an inferiorized, body. This system aims at turning women into the docile and compliant companions of men (Bartky 75). Yet there have been vitriolic attacks in press and magazines on women who fail to live up to increasingly narrow normative requirements of feminine appearance (Gill 2). This requirement, in turn, forces women to give up parts of themselves. Susan J. Douglas writes: We can play sports, excel at school, go to college, aspire to and get jobs previously reserved for men, be working mothers and so forth. But in exchange, we must obsess about our faces, weight, breast size, clothing brands, about pleasing men and being envied by other women. (16) The standard is already so small that the majority of women cannot meet the requirement set forth for them, and when they fail, they must absolve themselves with shame.

Women of color are itemized, even if they meet every expectation of the media Chapman 11 (http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/548/women-in-americanmedia-a-culture-of-misperception)
As these standards become increasingly narrow, it is important to note that there is yet another category of women who are affected negatively by the media. Jean Kilbourne states that its an impossible ideal for just about everyone, but its absolutely impossible for women who arent white. Women of color are generally considered beautiful only if they approximate the white ideal including tamed hair, lighter skin tone, and white facial features (Killing Us Softly). As this idea is perpetuated, there is a constant disavowal of ones own flesh. (Murray). Furthermore, women of color are stereotyped and depicted in ways where they are not individuals; rather they are projected as characters and a mass of body parts for males consumption (Stephens and Phillips 42). An example of this is in cocoa drink advertisements where representations of women of African origin frequently play on themes of darkness and sexualityin which both the woman and the drink are signified as hot chocolate (Gill 79). There is also a trend among advertisers where women of color are often featured in jungle settings wearing leopard skins as if they were exotic animals (Killing Us Softly). Instead of allowing these women dignity and humanity, the media are presenting them as dessert drinks and an entirely different species from what they are. Mendible refers to this as a convenient fiction where bodies of color function within a social and cultural taxonomy that registers but an echo of the clamor, complexity, and variety of women who embody t hem (1). Therefore, the media are denying many women of color a chance for acknowledgement, while telling the women of color who are mentioned that they are equivalent to products instead of people.

The media expects women described as fat to be in a state of attempted battering, if they arent they are shunnded by society Chapman 11 (http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/548/women-in-american-media-aculture-of-misperception) Another way in which the media categorically strips women of their humanity is when these women are a living embodiment of what the media deem as ugly, disgusting, or wrong. Perhaps one of the most fitting examples today is when a woman is fat. Not only is fat an immediate determinate for ugliness by the media, but it is also cause for being stripped of ones personhood completely. In short, the fat body is discursively constructed as a failed body project (Murray). Being fat is stigmatizing for all people, but it brings on a slew of new requirements for women. Not only is the fat body seen as ugly but it is also seen as something that needs to be controlled. Samantha Murray recounts a personal experience saying, The very name of the Control Top underpants suggested they were indeed a disciplining device, a reminder that the fat body must be strictly patrolled and policed (156). Furthermore, the media constantly emphasizes that women are defined by *their+ bodies (Douglas). Therefore, the message is not simply that fat itself needs to be tamed, but that fat women need to be disciplined and controlled. Accordingly, society learns these knowledges, internalize[s] them, and deploy[s] them at an almost pre-conscious level: [society] has a learned negative response to fat bodies, and their aesthetic transgressions (Murray). Because of this, the fat body is seen as deviant and alien and in order to be accorded personhood, is expected

to engage in a continual process of transformation (Murray). Consequently, there is a fear equated with the fat body and any body that simply is not thin, encouraging shame and disgust toward these people for living in bodies the media deem as unacceptable. The most important truth in relation to the media is that it is built on myth. Advertisements work by constructing myths, in such a way as to endow the products with meanings which appear to be natural and eternal (Gill 49). Advertising myth is also used when weighing peoples physical appearances. However, products eventually break and beauty will inevitably fade, because the standard is constantly changing. Wolf states that modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it; beauty is, by definition, inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way beauty so directly contradicts womens real situation (6). This is also evident because in the 1950s and 1960s the media myth was that women werent changing when they were and the myth now is that womens equality is an accomplished fact when it isnt (Douglas 4). If the perfect lifestyle is only depicted in these elaborate media-constructed fantasies, then it should be argued that the perfect lifestyle is unattainable because, like media, the foundation for it is also a myth.

Men in Feminism
Feminism Needs Men too Rankin 13
Lauren Feminism Needs Men, Too Lauren is a feminist, freelance writer, social justice activist, and a graduate student in Womens and Gender Studies [http://www.policymic.com/articles/416655/feminism-needs-men-too] Feminism is a movement to eradicate gendered oppression, to highlight womens voices and experiences, and to challenge restrictive and constructed gender norms. It challenges male dominance and privilege, and, at its best, challenges white, heteronormative, and cisgender privileges, as well. This is what a feminist looks like, the t-shirt proudly proclaims. But what about men? What does it mean to be a man and a feminist? What role do or should men play in the feminist movement? Acording to a 2009 CBS News poll, only 14% of men consider themselves feminists. Why so few male feminists? And how do we increase the number of male feminist allies? Perhaps its because feminism isnt a label, but an action. Co-host of Citizen Radio and writer Allison Kilkenny, notes that for a man to truly become a feminist, He has to view the world through a more empathetic lens. That reflects what her husband and cohost of Citizen Radio, Jamie Kilstein, notes as perhaps the biggest road block for men to become feminists: Feminism requires an active change in your life. To be a male feminist means changing the way you speak about and treat women, and that often means challenging your male friends when they perpetuate sexism, which can be incredibly difficult. Whats more, the simple fact is that patriarchy privileges men, particularly white men. What does it mean to challenge an immensely deep societal framework from which you profit? It can be incredibly hard, and as Kilkenny says, not every guy is up to that challenge. But many are, and more should be, because ending the patriarchal oppression for women is good for men, too. Patriarchy doesnt just privilege men over women, but privileges certain kinds of men and certain kinds of masculinity. White, heterosexual, cisgender men receive the most favor, but with that privilege, they are expected to perform a certain type of masculinity, one that is normalized as natural but is, instead, a performance based on societal norms. Feminism works to free both men and women from the gender binary that imposes a strict set of acceptable gender performances. Worth noting, in the same 2009 CBS News poll, 47% of men stated that the womens movement had improved their lives, up from 30% who said so in 1999. And this makes sense; feminism is not about demonizing men but about ending patriarchal oppression. Men are not the target; patriarchy is. Male feminists understand that no one is free until we are all free, and until we end the patriarchal oppression of women, men will suffer, too. The feminist movement cannot afford to eschew male participation in a radical movement for social change. There are numerous male feminist allies who do incredible work Jeff Fecke, Jamil Smith, Andrew Jenkins, Jamie Kilstein, Angus Johnston, John Knefel, to name a few and continually prove that men not only have something to offer feminism, but can help enable feminist consciousness and understanding within a group that many female feminists simply

cant seem to reach: other men. Jamie Kilstein is a political comedian, co-host of Citizen Radio, and proud feminist, and he emphasizes the role that feminist men can play as a role models for younger men. If you look up to a guy and he starts telling you about rape culture or feminism as youre developing, that can make a difference, he says. Feminist men can help to shift the patriarchal assumptions of masculinity for younger men, and they can help liberate other men from the strict gender binary that dictates what it means to be a man. And male feminist comedians like Jamie Kilstein and John Knefel help make feminism relatable and cool for younger men who may not understand it. Male feminist allies can get through to younger men in a way to which women may not be able. Men can be great feminist allies, but because of their privileged positions as men and because they cannot understand firsthand what patriarchal oppression feels like, its important for men to take a supportive role. I shut up for a second and listen to people who actually have to live with [that oppression+, Kilstein emphasizes, and he is exactly right. Men who want to be feminist allies need to listen to women and give rise to womens voices and experiences. Male feminists can play a vital role in educating other young men and showing solidarity with feminist women, but they need to understand that they are supportive allies, not headlining superstars. Feminism affords women a space to share their often ignored and silenced stories, experiences, and perspectives, and male feminists should promote and support those. The feminist movement needs male allies, but we need male allies who listen, who trust us, who support us. We need male feminist allies who will challenge their friends and male social circles, who will defend us without sidelining us, and who will continue to call out sexism when ]they see it. Im proud to be part of a movement where women are at the forefront and *I get+ to be the backup, Kilstein says. And that is what being a male feminist ally is all about.

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Feminist Activist 12 http://feministactivism.com/2012/01/ First of all, I want to thank you, my readers, for gifting Feminist Activism with more than 92,000 views last year! And already January has seen over 5,000 views only 3,000 more until we have a party for turning 100,000! Thank you for your continued readership and support; for liking and sharing this blog and participating in the comments. As always, I want your voice heard too, so feel free to chime in with advice, information, criticism or suggestions .Even after only one month 2012 has proven to be an important year. Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords (D-Arizona), who was shot in the head last year in a misogyny-driven attack, resigned from Congress to continue on her road to recovery. After last years constant battle against legislative misogynydriven attacks against reproductive justice in the United States, this year we all must be vigilant in ensuring that laws that are meant to protect us are not taken away. We also have the shame of battling against ridiculous Republican bills designed to distract us from their War on Women. But on the bright side *sarcasm* Jay-Z has discovered misogyny after becoming a father to a little girl and will no longer use the word bitch in his music. See this piece to learn why so mny of us are not impressed with his grand gesture. Outside the US 2012 has already heated up too. The Canadian government, in a move that further divides the LGBTQAI

communities of Canada and the rest of the world, has recently decided same-sex marriages of foreigners performed in Canada are invalid. Women in Afghanistan are still facing the same violations of their human rights as they were when the US invaded to liberate them. Police in Afghanistan arrested a woman on charges of strangling her daughter-in-law to death for giving birth to a third daughter and not a son. And rape victims there, while thankfully not being executed for being raped, are still being forced to marry their rapists. In Juarez, Mexico women are still being murdered in the string of femicides that began in 1993 and has claimed an estimated 400 (but possibly as many as 5,000) womens lives. For more information on human rights abuses in Canada, Afghanistan, Mexico and around the world see the 2012 Human Rights Watch World Report. Obviously there is a lot of work to do already to ensure that 2012 does not end in the massive global violation of human rights that 2011 did. But although internet censorship bills, the slaughter of Syrians, the forgotten famine in Africa, and the potential election of a Republican in the US give me reason to worry about 2012, I am confident that as long as we stand together and keep fighting for equality, education and human rights, this year will definitely be brighter than last

Mecixos law protects women so that playing fields are more level Reuters.com 07
Mexican Husbands May Face Trial for Jealousy [http://www.banderasnews.com/0702/edat-mexhusbands.htm] Mexican men who display extreme jealousy or avoid sex with their wives could be tried in court and punished under a new law, the special prosecutor for crimes against women told a local newspaper on Friday Men who phone their wives every half hour to check up on them, constantly suspect them of infidelity or try to control the way they dress are committing the crime of jealousy, special prosecutor Alicia Elena Perez Duarte told Excelsior newspaper. Those who stop talking to their wives, avoid sex or try to convince suspicious spouses they are "crazy" even if they are caught red-handed having an affair, are guilty of indifference, she said. Men found guilty of jealousy or indifference could face up to five years in prison, the newspaper said. Mexico's individual states will determine the punishments, it said. The progressive new law was passed this month to protect women from domestic violence .In Mexico, about 75 percent of all murdered women are killed by their husbands, Perez Duarte said. "If we do not stop this from the beginning, it turns into beatings, and the beatings turn into more beatings and rape, until it gets out of hand, and whoops, she died," she told the paper. Perez Duarte said the law would be a weapon that women could employ to level the playing field with abusive men. "Men ought not to feel discriminated against," she told Excelsior. Perez Duarte said indifference, jealousy or lack of love were crimes against women just as much as physical violence. Jealousy produces a particular type of stress in the person that comes up against it," she said. "It is exactly the same. They are wounds, psychological scars identical to physical scars."

Feminism Cards
This masculine ideology is the root cause of all proliferation, environmental destruction, domestic violence, and war Warren and Cady 94 (Karen J, Duane L, feminists and authors, Hypatia, Feminism and Peace:
Seeing connections, pg 16-17)

Much of the current "unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors -- the symptoms of dysfunctionality -- that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be seen for what it is -- as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy. 11The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989 , 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that "a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth" ( Spretnak 1989 , 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility ties in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.

Discussion of feminism is key to the reinforcing the individual because in a world where we let policies dominate debate, the individual becomes disempowered because they are excluded. Nhanenge 7
Master of Arts at the development studies @ the University of South Africa (Jytte Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the concerns of women,, poor people and nature into development http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/570/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1) - JS Consequently, also social scientists

apply the scientific characteristics of objectivity, value-freedom, rationality and quantifiability to social life. In this way, they assume they can unveil universal laws about social relations, which will lead to true knowledge. Based on this, connect social policies can be formulated. Thus, social processes are excluded, while scientific objective facts are included. Society is assumed a static entity, where no changes are possible. By promoting a permanent character, social science legitimizes the existing social order, while obscuring the relations of domination and subordination, which is keeping the existing power relations inaccessible to analysis. The frozen order also makes it impossible to develop alternative explanations about social reality. It prevents a historical and political understanding of reality and denies the

possibility for social transformation by human agency. The prevailing condition is seen as an unavoidable fact. This implies that human beings are passive and that domination is a natural force, for which no one is responsible. This permits the state freely toimplement laws and policies, which are controlling and coercive. These are seen as being correct, because they are based on scientific facts made by scientific expense. One result is that the state, without consulting the public, engages in a pathological pursuit of economic growth. Governments support the capitalist ideology, which benefits the elite only, while it is destroying nature and increasing poverty for women and lower classes. The priority on capitalism also determines other social policies. There are consequently no considerations for a possible conflict between the aims of the government for social control and economic efficiency and the welfare needs of various social groups. Without having an alternative to the existing order, people become dis-empowered. Ultimately, the reaction is public apathy, which legitimizes authoritive governments. Thus, social science is an ideology, which is affinning the prevailing social, political and economic order.(Reitzes 1993: 36-39, 4|-42). In reality, it is a contradiction to apply the scientific method to social policy making. Any social policy change will alter social relations and affect the relative welfare of classes of people, which makes social decision making nonnative. Social policy is related to politics, which is an extension of ethics. Since values and
facts are different categories, one cannot apply indisputable empirical facts to social values. It is therefore impossible to legitimize political decisions with reference to scientific knowledge. Social decision-making is a political process. When science is applied to political and nonnative questions, it becomes an ideology, which supports the dominant interests. Thus, the

state reproduces conditions for domination. In case the contradictions become too pronounced, and the power of the
state is challenged, then the ideology becomes violent. The consequence is totalitarianism. It is a situation where the state sets limits to what is pennissdale to think and teach, if necessary by coercion. Conclusively social science manipulates reality to serve the vested interests of specific social groups. 'Hue result is a dominant and violent ideology masked as science. (Reitzes l993: 32, 34, 4245).

Feminist methodology is incompatible with the affirmative top down approach bad Tickner 01-[professor in the School of International Relations at USC-LA ;J. Ann Gendering World Politics: Issues and
Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era page 4-5] Whereas IR

has generally taken a top-down approach focused on the great powers, feminist IR often begins its analysis at the local level, with individuals embedded in social structures. While
IR has been concerned with explaining the behavior and interaction of states and markets in an anarchic international environment, feminist IR, with its intellectual roots in feminist theory more generally, is seeking to understand the various ways in which unequal gender structures constrain women's, as well as some men's, life chances and to prescribe ways in which these hierarchical social relations might be eliminated. These different realities and normative agendas lead to different methodological approaches. While IR has relied heavily on rationalistic theories based on the natural sciences and economics, feminist IR is grounded in humanistic accounts of social relations, particularly gender relations. Noting

that much of our knowledge about the world has been based on knowledge about men, feminists have been skeptical of methodologies that claim the neutrality of their facts and the universality of their conclusions. This skepticism about empiricist methodologies extends to the possibility of developing causal laws to explain the behavior of states. While feminists do see structural regularities, such as gender and patriarchy, they define them as socially constructed and variable across time, place, and culture; understanding is preferred over explanation. 13 These differences over epistemologies may well be harder to reconcile than the differences in perceived realities discussed above.

Portraying women as fearful victims implies that women are irrational, reproducing the patriarchal mindset Bondi and Rose 10 (Liz, Professor of Social Geography at the University of Edinburgh,
Damaris, obtained her BA and PhD from the University of Sussex (UK) and her MA from the University of Toronto, "Constructing gender, constructing the urban: A review of Anglo-

American feminist urban geography", July 14 2010, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0966369032000114000. Noparstak) The relationship between gender, fear and risk has often been characterised in terms of two mismatches. First, the demographic groups displaying the highest levels of fear (typically elderly women) are at lower risk of experiencing urban violence than many others (notably racialised young men). Secondly, while women tend to be most fearful of violence perpetrated by strangers in urban public space, they are statistically most at risk from acts of violence perpetrated in domestic spaces by men they know. These patterns can be, and have been, interpreted in ways that denigrate women by implying that the constraining and exclusionary effects of fear are consequences of womens supposedly inherent irrationality. Thus, women are portrayed as doubly victimised, in the sense of being constrained not only by fear but also by the apparent irrationality of this fear. Feminists have, of course, contested both aspects of this victimisation. Rachel Pain (1991), for example, has provided a powerful critique of claims about mismatches by questioning definitions of violence and arguing that gendered patterns of fear reflect womens exposure to verbal and gestural assault in urban space (also see Valentine, 1989, 1992). In so doing she criticised persistent failures to recognise womens experiences accurately, and she suggests that the distributive effects of fearthe capacity to occupy, appropriate and traverse urban spacecannot be understood except in conjunction with these issues of recognition and misrecognition.

Patriarchal hierarchies are the root cause of international violence Runyan 94 (Professor and former Head, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality
Studies, University of Cincinnati Anne Sisson Women, Gender, and World Politics: Perspectives, Policies, and Prospects Page 202 203) These hierarchies of men over women and officers over recruits, Radical feminists insist, lay the basis for hierarchies in the international system. For example, Strange argues that "international politics closely resembles gang fights in the playground. The leader is the one acknowledged to have superior force: his power is then augmented by his position--in effect, the power of his underlings is added to his own. They give this power to him and get certain benefits--protection, enhanced prestige from the relationship to the leader." 3 Thus, from the Radical feminist view, the international system of unequal and competitive states can be seen as one big male-protection racket wherein the strong extort the weak to enter into various military and economic alliances or relationships that mostly benefit the strong . Radical feminists argue that this male-protection racket has its origins in patriarchal thinking that assumes that "man" should have dominion over natural resources. In particular, Western patriarchal thinking, which Radical feminists claim is reflective of the worldview of largely white men in power in the West, considers not only the natural world but also white women and Third World peoples as raw materials that can be exploited for political and economic gain. This constant extraction of resources--which increasingly impoverishes women, Third World peoples and states dependent on "aid" from elite men and First World states--is what makes the male-protection racket possible. This racket undermines any attempts to develop selfreliance that might release dominated peoples and states from the contemporary international hierarchy. Thus, for Radical feminists, the struggles of "weak" states against "strong" are related to the struggles of women against patriarchal domination. "The aim of self-reliance is paralleled by the struggle of many women who refuse to be victims any longer, yet also refuse to become oppressors. What is being struggled against is at root the same thing--a hierarchy grounded in and perpetuated by sexual dominance." 4

Violence against women goes unnoticed by society and is the largest systemic impactits an ethical and political obligation to prevent French et al 98 (Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Wanda
Teays, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at Mount St. Mary's College in Los Angeles, Ph.D. in Humanities from Concordia University in Montreal, and an M.T.S. (Applied Ethics) from Harvard University, "Violence Against Women. Philosophical Perspectives", Cornell University, http://books.google.com/books?id=5_deWNO1GEUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_su mmary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. Noparstak) Women are the victims of widespread personal and systemic violence, the true scope and gender-specific nature of which emergy clearly when all types of violence are set in context in a collection such as this one. The sweep of violenceover or subtleis striking: common in North America and elsewhere are sexual assault and rape, wife battering, sexual harassment, prostitution, sadistic pornography, and sexual exploitation by medical personnel. Cultures beyond these shores add their own forms of violence such as dowry death and female genital mutilation as well as the disproportionate abortion of female fetuses and systematic neglect of girl children. Only recently have philosophers begun to inquire into violence against women. Yet it is striking that such an important social phenomenon did not capture philosophical attention long ago. It cries out for conceptual analysis: what do we mean by violence, and what can we conclude about the special forms of violence directed toward women? Moreover, such violence is precisely the sort of issue that ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law deal with ; so how can there be an elaborate historical discourse on just war theory and no theory of rape or wife beating? Despite their impact on womens lives, such practices have simply been part of the backdrop, unnoticed and certainly not treated as fit subjects for serious theorizing. According to former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, domestic violence is the top problem for American women, causing more inujuries than automobile accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. According to a U.S. Justice Department study, nearly 700,000 victims of violence or suspected violence treated in hospital emergency rooms in 1994 were hurt by someone they knew. Of these approximately 243,000 (or 34 percent) were injured by someone they knew intimatelya current of former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend. Of these, 203,000 (over 80 percent) were women. One of the distinctive characteristics of violence directed toward women is that it tends, unlike violence toward men, to come from those they know (Blodgett-Ford, 1993: 510). That it is rooted in asymmetrical assumptions about the nature of the two sexes is illustrated by the belated recognition of marital rape as a crime in most states. (Some, like Oklahoma and North Carolina, still fail to recognize it as such [Down, 1992: 569].) Sexist assumptions clearly play a role, too, in the massive exploitation of women as prostitutes. The consequences for these women may be dire, especially when, as in India, a majority are indentured slaves, many of whom are doomed to die of AIDS (Friedman, 1996: 12). The specifically sexual element in gender relations comes to the fore in pornography, especially sadistic pornography. Both the production of such materials and their disproportionate consumption by males reinforce and promote the attitudes toward women that fuel the practices discussed here. Such attitudes become especially apparent in war, when rape is used as a weapon against the enemy.

Women are excluded from international politics Tickner 92

Ann, Gender in International Relations [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8LtKx_vm6IUC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=ann+tickn er+feminism&ots=TFapjBWAll&sig=KKMnfqGICv_zuh6N_F1mG0OU_MQ] As Eleanor Roosevelt and countless others have observed, international politics is in a mans world. It is a world inhabited by diplomats, soldiers, and international civil servants most of whom are men. Apart from the occasional head of state, there is little evidence to suggest that women have played much of a role in shaping foreign policy in any country in the twentieth century. In the United States in 1987, women constituted less than 5 percent of the senior Foreign Service ranks, and in the same year, less than 4 percent of the executive positions in the Department of Defense were held by women. Although it is true that women are underrepresented in all top-level government positions in the United States and elsewhere, they encounter additional difficulties in positions having to do with international politics. The following stories can help us understand why.

People may think sexism has been solved, it hasnt. Davidson 13

Lauren, Sexism: Still All Around Us [http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lauren-davidson/sexism-still-all-around-us_b_2480505.html Lauren is a freelance journalist, raised in London and living in New York] But the problem is far bigger than sexism still being rife. The real issue is that people don't think it is. In Western countries, women have had the right to vote for decades, they say. Women are welcome to be chief executives, prime ministers, lawyers, doctors, editors and academics, they say. Women have represented more than half of enrollments at American colleges for years, they say. The gender revolution is so last century. Not so . We still live in a society where our woman-ness defines us, where lewd gender-based jokes are made at our expense, where wolf whistles on the street are so commonplace we hardly turn our heads, where George W. Bush's views make him a ridiculed person but Sarah Palin's comments make her a ridiculed woman , where female comic book and action characters are overtly sexualized and seductive, where male presidential candidates debate whether women should have control over their own bodies and where it is worthy of note when a woman makes it to a position of leadership. These are just not issues that men face to anywhere near the same extent. It is these long and gnarled fingers of sexism which probe their way into issues of body image, selfconfidence, ambition and public attitude; they twist how we treat our fellow human beings and how we develop as a society. For the sake of everyone - both men and women - sexist treatment of women is an issue that needs to be, once again, at the front of the public consciousness.

