Article written by Monica Sandschafer
A friend and I were walking home from a documentary about the
Zapatista rebellion the night that she was assaulted. A young man
walked past us, then encircled her from behind, running away only after
we had both screamed until our throats ached. Relatively speaking, we
were lucky, shaken up but not badly hurt. And, unfortunately our
experience was not an uncommon one for women here in San Cristobal de
Las Casas, Chiapas.
According to the Campaign against Violence against Women, a
coalition of women's groups around the city, there has been a worrisome
increase over the last four years in street violence against women,
from verbal harassment to exhibitionism to assault, rape and/or
attempted murder. This rise in violence is occurring in a
socio-cultural environment characterized by its silence about sexual
and other forms of gender violence, fortified by a lack of media
coverage and official action. Gender inequity in the legal system and
the socialization of gender in Chiapas further compound the
vulnerability of women.
However, to fully understand the growing violence against
women in the streets, the cumulative effects of the expansion of
globalization and the heavy militarization of the region must also be
explored. These include a rise in poverty, migration, prostitution and
drug abuse, all of which weaken the social fabric of San Cristobal and
create greater risk for its female residents.
In respect to crimes against women, including murder, there is
a startling lack of coverage in the local media, creating the illusion
that "no pasa nada," or nothing is happening. La Jornada, a newspaper
based in Mexico City, reported in September that Chiapas is considered
a "red light" state by the Mexican Human Rights Commission, meaning
that because its average femicide rate is 5.34% higher than that of the
nation, there is an urgent need to take action to prevent the creation
of a "new Ciudad Juarez."
This story was not picked up by local news media, which would
have made it much more widely accessible to the people of San
Cristobal. According to the Procuraduria General de Justicia en Chiapas
(the equivalent of the State Attorney General's office), 10 women were
victims of intentional homicides in San Cristobal from January to
August of 2004. Interestingly, however, only one of these women's
deaths received any media attention. Reina, who was raped and killed in
August by a relative, an acquaintance and a taxi driver friend of
theirs, has become known to the city due to the march and protest
called by her family and neighbors to insist that her murder should not
go unnoticed.
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Reina's case is unusual not only due to its coverage in the
media, but also because her alleged murderers have been apprehended and
incarcerated. According to a study undertaken in September 2004 by the
Campaign against Violence against Women, 292 women out of 380 reported
an experience of street violence in the last four years, with 2004
being the year with the most aggressions. Of these 292 women, only
fifteen, or 3.9% denounced the aggression to the authorities. Thirteen
of those fifteen women stated that involving the authorities was not
helpful to them, either because no official investigation was ever
undertaken or because the aggressors were never taken into custody.
Martha Figueroa, lawyer with the Grupo de Mujeres de San Cristóbal,
asserts that this lack of prosecution is all too common in crimes of
gender violence and is a reflection of structural violence against
women. Often the violence women experience is either not considered a
crime at all or is not taken seriously enough to be as fully and
effectively investigated as crimes of violence against men. She cites
the example of the murder of a woman, coincidentally also named Reina,
in April of 2002. Around the same time, two young men were murdered.
While their case has long since been solved and the perpetrators
punished, Reina's murderer is still free. Despite the national Mexican
Human Rights Commission's on concern about her death and the other
femicides throughout the state, the state government remains
conspicuously silent, putting no public pressure on local authorities
to solve these cases, essentially sanctioning the violence and granting
perpetrators, current and future, a sense of impunity.
If women do become involved with the authorities, they face
even greater obstacles than the lack of prosecution of their aggressor.
Chiapas' penal code is replete with discriminatory language and
provisions. If a minor from the age of twelve to eighteen or an adult
is kidnapped or deprived of her liberty, and the aggressor does so with
the goal of seduction or marriage, she (although the language is
gender-neutral, by far the great majority of victims are female) can be
offered to the aggressor in marriage as an alternative "punishment" to
jail time for him. Instead of obtaining justice for the abuse done to
her, the victim could face a life sentence of marriage with her
aggressor. Sexual harassment and domestic violence are not crimes until
they've met the legal requirement of "reiteration;" until the act has
been repeated with the same victim, it is not a crime, effectively
providing the perpetrator with one "freebie." At least one woman is
currently serving time in jail for having defended herself from a man
who sexually harassed her on the street. Although he had made physical
contact with her, because she had no wounds and it was the first time
that the man had approached her in such a way, he was not guilty of a
crime. She, because she caused him injury, became the guilty party.
