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Zulma Mendez told me that the local governments have launched a campaign to
protect women naming the 10 things women had to do in order to prevent being victims
of sexual violence. Mendez stated
“one of them had to do with not dressing provokingly, that means
everything was derived from the feminine body, everything was in the
feminine body; the feminine body was the crime, being a woman was a
crime. Those campaigns were very offensive. They portrayed a very
mistaken and misinformed vision of the women who were killed. The
police files state that most women had jeans, with tennis shoes. The mass
media constructed these women as people who deserved their fatality of
their destiny. That was ‘they die because they are on the streets at night,
there are certain times in which women cannot walk outside, and if they
do, they are transgressing an order. If you transgress you can die and
your life is worth nothing’ in the political debates, the moral reputation of
the killed women is always in doubt.”
The State has a vested interest in supporting patriarchy and is responsible for
reinforcing the acquiesce, passivity total conformity and subjugation of women to men as
well as their acceptance of the appropriate gender role, through its treatment of female
victims. Violence against young migrant women is encouraged by perpetuating male
supremacist ideology and the myths stereotypes and assumptions that underline it. The
mainstream reports of working women as victims of sexist violence in Juarez has acted
both as warning to women and as a form of social control that outlines the boundaries of
acceptable behavior and the forms of retribution they can expect for transgression. The
dangers of violating the codes of behavior are gender specific, positioning all women as
vulnerable to male violence and in need of protection. Indeed, the vulnerability of women
is a given, and linked to the questions of complicity. So, it remains lurking in the
shadows of representation.
c.- Moral panic
As stated above Cd. Juárez is not only experiencing drastic economic changes
that have negatively affected its social dynamics, but it is also experiencing a moral
Convention