The United States is sexist - breast cancer screening proves Mulcahy 12

Nick Breast Cancer Screening: Paternalistic, Sexist, Say Critics [http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/762667] Apr 25, 2012

A retired American academic turned healthcare blogger has charged that breast cancer screening in the United States is "sexist." Carole Schroeder, PhD, RN, emeritus associate professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing in Seattle, writes in her CancerRealityCheck blog that mammography screening is recommended to women "sans discussion." This is in contrast to prostate cancer screening guidance for men, which "professional organizations, advocacy groups, and the media" all now say should be an "informed choice," she states. This means that physicianpatient discussion about screening harms and benefits is recommended. "A bit of paternalism or what?" writes Dr. Schroeder about this difference in screenings in her post, entitled Sexism in Cancer Screening: PSA and Mammography. She was inspired to write her blog post after a recent essay in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (2011;103:1821-1826), which called for "shared decision making" in cancer screening. In that essay, a research officer at a major university said that the medical community has "unintentionally adopted a very paternalistic stance" toward women with regard to breast cancer screening. Breast and prostate cancer screening suffer from a "similar ambiguity of evidence," wrote Michael Edward Stefanek, PhD, associate vice president of collaborative research in the office of the vice president at Indiana University in Bloomington. Despite this similarity, said Dr. Stefanek, guidelines "have typically recommended that men make informed decisions about prostate cancer screening," whereas women have been "summoned" to breast cancer screening. Dr. Schroeder was encouraged to see Dr. Stefanek's call for shared decision making in cancer screening. But in an interview with Medscape Medical News, Dr. Schroeder said that sexism is a more accurate term than paternalism to describe what is happening in cancer screening.

Conditions for Female Workers

City conditions are very poor for maquiladora workers. Nieves 02- Columnist for the New York Times
*To Work and Die in Juarez, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2002/05/work-and-diejuarez] And so Mexico's fourth-largest city retains its nickname as "the capital of murdered women." The city of 1.5 million, where an acrid haze of factory smoke and car exhaust hangs in the air, is known for having one of the highest crime rates in Mexico; in 2001 alone, drug traffickers were blamed for more than 60 execution-style murders. But Juarez is most notorious as a place that draws tens of thousands of young women from small, poor towns to take $55-aweek jobs in assembly plants, known as maquiladoras, operated by some of the wealthiest corporations in the world -- companies like General Electric, Alcoa, and DuPont. More than 60 percent of maquiladora workers are women and girls, many as young as 13 or 14. At least 75 young women, many of them factory workers and most fitting the same description -- slim, pretty, long dark hair -- have been raped and murdered here since 1993, according to most accounts. Scores more are missing. Yet young women keep arriving, even as the city remains seemingly unable to protect them. But while the murders have scarred Ciudad Juarez and exposed its law-enforcement officials as either incompetent or corrupt, they have also sparked the creation of more than a dozen women's rights groups in the city. Born of desperation and outrage, many of the groups are made up largely of housewives, mothers, and grandmothers, some of them relatives and friends of the murdered. Most have few means and little time, given the demands of tending to their families. Still, the women have become a force in Juarez. Taking on the powers that be, much as civil rights marchers in the United States did in the segregated South, they have marched time and again to the state attorney general's office demanding more aggressive investigations. They have held vigils, erected crosses throughout the city in the victims' memories, and scoured fields and ditches for evidence. They have kept the murders in the news, drawn attention from human-rights groups in Mexico and the United States, and pressured President Vicente Fox to send federal investigators to look into the cases. (He finally promised to do so in January, but by early spring no federal help had arrived.) Mostly, the groups have demanded more attention to violence against women in a city where, they charge, the lives of young, poor women haven't counted for much. "The killings continue," says Esther Chvez, who is considered a pioneer in Juarez's women's movement. "So not much has changed."

Women face discrimination in maquiladoras. Pantaleo 06- California University of Pennsylvania

GENDERED VIOLENCE: MURDER IN THE MAQUILADORAS, http://www.pasocsociety.org/article2.pdf Customarily, the management of the maquiladoras chooses to hire women and young girls. One of the reasons for this is the belief that females possess better talent, hand eye coordination, and endurance for manual work as opposed to men. Also, women tend to put up with poor working conditions more readily than do men. Additionally, in comparison to men, women are believed to be cheap labor (Abell 1999). For most women, work in the maquiladoras is the only choice of paid labor available. Most have little education and no

training in the more skilled positions needed in factory work. Since women are preferred over men for the unskilled work, one cannot argue that there is discrimination against women in hiring practices. Rather, there may be discrimination against males in hiring. The exploitation then is not in hiring practices but in how the women are treated within the workplace. One of the problems that many Mexican women face while working in maquiladoras has less to do with discrimination in hiring and more to do with discriminating practices in the workplace. While there is no discrimination against women working in maquiladoras, there is pregnancy discrimination in the workplace. Women who are pregnant are turned away immediately, while those who are hired can be subject to established practices designed to discourage and prevent pregnancy. These practices are as follows: pregnancy testing, proof of menstruation, and physical harm. First of all, women can be forced to undergo pregnancy testing throughout their work term (Abell 1999). This occurs randomly and without notice and usually consists of a urine test. A second practice is more painful for the women, psychologically and emotionally. Each month, women may be mandated to demonstrate proof of their menstruation by showing sanitary napkins to managers. Also a series of intrusive questions are asked to each female employee, such as the date of her last period, what kind of contraception she uses, and when the last time was she had sex (Koerner 1999). The third practice adds physical harm to the existing emotional and psychological stress. Women may be deliberately punched in the stomach and abdomen by managers to make sure that they are not pregnant or to damage any unborn child. Because of these practices, female maquiladora workers suffer numerous consequences. In relation to reproduction in general, maquiladora workers are likely to have irregular menstruation, miscarriages, fertility problems, and to bear children with birth defects such as premature births or low birth weight (Abell 1999).

Violence against women is deeper that what skin can show

Choudhury, Anglade, and Park 2013 Shonali PhD, MMH, Debbie MSN, RN, LHRM, CPHQ, CCM, and Kyuwon MS, RN, From Violence to Sex Work: Agency, Escaping Violence, and HIV Risk Among Establishment-Based Female Sex Workers in Tijuana, Mexico [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055329013000782] The findings from the 2006 National Survey on Family Relations in Mexico indicated that 67% of women have experienced some form of violence, including 47% of women who experienced interpersonal violence with a romantic partner (Amnesty International, 2008a). Research has shown that the percentage of women who experience some form of violence has been increasing in Mexico, and violence against women tends to be underreported since 82% of women who experience some form of violence do not report it. Furthermore, femicide is a major problem in Mexico. In 2003, 1,205 women were murdered, and approximately 34% of women murdered in 2003 and 2004 were murdered in the home (Amnesty International, 2008a). In 2008, 28 of the states in Mexico enacted legislation that stated that women have the right to a life free from violence, but rates of violence remain high (Amnesty International, 2008b). Women's susceptibility to violence can be exacerbated by lack of economic power. Economic dependence on men is a barrier not only to resistance to violence, but also to resistance to demands for high-risk sex. For example, a woman may be more willing to give in to the sexual demands of her partner to continue to gratify him and secure financial stability. Women also

tend to be accepting of a partner's infidelity in order to ensure the financial stability of marriage. Women may be willing to remain in a high-risk relationship and to accept high-risk sexual behaviors because of fear of desertion and rejection (Blanc, 2001).

Women In Debate
Women suffer in debate Womens Debate Institute, 10
[http://womensdebateinstitute.org/faqs#computer] The Womens Debate Institutes (WDI) mission is to close the gender gap in debate. There is statistical documentation that men outnumber women at every level of debate competition. There are many reasons for such inequality: differences in communication styles, competition from other activities, and explicit harassment . A hostile environment, even when that hostility is infrequent, can contribute to a higher attrition rate for females versus males creating a vicious cycle. Women leave the activity, so fewer women debate in college than in high school, resulting in fewer successful female debaters and fewer female coaches. Ultimately, there are insufficient female role models for high school girls to emulate. The Womens Debate Institute was created to increase the proportion of girls and women of all races in debate by helping young women develop debate skills, and by creating a community of women to whom students can look for models of success. By bringing together young women from around the country, less experienced debaters are exposed to successful, experienced debaters who can act as role models. Successful experienced debaters can network with a community of women while working one-on-one with top debaters and coaches. We hope our students will never feel lonely on the circuit and will have friends and mentors to turn to for support. While the size of the WDI may seem modest, exposure to one outstanding female debater can have a lasting impression on dozens of other girls who are uncertain about their debate future.

Latinas face problems, even more so than other women and minority men Casey Arbenz, Sylvia Beltran, 01
[communications.fullerton.edu/clubs/forensics/papers.asp] Latinas in high school as a group are more likely to dropout, are more likely to get pregnant, attempt suicide at higher rates, and are more likely to have used marijuana and cocaine than white or African American girls the same age (Navarro, 2001). Latinas are attending the same high schools as their white and African American counterparts, but they are not doing as well as women of other ethnicities. It is no coincidence that I had trouble encountering girls of my same background when I was participating in high school forensics. Despite the alarming fact that Latinas face many social and institutional barriers to staying in school, remarkably little is being done to combat this crisis (Vives, 2001). Indeed, Latinas, like many other women of color, are often rendered invisible by virtue of the fact that policymakers and other individuals in positions of power often focus their attention on white women and minority men (Flores, 1990; Lopez, 1995; Galindo and Gonzalez, 1999; Garcia, 1997).

Female debaters become victims of misogyny Louise Wilson, 13

[http://glasglowguardian.co.uk/2013/03/04/female-debaters-victims-of-misogyny-at-guu/] Two female speakers, who had made it to the Final of this years GUU Ancients Debate, were reduced to tears after a number of misogynistic comments were yelled out by hecklers in the audience. Marlena Valles, recently named Scotlands best speaker, and Rebecca Meredith, who is ranked amongst the worlds best speakers, were both booed during their speeches at the annual GUU Ancients Debating Championship. Members of the audience also repeatedly yelled shame women and objectified the two women based on their appearance. A former President and other prominent members within the Union are amongst those known to have been making the comments. When Pam Cohn and Kitty Parker-Brooks, two of the judges of the competition, openly condemned the sexist comments being made, the two were also attacked . Hecklers were heard to ask what qualifications the women had to allow them to sit on the judging panel. A member of the GUU was subsequently called over in an attempt to stop the sexist heckling, but the member simply replied it is just how they are and to leave it alone.

Women are just recognized as not male. Jess Zolt-Gilburne 02

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837579] The halls are gray and institutional in a suburban New York High School, which 200 High School Policy debaters are calling home for the weekend. In this sea of a people two young men catch my eye. They are chatting about their last debate rounds, when one of them asks, "so did you win?" The other one smiles and responds, "You bet. We raped them." Suddenly I realize those three words encapsulate so much of what the high school debate experience is like for women. Rape is an intensely emotional and significant word for women, as it is for many men. It is a word that is charged. It carries a specific connotation and meaning. To hear it used to describe something as trivial as the victor in a given debate round is to belittle an experience that hurts the core of who I am as a woman. Yet these two men can throw it around without thinking twice, because to them, it doesn't represent anything more than terminology to describe their exclusive fraternitythe policy debate community. In this world of intense rhetoric and competition, there are no women: There are only men and people who are "not men." Who I am is defined by who I am not, not by who I am. In a predominantly male community, like the high school policy debate community, many men still see women as sex objects, not as peers.

Female debaters are significantly devalued Jess Zolt-Gilburne 02

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837579] Policy Debate is the most common type of secondary school forensics in the United States. There are policy debate teams in almost all of the major cities. Almost all 50 states send representatives to the National Forensic League tournament every June. Policy Debaters debate with a partner from their own team against two people from another team. There is a set topic for the year and partners take turns defending and arguing against that topic. The Debate Community is generally considered to be one of the more enlightened and liberal communities in competitive high school activities. Yet sexism is still prevalent. I have known female debaters who have had judges tell them how hot they are, or criticize the higher pitch of their voices. One student that I worked with told me that her coach would only spend money on the males because females were "never good enough for him. Sometimes I feel that as a woman in debate, I am not an equal competitor, but rather I am part of the arguments. My male opponents run feminism arguments on me because the policy options that I suggest may contradict the philosophical claims of second wave feminists. Yet here I am, a young, third wave feminist. And my experience and ambitions can't be wrapped up in a neat little box in an eight minute argument.

Women are forced to lose their own confidence and identity Jess Zolt-Gilburne 02
[http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837579] Women face all sorts of issues on their debate teams. In addition to being excluded socially (because people of opposite gender do not share hotel rooms), many women also speak of frustrations with research assignments or opportunities. We often feel that we are given an argument solely because "a woman should research that issue," or that we are excluded from

a tournament because our debate coaches think that making arrangements to bring one woman to a tournament would be too difficult. Because policy debate is an experience-driven activity, missing out on opportunities to compete or engage in research as a result of our gender puts us at a serious competitive disadvantage. Some of us feel that our unease and marginalization on our teams makes it hard for us to focus on the competition. As a result, we may feel uneasy in rounds, overshadowed by our male partners who can compete without fear of sexism. Sometimes female debaters are referred to as "he" or "him." This gendered language marginalizes female competitors by reducing our identity. We are not women. In debate, there are only men and people who are "not men." Gendered language is rampant in the quotes from academic papers and various media used by policy debaters to support their assertions. The pronoun "he" is used almost exclusively.

Women are discouraged and not taken seriously Allison Pickett

[debate.uvm.edu/nfl/rostrumlib/ldpickett%20and%20Scott0202.pdf] In the fall of 1994, my debate career nearly ended as quickly as it had begun. Lord knows I was already nervous enough as I stood outside the classroom, waiting for my very first debate round to begin. Never mind the fact that I had three (!) more to do before I could go home and cry, the only thing I could imagine doing after what promised to be one of the most mortifying days of my life. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I think I may have had a selfconfidence problem.) I was on the brink of emotional meltdownand then, it happened Whew! Hey baby, whats your name? I need your number. And so it went. For twenty minutes outside the room and then throughout the entire round. No, you cant be a freshman, youve gotta be a junioror even my judgewhere did you get those eyes? Aw, honey, dont be scared, Im just going to ask you a few easy questions. Could I really cross-examine someone with such beautiful eyes as yours? Did I mention the starring, perhaps better termed leering? Im not kidding; I was ready to quit debate forever after round one.

Sexism is disregarded in debate DAS (Debaters Against Sexism) 13

[www.debatersagainstsexism.org] We are tired of online discussions about gender disparities in debate dying out without resulting in any concrete changes. We are tired of sexism becoming the talk of the day, and then fading away as people settle back into their normal routines of cutting cards and trying to win tournaments. We are tired of waiting for someone else to do something, so we are taking a stand now. The biggest problem is not that tournament rules are written to disadvantage women, or that workshop and institute policies dont account for sexual harassment (although policies lacking enforcement are meaningless). The biggest problem is the way that we as a community behave. Gender discrimination is so prevalent because we fail to embrace mature dialogue, underestimate the power of disparaging remarks, and stigmatize victims. We need to examine the way we think and behave as a community; no real change can occur until we do.

Personal Stories of Juarez

Irma Monreal is one of many people in Mexico who has experienced the loss of a loved one due to murder in Ciudad Juarez. Althaus 10 Mexico City Bureau Chief for Houston Chronicle Dudley Ciudad Juarez Women still being Tortured by Killers [http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Ciudad-Juarez-women-still-beingtortured-by-1703010.php] CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico From her mountainside neighborhood of dirt streets and cramped concrete houses, Irma Monreal can scan the lights of the city beyond, so pregnant with promise, so choked with sorrow. Monreal arrived penniless to this borderland mecca just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, toiling in its industrial bowels for 20 years. She scratched out a proud new life for herself and seven children a life that now shoulders an unquenchable pain. Tucked amid the lights below, an irrigation ditch slices bone-dry through a fallow cotton field. Three wooden crosses, pink and frail, cling to the trench's weed-choked lip. Fading sentinels to the horror this dirt embraces, the crosses mark where searchers recovered the defiled bodies of three young women. One of those girls was Monreal's 15-year-old daughter, Esmeralda. Savagely tortured and murdered in 2001, Esmeralda is among nearly 500 teenagers and young women factory workers, shop clerks, prostitutes who have been murdered here since 1993. Hundreds more have simply vanished. For years, Mexican authorities have promised an end to the slaughter and the disappearances. Movies have been filmed about the butchery, books and countless articles written, protest marches marched. Under intense public pressure, police investigations were launched, task forces formed, suspects arrested.

Irma Monreal confesses the troubles of losing someone due to murder in Juarez. Cabrera, Canto, Burkhardt, No Date Columbia Journalism School
Yvette, Minerva, Mimi, Women of Juarez: The Struggle to Go On [http://dartcenter.org/content/women-juarez-3#.UdJQN7Uo74g]

Her daughter's death robbed Irma Monreal of the will to live. Long ago, Irma Monreal set her sights on Ciudad Jurez. She'd leave behind the days when her children cried with hunger, she'd find a steady job with steady pay, and she'd build a home for her family. Jurez was the answer. She knew it. She left her farming village of Rancho Grande, Zacatecas, 14 years ago, went back for her children two years later and never looked back. Until now. Now, she's haunted by her decision. Now, she wonders, would her sweet daughter Esmeralda have lived if they had never come to this border town?

She'll never know the answer. I learn quickly that if what you seek are answers, Jurez is not the place to find them. It's a city with many stories, but few have the courage to tell them. It's a city where girls like Esmeralda Herrera Monreal, 15, vanish, but few speak up for them. Like other mothers who have lost their daughters in the past decade, Irma has struggled against the forces that have torn her family. Government officials attack the women's reputations: They are prostitutes, they dress provocatively, they shouldn't be out after dark. Investigators withhold details of Esmeralda's case and can't explain the inconsistencies Irma finds. And most painful is the void left by Esmeralda, who brought music and laughter into a home now filled with an overwhelming sense of loss. Irma is one of those with the courage to speak, so I come to Jurez to understand how a mother survives the loss of her child. I arrive in this city of roughly 1.3 million with apprehension built up over months of research. My senses are on alert as I head down the main thoroughfare, Paseo Triunfo de la Republica, in this city known for its missing women. Everywhere I walk, the streets are filled with women on their way to school or work, followed by catcalls from men in cars. Even as I drive in Irma's colonia, I see men hanging out on the street staring at the young girls as if the sidewalks are fashion runways. Old tires litter driveways of homes built of cinder block and cement. Many are half finished, duct tape covering doorknob holes, and door frames gaping like missing front teeth. Irma's house doesn't have a fancy iron fence like her neighbor's, but it's sturdy. We sit in her kitchen, a tiny space that Irma has brightened by painting the walls an aquamarine that reminds me of Easter eggs. Her eyes are the first thing that strike me. They are deep brown like her children's, and kind like a mother's, but there is something else. She carries pain in those dark pools, a pain so deep it seems nothing can rescue her. Irma's memories carry me into the past, to a time when a short encounter by the roadside was enough to make a mother happy. From afar, Irma can spot her daughter's thin frame coming down the street that leads to their home in Colonia Granjas de Chapultepec. Even through the dust stirred up by cars on the rocky road, a mother knows when her child is near. They pass as Irma rounds the corner near their house, Esmeralda heading to school or work and Irma returning from her graveyard shift. Their brief encounter brightens the walk along the road lined with chain-link fences and factories. Esmeralda chuckles. "Ay Mam, poor thing. You're falling asleep, right?" "Are you off, mi'ja?" "Yes, Mam." "Be careful mi'ja ... May God help you." A few days a week Esmeralda cleans houses. It's a job she begged her mom to let her take to pay for her quinceaera, a rite of passage for Mexican girls on their 15th birthday. Esmeralda knows her mom can't afford the celebration, so she offers to work during her school break. Irma worries about her daughter traveling across the city alone. She doesn't even feel safe in her own home, which has been broken into several times. In the end, she gives her permission because Esmeralda will be working for Irma's former boss. I understand why she let Esmeralda take the job. After just a month in Jurez, I feel safer, familiarity allowing me to move with more ease. I've memorized the locations of the gas marts, the grocery chains, the malls. I've learned shortcuts around the city, the best times to wash at the coin laundry. I don't think twice about heading out at night to follow a parade. And I find myself eager to return to the "safety" of Jurez after a bomb threat prevents me from getting cash at Wells Fargo in El

Paso, Texas. Like most mothers, Irma knew that danger lurked in the city, and she warned Esmeralda to be careful, not to talk to strangers. She never imagined her daughter would end up in the news reports about the missing girls she used to watch with such pity. "I'd say, 'Poor girls, their poor moms.'" Now, she realizes how little she understood their pain. It's Sunday evening, Oct. 28, 2001, and Irma stands in the bedroom doorway and says goodbye to her children as she leaves for work. Esmeralda is playing with her brother and sister in their room. Irma works the graveyard shift in a Jurez maquiladora (factory) making frames for computers and televisions. Seeing how hard her mother works, Esmeralda's ambition is to rescue her family from poverty. She loves typing and dreams of becoming an executive secretary. One day, she says, she'll earn enough to replace their dirt floors with cement, to build a fence, to buy a stove. Irma works the overnight shift so that she can tend to her family by day. Three of Irma's seven children are grown and married, but at home the single mother has Erick, 7; Zulema, 11; Esmeralda, 15; and Benigno, 16. Irma separated from her first husband shortly after Esmeralda was born. After the failure of her second relationship, with Erick and Zulema's father, she resolved to support her family on her own. Working seven days a week is just a fact of life. All seems normal the next morning on Irma's walk home from the bus, until she fails to spot her daughter's trim figure. She pushes away her worries, thinking that Esmeralda must have left early for work. But Esmeralda never comes home. The next morning, when her children tell her that Esmeralda never returned from work, Irma begins frantically searching. She can't eat, she can't sleep, and she loses 15 pounds in eight days. On the ninth day Irma learns at work that the bodies of eight women have been found in an abandoned cotton field. She goes to the morgue, where investigators show her a bra, a pair of white socks, a blouse - all they found with the body they think may be her daughter's. The blouse is Esmeralda's. It's tiny and made of Lycra with a rainbow of colors. It's ripped and soaked with blood and something that looks like oil. The socks are dirty and have lost their elastic, as if someone, Irma imagines, dragged Esmeralda through the mud. Investigators tell Irma she can't see the body until she obtains a permit from the attorney general's office. So she returns home and breaks down, the images of the clothes haunting her. Her oldest children get the permit and identify the body so Irma won't have to. The body, her children tell her, is bloated and purple, with the flesh above the neck missing; even the hair is gone. Just the skull remains. This image plagues Irma. She doesn't understand how in nine days her daughter's head could have decomposed so. It is fall, so it hasn't been hot, and the body was found under a shady tree in the cotton field. Investigators say animals ate the flesh, but there are no other bites on the body. In this field where cotton once bloomed, all I find nearly two years later are remnants yellowed weeds, broken branches and wisps of cotton in the dirt. Death lingers everywhere. In the waterless channel, filled with empty bottles and discarded newspapers, yellow crime-scene tape and wooden sticks still mark the spot where bodies were found. Standing at attention for motorists to see are crosses that commemorate the eight girls. Their mothers painted them pink, bright as the expectations the day their daughters were born. In black, the color of death, their names: Laura Ber enice, Lupita, Esmeralda, Veronica, Claudia Ivette, Brenda, Barbara,

unknown. Questions about her daughter's death overwhelm Irma. She can't help wondering whether the body at the morgue is really Esmeralda. Despite her doubts, Irma arranges for a funeral. She can't bear the thought of leaving the body at the morgue. "If it's my daughter, OK, and if it's not, it doesn't matter. It doesn't hurt me to bury a body that doesn't have a family to claim her." Sixteen days after authorities discovered the dead women, Irma buries the body using the money Esmeralda had saved for her quinceaera. In many ways Irma's spirit died the day her daughter disappeared. The people who took Esmeralda "ended her dreams, all our plans. And, well, nobody can remedy that. There's nothing we can do," Irma says. Not even the arrest of two bus drivers, who are charged with murdering Esmeralda and the seven other young women, comforts Irma. She's convinced they aren't guilty, that they're merely scapegoats. For days after Esmeralda's funeral, Irma wants nothing more than to lay her tired body next to her daughter's and close her eyes forever. On one of those days Irma asks for permission to leave work early. It's 5 a.m. as her bus pulls away from her factory and makes its way through the dark streets of Jurez. She plans to swallow a bottle of antidepressant pills. First, she wants to see her children one last time. When she arrives home, her two youngest are sleeping peacefully. She's exhausted, worn down and worn out by pain and tears. Memories of her daughter swirl through her mind every day only to drain to the same, inevitable conclusion. Esmeralda is gone forever. In her grief, suicide seems somehow logical. Peaceful. The only way. Until she sees Erick and Zulema breathing softly in and out. Suddenly, she's racked with worry. Who will they turn to when they need help? Who will take care of them? She closes the door behind her. No, she can't kill herself, Irma decides. Not today "Sometimes that's what helps keep me going, knowing that one day I'll see her. That my daughter will appear." Yet as much as her heart clings to this hope, Irma knows - as a mother knows when her daughter is near - that she and Esmeralda will never cross paths again. "It's very sad, very painful," Irma says. "But sometimes that's the way it has to be.