In a society in which women are raised to think of themselves
as the weaker sex, incapable of self-defense, the harsh punishment of
women who do step outside of this model is a stark lesson. While men
are seen as more macho the more violent they are, women are to continue
to be victims, with little or no protection or justice from the
authorities, while defending oneself or becoming involved in the
justice system could mean only more victimization. Is it any wonder
that sixty of the respondents to the Campaign's study stated that their
lack of faith in the authorities was the principle reason for having
not reported the violence they experienced?
Another fifty of these women who did not report the violence
said that they did not consider the violence they experienced to be
serious enough to be reported, a phenomenon which the Campaign refers
to as the "naturalization of violence." Given the lack of media
coverage, the absence of official treatment of the violence as criminal
acts and the socialization of women as powerless and men as "macho"
aggressors, women come to see street violence as a natural part of the
life of a woman in San Cristóbal. If they do see the violence as a
problem, it is theirs alone to resolve. By modifying their behavior,
women attempt to avoid situations in which violence could occur, and
therefore avoid the attendant blame that falls on them for having been
outside their homes at a dangerous hour or alone at all.
A consequence of this naturalization of violence is the
immobilization of women, that is, the curtailing of the freedom of
movement of women and an undermining of their power and sense of self.
Far from being a "women's issue," this domination of women must also be
understood in the context of globalization and militarization and their
cumulative effects in the region: a falling standard of living and a
rise in migration, prostitution and drug abuse.
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Since the federal government's brutal response to the Zapatista
National Liberation Army uprising in 1994, Chiapas has been home to
40,000 to 70,000 federal soldiers at any given time. This military
presence has increasingly become more naturalized and integrated into
communities where soldiers are involved in "social labor," which
includes, among other activities, cutting hair, administering
vaccinations and building schools in many of the communities around San
Cristóbal. These "contributions" to communities are used to justify
increases to military spending and are a more socially acceptable means
of engaging in military surveillance and control in areas of conflict.
At the same time, military and paramilitary violence - there are over
seventeen known paramilitary groups in Chiapas - continues as part of a
low-intensity warfare against indigenous rights. Activists receive
death threats, at least one campesino is killed a day in some areas of
Chiapas, and women are sexually assaulted near military bases, as in
the famous case of the three sisters raped at the military checkpoint
at Altamirano in 1995, a case which is still unresolved.
In San Cristóbal and elsewhere in Chiapas, the military
presence also serves as the armed enforcement wing of the "neoliberal
conquest," otherwise known as transnational free trade agreements.
Throughout his term as governor of Chiapas, Pablo Salazar has dedicated
state monies to the construction of highways in key locations, often
protected by military bases and checkpoints. Despite his declarations
of their usefulness for the local population, it is widely known that
the highways are the first and, for now, most important step in the
advancement of the Plan Puebla Panama and a continuation of the damage
done to the local economy by the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA). Since the implementation of NAFTA, the prices of both corn and
coffee, two of the staple cash crops of Chiapas, have fallen
dramatically, leaving farmers unable to purchase the other food items
which they no longer grow themselves. Faced with hunger and financial
ruin, campesinos are more likely to enroll in the ever-ready government
programs such as PROCEDE, which allow for the privatization and
eventual sale of parcels of previously protected indigenous communal
lands, and essentially eliminate the livelihood of the mostly rural
Chiapan population. The state government in Chiapas, together with the
military and paramilitary groups, is actively involved in the
displacement and relocation of indigenous groups living in areas - such
as Montes Azules - which have been targeted for ecotourism or biopiracy
in the Plan Puebla Panama. Those displaced are often relocated onto
lands inhabited by other indigenous peoples, causing a crisis of land
currently concentrated mostly in the southeast of the state and
creating an increase in migration to cities.
San Cristóbal is a focal point of migration from rural
communities. Many who can no longer make a living off their land come
seeking work, which is every year harder to find, compounding
insecurity and tensions in the city and generating a labor force
willing to work for bottom-rate wages. Signs of globalization are
becoming more common; the first maquiladora arrived in the outskirts of
San Cristóbal in April 2002.
Young, single women are among those who come to San Cristóbal.