Mexico has developed enough courage to even abduct a U.S. antikidnapping expert, reflecting their misused power.
Stevenson 08 Huffington Post World Mark Felix Batista: US Anti-Kidnapping Expert Kidnapped In Mexico* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/15/felix-batista-us-antikidn_n_151172.html] A U.S. anti-kidnapping expert was abducted by gunmen in northern Mexico last week, a sign of just how bold this nation's kidnapping gangs have become. U.S. security consultant Felix Batista _ who claims to have helped resolve nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases was in Saltillo in Coahuila state to offer advice on how to confront abductions for ransom when he himself was seized, local authorities said. Unknown assailants grabbed him on Dec. 10, said Charlie LeBlanc, the president of the Houston,

Texas-based security firm ASI Global LLC., where Batista is a consultant. "We have notified the FBI and Mexican authorities, and they are working on the case," LeBlanc said Monday. "What we are doing is we're offering our support to the family and hoping for the best." The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City said it would not comment on the case, and LeBlanc declined to say whether the kidnappers had demanded a ransom. LeBlanc said Batista had his own security business and that "he was in Mexico for business that wasn't associated with our company." "Part of that could be or may involve negotiations with kidnappers," Leblanc said. ASI Global's Web site advertises "kidnap and ransom response" and says the company has worked for major insurance companies. A woman who answered a phone number listed under Batista's name in Miami said she did not wish to comment on the case. Batista was frequently cited as an anti-kidnapping expert at conferences and in the news media. A story in the December issue of the trade magazine Security Management describes how Batista organized relatives' response to a kidnapping in Mexico, even cooking the family meals at times. He advised the family during months long negotiations that eventually reduced the ransom request to about a third of the original amount the kidnappers had demanded. The victim was eventually released. Local news media reported that Batista is 55, but his age was not included in his professional profile on the ASI Global Web site. Kidnapping has become a rising problem in Mexico, but attacks on U.S. anti-crime consultants have largely been the stuff of movies. The seizure seems to echo the plot of a 2004 movie, "Man on Fire," in which Denzel Washington played a U.S. security consultant who takes on Mexican kidnappers and is abducted himself. A series of high-profile kidnappings in which the victims were later found dead has sparked outrage in Mexico. In the past year, the bodies of the daughter of Mexico's former sports commissioner and the son of a prominent businessman have been found. Non-governmental groups claim Mexico has one of the world's highest kidnapping rates, surpassing Colombia. Earlier this year, more than 100,000 people marched through Mexico City to protest rising crime. Many people carried pictures of kidnapped relatives. Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira set off a nationwide controversy by proposing to reinstate the death penalty for kidnappers who kill their victims. On Monday, Moreira refused to talk about Batista's kidnapping and said only that "it is one of so many kidnappings and like all of them it is deplorable." Coahuila state law enforcement officials who were not authorized to be quoted by name said Batista had been giving talks to local police officials and businessmen on how to prevent or avoid kidnappings. They said he apparently was snatched from a street outside a restaurant. The Web profile of Batista _ later removed from ASI's site _ described him as "the primary case officer for all cases throughout the Latin American region." The site said Batista was a former U.S. Army major who is "known for conducting in-depth threat assessments, the successful resolution of nearly 100 kidnap and ransom cases (many on behalf of major insurance carriers) and investigations." The company denied local news reports that Batista was a former FBI agent, and warned those reports could put his life at risk.

Residents of Juarez are constantly reminded of the mass slaughters and realize that nothing will change.
Paniagua, 10, Freelance Writer Daniela, Ciudad Jurez: An untold history of femicide and violence in the Western hemisphere [http://www.examiner.com/article/ciudad-ju-rez-an-untold-history-offemicide-and-violence-the-western-hemisphere] Nearly every street corner in Jurez shows signs of lost soulsEven the Paso del Norte Bridge bears the weight of hundreds of dead women. The massive wooden cross at the bridges entrance stands erect against the pale pink backdrop, punctured with more than a hundred nails. Each nail fastens in place a scrap of worn material with a name printed upon it, serving as a make-shift missing person poster. The sign hanging just above the rugged crossreads, Ni una ms[2]Not one more (Valdez 75). Locals say that the Mexican revolutionary hero Benito Jurez weeps as he watches the beloved city he built as a symbol of prosperity and faith fill to the brim with injustice and mass slaughter. The cross at the bridge couldnt be a more poignant reminder. Even as the number of victims continues to grow, seemingly unnoticed by the rest of the world, the families of the daughters of Jurez wonder if anyone is really listening(Rodriguez xi). Some have even concluded that God has abandoned Jurez, but I would say that He watches with tear-stained cheeks, for it is not He who is lost in the hearts of the people of Jurez, but justice. Justice has abandoned Jurez.

Government officials make minimum effort to stop crime and find the missing even after much protest. Conn, 13, English/ Spanish Translator and Freelance Writer Clayton, 20 Years of Femicide in Mexico, Call for Justice Grows Louder,
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/9160 Beatriz Alejandra Hernndez Trejo, 20 years old, went missing in 2010 from downtown Ciudad Juarez. Two years later her remains were recovered in the desert sands of the Juarez Valley desert a popular dumping ground for the victims of femicides. It would be another whole year until the authorities finally contacted her mother, Ana Trejo, and return what was left of her daughter two bone fragments. Carla Castaeda a member of the committee, a friend of Trejo and mother of Cinthia Jocabeth Alvarado Castaeda, who disappeared in 2009, said in an interview with the Juarez newspaper , El Diario, The only thing they could turn over were two little pieces of bonethats

all there isthere are no investigation results, nothing, they dont know anything. They had Alejandra for so many months and just now they are informing us that it is herwhy, why?! The indignation and offense taken by the mothers for the governments indifference when it comes to the cases of their disappeared daughters, compelled them to march nearly 240 miles from Ciudad Juarez to the state capital, Chihuahua City. They demanded a meeting with Governor Csar Duarte to guarantee the states commitment to investigating disappearances and to speed up the process of identifying the victims of femicides. The high-profile march called the Walk for Life and Justice began on Jan. 15 with little over two-dozen mothers and family members of the disappeared. They march of mostly women crossed the cold Chihuahua desert, which has seen more than 10,000 murders in the past 5 years, by foot. The mothers arrived in the state capital 7 days later to find that the Governor had left the state. The group had to return to Juarez. We left. It cost us a lot to get there and he wasnt even there. We had to return to Juarez because wed been away from home for too much time in our search for justice for our daughters. explained Castaeda. Days later the governor and local officials agreed to meet with the group. In a heated meeting in Juarez on Feb. 2, the mothers presented a six-point list of demands that requires the authorities to immediately hand over all information on the cases of their daughters, to make investigations transparent, and for investigations into the cases of the disappeared to be considered a priority and expedited. At one point during the meeting, Ciudad Juarez Municipal President, Hctor Murgua Lardizbal, lost control and showed exactly the kind of attitude the mothers were complaining about. Fucking mothers! Let me speak! he yelled, as the mothers pointedly expressed their grief and frustration to the officials. The Feb. 2 meeting ended with Governor Duarte publically pledging to fulfill the demands within 30 days. He also agreed to dismiss the States Attorney General, Rosa Mara Sandoval Snchez, within 10 days. In 2011 Snchez was accused of directing death threats toward Manuel Garcia the former driver of slain anti-femicide activist, Marisela Escobedo for refusing to falsely incriminate Escobedo as a member of the Sinaloa drug cartel. Yet impunity and a rejection of justice seem to be the only commitment being made by authorities. According to the legal representative of the Committee of Mothers of the Disappeared, Francisca Galvan, Duarte has failed to fulfill his promises. Sandoval Sanchez will reportedly remain in office as Attorney General and the group was only given a partial report with information related to the cases of their missing daughters, whichaccording to Galvanadds nothing to current investigations. In fact, authorities allegedly are going beyond rejecting justice to attempting to silence the voices of the anti-femicide mothers and activists. On Feb. 10, the committee of mothers released a public statement, denouncing death threats, intimidation, harassment and surveillance by local and state police. They believe this is the authoritys real response to their Walk for Life and their very public demands for justice and accountability. Several of the mothers and their families have sought political asylum and exile in the United States, fearing for their safety and their lives. This includes Karla Castaeda, and another of the main organizers of the Walk for Life. After Castaeda received threatening phone calls and suffering several incidents of surveillance by local

police, on Feb. 9 state police and agents of the prosecutors office raided her home and temporarily detained her mother-in-law, stating that Castaeda had dug too deep in the investigation of her daughter. She has been granted an asylum hearing in the United States. The strategy to repress anti-femicide activists is nothing new. The most notable case is that of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz. In 2008 Escobedos 16-year old daughter, Rub Escobedo was murdered by her boyfriend, Sergio Barraza. Although Barranza confessed and directed authorities to where he buried the body, he was acquitted of charges and set free. Escobedo held the authorities responsible for the clear case of impunity and began to organize against femicides and for justice for her daughter. On Dec. 16, 2010, while holding a peaceful vigil with her organization, Justice for our Daughters, in the square in front of the Chihuahua State Governors Office, a gunman approached Escobedo, chased her and shot her in the head on the steps of the Government building. Another case is that of Norma Andrade and her daughter Mal Garcia. Both are founding members of another organization, Bring Our Daughters Home. In 2001 Andrades daughter, Lilia Alejandra Garca Andrade was the victim of an unsolved femicide. Similar to Escobedo, Andrade and her other daughter, Mal Garcia, began to organize against femicides, violence against women, and the widespread impunity that has allowed the phenomenon to grip many parts of the country. In the winter of 2011 Andrade and Garcia survived assassination attempts for their activism. Andrade survived a gunmans attack, resulting in 5 bullet wounds and Garcia suffered an arsonist attack, resulting in the destruction of her home. Later in 2012, after seeking protection and relocating to Mexico City, Andrade survived another attempt on her life when a man entered her home and tried to stab her.

A photographer enters Juarez with no idea of what to expect and always has a layer of fear coating him.
Rochkind, 13, Photographer David, The Mexican drug war: a photographer's story, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/photography-blog/2013/jan/25/mexicodrug-war-photographer-david-rochkind> I didn't go to Mexico with an agenda or even an idea of the kind of pictures I wanted to take. But as soon as I got there in 2008, it became clear what a widespread impact the conflict was having. I wasn't interested in creating a story about violence that happened to be set in Mexico. I was inspired by Mexico's present situation, which includes violence but is also a window into a time that will be referred to for decades, as people try to make sense of Mexican society. I want the work to convey a sense of Mexico, her color, her complexity and her culture. This isn't a story about body counts on the border. A young woman weeps in front of a bust of Jess Malverde in Culiacn, Sinaloa. Jess Malverde is a folk saint believed to look after criminals. I've worked in environments that were equally as challenging before, and similar themes always

emerge: a lack of economic and educational opportunities, issues of corruption and broken judicial processes. But personally, I had not been in an environment where there was such brutality and gruesome acts of violence occurring so frequently and so publicly. Men who have just been arrested by police in Nogales, Sonora. On several occasions, I knew I was being followed or filmed, and a few times people told me to be on my way. But I never felt I was in imminent danger; I often worked with Mexican photographers and writers who faced a far greater threat than I did. They go to work every day and report heroically on what's happening. They know the communities best and they risk their lives daily. As a foreign photographer, I was able to work in relative obscurity. I found people I trusted, but beyond that, if something didn't feel safe, it probably wasn't safe. Police in Ciudad Juarez frisk a man during a security sweep. The police say that they routinely detain men who they deem suspicious claiming that it is a preventative measure to ensure a calm evening. The situations that felt most tense were not at crime scenes or with police, where people's roles were clearly defined. Rather, whenever I walked into a nightclub or an auto shop any seemingly mundane situation there was always a veil of suspicion; I wasn't completely trusted because I had a camera. And I couldn't be sure of the people in my surroundings any more than they could be sure of me. Friends and family mourn at the funeral of two sisters in Ciudad Jurez. I had been spending time in Ciudad Jurez and happened to be there when there was an awful massacre at a birthday party. Apparently, masked gunmen stormed in looking for one specific person and started shooting up the place. They killed more than a dozen people, most of them teenagers. It turned out the person they said they were looking for wasn't even there. Several of the victims had joint funerals, and this image comes from one of the funeral ceremonies for two sisters who were killed at the party. I thought this encapsulated the intense pain that such senseless violence causes. People visit a cemetery at San Gregorio de Atlapulco on the Day of the Dead. It was important that my work was diverse, and didn't solely focus on crime scenes at the border. I wanted to look at how migration patterns, and the lives of migrants, had been affected as well as cultural responses to the conflict. This meant I spent a fair amount of time travelling with migrants and looking at the emerging narcoculture. Two men, who said they were migrants hoping to ride north on top of a freight train, sleep next to the tracks at Arriaga so that they can be sure that they hear the train departing. Some situations instantly came together, while others took weeks. It was about putting in the time and building relationships. The starting point is always personal: when I talk to people before I photograph them, I have to show I'm interested, and that they're not simply props in preconceived tableaux I've imagined. Central American migrants in Chiapas ride on top of a freight train carrying cement as they head north in an attempt to enter the US. I spent a week in various shelters meeting migrants and waiting for a train to come through town that was heading north to the US-Mexico border. I had met a group of men I liked, who were travelling together, when a train came through town. We climbed on top of one of the train cars, which I believe was carrying cement. I was struck that many of them were going back to the US to return home not go to a foreign land. They had lived in the US for years, had children in the country and, for a variety of reasons, had returned to Mexico or were deported. Now

they were risking everything to reunite with their families. They all told me this trip was more dangerous and they were more fearful: the migrants and drug smugglers were now sharing the same space and the migrants faced new threats. Some had been forced to mule drugs across the border, and many now had to pay an exit tax to the cartels to leave Mexico. The threat of kidnapping, robbery and murder had drastically increased with the rise of the drug war. Migration routes, and what migrants were willing to risk to achieve their dreams, had been drastically altered by the conflict. The border fence runs between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonara. There has been little violent spillover into the US though there have been cases of US citizens killed in Mexico. I remember just before I got off the train that we passed a field filled with fireflies. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. There were so many it was as if they were a reflection of the stars in the sky. I think my work is a true representation of how I experienced Mexico while I was living there. Unspeakable, atrocious things were happening in parts of the country but there was still an intense beauty permeating the atmosphere. I want people to feel as if they had been standing in the same spot, in the same moment in time, that they could have seen the exact same thing.

Women are constantly chosen as victims of numerous murders and their relatives have tragic stories to tell.
Torres, 11, Freelance Writer in Dallas
Mariel, Women of Juarez tell their stories of death and despair <http://borderzine.com/2011/11/women-of-juarez-tell-their-stories-of-death-and-despair/

The little girl, full of life and energy, went out one evening to play in the park just one block away from her home, just like she did so many times. The neighborhood in Cd. Jurez was generally calm, but that one particular day in 1997, Cinthia simply disappeared. After twenty days of distress, her family was notified by the authorities they had found Cinthias body in a dumpster. This is the true story of Mariposa, one of the 12 stories found in the second volume of the book Mi Vida en Jurez: Voces de Mujeres. The 120-page book was a result of a literary contest held by the project Pacto por la Cultura and it tells the sagas of women who live in the violent city of Jurez. I could have imagined anything, but that they found her in a dumpster? What do I do with this? Where do you place this? Where do I place the word to understand it? To feel it? Its something you cant assimilate, the girls aunt, Rosario, told wri ter Patricia Cabrera. In memory of the women of Jurez. (David Smith-Soto/Borderzine.com) These questions clouded Rosarios mind while she made her way to the morgue to identify her little nieces body. Feeling nothing but fear, Rosario walked up to Cinthias lifeless body. She was lying there, her body had deformed with time, and Rosario recognized her by the clothes she was wearing and a mole on her foot. The report said she died strangled the same day she went missing. Rosario, devastated, searched for years to find the murderer of her mariposa. She did not stop until she saw him behind bars and

to close the chapter, she decided to share her story. Pacto por la Cultura has had two contests, one in 2006 and another in 2009. The project included literary workshops and meetings to produce this book. Some women wrote their texts. Others who had never written a book told their stories to writers. To help these women, organizers of Pacto por la Cultura began doing several workshops in different parts of the city to help women tell their stories. Veronica Corchado, event coordinator and member of the Pacto por la Cultura, has worked with hundreds of women helping them tell their stories. In my experience through these two events, I have noticed the transformati on of several of these women. Its evident that these types of exercises are helping them break with the vicious cycles of violence, Corchado said.

Tag goes here Fox Latino 13

Mexico Arrests 12 in Connection To Ciudad Juarez Feminicides, <http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2013/06/12/mexico-arrests-12-in-connection-to-ciudad-juarez-femicides/>

Ciudad Jurez, Mexico Mexican prosecutors announced the arrest of 12 people in connection to the killings of 11 women whose skeletal remains were found near the northern border city of Ciudad Jurez early last year. The suspects include alleged drug dealers, pimps and small store owners. They allegedly belonged to a gang that forced young women into prostitution and drug dealing and then killed them when they were "no longer of use," the prosecutors' office for the northern state of Chihuahua said in a statement late Tuesday. The 10 men and two women face charges of human trafficking and homicide. The killings had raised fears that serial-style killings had returned to Ciudad Jurez, where over 100 women were killed in such crimes in the 1990s and early 2000s. The latest round of deaths appeared to be different, apparently involving forced labor and prostitution, but no less chilling. Three of the suspects ran a modeling agency, a clothing store and a small grocery. "These businesses were used by the gang as a 'hook' to offer young women jobs. Once they obtained the information they needed from the women's' job applications, they used different techniques and other people to kidnap them or pressure them into forced prostitution, and the consumption and or sale of drugs," the state attorney generals' office said. "Once the women were no longer useful for their illegal activities, they decided to kill them and abandon their bodies ... in the Jurez Valley," just east of Ciudad Jurez. In past cases in Ciudad Jurez, prosecutorial and police misconduct was so prevalent that the mothers of dead or missing girls doubted authorities' identification of their daughters' remains and the arrest of suspects in those cases. But in this case, mothers and activists said Wednesday they are sure that the suspects arrested this week participated in abducting their daughters. Maria Garca Reynosa, the mother of Jessica Leticia Pena Garca, who was 15 when she disappeared in 2010, said she obtained video showing her daughter entering one of the suspects' businesses, a boot shop, looking for work. Garca Reynosa said she had to do much of the investigative

work herself, but that prosecutors finally listened to her and followed up the leads she provided on a hotel where she believed her daughter had been held. Unfortunately, it was too late by then; Jessica Leticia had already been killed. "I gave them everything on a silver platter, and these dogs didn't do anything," she said of the original investigators. Finally this year, the state agreed to create a small team of investigators devoted to focusing on the murders. "This was done with the creation of the investigative agency, our presence and the efforts of the mothers, who were the ones who provided leads from the beginning," said Norma Ledesma, leader of the advocacy group Justice for Our Daughters. "They (the mothers) carried out their own investigation."

Support For Feminicide by Men

Support from men is the biggest factor in controlling women abuse DeKeseredy, Schwartz, and Alvi, no date
http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/6/9/918.short Stopping woman abuse on the North American college campus has not been very successful thus far. There is a major backlash, where students, faculty, and administrators too often either feel that the problem is not very significant or support the patriarchal rights of men. Programs begun by many campuses have not worked very well, partially because they depend on women to police the actions of men and partially because so few men come under formal social control that most offenders know that they can get away with their actions. Building on empirical research that suggests that male peer support is the most important factor on whether a male will be abusive , the authors suggest ways in which profeminist men can begin to tilt the balance against male aggression. This can include shaming or working with bullies or those who are abusive, protesting pornography, and involving oneself with education programs and/or support groups.

Men are very important in feminist movements Klocke, with no date http://www.nomas.org/node/122
It is crucial for men to be a part of feminist agency. If feminism is to attain its goal of liberating women, men must be a part of the struggle. Indeed, men probably bear more of the responsibility for ending oppression of women since patriarchal men have been the main perpetrators of that very oppression. But can men do this by becoming feminists?

Men need to learn and advocate feminist theory through more than just reading Klocke, no date http://www.nomas.org/node/122
As suggested by Alison Jaggar and others, men must first learn the text of feminist theory. This learning must not only involve the traditional reading of seminal works in feminist theory by feminist authors but must also involve a learning of social and political experience from a feminist perspective. Men should consult with feminist women when writing about feminist theory. Men should also support more authorship of feminist theory by women and challenge other men to see feminist theory as a legitimate and necessary practice that challenges men to end patriarchy. Above all, men need to engage with feminist theory and practice, letting it work on them, in order to liberate all genders and build a society constructed on justice and nourished by love.

Changing attitudes is possible and is currently happening now Cattan and Bodzin, 11 [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0215/InLatin-America-new-ads-aim-to-steer-men-away-from-machismo] Men who mistreat women have "a misunderstood idea of masculinity," says Bernardita Prado, director of domestic violence prevention at Chile's Ministry of Women and Children's

Affairs. Her group ran the recent campaign to redefine the word maricn. Their next campaign, Ms. Prado says, will encourage men to take more responsibility in childcare. She and others already see signs of changing attitudes. Matthew Gutmann, an anthropology professor at Brown University in Provi-dence, R.I., and author of "The Meanings of Macho: Being a Man in Mexico City," says he has noted signs of this trend. "The ads, the TV shows," he says, "are a sign of ongoing ferment about what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, relations between men and women." That "ongoing ferment" is fueling, and being fueled by, rising female participation in politics and labor as the evolving role of men frees up opportunities for women

Latino Women have been slowly getting similar opportunities as men Cattan and Bodzin, 11 [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0215/InLatin-America-new-ads-aim-to-steer-men-away-from-machismo/%28page%29/2] Four decades ago, many men told Mexico City car dealer Antonia Suaste that they wouldn't buy from a woman. Today, she says, more men are willing to trust that a saleswoman knows her cars. "There's less machismo, although it hasn't disappeared," she says. Within the past five years, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica have all elected female presidents. Women doubled their presence to 19 percent in the region's legislatures between 1990 and 2009, according to the United Nations. And in 2009, women took home more than a quarter of all university diplomas awarded in the typically male-dominated fields of engineering, manufacturing, and construction in Brazil, Argentina, Panama, and Uruguay. Big players are stepping up to keep that trend moving. Chile's National Mining Society said in January that increased hiring of women is a top priority. (Four percent of miners in Chile are female.)

Machismo culture is very real Batista 2k

Jos DECONSTRUCTING MACHISMO: VICTIMS OF MACHISMO IDEOLOGY DOMINATING IN BRAZIL http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/lasa2000/deoliveira.pdf If you are not Hispanic or are not enthralled with the Latino culture you may think that the concept of Machismo is an American stereotype of the quintessential Latino man. There are many misconceptions regarding Latinos; but the concept of Machismo is definitely not mistaken- it is real! There are, however, many different ways to describe Machismo. To many Latinos it is simply the belief that a real man needs to strive to be the most manly he can possibly be. The word machismo comes from the word macho or male; and it is often defined as exaggerated manliness. In Latin America it is common for the man of the house to be portrayed as the master of his domain. Latinas do not disagree; because in the traditional Latino family the man is supposed to be in charge. A Latina wife wants her husband to be also seen by others in the community as manly. As a result, most Latinas that I interview say that their husband is the head of their household. Further probing often paints a different picture; but the pretension is always to uphold the males position of dominance. There is a fine line between Machismo and male chauvinism. One thing is to pretend that the man is always in charge; while a very different situation is to actually have a man dominating a woman. In my interviews with

Hispanics I have witnessed many instances of Machismo crossing over to the realm of chauvinism; but those cases exists across all cultures. The Machismo that I feel is unique to the Latino community is the cultural acceptance of the pretension by both males and females that the man is actually in charge. This charade goes on in the U.S. Hispanic community despite the fact that Latinas in this country have managed to move away from the cultural tendencies of Marianismo(1). Why then do we continue to ensure that machismo stays alive by exaggerating the male manliness in the Hispanic behavior? I have a theory. We rely on Machismo because we (Latino men) are too emotional. Being emotional is not considered a particularly manly characteristic. The fact that Hispanic men are emotional is no secret; it has been very well documented and is often portrayed in the media as a typical Latino male point of difference from non-Hispanic men. In fact, just yesterday I was watching the movie Spy Kids with my daughter and was reminded of how far Hollywood has gone in substantiating the fact that Latino men cry. At the climatic conclusion of the movie, the father character (played by Antonio Banderas) meets his long lost brother- a rough macho man played by Danny Trejo. In the exchange Dannys character sheds a tear, at which point the brother comments in a comical fashion Latinos! I laughed at that when I saw the movie for the first time in the theater, and I laughed again yesterday. How true! I remember my father telling me as a child not to cry because men do not cry. Men may not cry in other cultures; but Latino men have trouble separating themselves from those darn Latino emotions. My father was not one to preach about not crying, because he would get emotional with something as mundane as watching a parade! But he countered his emotional nature with a good dose of Machismo; and I think we all do to an extend. This is especially the case here in the U.S. where many men are not as emotional by nature and would perceive an emotional tear as male weakness or even sissyness. So, what do we do? We step up the Machismo a couple of notches! There is another trick that we use to counter the portrayal of being sissy. Being emotional is a quality more often associated with females; which is why emotional men can be seen as being effeminate. The best way to battle that position and show our manliness is to demonstrate that we are better at getting the attention of the girls. A womanizer is not a sissy; and Giacomo Casanova himself was known to win the womens affection by using his emotional nature. So, if our Machismo is not convincing enough we can always fall back on positioning ourselves as the Latin Lovers!

Rights for Women in Juarez

Women in Juarez struggle for basic human rights. Ensalaco,06
Mark, A Parable of womens struggle for Human Rights [http://books.google.com/books?id=_SrAVrFD8WsC&pg=PA268&lpg=PA268&dq=%22This+is+so+for+three+reasons:+The+economic ,%22&source=bl&ots=GkDzjF1HeB&sig=0IMZBav3nsKYAot2Bqied2bxgac&hl=en&sa=X&ei=RjYUYKpG4vy9gS9l4Ew&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22This%20is%20so%20for%20three%20reasons%3A%20The%20econo mic%2C%22&f=false]

The murder of hundreds of women in Ciudad Jurez during the past decade has compelled women to mobilize. This mobilization is a parable of womens struggle for human rights because the factors that cause gender-based violence in Mexico are common throughout the world, the authorities failure to punish those crimes constitutes a form of gender discrimination that is prevalent
throughout the world, and the imperative for Mexican women to mobilize in defense of their own human rights is shared by women throughout the world. This struggle involves a double transformation: the transformation of womens organizations into human rights organizations and the transformation of human rights advocacy through the integration of the gender perspective. Keywords: femicide; gender-based violence; human rights; Mexico

The abduction, sexual torture, murder, mutilation, and disappearance of hundreds of women
have in Ciudad Jurez and Chihuahua, Mexico, during the past decade and the failure of Mexican authorities to exercise due diligence in investigating the crimes

compelled women to mobilize in a campaign to stop the impunity for genderbased violence. The mobilization against the femicide in Ciudad Jurez is something
of a parable of womens struggle for human rights because its significance extends beyond Mexico and even Latin America. This is so for three reasons: The economic, social, political, and cultural factors that cause gender-based violent crimes in Mexico are common in other regions of the world; the Mexican authorities failure to investigate, prevent, and punish those crimes constitutes a form of gender discrimination that is prevalent in other regions of the world; and the imperative for Mexican women to mobilize in defense of their own human rights in the absence of government recognition that gender discrimination is the cause of violence against women is an imperative shared by women in other regions of the world.

The RAPE and Suffering is everywhere in Ciudad Jurez. Pineda-Madrid,11 University of Notre Dame
Nancy Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Jurez. [http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/09/24/jaarel.lfr060.full.pdf]
Pineda-Madrid's study is consistent with previous works that closely examine the context and struggles of a quite specific group of women. But the women she considers are no mere cross-section of informants. Rather, they are the women of

Ciudad Jurez across the MexicanU.S. border from El Paso, who have undergone the horror of torture, rape, and murder on a rampant scale: since 1993 , at least six hundred brutal killings of young girls and women, almost all of them poor and dark-skinned.
Moreover, in all that time, authorities have scarcely convicted a single offender, exacerbating women's fears of victimization. Pineda-Madrid appropriately claims that labeling these murders as homicides does not sufficiently capture the organized terror directed at women. She calls the situation in Jurez feminicide in order to accentuate that the killings are vicious, widespread, committed with impunity, and ultimately part of an epidemic of systematic violence based on gendered power inequalities (11). The resistance movements that womenmany of them mothers, grandmothers, friends, or relatives of victimshave organized to combat the feminicide provide communal means to

unite in solidarity, remember their loved ones, shame their assailants, demand that authorities act, and publicly assert that the perpetrators will not have the final word on the dignity of the women of Jurez. Drawing on official reports of human rights groups, fellow scholars' ethnographic studies, newspaper reports, and her own observations and interviews in Jurez, Pineda-Madrid begins

explanations that scholars, government officials, and Catholic Church leaders have offered for the killings, which range from perceiving them as the byproduct of global capitalism to contending that they are all isolated incidents to a blame-the-victim strategy often rehashed when women suffer rape and violence. Her critical assessment of the social blight of feminicide provides a far more convincing structural analysis of the
with an analysis of the human tragedy there. She critiques alternative situation. She reveals not only the people and social conditions that gave rise to the feminicide and have helped perpetuate it for nearly two decades, but, employing Charles Taylor's term, she also examines the social imaginary that underlies this evil. The works of Taylor, Octavio Paz, and Emilie Townes inform her exploration of the social imaginary operative in Jurez and other Latino/a communities. Often unconsciously, this social imaginary encompasses cultural and symbolic representations that create a seemingly integral and legitimate relation between Latinas and suffering (40) and thus

provide a rationalization both for those who attack women and for those who ignore their systematic abuse. Pineda-Madrid then
proceeds to her theological analysis, which opens with an examination of Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo (1098), a classical text that arguably has influenced Christians' understanding of the doctrine of salvation more than any other theological treatise. Contrasting her interpretation to more typical understandings of Anselm, she concludes that Anselm accentuated Christ's selfoffering on the cross as absolutely gratuitous, not required by a vengeful God but freely offered by God incarnate for the sake of sinful humanity. Whether or not Anselm intended the subsequent interpretations of his work, Pineda-Madrid notes his legacy has had various negative effects on Christians. The most detrimental effects in situations like the Jurez feminicide include the tendency to see Christ's death on the cross as an ahistorical event that satisfies an individual's debt before God, but has little or no ethical imperative for believers to enact Jesus' salvific message in everyday life. Moreover, the atonement theories *rooted in Anselm] have far too often put forward a model in which God approves of violence against God's son, Jesus, and approves of Jesus' passive submission to the violence directed at him (88), a particularly damaging divine attribution that gives rise to social imaginaries in which

women are expected to place high value on self-negation and resignation in suffering.

Women in Juarez travel to work at the risk of being sexually harassed and mutilated Pantaleo, 10
[http://icj.sagepub.com/content/20/4/349.abstract] This study analyzes the social construction of a wave of female homicides surrounding the maquiladora plants in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Specifically, it explores the social construction of the murders by three different groups, the news media, human rights organizations, and academic researchers. The research begins with a content analysis of 35 narratives from newspapers, human rights reports, and academic journals. Sixteen of these narratives discuss North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in relation with the violence in Juarez. Analysis indicates that gender issues are intertwined with the trade agreement and concludes that the policy has aided in the disruption of the social fabric of Mexican society. Beginning in 1993 and continuing to the present, approximately 370 women and young girls have been murdered in and around the industrial border town of Ciudad Juarez, located in the state of chihuahua, Mexico (Amnesty International, 2007). In most cases, the murders have occurred under different circumstances and specific details of many of these murders are not clear. However, some similarities exist in the details of the murders, such as rape, torture, and mutilation of the victims to the point where the bodies are unrecognizable. The victims were often employees of maquiladoras, or foreign-owned Mexican factories, which allow tax-free imports of materials and tax-free exports of finished products throughout the world. The maquiladoras are associated with inhumane treatment of employees, where workers are subject to poor working conditions, sexual harassment, and used for their cheap labor (Kamel & Hoffman, 1999). Various deserts and other abandoned areas in Juarez, especially those close to the maquiladoras, are often the places where the victims bodies have been discovered. Due to the numerous similarities of the characteristics surrounding the victims, the murders have been referred to as the maquiladora murders or femicides of Juarez.

Decisions of Nafta lead to women in mexico being victims of feminicide Haley, 10

[http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/vol2010no5/archivevol2010no5/haley.pdf] This paper will explore how industrialization has impacted the women of Ciudad Jurez, in the state of Chihuahua, Mxico from 1993 to the present. Specifically, I will discuss how the construct and policies of neoliberalism, the conditions brought forth by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the industrialization of Jurez have impacted the economic, working, and sociocultural conditions of women. Within this discussion, I will illustrate how the maquiladoras (factories) have circumvented Latina Mxican cultural and gender patterns, leaving these women vulnerable to unabated poverty, violence, and femicide. This paper will conclude with a discussion from a social justice perspective regarding suggestions of the interventions necessary to improve the conditions affecting these women. The border between the United States and Mxico is a distinctive environment filled with unique needs and opportunities. Both countries share an uneasy partnership. One country is an industrial giant, while the other is still developing its potential. The chance for exploitation between countries is great.

Many women have been raped traveling to work Garwood, 99

[http://www.awid.org/layout/set/print/Library/What-is-the-connection-between-NAFTA-andthe-murders-of-maquila-women] Since 1993, 268 women have been murdered in Ciudad Jurez, Mexico. About a third of the murders fit similar patterns; the victims worked in the maquiladoras or assembly factories and their bodies were found raped, disfigured, and decaying in the garbage-strewn desert just beyond the maquila industrial parks on the outskirts of the city. This US-Mexico border town has become an exportprocessing zone, turned conflict zone, where women workers are devalued and literally discarded. A critical look into the violence is particular important during a time when increasing trade liberalisation is expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-like conditions of Ciudad Jurez throughout the Americas.

NAFTA leads to pregnant women in the work place being discriminated on. Yokoyama, 04
[https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/889/04honorsyokoyama.pdf? sequence=1] The effects of NAFTA in Mexico are different depending on regions, occupations, gender, and the economic status of the people. The overall effects from trade do not tell us much about how Mexicans lives has been affected because certain groups of people may bring up the average wage, while others do not have any effects. Women tend to be at a disadvantage economically and sociologically in this country. Studying the effects of NAFTA on women in Mexico will enable us to examine the true gains from free trade. The goal of this study is to determine which groups of people in Mexico are influenced under NAFTA. With a particular focus on the change in

wages of Maquiladora women workers in Mexico since the border region had many foreign firms coming in under NAFTA. I will be using a regression analysis to examine the wages of the workers.
An overview of NAFTA and the Maquiladora region of Mexico, and various theories of the effects of international trade are introduced in the literature review in the following section. Some previous works have shown that trade cannot hurt one countrys economy. While others

argue that free trade actually worsens the workers conditions, including discrimination against certain types of workers such as pregnant worker, and adverse effects on the environment, The loss of tradition is a crucial matter to be discussed as well. There are a lot of papers focusing on charges in wages under NAFTA, but not many of them focus on women who are more likely to have disadvantages in a society. Most of the newly constructed Maquiladoras hire more women than ever in Mexico, and this study
will help us understand the effects of NAFTA on specifically these women workers.

Gender discrimination within the Mexican society leads to the discrimination to the women at work. Grim 99
[https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/889/04honorsyokoyama.pdf? sequence=1]
Today, hundreds of maquiladoras exist throughout Mexico and employ approximately one million workers. Women comprise a significant percentage of maquiladora workers. Maquiladora

working conditions merit concern because maquiladora workers, including women, often receive very low wages, work in unsafe conditions, and are either not represented by unions or are represented by ineffective unions that do little to promote the welfare of their constituents. These workers have had some success in attracting attention to their problems, and several Mexican and U.S. groups now advocate on their behalf. Female maquiladora workers efforts to improve factory work, however, are hampered by their economic needs and the lack of other job opportunities, which force the women to accept poor maquiladora working conditions. As such, although this particular group of women possesses its own unique
characteristics and problems, it also shares many concerns with women around the world, including gender-based discrimination and the perpetuation of inequality in international agreements.

One of the primary reasons that Mexican women, including maquiladora workers, did not have meaningful representation during the formation of the NAFTA and the NAALC is the publicprivate dichotomy that exists between mens and womens gender-defined roles in Mexican culture. Mexican culture assigns women as a group to the private realms of home, domestic life and childrearing, and characterizes men as actors who control the public areas of government and economic activity, and provide financial support for their wives and children. Mexican men tend to
function in the highly visible world of business and economic activity and receive monetary compensation for these activities, enabling them to attract public recognition both for issues that affect them and for the fruits of their labor. on the other hand, are

Mexican women, expected to assume primary responsibility for childrearing and other work that takes place in the home, where they receive less acknowledgment of their work and receive no financial compensation for their household-related labor. This perception of the separate roles of women and men persists despite the fact that, in some sectors of Mexico, more than half the women are single and do not have access to traditional heterosexual relationships in which men financially support women who stay at home.

A2: Cap

Gender Disad
Focus only on class silences race and gender Mohanty 2004
Chandra (Professor of Womens Studies at Hamilton College) Feminism without Borders pg 242244 My recurring question is how pedagogies can supplement, consolidate, or resist the dominant logic of globalization. How do students learn about the inequities among women and men around the world? For instance, traditional liberal and liberal feminist pedagogies disallow historical and comparative thinking, radical feminist pedagogies often singularize gender, and Marxist pedagogy silences race and gender in its focus on capitalism. I look to create pedagogies that allow students to see the complexities, singularities, and interconnections between communities of women such that power, privilege, agency, and dissent can be made visible and engaged with.

Capitalism critiques do not draw on feminist analysis Mohanty 2004

Chandra (Professor of Womens Studies at Hamilton College) Feminism without Borders pg 249 While women are present as leaders and participants in most of these antiglobalization movements, a feminist agenda only emerges in the post- Beijing womens rights as human rights movement and in some peace and environmental justice movements. In other words, while girls women are central to the labor of global capital, antiglobalization work does not seem to draw on feminist analysis or strategies. Thus, while I have argued that feminists need to be anticapitalists, I would now argue that antiglobalization activists and theorists also need to be feminists. Gender is ignored as a category of analysis and a basis for organizing in most of the antiglobalization movements, and antiglobalization (and anticapitalist critique) does not appear to be central to feminist organizing projects, especially in the First World/North. In terms of womens movements, the earlier sisterhood is global form of internationalization of the womens movement has now shifted into the human rights arena. This shift in language from feminism to womens rights can be called the mainstreaming of the feminist movementa (successful) attempt to raise the issue of violence against women onto the world stage.

Place Based/Local Politics K2 Solve

Place-based politics are necessary to challenge capitalist modernity critiques of capitalism that do not start from a politics of place only devalue all forms of localized action Escobar, Professor of Anthropology, 2004 *Arturo, Beyond the Third World: Imperial
Globality, Global Coloniality and Anti-globalization Social Movements, Third World Quarterly, 25.1, p.220-1]0 The goal of many (not all) of the anti-globalisation struggles can be seen as the defence of particular, place-based historical conceptions of the world and practices of world-making more precisely, as a defence of particular constructions of place, including the reorganisations of place that might be deemed necessary according to the power struggles within place. These struggles are place-based, yet transnationalised.^" The politics of place is an emergent form of politics, a novel political imaginary in that it asserts a logic of difference and possibility that builds on the multiplicity of actors and actions operating at the level of everyday life. In this view, places are the site of live cultures, economies and environments rather than nodes in a global and all-embracing capitalist system. In Gibson-Graham's conceptualisation, this politics of placeoften favoured by women, environmentalist and those struggling for alternative forms of livelihoodis a lucid response to the type of 'politics of empire' which is also common on the Left and which requires that empire be confronted at the same level of totality, thereby devaluing all forms of localised action, reducing it to accommodation or reformism. As Gibson-Graham does not cease to remind us, 'places always fail to be fully capitalist, and herein lie their potential to become something other'.^' Or, in the language of the MC project, there is an exteriority to imperial globalitya result of both global coloniality and place-based cultural dynamics, which are irreducible to the terms of capitalist modernity.8

Challenging the global/local binary empowers the powerless and creates a starting point for politics Gibson-Graham 02 (JK Gibson Graham is the pen name of Julie Graham [Prof. of Geography
@ UMass & Ph.D. Clark Univ.] and Katherine Gibson [Prof. and head Dept. of Human Geography @ Australian National University & Ph.D. Clark Univ.]; BEYOND GLOBAL VS. LOCAL: ECONOMIC POLITICS OUTSIDE THE BINARY FRAME; Forthcoming in A. Herod and M. Wright (eds), Geographies of Power: Placing Scale, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers; kdf) The local and the global are not fixed entities, but are contingently produced, always in the process of being re-produced and never completed. Thus, places contain processes that can be globalized. Local initiatives can be broadcast to the world and adopted in multiple places across spacethe Grameen bank, for instance, is replicated in countless low-income neighborhoods across the world. And global processes always involve localizationthe arrival of the McDonalds outlet on the next block, the local link-up to cable TV, the building of a factory on customary owned land. This focus upon process opens up the binary to politics, to interventions that can interact to change the nature of globalization and localization (Escobar, 2001). From this brief foray into current deconstructive analyses, it is clear that global and local are recognized as existing within a structured formation that differentially distributes

power to one term. Challenges to the global/ local binary attempt to break down the dualist structure of difference, allowing us to see that the global is not global, the local is not local, and the local is not powerless or even less powerful. They argue for the unfixity and multiple meanings attached to each term, and resituate them as processes whose courses are unknown and potentially malleable.7 The recognition that the differential positioning of the global with respect to the local emerges from the discourse of globalization, and that this discourse is produced and purveyed by theorists, becomes the starting point for a politics outside the binary frame. What emerges from this abbreviated review of attempts to destabilize the global/ local binary, however, is an overriding sense that the power differential is never completely eradicated by deconstructive reason and re-presentation. Power, it seems, is either already distributed and possessed or able to be mobilized more successfully by the global (whatever that may be). The efforts to render global and local as somehow the same end up allowing the global to retain its power, and the representational shift associated with seeing the local and the global as processes, as always unfixed, is curiously circumscribed by a sense of imbalance. Dirlik, for example, in his discussion of the glocal, notes that most phenomena are both global and local, but they are not all local and global in the same way (1999: 42, italics ours). Does not the italicized phrase create an opening for unequal power to be reinserted?

Cap Focus Bad

Alt cant solve - total opposition is readily co-opted because it forms a mirror image, total rejection turns into total acceptance of the system. Good 01 - Professor of English at the University of British Columbia 2001 (Graham Good,
Humanism betrayed, P. 7) Liberal humanism, in my view, offers a more cogent critique of capitalist society because it generally accepts capitalism as an economic system that is more productive and efficient than the alternatives. Yet liberal humanism seeks to limit capitalism's social and cultural effects by preserving certain spheres - politics, art, education - as having a limited autonomy from the imperatives of the market. This attitude of partial acceptance and partial critique is much more realistic and effective, for example, in protesting the commercialization of the university, or in preserving artistic standards, than the total rejection of "late-capitalist society" that is common among academic pseudoradicals. Total opposition is more readily coopted by the system because it forms a mirror image. If the system is all-powerful, how can Theorists explain the possibility or acceptability of their own opposition to it? This problem is usually evaded; but when it is confronted, a doctrine of "necessary complicity" is often evoked. If you disbelieve in your own autonomy as an individual, you must be liable in dark moments to suspect that you are actually working for the system. Resistance to the system is part of the system. Total rejection flips into total acceptance and opens the way for a personal exploitation of the academic system. Political correctness covers up careerist realpolitik.

To get past capitalism we must let go of capitalism as a reference point relationality changes the nature of cap Healy and Graham in 2007 (Stephen [Professor of Human Geography at the University of
Durham] and Julie [Professor of Geography, Associate Department Head for Geography @U Mass]; BUILDING COMMUNITY ECONOMIES: A POSTCAPITALIST PROJECT OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT; in D. Ruccio, ed, Economic Representations: Academic and Everyday; kdf) The point, then, is that the difference between complementarity and simple relationality is a matter of perspective. A relational vision that insists on the importance, possibilities, and relative autonomy of a community economy does not require us to deny the existence, importance, or power of capitalism. To move beyond the capitalocentric imaginary simply requires that we let go of capitalism as the reference point against which we gauge our successes and failures and understand our possibilities of action and becoming. When capitalist firms rather than foreordained structures of dominance and subordination, we are free to become simply one site of economy rather than embodying the law of economy, we know we have made the leap of faith that is required to see things differently. When we recognize relationships, including ones with capitalist firms and the natural environment, as ethical projects to take on the ethical and political project of constructing an environmentally sustainable community economy. While a vision of relationality does not suggest any particular way that capitalist institutions and practices will interact with non-capitalist ones, it opens the possibility of a variety of interactions. Once capitalism is no longer in the position of constraining every goal and action, the logic of relationality (which does not foreclose) allows that capitalism may even enable the building of a community economy and performing environmental stewardship. An innovative project in the Pioneer Valley provides an example of this seemingly unlikely convergence, one

that brings into play our two development strategies of marshaling surplus and creating wellbeing directly.

The critique makes imagining alternatives to capitalism impossible their paranoid description of Capital dismisses all resistance as always already coopted Gibson-Graham 96 [Katherine & Julie, Professors of Geography, The End of Capitalism, p.1-3]
Given the avowed servitude of left theory to left political action it is ironic (though not surprising) that understandings and

images of capitalism can quite readily be viewed as contributing to a crisis in left politics . Indeed, and this is the argument we wish to make in this book, the project of understanding the beast has itself produced a beast, or even a bestiary; and the process of producing knowledge in service to politics has estranged rather than united understanding and action. Bringing these together again, or allowing them to touch in different ways, is one of our motivating aspirations. Capitalism occupies a special and privileged place in the language of social representation. References to capitalist society are a commonplace of left and
even mainstream social description, as are references to the market, to the global economy, to postindustrial society in which an unnamed capitalism

is implicitly invoked as the defining and unifying moment of a complex economic and social formation. Just as the economic system in eastern Europe used confidently to be described as
communist or socialist, so a general confidence in economic classification characterizes representations of an increasingly capitalist world system. But what might be seen as the grounds of this confidence, if we put aside notions of reality as the authentic origin of its representations? Why might it seem problematic to say that the United States is a Christian nation, or a heterosexual one, despite the widespread belief that Christianity and heterosexuality are dominant or majority practices in their respective domains, while at the same time it seems legitimate and indeed accurate to say that the US is a capitalist country?1 What is it about the former expressions, and their critical history, that makes them visible as regulatory fictions,2 ways of erasing or obscuring difference, while the latter is seen as accurate representation? Why, moreover, have embracing and holistic expressions for social structure like patriarchy fallen into relative disuse among feminist theorists (see Pringle 1995; Barrett and Phillips 1992) while similar conceptions of capitalism as a system or structure of power are still prevalent and resilient? These sorts of questions, by virtue of their scarcity and scant claims to legitimacy, have provided us a motive for this

book.3 The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes capitalism. as an economic and social descriptor.4 Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global capitalism as well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern social experience, the book selectively traces the discursive origins of a widespread understanding: that capitalism is the hegemonic. or even the only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in the proximate future. It follows from this
prevalent though not ubiquitous view that noncapitalist economic sites, if they exist at all, must inhabit the social margins; and, as a corollary, that deliberate attempts to develop noncapitalist economic practices and institutions must take place in the social interstices, in the realm of experiment, or in a visionary space of revolutionary social replacement. Representations of capitalism are a potent constituent of the anticapitalist imagination, providing images of what is to be resisted and changed as well as intimations of the strategies, techniques, and possibilities of changing it. For this reason, depictions

of capitalist hegemony deserve a particularly skeptical reading. For in the vicinity of these representations, the very idea of a noncapitalist economy takes the shape of an unlikelihood or even an impossibility. It becomes difficult to entertain a vision of the prevalence and vitality of noncapitalist economic forms, or of daily or partial replacements of capitalism by noncapitalist economic practices, or of capitalist retreats and reversals. In this sense, capitalist hegemony operates not only as a constituent of, but also as a brake upon, the anticapitalist imagination.5

Our Advocacy Key

We must address the social agency of women in the Third World the negative treats them as dupes who have nothing to contribute to the anti-capitalist struggle Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 72] World market factories relocate in search of cheap labor and find a home in countries with unstable (or dependent) political regimes, low levels of unionization, and high unemployment. What is significant about this particular situation is that it is young Third World women who overwhelmingly constitute the labor force. And it is these women who embody and personify the intersection of sexual, class, and racial ideologies. Numerous feminist scholars have written about the exploitation of Third World women in multinational corporations.11 While a number of studies provide information on the mobilization of racist and (hetero)sexist stereotypes in recruiting Third World women into this labor force, relatively few address questions of the social agency of women who are subjected to a number of levels of capitalist discipline. In other words, few studies have focused on women workers as subjects-as agents who make choices, have a critical perspective on their own situations, and think and organize collectively against their oppressors. Most studies of Third World women in multinationals locate them as victims of multinational capital as well as of their own "traditional" sexist cultures.

Capitalist neocolonialism is produced by creating concrete experiences of the subaltern this is a cooptation of their perspective our aff is critical to the context-specific necessity of moving beyond these constructions. Spivak 99 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.254-5]
It is not surprising, therefore, that upon

the empirical register of resistance-talk, Foucault articulates another corollary of the disavowal of the role of ideology in reproducing the social relations of production: an unquestioned valorization of the oppressed as subject, the object being, as Deleuze admiringly remarks, to establish conditions where the prisoners themselves would be able to speak. Foucault adds that the masses know perfectly well, clearlyonce again the thematics of being undeceivedthey know far better than *the intellectual+ and they certainly say it very well. The ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern is the left intellectuals stock-in-trade. What happens to the
critique of the sovereign subject in these pronouncements? The limits of this representationalist realism are reached with D eleuze: Reality is what actually happens in a factory, in a school, in barracks, in a prison, in a police station .

This foreclosing of the necessity of the difficult task of counterhegemonic ideological production has not been salutary. It has helped positivist empiricismthe justifying foundation of advanced capitalist neocolonialismto define its own arena as concrete experience, what actually happens. (As in the case of capitalist colonialism, and mutatis mutandis, of exploitation-as-Development. Evidence is daily produced by computing the national subject of the global South in this unproblematic way. And an alibi for globalization is produced by calling on the testimony of the credit-baited female.) Indeed, the concrete experience that is the guarantor of the political appeal
of prisoners, soldiers, and schoolchildren is disclosed through the concrete experience of the intellectual, the one who diagnoses the episteme. Neither

Deleuze nor Foucault seems aware that the

intellectual within globalizing capital, brandishing concrete experience, can help consolidate the international division of labor by making one model of concrete experience the model. We are witnessing this in our discipline daily as we see the postcolonial migrant become the
norm, thus occluding the native once again.

Critiques of capitalism are ineffectual without a positive political program to give them meaning this is key to political agency Brockelman, 2003 (Thomas, Professor of Philosophy, The Failure of the Radical Democratic
Imaginary Philosophy and Social Criticism 29.2, JSTOR) The peculiarity of the German left in and after 1989 that it was able to transform society only to the extent that it held onto an actually false hope indicates both the political effectiveness of Zizeks version of critique and its limitations. On the one hand, within the sphere of political action itself, the radicals in Neues Forum effected precisely the kind of revolutionary criticism that Zizek embraces. Critique is not only (or even primarily) the work of academics. On the other hand, the very distortion imposed upon this critique (that it could discover the truth of the political only through factual falsity) emblematizes the limitations of a utopianism shorn of the imaginary. Utopia without the power of the image: surely this is a thought entirely unable to achieve the mobilizing effects that Habermas has rightly sought in utopianism. Thus, while we can certainly agree with Zizek that his work provides an alternative to the anti-utopianism so universal in todays political theory, we must also insist that the strictures we must place on utopia here also prevent it from being very effective. And perhaps that is why the reader is frustrated in efforts to find the program announced by Zizek in The Ticklish Subject. The elliptical debates and readings that make up The Ticklish Subject may help us to construct Zizeks position, but they hardly offer the radical democratic imaginary whose construction he seems to promise. I would give the last word here to none other than Ernesto Laclau, who in a dialogue with Zizek printed in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality responds to Zizeks attack on his theory. He argues that Zizeks own position cannot really produce a coherent politics. Zizeks attacks on capitalism, Laclau claims, amount to empty talk without a vision of an alternative to capitalism (Butler, Laclau and Zizek, 2000: 206). This is particularly the case for Laclau in the light of the historical failure of the Marxist alternative: clearly Zizek does not mean what Marx and Engels meant by the end of capitalism, neither the dictatorship of the proletariat nor the abolition of market mechanisms. But without his meaning that or something equivalently imaginable, Zizeks position remains purely negative, purely a way of registering a discomfort with the world as it is. Such a registration, however, cannot provide more than a kind of voice in the wilderness. What, after all, does it mean to be against capitalism if that suggests nothing about what one would change in it or substitute for it? A theory unable to offer such a substitution will be unable to connect with or articulate the concrete struggles of oppressed individuals. The thing that empowers concrete struggles, that allows them to grow and join with the political efforts of others, is precisely a program, a vision of the future. Indeed, there is, Laclau might well say, something narcissistic about the purity of the intellectual position Zizek stakes out classically unable to escape from academic analysis to engage at a level of genuine solidarity with social movements. This is not to reject Zizeks critical position which may provide the most trenchant analysis available today of the reasons for the failure of contemporary Leftist politics but it is to insist that, Zizeks protests to the contrary, no clear path to the future emerges from it.

Third World women workers have a critical vantage point to expose the workings of global capital as well as to understand the experiences transnationally Mohanty 03 *Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 167-168] I have argued that the particular location of Third World women workers at this moment in the development of global capitalism provides a vantage point from which to (I) make particular practices of domination and recolonization visible and transparent, thus illuminating the minute and global processes of capitalist recolonization of women workers, and (1) understand the commonalities of experiences, histories, and identity as the basis for solidarity and in organizing Third World women workers transnationally. My claim, here, is that the definition of the social
identity of women as workers is not only class based but, in fact, in this case, must be grounded in understandings of race, gender, and caste histories and experiences of work. In effect, I suggest that homework is one of the most significant, and repressive, forms of womens work" in contemporary global capitalism. In

pointing to the ideology of the "Third World woman worker" created in the context of a global division of labor, I am articulating differences located in specific histories of inequality, that is, histories of gender and caste/class in the Narsapur context and histories of gender, race, and liberal individualism in the Silicon Valley and in Britain.
However, my argument does not suggest that these are discrete and separate histories. In focusing on women's work as a particular form of Third World women's exploitation in the contemporary economy, I also want to foreground a particular history that Third and First World women seem to have in common: the logic and operation of capital in the contemporary global arena. I maintain that the

interests of contemporary transnational capital and the strategies employed enable it to draw upon indigenous social hierarchies and to construct, reproduce, and maintain ideologies of masculinity/femininity, technological superiority, appropriate development, skilled/unskilled labor, and so on. Here I have argued this in terms of the category of women's work," which I have shown to be grounded in an ideology of the Third World women worker. Thus, analysis of the location of Third World women in the new international division of labor must draw upon the histories of colonialism and race, class and capitalism, gender and patriarchy, and sexual and familial figurations . The
analysis of the ideological definition and redefinition of women's work thus indicates a political basis for common struggles and it is this particular forging of the political unity of Third World women workers that I would like to endorse. This is in opposition to ahistorical notions of the common experience, exploitation, or strength of Third World women or between Third and First World women, which serve to naturalize normative Western feminist categories of self and other. If Third World women are to be seen as the subjects of theory and of struggle, we must pay attention to the specificities of their four common and different histories.

A2: Zizek Alt

Zizeks alternative is political nihilism he supplies no method for over throwing capitalism. Laclau 04 Ernesto Laclau, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Essex and Visiting
Professor of Comparative Literature at SUNY-Buffalo, 2004, Umbr(a): War, p. 33-34 Here we reach the crux of the difficulties to be found in Zizek. On the one hand, he is committed to a theory of the full revolutionary act that would operate in its own name, without being invested in any object outside itself. On the other hand, the capitalist system, as the dominating, underlying mechanism, is the reality with which the emancipatory act has to break. The conclusion from both premises is that there is no valid emancipatory struggle except one that is fully and directly anti-capitalist. In his words: I believe in the central structuring role of the anti-capitalist struggle. The problem, however, is this: he gives no indication of what an anti-capitalist struggle might be. Zizek quickly dismisses multicultural, anti-sexist, and antiracist struggles as not being directly anti-capitalist. Nor does he sanction the traditional aims of the Left, linked more directly to the economy: the demands for higher wages, for industrial democracy, for control of the labor process, for a progressive distribution of income, are not proposed as anti-capitalist either. Does he imagine that the Luddites proposal to destroy all the machines would bring an end to capitalism? Not a single line in Zizeks work gives an example of what he considers an anti-capitalist struggle. One is left wondering whether he is anticipating an invasion of beings from another planet, or as he once suggested, some kind of ecological catastrophe that would not transform the world but cause it to fall apart. So where has the whole argument gone wrong? In its very premises. Since Zizek refuses to apply the hegemonic logic to strategico-political thought, he is stranded in a blind alley. He has to dismiss all partial struggles as internal to the system (whatever that means), and the Thing being unachievable, he is left without any concrete historical actor for his anti-capitalist struggle. Conclusion: Zizek cannot provide any theory of the emancipatory subject. At the same time, since his systemic totality, being a ground, is regulated exclusively by its own internal laws, the only option is to wait for these laws to produce the totality of its effects. Ergo: political nihilism.

Zizeks philosophy is contradictory and lacks a concrete alternative. Tormey and Robinson, 05 teaches in the School of Politics and Critical Theory at the
University of Nottingham; doctoral student in the School of Politics at the University of Nottingham (Simon; Andrew, SAGE Publications, A Ticklish Subject? Zizek and the Future of Left Radicalism) Zizeks popularity results largely from the apparent way out that he provides from the cul-de-sac in which radical theory, and in particular radical postmodern theory, has found itself. Zizek is of course not the rst author to attack postmodernists, post-structuralists and post-Marxists on grounds of their lack of radical ambition on the terrain of politics. However, left activists interested in confronting the liberal capitalist status quo nd themselves trapped between politically radical but theoretically awed leftist orthodoxies, and theoretically innovative but politically moderate post-theories. Enter Zizek. Zizek offers an alternative to traditional left radicalisms and postmodern anti-essentialist approaches, especially identity politics. For

Zizek, radical democracy accepts the liberal-capitalist horizon, and so is never radical enough. Against this alleged pseudo-radicalism, Zizek revives traditional leftist concepts such as class struggle. He ignores, however, the orthodox left meaning of such terms, rearticulating them in a sophisticated Hegelian and Lacanian vocabulary. Yet problems remain: Zizeks version of class struggle does not map on to traditional conceptions of an empirical working class, and Zizeks proletariat is avowedly mythical. He also rejects newer forms of struggle such as the anti-capitalist movement and the 1968 uprisings, thereby reproducing a problem common in radical theory: his theory has no link to radical politics in an immediate sense.6 Nevertheless, he has a theory of how such a politics shouldlook, which he uses to judge existing political radicalisms. So how does Zizek see radical politics emerging? Zizek does not offer much by way of a positive social agenda. He does not have anything approximating to a programme, nor a model of the kind of society he seeks, nor a theory of the construction of alternatives in the present. Indeed, the more one looks at the matter, the more difcult it becomes to pin Zizek down to any line or position. He seems at rst sight to regard social transformation not as something possible to be theorized and advanced, but as a fundamental impossibility because the inuence of the dominant symbolic system is so great that it makes alternatives unthinkable.7 A fundamental transformation, however, is clearly the only answer to the otherwise compelling vision of contemporary crisis Zizek offers. Can he escape this contradiction? His attempt to do so revolves around a reclassication of impossibility as an active element in generating action.

Utopian Alt
Utopianism lets capitalism off the hook by letting its defenders pick at tiny holes in the utopian vision Magdoff & Foster 05 [Harry and John Bellamy, Professor of Sociology and Editor of the
Monthly Review, The Monthly Review 57.3, July-August] But perhaps the most important argument against the utopian way of arguing is that, though it addresses our ideal future, it carries out the debate on their terrain. Instead of forcing capitalists and their paid hirelings to defend what is intolerable and unnecessary in presentday society, it allows them to sit back and pick holes in whatever sounds untidy or unlikely in our hopes for the future. It does capitalists the immense favor of letting them go on the offensive, rhetorically speaking. Marxs analysis, on the other hand, which focuses on the irrational workings of the capitalist system and its devastating effects on our lives, is essentially a way of putting the capitalists in a defensive position from which no amount of rationalization will free them. It is the difference between arguing why society should be changed in ways the utopian thinks best, where most of the evidence that would ordinarily apply is either unavailable or unconvincing, and describing the prison in which we are all being held captive (including what can be glimpsed of freedom from the many holes in the walls), in which the selfserving content of the wardens excuses has been revealed beforehand. Let the capitalists try to talk themselves out of this, is what Marx seems to be saying. It is when they cannot, and when enough of us recognize they cannot, that the walls of the prison (financial cornices and all) will be torn down.

The alternative has no theory of persuasion it has no way of accounting for and mobilizing concrete class interests to create true revolutionary change Magdoff & Foster 05 [Harry and John Bellamy, Professor of Sociology and Editor of the
Monthly Review, The Monthly Review 57.3, July-August] Sixth, and last, utopian thinking leads to adopting ineffective political strategies for bringing about the desired changes. For the utopian thinker, the ideal society will come into being when enough people recognize that it is both good and possible. But, as we have seen, there is no compelling reason why anyone should accept either of these claims. Nor can it be said that utopian
arguments succeed by other means. Reformulated, repackaged, fictionalized, and personalized, their literary merit may pick up a few more followers. It

is always possible that the fantasies featured in a particular utopian vision will appeal to some people whose thinking is structured along similar lines (see the discussion of ethics and religion above), but so far this has never been enough. To supplement the written word, therefore, many
utopian thinkers have set up models of what they favorworkplaces, household arrangements, and even whole communities believing that the example will convince larger numbers of the desirability as well as practicality of their vision. But the very conditions of the present that utopians neglect to study ensure that at least some of the pieces that are required for the model to work as expectedincluding people with the right attitudesare generally lacking. Also, the especially the market, in which the experiment is forced to operate overwhelms

larger capitalist context, and it economically, politically, and

culturally at every point the two come into contact. Utopian thinkers have only been able to think otherwise, because, abstracting the future from the present, they have no way of judging how this same present will affect any piece of the future that is set down in its midst. The same dismissal of present realities in constructing their vision of the future leaves utopians without an adequate grasp of who is likely to favor their project and who is not. Since life in their ideal society would satisfy everyone, it
seems to follow that everyone should be in favor of it. And as the intelligence required to understand how the utopian ideal works is

equally distributed throughout the population, there is no reason to single out any section or class of people for their appeal. Except one. Those who hold high political office or have a lot of money can, if they wish, do more to bring the utopian vision into being than others. So why not address a special appeal to them? And many utopian thinkers have done just this. Saint-Simon, for example, wrote to Napoleon for help; Fourier advertised in newspapers for capitalist benefactors; and Owen petitioned the English Parliament. And many modern-day utopians continue to make similar appeals to the rich and powerful in our society who are in a position to make a difference. Sometimes it even works, a little bit, for there are a few wealthy radicals. But the point, of course, is that those who have succeeded by playing according to the existing economic and political rules of our society have every interest in keeping these rules as they are. The same interests also help them fool themselves into believing that these rules are fair (in earlier times they may have added and God given). And no appeal, no matter how inventive and aesthetically pleasing, is going to convince most of them otherwise. Meanwhile, the quest for such support is almost certain to result in the watering down of utopian goals as one tries to make them acceptable to everyonefor example, Fouriers idea of allowing capitalists to draw a profit from his utopian community as a way of attracting needed investment. The same quest, together with the moderation that it induces, also makes it more difficult to win the support of workers and other oppressed groups who have a clear interest in a thorough transformation of society. Utopians

make no special effort to attract workers; they dont see any reason to. In order to grasp why they should, they would have to have made the kind of analysis of society, emphasizing where different groups fit into it and the opposing interests that arise from their positions, that Marx made and the utopians have not. But without adequate attention to class and class interests, what sense can utopians make of the class struggle andparticularly of the role that the state plays in it? If communists, including anarcho-communists, have the abolition of the state as one of their goals, utopians often act as if the state has already been abolished. Pursuing reforms that are chiefly of civil society within civil society, utopians tend to ignore how the state contributes to the problems they are trying to solve and the equally complex ways the state ties the hands of any reformers who try to solve them. There is no shortage of complaints, of course, but without a Marxist analysis of the organic relation between the ruling economic class and the state one can never understand whywith only minor and temporary variationsit acts in this way, and what must be done to bring about permanent and thoroughgoing changes. Consequently, there is no recognition of the need for a
political revolution, of removing the capitalists from political power so we can take away their economic and social power, even to the relatively modest degree advocated by most utopians. It cant be done the other way around, achieving economic and social power first, which is essentially what utopians of all kinds try to do, without ever offering the analysis that would justify turning Marxism on its head in this way.

Cap Not Root Ignores power

Capitalism cant explain all forms of domination doing so obscures the way power and hegemony function Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 182-183]
What does it mean to speak about a notion of capitalist citizenship? How is this idea different from democratic citizenship? Why privilege capitalist social relations and values-why not focus on "sexist" or "racist" citizenship? The answer to these questions lies in my belief that capitalism

is a foundational principle of social organization at this time (see Dirlik 1997). This does not mean that capitalism functions as a "master narrative" or that all forms of domination are reducible to capitalist hierarchies, or that the temporal and spatial effects of capital are the same around the globe. It does mean that at this particular stage of global capitalism, the particularities of its operation (unprecedented deterritorialization, abstraction and concentration
of capital, transnationalization of production and mobility through technology, consolidation of supranational corporations that link capital flows globally, etc.)

necessitate naming capitalist hegemony and culture as a foundational principle of social life. To do otherwise is to obfuscate the way power and hegemony function in the world -and certainly at the university. Thus, an anticapitalist feminist critique is the logical way to go here.
Also, there are questions to be raised regarding the place of programs such as women's studies, race and ethnic studies, and so on, in the corporate university. How are these programs marketed? How do we/they collude in this restructuring of the university? How do we benefit, and what have we lost as a result of these changes. For instance, many schools assume that so long as there is a women's studies program there is no need to hire feminist scholars in other departments (Sidhu 200l, 38). In conjunction with the backlash against feminist scholars and the revolving door policy for hiring us, these are difficult times for many of us in the academy. With the simultaneous downsizing, commodification, and technicization of education in the corporate university. it is likely that interdisciplinary programs, and humanities and arts curricula will be slowly phased out because our "role in the market will be seen as ornamental" (Giroux 2001, 40). Anticapitalist feminism links capitalism as an economic system and culture of consumption centrally to racist, sexist, heterosexist, and nationalist relations of rule in the production of capitalist/corporate citizenship.

Perm Card
Feminist criticism addresses capitalism and eurocentrism Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 8-9]
I use the term "anticapitalist critique" for two reasons. First, to draw attention to the specificities of global capitalism and to name and demystify its effects in everyday life-that is, to draw attention to the anticapitalist practices we have to actively engage in within feminist communities. And second, to suggest that capitalism

is seriously incompatible with feminist visions

of social and economic justice. In many ways, an anticapitalist feminist critique has much in common with earlier
formulations of socialist feminism. But this is a racialized socialist feminism, attentive to the specific operations and discourses of contemporary global capitalism: a socialist feminist critique, attentive to nation and sexuality-and to the globalized economic, ideological, and cultural interweaving of masculinities, femininities, and heterosexualities in capital's search for profit, accumulation, and domination. To specify further, an

anticapitalist critique fundamentally entails a critique of the operation, discourse, and values of capitalism and of their naturalization through neoliberal ideology and corporate culture. This means demystifying discourses of consumerism, ownership, profit, and privatization -of the collapse of notions of public and private good, and the refashioning of social into consumer identities within corporate culture. It entails an antiimperialist understanding of feminist praxis, and a critique of the way global capitalism facilitates U.S.- and Eurocentrism as well as nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment. This analysis involves decolonizing and actively combating the naturalization of corporate citizenship such that democratic, socialist, antiracist feminist values of justice, participation, redistribution of wealth and resources, commitment to individual and collective human rights and to public welfare and services, and accountability to and responsibility for the collective (as opposed to merely personal) good become the mainstay of transformed local, national, and transnational cultures. In this frame, difference and plurality emerge as genuinely complex and often contradictory, rather than as commodified variations on Eurocentric themes. Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 develop these ideas in some detail.

Framework
The purpose of the critique is to be an instrument for those who fight. It causes the old ways of doing things to be questioned and changed. Demands for top down policy options over determine the purpose of the critique, rendering it useless. Michel Foucault, Some Dead French Guy, 1991, The Foucault Effect, pp. 83-85
We have known at least since the nineteenth century the difference between anaesthesis and paralysis. Let's talk about paralysis first. Who has been paralyzed? Do you think what I wrote on the history of psychiatry paralyzed those people who had already been concerned for some time about what was happening in psychiatric institutions? And, seeing what has been happening in and around prisons, I don't think the effect of paralysis is very evident there either. As far as the people in prison are concerned, things aren't doing too badly. On the other hand, it's true that certain people, such as those who work in the institutional setting of the prison which is not quite the same as being in prisonare not likely to find advice or instructions in my books that tell them 'what is to be done'. But my project is precisely to bring it about that they 'no longer know what to do', so that the acts, gestures, discourses which up until then had seemed to go without saying become problematic, difficult, dangerous. This effect is intentional. And then I have some news for you: for me the problem of the prisons isn't one for the 'social workers' but one for the prisoners. And on that side, I'm not so sure what's been said over the last fifteen years has been quite sohow shall I put it?demobilizing. But paralysis isn't the same thing as anaesthesison the contrary. It's in so far as there's been an awakening to a whole series of problems that the difficulty of doing anything comes to be felt. Not that this effect is an end in itself. But it seems to me that 'what is to be done' ought not to be determined from above by reformers, be they prophetic or legislative, but by a long work of comings and goings, of exchanges, reflections, trials, different analyses. If the social workers you are talking about don't know which way to turn, this just goes to show that they're looking, and hence are not anaesthetized or sterilized at allon the contrary. And it's because of the need not to tie them down or immobilize them that there can be no question for me of trying to tell 'what is to be done'. If the questions posed by the social workers you spoke of are going to assume their full amplitude, the most important thing is not to bury them under the weight of prescriptive, prophetic discourse. The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: 'Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform.' That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes: this then is what needs to be done. It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. The problem, you see, is one for the subject who actsthe subject of action through which the real is transformed. If prisons and punitive mechanisms are transformed, it won't be because a plan of reform has found its way into the heads of the social workers; it will be when those who have to do with that penal reality, all those people, have come into collision with each other and with themselves, run into dead-ends, problems

and impossibilities, been through conflicts and confrontations; when critique has been played out in the real, not when reformers have realized their ideas.

We must radically change the educational sphere, our performance is an act of liberation, visibility, and empowerment, creating a public space for dissent and challenges Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 205-207] In the intellectual, political and historical context I have sketched thus far, decolonization as a method of teaching and learning is crucial in envisioning democratic education. My own political project involves trying to connect educational discourse to questions of social justice and the creation of citizens who are able to conceive of a democracy which is not the same as "the free market." Pedagogy in this context needs to be revolutionary to combat business as usual in educational institutions. After all, the politics of commodification allows the cooptation of most dissenting voices in this age of multiculturalism. Cultures of dissent are hard to create. Revolutionary pedagogy needs to lead to a consciousness of injustice, self-reflection on the routines and habits of education in the creation of an "educated citizen," and action to transform one's social space in a collective setting. In other words, the practice of decolonization as defined above. I turn now to a narrative in the tradition of Toni Cade Bambara, a story that "keeps me alive - a story which saves our lives." The story is about a performance by a student at Hamilton College. Yance Ford, an African American studio art major and feminist activist, based her performance, called "This Invisible World," on her three-plus years as a student at the college." She built an iron cage that enclosed her snugly, suspended it ten feet off the ground in the lobby of the social sciences building, She shaved her head and barefoot and without a watch, wearing a sheet that she had cut up-spent five hours in the cage in total silence. The performance required unimaginable physical and psychic endurance, and it dramatically transformed a physical space that is usually a corridor between offices and classrooms. It had an enormous impact on everyone walking through - no mundane response was possible. Nor was business as usual possible. It disrupted educational routines - many faculty (including me) sent their classes to the performance and later attempted discussions that proved profoundly unsettling. For the first time in my experience at Hamilton, students, faculty, and staff were faced with a performance that could not be "consumed~ or assimilated as part of the "normal" educational process. We were faced with the knowledge that it was impossible to "know" what led to such a performance, and that the knowledge we had, of black women's history of objectification, of slavery, invisibility, and soon, was a radically inadequate measure of the intent or courage and risk it took for Vance to perform "This Invisible World. ~ In talking at length with Vance, other students, and colleagues, and thinking through the effects of this performance on the campus, I have realized that this is potentially a very effective story. Here is how Vance, writing in October 1993, described her project: What is it? I guess or rather I know that it is about survival. About trauma, about loss, about suffering and pain, and about being lost within all of those things. About trying to find the way back to yourself The way back to your sanity, a way to get away from those things which have driven you beyond a point of

recognition. Past the point where you no longer recognize or even want to recognize yourself or your past or the possibility that your present may also be your future. That is what my project is about. I call it refuge but I really think I mean rescue or even better, survival, escape, saved. My work to me is about all the things that push you to the edge. Its about not belonging, not liking yourself, not loving yourself, not feeling loved or safe or accepted or tolerated or respected or valued or useful or important or comfortable or safe or part of a larger community. It's about how all these things cause us TO hate ourselves into corners and boxes and addictions and traps and hurtful relationships and cages. It's about how people can see you and look right through you. Most of the time nor knowing you are there. It is about fighting the battle of your life, for your life. And this place that I call refuge is the only place where I am sacred. It is the source of my strength, my fortitude, my resilience, my ability to be for myself what no one else will ever be for me. This is most directly Vance's response and meditation on her three years at a liberal arts college-on her education. In extensive conversations with her, two aspects of this project became clearer to me: her consciousness of being colonized at the college, expressed through the act of being caged like animals in a science experiment, ~ and the performance as an act of liberation, of active decolonization of the self, of visibility and empowerment. Vance found a way to tell another story, to speak through a silence that screamed for engagement. However, in doing so, she also created a public space for the collective narratives of marginalized peoples, especially other women of color. Educational practices became the object of public critique as the hegemonic narrative of a liberal arts education, and its markers of success came under collective scrutiny. This was then a profoundly unsettling and radically decolonizing educational act. This story illustrates the difference between thinking about social justice and radical transformation in our frames of analysis and understanding in relation to race, gender, class, and sexuality versus a multiculturalist consumption and assimilation into a supposedly democratic" frame of education as usual. It suggests the need to organize to create collective spaces for dissent and challenges to consolidation of white heterosexual masculinity in academy.

Opening up public space for epistemological standpoints is fundamental to the exposure of power relations we must make the politics of everyday experience important Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 215-216] If my argument in this essay is convincing, it suggests why we need to take on questions of race and gender as they are being managed and commodified in the liberal U.S. academy. One mode of doing this is actively creating public cultures of dissent where these issues can be debated in terms of our pedagogics and institutional practices.20 Creating such cultures in the liberal academy is a challenge in itself, because liberalism allows and even welcomes "plural~ or even "alternative" perspectives. However, a public culture of dissent entails creating spaces for epistemological standpoints that are grounded in the interests of people and that recognize the materiality of conflict, of privilege, and of domination. Thus creating such cultures is fundamentally about making the axes of power transparent in the context of academic, disciplinary, and institutional structures as well as in the interpersonal relationships

(rather than individual relations) in the academy. It is about taking the politics of everyday life seriously as teachers, students, administrators, and members of hegemonic academic cultures. Culture itself is thus redefined to incorporate individual and collective memories, dreams, and history that are contested and transformed through the political

Oppression is not a binary force only by examining our relationship to others can we participate in liberatory political projects Henze, Professor of English, 2000 *Brent, Who Says Who Says? Reclaiming Identity:
Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism, Ed. Paula Moya & Michael Hames-Garcia] One outcome of these approaches to participating in the politics of the oppressed is that our way of thinking about oppression must be modified. Rather than treat oppression as a binary force either oppressive or unoppressive to ourselves (and, if unoppressive, also unrelated to ourselves), we must see it as complex and relational, linking us to others and at the same time making us responsible for how we participate in the matrices of power that sustain oppression. The result of seeing oppression in this way is to enable more effective participation in these systems; by broadening our ways of knowing about the systems within which we operate, we at least potentially increase our ability to shape these systems in the long term. It enables us to participate in liberatory political projects more effectively, working in concert with rather than against or in place of those whose experiences of oppression both necessitate and ground this work.

White people must also articulate their experiences of race issues this is the only way that they can unlearn their positions of privilege Schraub, 2007 *David, A Clarification of Standpoint Theory,
http://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2007_05_06_archive.html ] When it comes to race issues, White voices do have unique and valuable contributions to add to the discourse. Many of them, I suspect, are also structurally suppressed, in that they haven't come out because they don't make sense within a knowledge paradigm that says the White perspective is the universal perspective. Conditioned to believe that their experiences are universal, Whites haven't developed the language to talk about their experience as particularized events, and (speaking as a White) this cripples attempts to genuinely engage in racial dialogue in a very frustrating manner. But that doesn't mean that if such language came to be, the revealed thoughts might not provide clues at achieving a progressive racial vision. Hence, I support efforts to articulate White perspectives on racial issues, too, and I think these perspectives have independent value. This is so for two reason. Ideologically, I'm uncomfortable with exiling any voice from the polity, even under the mantra of inverting hierarchies. There are plenty of democratic problems with such a move, and I have a strong pluralist commitment towards exposing and airing as many voices as possible. I don't think this has to be zero-sum. But also, from a pragmatic angle, I think that the progressive anti-racist community could score significant gains in the White community by affirming that, yes, their voice and their stories are valuable, and we want to hear them. As Kenji Yoshino has written, viewing majority members "only as impediments, as people who prevent others from expressing themselves" is a major factor in these people "respond[ing] to civil rights advocates with hostility." I don't actually think

that the community is opposed to such a move, but the issue is rarely pressed and without it all this talk of "epistimological advantage" is understandably frightening to people who don't have a clue what this "post-modernism" thing is. As feminist and race theorists smarter than me have talked about, there is very little more frustrating than being stifled by linguistic inadequacy. White people, being part of our racial ecology, have stories to tell, and not only do they have no words by which to speak them, they aren't even sure they're supposed to be allowed to contribute. No wonder they default back to universalist paradigms which articulate (but do not replicate) a vision of reality that is familiar and comfortable to them. Breaking out of that paradigm necessitates a clear statements from standpoint theorists that we are interested in all standpoints, and that to the extent we are more interested in those of the minority, its a case of distributions rather than exclusion.

Speaking for Others

Speaking for and Speaking about are inseparable both raise the same issues concerning power and privilege Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.8-9] In the examples used above, there may appear to be a conflation between the issue of speaking for others and the issue of speaking about others. This conflation was intentional on my part. There is an ambiguity in the two phrases: when one is speaking for others one may be describing their situation and thus also speaking about them. In fact, it may be impossible to speak for others without simultaneously conferring information about them. Similarly, when one is speaking about others, or simply trying to describe their situation or some aspect of it, one may also be speaking in place of them, that is, speaking for them. One may be speaking about others as an advocate or a messenger if the persons cannot speak for themselves. Thus I would maintain that if the practice of speaking for others is problematic, so too must be the practice of speaking about others, since it is difficult to distinguish speaking about from speaking for in all cases.7 More- over, if we accept the premise stated above that a speaker's location has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims, then both the practice of speaking for and of speaking about raise similar issues. I will try to focus my remarks in this paper on the practice of speaking for others, but it will be impossi- ble to keep this practice neatly disentangled from the practice of speaking about. If "speaking about" is also involved here, however, the entire edifice of the "crisis of representation" must be connected as well. In both the practice of speaking for as well as the practice of speaking about others, I am engaging in the act of representing the other's needs, goals, situation, and in fact, who they are. I am representing them as such and such, or in post-structuralist terms, I am participating in the construction of their subject-positions. This act of representation cannot be understood as founded on an act of discovery wherein I discover their true selves and then simply relate my discovery. I will take it as a given that such representations are in every case mediated and the product of interpretation (which is connected to the claim that a speaker's location has epistemic salience). And it is precisely because of the mediated character of all representations that some persons have rejected on political as well as epistemic grounds the legitimacy of speaking for others.

Speaking for yourself is inseparable from speaking for others the claim that you speak only for yourself only avoids accountability for your effects on others. Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.20] This problem is that Trebilcot's position, as well as a more general retreat position, presumes an ontological configuration of the discursive context that simply does not obtain. In particular, it assumes that one can retreat into one's discrete location and make claims entirely and singularly based on that location that do not range over others, that one can disentangle oneself from the implicating networks between one's discursive practices and others' locations, situations, and practices. (In other words, the claim that I can speak only for myself

assumes the autonomous conception of the self in Classical Liberal theory-that I am unconnected to others in my authentic self or that I can achieve an autonomy from others given certain conditions.) But there is no neutral place to stand free and clear in which one's words do not prescriptively affect or mediate the experience of others, nor is there a way to decisively demarcate a boundary between one's location and all others. Even a complete retreat from speech is of course not neu- tral since it allows the continued dominance of current discourses and acts by omission to reinforce their dominance. As my practices are made possible by events spatially far from my body so too my own practices make possible or impossi- ble practices of others. The declaration that I "speak only for myself" has the sole effect of allowing me to avoid responsibility and accountability for my effects on others; it cannot literally erase those effects.

There is no line between speaking for yourself and speaking for others both involve the creation of self and other Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.9-10] And once we pose it as a problem of representation, we see that not only are speaking for and speaking about analytically close, so too are the practices of speaking for others and speaking for myself. For, in speaking for myself, I am also representing myself in a certain way, as occupying a specific subject-position, having certain characteristics and not others, and so on. In speak- ing for myself, I (momentarily) create my self-just as much as when I speak for others I create their selves-in the sense that I create a public, discursive self, which will in most cases have an effect on the self experienced as interiority. Even if someone nev- er hears the discursive self I present of them they may be affected by the decisions others make after hearing it. The point is that a kind of representation occurs in all cases of speaking for, whether I am speaking for myself or for others, that this representation is never a simple act of discovery, and that it will most likely have an impact on the individual so represented

Learning to occupy the subject position of the other through speaking for others is key to social change
(in the 1AC)

Spivak 1990 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, The Post-Colonial Critic, p.121-2]
Through you one can see the problem without any interference, and this is a very serious claim. It is a serious questioning of the sovereignty of the subject, it's not just breastbeating. As I said in my talk, the sort of breast-beating which stops the possibility of social change is to say, "I'm only a white male, I cannot speak as a feminist," or, "I'm only a white male and cannot speak for the blacks." You know that whole thing about "Oh, there was no voice of the other because there were no black anthropologists here," et cetera. What we are asking for is that the hegemonic discourses, the holders of hegemonic discourse should de-hegemonize their position and themselves learn how to occupy the subject position of the other rather than simply say, "O.K., sorry, we are just very good white people, therefore we do not speak for the blacks." That's the kind of breast-beating that is left behind at the threshold and then business goes on as usual. The deconstructive problemization of the positionality of the subject of investigation has stood me in very good stead. That is what was reflected when I refused marginalization when there were questions from the floor about my practice and so on. One of the things I said was that one of my projects is not to allow myself to occupy the place of the

marginal that you would like to see me in, because then that allows you to feel that you have an other to speak to. That comes from that deconstructive move. In this sense, to go back to my first answer, deconstruction gives a certain critical edge to all possible totalizations of this kind. The'Structure of complicity, why we should be there, why they should be here, what is getting lost-those are the kinds of things that deconstructive investigation of this area allows you to look at: the ways in which you are complicit with what you are so carefully and cleanly opposing. That leads to much better practice in my view. It seems to me that the understanding of deconstruction as leading to paralysis is to see it merely as a negative metaphysics which would like to be completely anti-essentialist (as if that were possible). Negative metaphysics leads not to paralysis on the part of people who are privileged enough to repudiate essentialism, et cetera. It leads, to use a very old-fashioned word, to irresponsibility, self-congratulation, and fun for some people. The view of deconstruction that I'm proposing here keeps it very clear from (excuse me for fabulating historically) the massive reaction to the failure of 1848 in Europe which brought with it a certain kind of negative metaphysics. I'm getting into very deep waters, and to mix metaphors, this is one of my hobby horses; I don't think you want to watch me riding my hobby horse across deep waters, so go on to the next one.

Despite the dangers of representing others, the alternative is far worse failure to represent the perspectives of the oppressed only disempowers them more Campbell, 1997 [Fiona,
members.tripod.com/FionaCampbell/speech_acts_on_problematising_empowerment.htm, 1204-07] For many of us engaged in the justice enterprise, there will come a time when we will be called upon to speak for or about Others - and Im not just talking about some formalised/institutionalised advocacy situation. In fact our everyday lives involve acts of representation. The representation I am talking about is that which is especially related to people who do not have a voice, are not listened to. Those whose knowledge has been excluded, minimised, has been disqualified or has been considered marginal. Surely it would be better, you might say, for those of us who have experienced the pain of our subordination/violence to speak? We are currently experiencing what has been termed, a crisis of representation - how can we speak of others, especially subordinated peoples in nonoppressive ways. Do we refrain from speaking and let them speak? What if, for whatever reason, there is silence? As privileged speaking subjects what responsibility do we have to speak out about injustice and powerlessness and create spaces for resistance? I am highly critical of those individuals who say they cant speak because they have not been there. Throwing out the gauntlet, Spivak says in response: why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has written such an abject script for you that you are silenced? (Spivak 1990b: 62 ~ emphasis added). These issues have been raised in recent times in the area of disability studies. The wisdom of the so-called enabling language movement is encapsulated in the following statement about the power of naming: Prejudice is not merely imparted or superimposed. It is metabolised in the bloodstream of society. What is needed is not so much a change in language as an awareness of the power of words to condition attitudes. (Saturday Review, in Zola 1988: 13). It is not only at the level of attitudes, that our understandings are affected., but constructions and representations of race, disability, sex and age. The question of language is critical and should not just be seem as merely playing lip service to political correctness (as problematical that term is). It is extraordinary how often that the media,

politicians, academic texts, ourselves - portray subordinated peoples as the passive Other separate and apart: The disabled, a gang of disruptive youths, the unemployed etc.. Think about it: in describing Others as nouns (this is not a grammar lecture!), your representation is not just a label, in your speech you are constituting the subjectivity of the whole person. Thingism, (you wont find this word in the Dictionary because I made it up), disempowers, makes people faceless, dehumanises and creates comfort zones of distance between us and them. The art of speaking should not merely be reduced to the level of the pursuit of rightness, a kind of morality of speech. Rather, each of us is called to constantly reflect and be mindful of the potential violence of our speech and representation. Sticks and stones may break my bones and contrary to the saying, names do have the capacity to injure and demean me. Need you think I am coming on too strong, I am supported by Morrison when she says oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence (Morrison, in Butler 1997: 6 - emphasis added). By now, it should be clear that the voice of agency is not just implicated in speech , but also in the silence of those in privileged speaking positions. To insist that those of us that have suffered only do the speaking is not only to disempower us more (leaving aside the question of stress) and disregard unequal power relations, but in effect you are saying that : I/we are not your concern, that there is no agency dilemma here, my/our situation is a private matter. In doing so, the (hidden experiences and wisdom), what I term subjugated knowledges of subordinated peoples will remain hidden and responsibility for collectively challenging dominant values will remain an illusion. Speaking and advocacy are inherently political acts. Let us remember that if it were not for people like the late Herbert Cole Nugget Coombs, who many called a man with vision for reconciliation, a true friend o f Indigenous people (Gatjil Djerrkura, in Whitlock 1997: B2) there would have been less debate about responsibility around indigenous issues in public discourse. It is time for us to speak

The alternative is far worse lack of images of suffering is worse than oversaturation Kleinman & Kleinman, 1996 *Arthur & Joan, The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of
Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times, Daedalus, 125.1] It is necessary to balance the account of the globalization of commercial and professional images with a vastly different and even more dangerous cultural process of appropriation: the totalitarian state's erasure of social experiences of suffering through the suppression of images. Here the possibility of moral appeal through images of human misery is prevented, and it is their absence that is the source of existential dismay. Such is the case with the massive starvation in China from 1959 to 1961. This story was not reported at the time even though more than thirty million Chinese died in the aftermath of the ruinous policies of the Great Leap Forward, the perverse effect of Mao's impossible dream of forcing immediate industrialization on peasants. Accounts of this, the world's most devastating famine, were totally suppressed; no stories or pictures of the starving or the dead were published. An internal report on the famine was made by an investigating team for the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was based on a detailed survey of an extremely poor region of Anwei Province that was particularly brutally affected. The report includes this numbing statement by Wei Wu-ji, a local peasant leader from Anwei: Originally there were 5,000 people in our commune, now only 3,200 remain. When the Japanese invaded we did not lose this many: we at least could save ourselves by running away! This year there's no escape. We die shut up in our own houses. Of my 6 family members, 5 are already dead, and I am left to starve, and I'll not be able to stave off death for

long.(30) Wei Wu-ji continued: Wang Jia-feng from West Springs County reported that cases of eating human meat were discovered. Zhang Sheng-jiu said, "Only an evil man could do such a thing!" Wang Jia-feng said, "In 1960, there were 20 in our household, ten of them died last year. My son told his mother 'I'll die of hunger in a few days.'" And indeed he did.(31) The report also includes a graphic image by Li Qin-ming, from Wudian County, Shanwang Brigade: In 1959, we were prescheduled to deliver 58,000 jin of grain to the State, but only 35,000 jin were harvested, hence we only turned over 33,000 jin, which left 2,000 jin for the commune. We really have nothing to eat. The peasants eat hemp leaves, anything they can possibly eat. In my last report after I wrote, "We have nothing to eat," the Party told me they wanted to remove my name from the Party Roster. Out of a population of 280, 170 died. In our family of five, four of us have died leaving only myself. Should I say that I'm not broken hearted?(32) Chen Zhang-yu, from Guanyu County, offered the investigators this terrible image: Last spring the phenomenon of cannibalism appeared. Since Comrade Chao Wu-chu could not come up with any good ways of prohibiting it, he put out the order to secretly imprison those who seemed to be at death's door to combat the rumors. He secretly imprisoned 63 people from the entire country. Thirtythree died in prison.(33) The official report is thorough and detailed. It is classified neibu, restricted use only. To distribute it is to reveal state secrets. Presented publicly it would have been, especially if it had been published in the 1960s, a fundamental critique of the Great Leap, and a moral and political delegitimation of the Chinese Communist Party's claim to have improved the life of poor peasants. Even today the authorities regard it as dangerous. The official silence is another form of appropriation. It prevents public witnessing. It forges a secret history, an act of political resistance through keeping alive the memory of things denied.34 The totalitarian state rules by collective forgetting, by denying the collective experience of suffering, and thus creates a culture of terror. The absent image is also a form of political appropriation; public silence is perhaps more terrifying than being overwhelmed by public images of atrocity.

The rejection of speaking for others has no mechanism for identifying the inside and outside of a group identity Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.7-8] We might try to delimit this problem as only arising when a more privileged person speaks for a less privileged one. In this case, we might say that I should only speak for groups of which I am a member. But this does not tell us how groups themselves should be delimited. For example, can a white woman speak for all women simply by virtue of being a woman? If not, how narrowly should we draw the categories? I am a Panamanian- American, and a person of mixed ethnicity and race: half white/ Angla and half Panamanian mestiza. The criterion of group identity leaves many unanswered questions for a person such as my- self, since I have membership in many conflicting groups but my membership in all of them is problematic. On what basis can we justify a decision to demarcate groups and define membership in one way rather than another? No easy solution to this problem can be found by simply restricting the practice of speaking for others to speaking for groups of which one is a member. Moreover, adopting the position that one should only speak for oneself raises similarly problematic questions. For example, we might ask, if I don't speak for those less privileged than myself, am I abandoning my political responsibility to speak out against oppression, a responsibility incurred by the very fact of my privilege? If I should not speak for others, should I restrict myself to following their lead uncritically? Is my greatest contribution to move over and get out

of the way? And if so, what is the best way to do this-to keep silent or to deconstruct my discourse?

Retreating from the need to speak for others entrenches exploitation and oppression effective politics requires speaking for Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.17-8] *[this evidence has been gender paraphrased] While the charge of reductionism response has been popular among academic theorists, a second response which I will call the "retreat" response has been popular among some sections of the U.S. feminist movement. This response is simply to retreat from all practices of speaking for and assert that one can only know one's own narrow individual experience and one's "own truth" and can never make claims beyond this. This response is moti- vated in part by the desire to recognize difference, for example, different priorities, without organizing these differences into hi- erarchies. Now, sometimes I think this is the proper response to the problem of speaking for others, depending on who is making it. We certainly want to encourage a more receptive listening on the part of the discursively privileged and discourage presumptuous and oppressive practices of speaking for. But a retreat from speaking for will not result in an increase in receptive listening in all cases; it may result merely in a retreat into a narcissistic yuppie lifestyle in which a privileged person takes no responsibility for [their] her society whatsoever. [they] She may even feel justified in exploiting[their] her privileged capacity for personal happiness at the expense of others on the grounds that [they have] she has no alternative. However, opting for the retreat response is not always a thinly veiled excuse to avoid political work and indulge one's own desires. Sometimes it is the result of a desire to engage in political work without engaging in what might be called discursive imperi- alism. The major problem with such a retreat is that it significantly undercuts the possibility of political effectivity. There are numerous examples of the practice of speaking for that have been politically efficacious in advancing the needs of those spoken for, but I think the example of Menchu is particularly instructive.

Even if there is no authentic voice of the other, it is still valuable for us to heed their perspectives they can challenge dominant relations of knowledge and power Alcoff, 1992 *Linda, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique, 5-32.]
Spivak's arguments, however, suggest that the simple solution is not for the oppressed or less privileged to be able to speak for themselves, since their speech will not necessarily be either liberatory or reflective of their "true interests," if such exist. I would agree with her here, yet it can still be argued, as I think she herself concludes, that ignoring the subaltern's or oppressed person's speech is "to continue the imperialist project" (298).But if a privileging of the oppressed's speech cannot be made on the grounds that its content will necessarily be liberatory, it can be made on the grounds of the very act of speaking itself. Speaking constitutes a subject that challenges and subverts the opposition between the knowing agent and the object of knowledge, an opposition that is key in the reproduction of imperialist modes of discourse. The problem with speaking for others exists in the very structure of

discursive practice, no matter its content, and therefore it is this structure itself that needs alteration.

Getting permission for representation cannot be the model for dealing with speaking for others Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.10-1] There is another sense of representation that may seem also vitally connected here: political representation, as in, for example, electoral politics. Elected representatives have a special kind of authorization to speak for their constituents, and one might won- der whether such authorization dissolves the problems associated with speaking for others and therefore should perhaps serve as a model solution for the problem. I would answer both yes and no. Elected representatives do have a kind of authorization to speak for others, and we may even expand this to include less formal instances in which someone is authorized by the person(s) spoken for to speak on their behalf. There are many examples of this sort of authorizing, such as when I asked my partner to speak on my behalf in the hospital delivery room, or when my student autho- rized me to speak on her behalf in a meeting with the chancellor. However, the procurement of such authorization does not render null and void all attendant problems with speaking for others. One is still interpreting the other's situation and wishes (unless perhaps one simply reads a written text they have supplied), and so one is still creating for them a self in the presence of others. Moreover, the power to confer such authorization, and to have power over the designated representative, is rarely present in the instances where one is being spoken for. Intellectual work has certainly not been guided by the mandate to get permission from those whom one is speaking for and about, and it is safe to say that most political representatives have not been strictly guided by the need to get such authorization either. The point here is that the model of political representation cannot be used in all instances of speaking for others, though it may prove instructive when we attempt to formulate responses to the problem

Rituals of speaking determine the meaning and significance of what is said Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.12-3] A plethora of sources have argued in this century that the neutrality of the theorizer can no longer, can never again, be sustained, even for a moment. Critical theory, discourses of empowerment, psychoanalytic theory, post-structuralism, feminist, and anticolonialist theories have all concurred on this point. Who is speaking to whom turns out to be as important for meaning and truth as what is said; in fact what is said turns out to change ac- cording to who is speaking and who is listening. Following Foucault, I will call these "rituals of speaking" to identify discursive practices of speaking or writing that involve not only the text or utterance but their position within a social space including the persons involved in, acting upon, and/or affected by the words. Two elements within these rituals will deserve our attention: the positionality or location of the speaker and the discursive context. We can take the latter to refer to the connections and relations of involvement between the utterance/text and other

utterances and texts as well as the material practices in the relevant environment, which should not be confused with an environment spatially adja- cent to the particular discursive event. Rituals of speaking are constitutive of meaning, the meaning of the words spoken as well as the meaning of the event. This claim requires us to shift the ontology of meaning from its location in a text or utterance to a larger space, a space that includes the text or utterance but that also includes the discursive context. And an important implication of this claim is that meaning must be understood as plural and shifting, since a single text can en- gender diverse meanings given diverse contexts. Not only what is emphasized, noticed, and how it is understood will be affect the location of both speaker and hearer, but the truth-value or epistemic status will also be affected. For example, in many situations when a woman speaks the presumption is against her; when a man speaks he is usually taken seriously (unless he talks "the dumb way," as Andy Warhol accused Bruce Springsteen of doing, or, in other words, if he is from an oppressed group). When writers from oppressed races and na- tionalities have insisted that all writing is political the claim has been dismissed as foolish, or grounded in ressentiment, or it is simply ignored; when prestigious European philosophers say that all writing is political it is taken up as a new and original "truth" (Judith Wilson calls this "the intellectual equivalent of the 'cover record.'")9 The rituals of speaking that involve the location of speaker and listeners affect whether a claim is taken as a true, well-reasoned, compelling argument, or a significant idea. Thus, how what is said gets heard depends on who says it, and who says it will affect the style and language in which it is stated, which will in turn affect its perceived significance (for specific hearers). The discursive style in which some European poststructuralists have made the claim that all writing is political marks it as important and likely to be true for a certain (powerful) milieu; whereas the style in which African-American writers made the same claim marked their speech as dismissable in the eyes of the same milieu.

Epistemic evaluation of a claim requires assessing the politics of the situation its not enough to be correct because some discursive situations are aligned with structures of oppression Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.14-5] Let me return now to the formulation of the problem of speaking for others. There are two premises implied by the artic- ulation of the problem, and unpacking these should advance our understanding of the issues involved. Premise 1: The "ritual of speaking" (as defined above) in which an utterance is located, always bears on meaning and truth such that there is no possibility of rendering positionality, location, or context irrelevant to content. The phrase "bears on" here should indicate some variable amount of influence short of determination or fixing. One important implication of this first premise is that we can no longer determine the validity of a given instance of speaking for others simply by asking whether or not the speaker has done sufficient research to justify his or her claims. Adequate research will be a necessary but insufficient criterion of evaluation. Now let us look at the second premise. Premise 2: Certain contexts and locations are allied with structures of oppression, and certain others are allied with resistance to oppression. Therefore all are not politically equal, and, given that politics is connected to truth, all are not epistemically equal. The claim here that "politics is connected to truth" follows necessarily from premise 1. Rituals of speaking are politically

constituted by power relations of domination, exploitation, and subordination. Who is speaking, who is spoken of, and who listens is a result, as well as an act, of political struggle. Simply put, the discursive context is a political arena. To the extent that this context bears on meaning, and meaning is in some sense the object of truth, we cannot make an epistemic evaluation of the claim without simultaneously assessing the politics of the situation. According to the first premise, though we cannot maintain a neutral voice we may at least all claim the right and legitimacy to speak. But the second premise dis-authorizes some voices on grounds which are simultaneously political and epistemic. The conjunction of premises 1 and 2 suggest that the speaker loses some portion of his or her control over the meaning and truth of his or her utterance. Given that the context of hearers is partially determinant, the speaker is not the master or mistress of the situation. Speakers may seek to regain control here by taking into account the context of their speech, but they can never know everything about this context and with written and electronic communication it is becoming increasingly difficult to know anything at all about the context of reception.

Speaking for yourself IS speaking for others the retreat from representing others is based on the illusion of the individualist ideology of the West Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.21] And this is simply because we cannot neatly separate off our mediating praxis that interprets and constructs our experiences from the praxis of others. We are collectively caught in an intricate, delicate web in which each action I take, discursive or otherwise, pulls on, breaks off, or maintains the tension in many strands of a web in which others find themselves moving also. When I speak for myself, I am constructing a possible self, a way to be in the world, and am offering that to others, whether I intend to or not, as one possible way to be. Thus, the attempt to avoid the problematic of speaking for by retreating into an individualist realm is based on an illusion, well-supported in the individualist ideology of the West, that a self is not constituted by multiple intersecting discourses but consists in a unified whole capable of autonomy from others. It is an illusion that I can separate from others to such an extent that I can avoid affecting them. This may be the intention of my speech, and even its meaning if we take that to be the formal entailments of the sentences, but it will not be the effect of the speech, and therefore cannot capture the speech in its reality as a discursive practice. When I "speak for myself" I am participating in the creation and reproduction of discourses through which my own and other selves are constituted.

Rejecting speaking for on the grounds that we should listen to others only conceals the authorizing power of the retreating intellectual who represents the other as transparent and self-knowing Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.22] In Spivak's essay, the central issue is an essentialist, authentic conception of the self and of experience. She criticizes the "self-abnegating intellectual" pose that Foucault and Deleuze adopt when they reject speaking for others on the grounds that it assumes the oppressed can transparently represent their own true interests. According to Spivak, Foucault and Deleuze's position serves only to conceal the actual authorizing power of the retreating intellectuals, who in their very retreat help to consolidate a particular conception of experience (as transparent and self-knowing). Thus, to promote "listening to" as opposed to speaking for essentializes the oppressed as non-ideologically constructed subjects.

The capacity for the subaltern to speak and be heard has inherent power to subvert systems of domination regardless of the content of the speech Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.23] Spivak's arguments, however, suggest that the simple solution is not for the oppressed or less privileged to be able to speak for themselves, since their speech will not necessarily be either

libera- tory or reflective of their "true interests," if such exist. I would agree with her here, yet it can still be argued, as I think she herself concludes, that ignoring the subaltern's or oppressed person's speech is "to continue the imperialist project" (298). But if a privileging of the oppressed's speech cannot be made on the grounds that its content will necessarily be liberatory, it can be made on the grounds of the very act of speaking itself. Speaking constitutes a subject that challenges and subverts the opposition between the knowing agent and the object of knowledge, an opposition that is key in the reproduction of imperialist modes of discourse. The problem with speaking for others exists in the very structure of discursive practice, no matter its content, and therefore it is this structure itself that needs alteration.

Speaking with is the best alternative we should create opportunities for dialogic encounters that lessen the dangers of misrepresentation Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.22-3] But Spivak is also critical of speaking for others that engages in dangerous representations. In the end Spivak prefers a "speaking to," in which the intellectual neither abnegates his or her discursive role nor presumes an authenticity of the oppressed but still allows for the possibility that the oppressed will produce a "countersentence" that can then suggest a new historical narrative. This response is the one with which I have the most agree- ment. We should strive to create wherever possible the conditions for dialogue and the practice of speaking with and to rather than speaking for others. If the dangers of speaking for others result from the possibility of misrepresentation, expanding one's own authority and privilege, and a generally imperialist speaking ritu- al, then speaking with and to can lessen these dangers. Often the possibility of dialogue is left unexplored or inade- quately pursued by more privileged persons. Spaces in which it may seem as if it is impossible to engage in dialogic encounters need to be transformed in order to do so-spaces such as class- rooms, hospitals, workplaces, welfare agencies, universities, insti- tutions for international development and aid, and governments. It has long been noted that existing communication technologies have the potential to produce these kinds of interaction even though research and development teams have not found it advan- tageous under capitalism to do so.

Unlearning ones privilege requires learning to speak in such a way that the other will not regard as bullshit
*[this evidence has been gender paraphrased] Spivak 1990 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, The Post-Colonial Critic, p.56] When I criticized Foucault in my talk in Melbourne, I was not suggesting that Foucault himself had not brilliantly tried to represent the oppressed. What I was looking at in the late Foucault was the theorization of that project as letting the oppressed speak for himself [or herself]. It seemed to me that theorizing in the late Foucault actually buys into the privileging of "concrete experience", which is something that is also used by the other side, by capitalism. There is an impulse among literary critics and other kinds of intellectuals to save the masses, speak for the masses, describe the masses. On the other hand, how about attempting to learn to speak in such a way that the masses will not regard as bullshit. When I think of the masses, I think of a woman belonging to that 84% of women's work in India, which is unorganized peasant labour.

Now if I could speak in such a way that such a person would actually listen to .me and not dismiss me as yet another of those many colonial missionaries, that would embody the project of unlearning about which I've spoken recently. What can the intellectual do toward the texts of the oppressed? Represent them and analyze them, disclosing one's own positionality for other communities in power. Foucault has done this. In fact, I can't think of another person, another intellectual, who had done this in our time in the Western context. What I was objecting to was that theorization of letting Pierre Riviere speak for himself, and what the theoretical articulation does for the people who are influenced by Foucault, enthusiastic academic intellectuals, who at the same time swallow Foucault's critique of the watershed intellectual and make Foucault into a watershed intellectual!

Unlearning privilege doesnt mean anti-intellectualism or dumbing down arguments Spivak 1990 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, The Post-Colonial Critic, p.57]
When I sad that one shouldn't invite people to de-skill themselves, I was talking about a kind of anti-intellectualism that exists among academics and counter-academics. One ought not to patronize the oppressed. And that's where this line leaves us. Unlearning one's privileged discourse so that, in fact, one can be heard by people who are not within the academy is very different from clamoring for anti-intellectualism, a sort of complete monosyllabification of one's vocabulary within academic enclosures. And it seems to me that one's practice is very dependent upon one's positionality, one's situation. I come from a state where the illiteratenot the functionally illiterate, but the real illiterate, who can't tell the difference between one letter and another-are still possessed of a great deal of political sophistication, and are certainly not against learning a few things. I'm constantly struck by the anti-intellectualism within the most opulent university systems in the world. So that's where I was speaking about de-skilling.

The conflation of representation and re-presentation enables the furthering of exploitation through the puppeteering of the concrete experience of the oppressed Spivak 99 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.256-7,
259] The unrecognized contradiction within a position that valorizes the concrete experience of the oppressed, while being so uncritical about the historical role of the intellectual, is being maintained by a verbal slippage. Deleuze makes this remarkable pronouncement: A theory is like a box of tools. Nothing to do with the signifier. Considering the verbalism of the theoretical world and its access to any work defined against it as practical is irreducible, such a declaration (referring only to an in-house contretemps with hermeneutics), helps only the intellectual anxious to prove that intellectual labor is just like manual labor. It is when signifiers are left to look after themselves that verbal slippages happen. The signifier representation is a case in point. In the same dismissive tone that severs theorys link to the signifier, Deleuze declares, There is no more representation; theres nothing but actionaction of theory and action of practice which relate to each other as relays and form networks. An important point is being made here: the production of theory is also a practice; the opposition between abstract

pure theory and concrete applied practice is too quick and easy. But Deleuzes articulation of the argument is problematic. Two senses of representation are being run together: representation as speaking for, as in politics, and representation as re-presentation, as in art of philosophy. Since theory is also only action, the theoretician does not represent (speak for) the oppressed group. Indeed, the subject is not seen as a representative consciousness (one re-presenting reality adequately). These two senses of representationwithin state formation and the law, on the one hand, and in subject-predication, on the otherare related but irreducibly discontinuous. To cover over the discontinuity with an analogy that is presented as a proof reflects again a paradoxical subject-privileging. Because the person who speaks and acts is always a multiplicity, no theorizing intellectual *or+ party or union can represent those who act and struggle. Are those who act and struggle mute, as opposed to those who act and speak? These immense problems are buried in the differences between the same words: consciousness and conscience (both conscience in French), representation and re-presentation. The critique of ideological subject-constitution within state formations and systems of political economy can now be effaced, as can the active theoretical practice of the transformation of consciousness. The banality of leftist intellectuals lists of selfknowing, politically canny subalterns stands revealed; representing them, the intellectuals represent themselves as transparent. She continues In the guise of a post-Marxist description of the scene of power, we thus encounter a much older debate: between representation or rhetoric as tropology and as persuasion. Darstellen [Re-presentation] belongs to the first constellation, vertreten [representation]with stronger suggestions of substitutionto the second. Again, they are related, but running them together, especially in order to say that beyond both is where oppressed subjects peak, act, and know for themselves, leads to an essentialist, utopian politics that can, when transferred to single-issue gender rather than class, give unquestioning support to the financialization of the globe, which ruthlessly constructs a general will in the credit-baited rural woman even as it formats her through UN Plans of Action so that she can be developed. Beyond this concatenation, transparent as rhetoric in the service of truth has always made itself out to be, is the much invoked oppressed subject (as Woman), speaking, acting, and knowing that gender in development is best for her. It is in the shadow of this unfortunate marionette that the history of the unheeded subaltern must unfold.

Appeals to the concrete experience of the oppressed is a ventriloquists trick that is used to legitimize capitalist globalization and neocolonialism Spivak 99 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.254-5]
It is not surprising, therefore, that upon the empirical register of resistance-talk, Foucault articulates another corollary of the disavowal of the role of ideology in reproducing the social relations of production: an unquestioned valorization of the oppressed as subject, the object being, as Deleuze admiringly remarks, to establish conditions where the prisoners themselves would be able to speak. Foucault adds that the masses know perfectly well, clearlyonce again the thematics of being undeceivedthey know far better than *the

intellectual+ and they certainly say it very well. The ventriloquism of the speaking subaltern is the left intellectuals stock-in-trade. What happens to the critique of the sovereign subject in these pronouncements? The limits of this representationalist realism are reached with Deleuze: Reality is what actually happens in a factory, in a school, in barracks, in a prison, in a police station. This foreclosing of the necessity of the difficult task of counterhegemonic ideological production has not been salutary. It has helped positivist empiricismthe justifying foundation of advanced capitalist neocolonialismto define its own arena as concrete experience, what actually happens. (As in the case of capitalist colonialism, and mutatis mutandis, of exploitation-as-Development. Evidence is daily produced by computing the national subject of the global South in this unproblematic way. And an alibi for globalization is produced by calling on the testimony of the credit-baited female.) Indeed, the concrete experience that is the guarantor of the political appeal of prisoners, soldiers, and schoolchildren is disclosed through the concrete experience of the intellectual, the one who diagnoses the episteme. Neither Deleuze nor Foucault seems aware that the intellectual within globalizing capital, brandishing concrete experience, can help consolidate the international division of labor by making one model of concrete experience the model. We are witnessing this in our discipline daily as we see the postcolonial migrant become the norm, thus occluding the native once again.

We must draw upon depictions of suffering to craft ways to combat it the negative would paralyze social action Kleinman & Kleinman, 1996 *Arthur & Joan, The Appeal of Experience; the Dismay of
Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times, Daedalus, 125.1] Our critique of appropriations of suffering that do harm does not mean that no appropriations are valid. To conclude that would be to undermine any attempt to respond to human misery. It would be much more destructive than the problem we have identified; it would paralyze social action. We must draw upon the images of human suffering in order to identify human needs and to craft humane responses.

The commodification of suffering is necessary to combat human rights abuses and violence even if it is deplorable, we must affirm it Baxi, Professor of Law, 1998 *Upendra, Voices of Suffering and the Future of Human
Rights, Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, lexis] The raw material for human rights investment and consumer markets is provided by here-andnow human misery and suffering. However morally deplorable, it is a social fact that the overall human capacity to develop a fellowship of human suffering is awesomely limited. It is a salient fact about the "contemporary" human scene that individual and associational lifeprojects are rarely disturbed, let alone displaced, by the spectacle of human suffering or human suffering as a spectacle. In such a milieu, human rights markets, no matter whether investor or consumer, are confronted with the problem of "compassion fatigue." This is a moral problem, to be sure, but it is also a material problem. Of necessity, markets for human rights concentrate on this aspect of the problem if only because, when compassion fades, the resources for the alleviation of human suffering through human rights languages are depleted. This intersection registers the necessity for human rights entrepreneurs to commodify human suffering , to

package and sell it in terms of what the markets will bear. Human rights violations must be constantly commoditized to be combated. Human suffering must be packaged in ways that the mass media markets find it profitable to bear overall. But the mass media can commodify human suffering only on a dramatic and contingent basis. Injustice and human rights violations are headline news only as the porn of power and its voyeuristic potential lies in the reiterative packaging of violations that titillate and scandalize, for the moment at least, the dilettante sensibilities of the globalizing classes. The mass media plays also a creationist role in that they "in an important sense 'create' a disaster when they decide to recognize it . . . . They give institutional endorsement or attestation to bad events which otherwise will have a reality restricted to a local circle of victims." Such institutional endorsement poses intractable issues for the marketization of human rights. Given the worldwide patterns of mass media ownership, and the assiduously cultivated consumer cultures of "info-entertainment," the key players in human rights markets need to manipulate the media into authentic representations of the suffering of the violated. They must marshal the power to mold the mass media, without having access to resources that the networks of economic/political power so constantly command, into exemplary communicators of human solidarity. So far, this endeavor has rested in the commodification of human suffering, exploiting the markets for instant news and views. In a germinal monograph, Stanley Cohen has brought home the daunting tasks entailed in the commodification of human suffering. The commodification of human suffering has as its task (according to Cohen, with whom I agree) the conversion of the "politics of denial" into that of the "politics of acknowledgment." Cohen brings to attention an entire catalogue of perpetratorbased techniques of denial of human violation and the variety of responses that go under the banner of "bystanderism," whether internal or external. The various techniques of marketing human suffering in the name of "human rights" succeed or fail according to the standpoint one chooses to privilege. Efficient market rationality perhaps dictates a logic of excess. The more human rights producers and consumers succeed in diffusing horror stories, the better it is, on the whole, for the sustenance of global human rights cultures. The more they succeed in establishing accountability institutions (truth commissions, commissions for human rights for women, indigenous peoples, children, and the urban and rural impoverished) the better commerce there is. Giving visibility and voice to human suffering is among the prime function of human rights service markets. But it is an enterprise that must overcome "compassion fatigue" and an overall desensitization to human misery. When the markets are bullish, the logic of excess does seem to provide the most resources for the disadvantaged, dispossessed, and deprived human communities. But in situations of recession, serious issues arise concerning the ways in which human suffering is or should be merchandized; and when those who suffer begin to counter these ways, we witness crises in human rights market management. Human rights markets are crowded with an assortment of actors, agencies, and agendas. But they seem united in their operational techniques. A standard technique is that of reportage: several leading organizations specialize in services providing human rights "watch" and "action alerts." A related market technique is that of lobbying, whereby official or popular opinion is sought to be mobilized around human rights situations, events, or catastrophes.

Images of suffering spur political action to solve suffering Kozol, Professor of Womens Studies, 2004 *Wendy, Domesticating NATOs War in
Kosovo/a, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 4.2]

There is, moreover, the risk of American news media turning to another story if violence and suffering are not visualized. News media's short attention span, with an insatiable appetite for new pictures, means that reporters and photographers quickly turn to the latest events. Despite the risks of voyeurism and spectacle, we may want the cameras to keep their gaze on a crisis. Pictures of victims, especially of children, have been successful at bringing world attention to human rights abuses and the sufferings of victimized populations. The political effectiveness of depicting victims of state violence and brutality cannot be underestimated. Attention to the intifada in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, for instance, took on new urgency (at least for a time) in the United States on September 30, 2000, when the New York Times featured a photograph of a Palestinian father, Jamal Dura, and his son, Mohammed Dura, huddled against a wall. The caption explained that the boy was killed right after the photograph was taken. Certainly, viewers are asked for their sympathy within a framework that secures ideals of heteronormative domesticity. This ideal also mediates the racialized representations of Palestinian men as terrorists that typically appear in the U.S. media. Alone, the father could be figured as a terrorist. Even the boy could look threatening in another context. But, as father and son, within the narrative framework of traumatic loss, the Palestinian cause is momentarily (for this narrative is rarely seen) figured as innocent victims. Again, we can see the process of domesticating alterity whereby heteronormative ideals sympathetically frame the otherness of the Palestinians. International attention in response to this publicity demonstrated how effective visual images can be in political struggles. Hasso argues that the value in such photographs lies as much in their repetition as in their content. The web-based worldwide distribution of the video of this scene created its own visibility of the [End Page 31] conflict, and for a moment at least, provided a narrative counter to the dominant frameworks offered by the American media as well as U.S. and Israeli government officials.

The disqualification of subjugated knowledge is an epistemic violence that constitutes the Other as the Selfs shadow Spivak 99 [Gayatri, Prof of English at Columbia, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.266-7]
However reductionistic an economic analysis might seem, the French intellectuals forget at their peril that this entire overdetermined enterprise was in the interest of a dynamic economic situation requiring that interests, motives (desires), and power (of knowledge) be ruthlessly dislocated. To invoke that dislocation now as a radical discovery that should make us diagnose the economic (conditions of existence that separate out classes descriptively) as a piece of dated analytic machinery may well be to continue the work of that dislocation and unwittingly help in securing a new balance of hegemonic relations. In the face of the possibility that the intellectual is complicit in the persistent constitution of the Other as the Selfs shadow , a possibility of political practice for the intellectual would be to put the economic under erasure, to see the economic factor as irreducible as it reinscribes the social text, even as it is erased, however imperfectly, when it claims to be the final determinant or the transcendental signified. Until very recently, the clearest available example of such epistemic violence was the remotely orchestrated, far-flung, and heterogeneous project to constitute the colonial subject as Other. This project is also the asymmetrical obliteration of the trace of that Other in its precarious Subject-ivity. It is well known that Foucault locates one case of epistemic violence, a complete overhaul of the episteme, in the redefinition of madness at the end of the European eighteenth century. But what if that particular redefinition was only a part of the

narrative of history in Europe as well as in the colonies? What if the two projects of epistemic overhaul worked as dislocated and unacknowledged parts of a vast two-handed engine? Perhaps it is no more than to ask that the subtext of the palimpsestic narrative of imperialism be recognized as subjugated knowledges, a whole set of knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: native knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity. This is not to describe the way things really were or to privilege the narrative of history as imperialism as the best version of history. It is, rather, to continue the account of how one explanation and narrative of reality was established as the normative one. A comparable account in the case(s) of Central and Eastern Europe is soon to be launched

Personal Experience Good

Failure to examine ones own speaking position replicates structures of privilege and oppression Campbell, 1997 [Fiona,
members.tripod.com/FionaCampbell/speech_acts_on_problematising_empowerment.htm, 1204-07] So who am I - to speak, to be listened to? And why is it important to identify my speaking position? The word in spoken or written form (sometimes referred to as Discourse), is the site that both power and knowledge meet. Which is why speech acts can be inherently dangerous. Furthermore, a person in a privileged speaking position, such as myself, has a political/ethical responsibility to interrogate his/her relationship to subordinated and disadvantaged peoples and declare their interest. On this point, La Trobe University, Professor Margaret Thornton states assumed objectivity of knowledge itself camouflage not only the fact that it always has a standpoint, but that it also serves an ideological purpose (Thornton 1989: 125). Refusing to declare ones speaking position, I argue constitutes not only a flagrant denial of the privileging effect of speech, but must be considered as an act of complicity to systematically mislead. I speak tonight from what I would term, a privileged speaking position. As someone who has been exposed to tertiary education, had an opportunity to read and reflect on many books and ideas, with a job and more particularly, as a teacher. Indeed, for some I act as a mentor - the one who knows something about knowledge. On the other hand, I am deeply ambivalent about my expertise to engage in the act of public speech talk. For am from the margins, the client, patient, the riff raff, flotsam and jetsam of society and might say - somewhat deviant. It is important to come clean about my speaking position, my knowledge standpoint and declare my interests: I speak for myself as a woman who has experienced youth homelessness, childhood violence and later disability. Before I speak I am required to undertake a process of self-examination, to scrutinise my representational politics, to immerse myself in a selfreflexive interrogation and discern what *my+ representational politics authorises and who it erases (Howe 1994: 217). Do I speak for myself or others? Am I making gross generalisations about groups in the community? Does my speech contain unacknowledged assumptions and values? More specifically, within this process of reflection, I am required to examine the context and location from which I speak, in order to ascertain whether it is allied with structures of oppression *or+ allied with resistance to oppression ( Alcoff: 1991: 15).

The social location of the speaker significantly affects the epistemological grounding of their arguments Alcoff 92 *Linda, Prof of Philosophy, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique
20, p.6-7] First, there is a growing recognition that where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one's location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I take here to refer to their social location, or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims and can serve either to authorize or disauthorize one's speech. The creation of women's studies and AfricanAmerican studies departments was founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves , and that we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location be- tween

speakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section.

Ones social location is a significant determinant of the way that one understands and represents the world Alcoff, 1992 *Linda, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique, 5-32.]
First, there is a growing recognition that where one speaks from affects the meaning and truth of what one says, and thus that one cannot assume an ability to transcend one's location. In other words, a speaker's location (which I take here to refer to their social location, or social identity) has an epistemically significant impact on that speaker's claims and can serve either to authorize or disauthorize one's speech. The creation of women's studies and AfricanAmerican studies departments was founded on this very belief: that both the study of and the advocacy for the oppressed must come to be done principally by the oppressed themselves, and that we must finally acknowledge that systematic divergences in social location between speakers and those spoken for will have a significant effect on the content of what is said. The unspoken premise here is simply that a speaker's location is epistemically salient. I shall explore this issue further in the next section.

The social location of speakers and listeners determines the meaning of what is said Alcoff, 1992 *Linda, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique, 5-32.]
Rituals of speaking are constitutive of meaning, the meaning of the words spoken as well as the meaning of the event. This claim requires us to shift the ontology of meaning from its location in a text or utterance to a larger space, a space that includes the text or utterance but that also includes the discursive context. And an important implication of this claim is that meaning must be understood as plural and shifting, since a single text can engender diverse meanings given diverse contexts. Not only what is emphasized, noticed, and how it is understood will be affected by the location of both speaker and hearer, but the truth-value or epistemic status will also be affected. For example, in many situations when a woman speaks the presumption is against her; when a man speaks he is usually taken seriously (unless he talks "the dumb way," as Andy Warhol accused Bruce Springsteen of doing, or, in other words, if he is from an oppressed group). When writers from oppressed races and nationalities have insisted that all writing is political the claim has been dismissed as foolish, or grounded in ressentiment, or it is simply ignored; when prestigious European philosophers say that all writing is political it is taken up as a new and original "truth" (Judith Wilson calls this "the intellectual equivalent of the 'cover record."')g The rituals of speaking that involve the location of speaker and listeners affect whether a claim is taken as a true, well-reasoned, compelling argument, or a significant idea. Thus, how what is said gets heard depends on who says it, and who says it will affect the style and language in which it is stated, which will in turn affect its perceived significance (for specific hearers).

Examination of our social location requires more than a simple disclaimer this alienates others and reinforces the speakers position of privilege Alcoff, 1992 *Linda, The Problem of Speaking for Others, Cultural Critique, 5-32.]
We must also interrogate the bearing of our location and context on what it is we are saying, and this should be an explicit part of every serious discursive practice we engage in. Constructing hypotheses about the possible connections between our location and our words is one way to begin. This procedure would be most successful if engaged in collectively with others, by which aspects of our location less highlighted in our own minds might be revealed to us. l3 One deformed way in which this is too often carried out is when speakers offer up in the spirit of "honesty" autobiographical information about themselves usually at the beginning of their discourse as a kind of disclaimer. This is meant to acknowledge their own understanding that they are speaking from a specified, embodied location without pretense to a transcendental truth. But as Maria Lugones and others have forcefully argued, such an act serves no good end when it is used as a disclaimer against one's ignorance or errors and is made without critical interrogation of the bearing of such an autobiography on what is about to be said. It leaves for the listeners all the real work that needs to be done. For example, if a middle-class white man were to begin a speech by sharing with us this autobiographical information and then using it as a kind of apologetics for any limitations of his speech, this would leave those of us in the audience who do not share his social location to do the work by ourselves of translating his terms into our own, appraising the applicability of his analysis to our diverse situation, and determining the substantive relevance of his location on his claims. This is simply what less-privileged persons have always had to do when reading the history of philosophy, literature, etc., making the task of appropriating these discourses more difficult and time-consuming (and more likely to result in alienation). Simple unanalyzed disclaimers do not improve on this familiar situation and may even make it worse to the extent that by offering such information the speaker may feel even more authorized to speak and be accorded more authority by his peers.

Narratives Good
Narratives are an important means of understanding experience and struggle Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 77] This section focuses on life story-oriented written narratives, but this is clearly only one, albeit important, context in which to examine the development of political consciousness. Writing is itself an activity marked by class and ethnic position. However, testimonials, life stories, and oral histories are a significant mode of remembering and recording experience and struggles. Written texts are not produced in a vacuum. In fact, texts that document Third World women's life histories owe their existence as much to the exigencies of the political and commercial marketplace as to the knowledge, skills, motivation, and location of individual writers.

Narratives are key loci for subversive practices and a basis for knowledge, redefining political process and action Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 78-80] Similarly, in the last two decades, numerous publishing houses in different countries have published autobiographical or life story-oriented texts by Third World feminists. This is a testament to the role of publishing houses and university and trade presses in the production, reception, and dissemination of feminist work, as well as to the creation of a discursive space where (self-)knowledge is produced by and for Third World women. Feminist analysis has always recognized the centrality of rewriting and remembering history, a process that is significant not merely as a corrective to the gaps, erasures, and misunderstandings of hegemonic masculinist history but because the very practice of remembering and rewriting leads to the formation of politicized consciousness and self-identity. Writing often becomes the context through which new political identities are forged. It becomes a space for struggle and contestation about reality itself. If the everyday world is not transparent and its relations of rule-its organizations and institutional frameworks-work to obscure and make invisible inherent hierarchies of power (Smith 1987), it becomes imperative that we rethink, remember, and utilize our lived relations as a basis of knowledge. Writing (discursive production) is one site for the production of this knowledge and this consciousness. Written texts are also the basis of the exercise of power and domination. This is clear in Barbara Harlow's (1989) delineation of the importance of literary production (narratives of resistance) during the Palestinian intifada. Harlow argues that the Israeli state has confiscated both the land and the childhood of Palestinians, since the word "child" has not been used for twenty years in

the official discourse of the Israeli state. This language of the state disallows the notion of Palestinian "childhood, ~ thus exercising immense military and legal power over Palestinian children. In this context, Palestinian narratives of childhood can be seen as narratives of resistance, which write childhood, and thus selfhood, consciousness, and identity, back into daily life. Harlow's analysis also indicates the significance of written or recorded history as the basis of the constitution of memory. In the case of Palestinians, the destruction of all archival history, the confiscation of land, and the rewriting of historical memory by the Israeli state mean not only that narratives of resistance must undo hegemonic recorded history, but that they must also invent new forms of encoding resistance, of remembering. Honor Ford Smith, 26 in her introduction to a book on life stories of Jamaican women, encapsulates the significance of this writing: The tale-telling tradition contains what is most poetically true about our struggles. The tales are one of the places where the most subversive elements of our history can be safely lodged, for over the years the tale tellers convert fact into images which are funny, vulgar, amazing or magically real. These tales encode what is overtly threatening to the powerful into covert images of resistance so that they can live on in times when overt struggles are impossible or build courage in moments when it is. To create such tales is a collective process accomplished within a community bound by a particular historical purpose . . .. They suggest an altering or re-defining of the parameters of political process and action. They bring to the surface factors which would otherwise disappear or at least go very far underground. (Sistren with Ford-Smith 1987, 3-4) I quote Ford-Smith's remarks because they suggest a number of crucial elements of the relation of writing, memory, consciousness, and political resistance; the codification of covert images of resistance during non revolutionary times; the creation of a communal (feminist) political consciousness through the practice of storytelling; and the redefinition of the very possibilities of political consciousness and action through the act of writing. One of the most significant aspects of writing against the grain in both the Palestinian and the Jamaican contexts is thus the invention of spaces, texts, and images for encoding the history of resistance. Therefore, one of the most significant challenges here is the question of decoding these subversive narratives. Thus, history and memory are woven through numerous genres; fictional texts, oral history, and poetry, as well as testimonial narratives-not just what counts as scholarly or academic ("real"?) historiography. An excellent example of the recuperation and rewriting of this history of struggle is the 1970s genre of U,S, black women's fiction that collectively rewrites and encodes the history of American slavery and the oppositional agency of African American slave women. Toni Morrison's Beloved and Gayl Jones's Corregidora are two examples that come to mind.

Narratives are crucial to creating cross-cultural understandings without claiming to completely know the experiences of others Young, Professor of Political Science, 1996 *Iris Marion, Communication and the Other:
Beyond Deliberative Democracy, Democracy and Difference, Ed. Seyla Benhabib] In a communicative democracy participants in discussion aim at reaching understandings about solutions to their collective problems. Although there is hardly a speaking situation in which participants have no shared meanings, disagreements, divergent understandings, and varying perspectives are also usually present. In situations of conflict that discussion aims to address, groups often begin with misunderstandings or a sense of complete lack of understanding of who their interlocutors are, and a sense that their own needs, desires, and motives are not understood. This is especially so where class or culture separates the parties. Doing justice

under such circumstances of differences requires recognizing the particularity of individuals and groups as much as seeking general interests. Narrative fosters understanding across such difference without making those who are different symmetrical, in at least three ways. First, narrative reveals the particular experiences of those in social locations, experiences that cannot be shared by those situated differently but that they must understand in order to do justice to the others. Imagine that wheelchair-bound people at a university make claims upon university resources to remove what they see as impediments to their full participation, and to give them positive aid in ways they claim will equalize their ability to compete with able-bodied students for academic status. A primary way they make their case will be through telling stories of their physical, temporal, social, and emotional obstacles. It would be a mistake to say that once they hear these stories the others understand the situation of the wheelchair-bound to the extent that they can adopt their point of view. On the contrary, the storytelling provides enough understanding of the situation of the wheelchair-bound by those who can walk for them to understand that they cannot share the experience. Narrative exhibits subjective experience to other subjects. The narrative can evoke sympathy while maintaining distance because the narrative also carries an inexhaustible latent shadow, the transcendence of the Other, that there is always more to be told. Second, narrative reveals a source of values, culture, and meaning. When an argument proceeds from premise to conclusion, it is only as persuasive as the acceptance of its premises among deliberators. Few institutions bring people together to face collective problems, moreover, where the people affected, however divided and diverse, can share no premises. Pluralist polities, however, often face serious divergences in value premises, cultural practices and meanings, and these disparities bring conflict, insensitivity, insult, and misunderstanding. Under these circumstances, narrative can serve to explain to outsiders what practices, places, or symbols mean to the people who hold them. Values, unlike norms, often cannot be justified through argument. But neither are they arbitrary. Their basis often emerges from the situated history of a people. Through narrative the outsiders may come to understand why the insiders value what they value and why they have the priorities they have. How do the Lakota convey to others in South Dakota why the Black Hills mean so much to them, and why they believe they have special moral warrant o demand a stop to forestry in the Black Hills? Through storiesmyths in which the Black Hills figure as primary characters, stories of Lakota individuals and groups in relation to those mountains values appear as a result of a history by which a group relate where they are coming from. Finally, narrative not only exhibits experience and values from the point of stew of the subjects that have and hold them. It also reveals a total social knowledge from the point of view of that social position. Each social perspective has an account not only of its own life and history but of every other position that affects its experience. Thus listeners can learn about how their own position, actions, and values appear to others from the stories they tell. Narrative thus exhibits the situated knowledge available of the collective from each perspective, and the combination of narratives from different perspectives produces the collective social wisdom not available from any one position.

Narratives are key to relating experiences of injustice that otherwise cannot be shared they are crucial to cross-cultural communication Young, Professor of Political Science, 2000 [Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy, p.70-7]
Another mode of expression, narrative, serves important functions in democratic communication, to foster understanding among members of a polity with very different

experience or assumptions about what is important. In recent years a number of legal theorists have turned to narrative as a means of giving voice to kinds of experience which often go unheard in legal discussions and courtroom settings, and as a means of challenging the idea that law expresses an impartial and neutral standpoint above all particular perspectives. Some legal theorists discuss the way that storytelling in the legal context functions to challenge a hegemonic view and express the particularity of experience to which the law ought to respond but often does not. Several scholars of Latin American literature offer another variant of a theory of the political function of storytelling, in their reflections on testimonio. Some resistance movement leaders in Central and South America narrate their life stories as a means of exposing to the wider literate world the oppression of their people and the repression they suffer from their governments. Often such testimonios involve one persons story standing or speaking for that of a whole group to a wider, sometimes global, public, and making claims upon that public for the group. This raises important questions about how a particular persons story can speak for others, and whether speaking to the literate First World public changes the construction of the story.22 While these are important questions, here I wish only to indicate a debt to both of these literatures, and analyse these insights with an account of some of the political functions of storytelling. Suppose we in a public want to make arguments to justify proposals for how to solve our collective problems or resolve our conflicts justly. In order to proceed, those of us engaged in meaningful political discussion and debate must share many things. We must share a description of the problem, share an idiom in which to express alternative proposals, share rules of evidence and prediction, and share some normative principles which can serve as premisses in our arguments about what ought to be done. When all these conditions exist, then we can engage in reasonable disagreement. Fortunately, in most political disputes these conditions are met in some respect and to some degree, but for many political disputes they are not met in other respects and degrees. When these conditions for meaningful argument do not obtain, does this mean that we must or should resort to a mere power contest or to some other arbitrary decision procedure? I say not, Where we lack shared understandings in crucial respects, sometimes forms of communication other than argument can speak across our differences to promote understanding. I take the use of narrative in political communication to be one important such mode. Political narrative differs from other forms of narrative by its intent and its audience context. I tell the story not primarily to entertain or reveal myself, but to make a pointto demonstrate, describe, explain, or justify something to others in an ongoing political discussion. Political narrative furthers discussion across difference in several ways. Response to the differend. Chapter 1 discussed how a radical injustice can occur when those who suffer a wrongful harm or oppression lack the terms to express a claim of injustice within the prevailing normative discourse. Those who suffer this wrong are excluded from the polity, at least with respect to that wrong. Lyotard calls this situation the differend. How can a group that suffers a particular harm or oppression move from a situation of total silencing and exclusion with respect to this suffering to its public expression? Storytelling is often an important bridge in such cases between the mute experience of being wronged and political arguments about justice. Those who experience the wrong, and perhaps some others who sense it, may have no language for expressing the suffering as an injustice, but nevertheless they can tell stories that relate a sense of wrong. As people tell such stories publicly within and between groups, discursive reflection on them then develops a normative language that names their injustice and can give a general account of why this kind of suffering constitutes an injustice. A process something like this occurred in the United States and elsewhere in the 1970s and 1980s, as injustice we now call sexual harassment gradually came into public discussion. Women had long experienced the stress, fear, pain, and humiliation in their workplace that courts today name as

a specific harm. Before the language and theory of sexual harassment was invented, however, women usually suffered in silence, without a language or forum in which to make a reasonable complaint. As a result of women telling stories to each other and to wider publics about their treatment by men on the job and the consequences of this treatment, however, a problem that had no name was gradually identified and named, and a social moral and legal theory about the problem developed. Facilitation of local publics and articulation of collective affinities. Political communication in mass democratic societies hardly ever consists in all the people affected by an issue assembling together in a single forum to discuss it. Instead, political debate is widely dispersed in space and time, and takes place within and between many smaller publics. By a local public I mean a collective of persons allied within the wider polity with respect to particular interests, opinions, and/or social positions.23 Storytelling is often an important means by which members of such collectives identify one another, and identify the basis of their affinity. The narrative exchanges give reflective, voice to situated experiences and help affinity groupings give an account of their own individual identities in relation to their social positioning and their affinities with others.24 Once in formation, people in local publics often use narrative as means of politicizing their situation, by reflecting on the extent to which they experience similar problems and what political remedy for them they might propose. Examples of such local publics emerging from reflective stories include the processes of consciousness-raising in which some people in the womens movement engaged, and which brought out problems of battering or sexual harassment where these were not yet recognized as problems. Understanding the experience of others and countering preunderstandings. Storytelling is often the only vehicle for understanding the particular experiences of those in particular social situations, experiences not shared by those situated differently, but which they must understand in order to do justice.25

Narratives are necessary to correct for stereotypes and misconceptions about other groups Young, Professor of Political Science, 2000 [Iris Marion, Inclusion and Democracy, p.70-7]
While it sometimes happens that people know they are ignorant about the lives of others in the polity, perhaps more often people come to a situation of political discussion with a stock of empty generalities, false assumptions, or incomplete and biased pictures of the needs, aspirations, and histories of others with whom or about whom they communicate. Such preunderstandings often depend on stereotypes or overly narrow focus on a particular aspect of the lives of the people represented in them. People with disabilities, to continue the example, too often must respond to assumptions of others that their lives are joyless, that they have truncated capabilities to achieve excellence, or have little social and no sex lives. Narratives often help target and correct such pre-understandings. Revealing the source of values, priorities, or cultural meanings. For an argument to get off the ground, its auditors must accept its premises. Pluralist polities, however, often face serious divergences in value premises, cultural practices, and meanings, and these disparities bring conflict, insensitivity, insult, and misunderstanding. Lacking shared premises, communicatively democratic discussion, cannot proceed through reasoned argument under these circumstances, Under such circumstances, narrative can serve to explain to outsiders what practices, places, or symbols mean to the people who hold them and why they are valuable. Values, unlike norms, often cannot be justified through argument. But neither are they arbitrary. Their basis often emerges from the situated narrative of persons or groups, Through narrative the outsiders may come to

understand why the insiders value what they value and why they have the priorities they have.

Narratives that speak of privilege must refer to the materiality of situation, thus, reanchoring positions to speak from Mohanty 03
*Chandra Talpade, Ph.D. and Masters degree from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, as well as a Master's degree and a bachelor's degree from the University of Delhi in India. Originally a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, she is currently the women's studies department chair at Syracuse University, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Duke University Press p. 87-88] It is this insistence that distinguishes the work of a Reagon or a Pratt from the more abstract critiques of "feminism" and the charges of totalization that come from the ranks of anti humanist intellectuals. For without denying the importance of their vigilante attacks on humanist beliefs in man" and Absolute Knowledge wherever they appear, it is equally important to point out the political limitations of an insistence on indeterminacy" that implicitly, when not explicitly, denies the critic's own situatedness in the social, and in effect refuses to acknowledge the critic's own institutional home. Pratt, on the contrary, succeeds in carefully raking apart the bases of her own privilege by resituating herself again and again in the social, by constantly referring to the materiality of the situation in which she finds herself. The form of the personal historical narrative forces her to reanchor herself repeatedly in each of the positions from which she speaks, even as she works to expose the illusory coherence of those positions. For the subject of such a narrative, it is not possible to speak from, or on behalf of, an abstract indeterminacy. Certainly, Pratt's essay would be considered a conventional " (and therefore suspect) narrative from the point of view of contemporary deconstructive methodologies, because of its collapsing of author and text, its unreflected authorial intentionality, and its claims to personal and political authenticity. Basic to the (at least implicit) disavowal of conventionally realist and autobiographical narrative by deconstructionist critics is the assumption that difference can emerge only through self-referential language, that is, through certain relatively specific formal operations present in the text or performed upon it. Our reading of Pratt's narrative contends that a so-called conventional narrative such as Pratt's is not only useful but essential in addressing the politically and theoretically urgent questions surrounding identity politics. Just as Pratt refuses the methodological imperative to distinguish between herself as actual biographical referent and her narrator, we have at points allowed ourselves to let our reading of the text speak for us. praxis of day-to-day living.

In order to heed the perspectives of others, we must critically examine the relation of our own experiences to theirs we can never know the experience of another, but through self-examination we might be able to form a common ground for relating to them
**GENDER NEUTRAL Henze, Professor of English, 2000 *Brent, Who Says Who Says? Reclaiming Identity: Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism, Ed. Paula Moya & Michael Hames-Garcia]

But the idea that we must reconceive our experience relationally, and that this reconception bears on the perspectives of both outsiders and members of oppressed groups, suggests the form that productive alliances between these groups might take. Outsiders wishing to support the liberatory work of the oppressed must form responsible and imaginative alliances alliances grounded in appropriate reconceptions of their experiences in relation to others. That is, we should not work toward imaginary identifications of ourselves with others, in which we make claims about our sameness without regard for the real differences in our experiences and lives; rather, we should work toward imaginative identifications of ourselves with others, in which we interrogate our own experience, seeking points where common ground or empathy might be actively constructed between us while remaining conscious of the real differences between our experiences and lives. I call this type of identification imaginative because it calls for us to imagine how our experiences might be analogous to rather than equivalent to the experiences of others. Moraga suggests a similar process when she describes what is required for a gay male friend to create an authentic alliance with her: He[they] must deal with the primary source of his [their] own sense of oppression. He[they] must, first, emotionally come to terms with what it feels like to be a victim. If he [they]or anyonewere to truly do this, it would be impossible to discount the oppression of others , except by again forgetting how we have been hurt (Moraga 30). Before he [they] can support her [their] cause, he [they] must empathize with her [them] by coming to terms with his [their] own experiences of oppression. This empathy will not provide him [them] with the actual experiences of her [their] oppression, but it will give them a basis for relating their experiences. This approach to forming responsible alliances with others resembles the process of identifying experience as relevantly similar in order for members of a group to produce useful frameworks for understanding oppression collective (as I discussed above). But in forming alliances between an oppressed group and outsiders, experiences themselves cannot be related; rather, the oppressive effects of the experience become the basis for common ground. Moragas gay male friend cannot share her specific experiences of being a woman of color, but he may share an experience of certain effects of this oppression to the extent that the oppression of gay men and the oppression of women of color produce relevantly similar effects. By investigating his experience of these effects, he can better understand her experience without ever needing to claim that he has shared it.