Apart from their families and communities for the first time, often
speaking little Spanish, unaccustomed to the culture of the mestizo
city, and with minimal formal education or job skills training, these
women are particularly vulnerable to a variety of abuses. Although
women of any race or social class can be victims of street violence,
according to the Campaign's literature, the greatest aggressions in San
Cristóbal are against women of a lower class, and, within this class,
against indigenous women. In their survey, the Campaign also found that
young women from the ages of fifteen to twenty-five were more likely to
experience public violence. The very structural violence that compels
them to leave their land makes them further vulnerable to gender
violence in the cities.
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The rise in prostitution in San Cristóbal and throughout
Chiapas is another consequence of the prolonged economic crisis and the
rise in militarization of the area. In September, Gaspar Morquecho
reported in La Jornada that the "zones of tolerance," in which
prostitution is officially sanctioned and monitored, were originally
created as a way to clean up the city by then Governor Patrocinio
Gonzalez Garrido. However, these zones, both in cities and around
military bases, have since become, although frequented by government
officials and military personnel, areas of high crime, including drug
trafficking. The inhabitants and workers in these zones - minors,
undocumented Central American immigrants, indigenous and mestiza women
alike - are the losers, reframed in this neoliberal context as products
to be consumed, vulnerable to violence. According to information
obtained from the Procuraduria General de Justicia in Chiapas, in July
of this year, a female employee of a nightclub in San Cristobal's "zone
of tolerance" was raped and killed, her body left in the nearby
cemetery. Her case has still not been solved and her murder was not
reported in the local media.
Drug abuse is not only a concern in the so-called "zones of
tolerance," but is linked to violence against women throughout the
state. The Cuarto Poder, a newspaper from the state capital, Tuxtla
Gutierrez, reported in September that drug use is on the rise in
Chiapas in general, particularly among younger people and in respect to
harder, more addictive drugs, such as cocaine. This drug use would seem
to reflect the deepening alienation of a generation of Chiapanecos
who've been witness to state violence and have little hope of financial
stability. Perhaps it is also a symptom of Chiapas' status as a border
state. As in Ciudad Juarez, border cities such as Tapachula display
some of the seediest sides of international commerce: high rates of
femicides, forced prostitution, trafficking of women, minors and
immigrants, rampant violence against immigrants, drug trafficking and
government indifference or tacit support for vigilante forms of border
control. While San Cristóbal is not a border city, it is located on one
of the main routes north to the United States, particularly from the
town Comitan, causing San Cristóbal to be greatly impacted by the flow
of immigration and the attendant crime and instability.
Another disturbing trend has been discovered in the recent
murders of women in San Cristóbal: several of the women were last seen
in taxis. While it would be hasty to suggest that taxi drivers were
involved in each of these murders, it is worthwhile to take a closer
look at the role of taxis in civil society. In a heavily touristed city
with few privately owned cars, taxis are commonly used not only within
town, but also to travel from one town to another. However, the income
of taxi drivers is very much linked with the health of the economy and,
in the deepening economic crisis, their livelihoods have become
increasingly unstable. Also, there is little regulation of taxis and
their drivers. Many drivers in San Cristóbal are licensed to drive in
other regions, but come here in an attempt to increase profits.
According to Ms. Figueroa, others simply paint their cars to look like
taxis, fictitious registration numbers included, and use removable
license plates, making crimes which occur in taxis or are known of or
perpetrated by drivers nearly impossible to trace. This is particularly
dangerous for women, who often take taxis at night precisely to avoid
being on the streets alone, and instead may find themselves vulnerable
within a moving vehicle.
This violence of men against women in San Cristóbal must be
analyzed within the context of not only the larger structural violence
against women, but also seen as a function of the state-sanctioned
violence of globalization and militarization. In a state in which the
masses are becoming more and more impoverished, losing their rights to
their family and communal lands and desperately seeking work elsewhere,
unable to afford the basic necessities, feelings of despair and
powerlessness are on the rise. In this context, violence against women
functions as a kind of societal safety valve, a release of rage about
larger injustices, directed at the persons or classes even more
powerless than the aggressor, generating in him a feeling of power. The
aggressor is in this way converted into an enforcer of social control,
reinforcing the established hierarchy through the immobilization of
women, especially those of a lower class, instead of breaking the
rigidity of the hierarchy by confronting together with women the more
powerful authors of structural violence.
Understanding violence against women in this paradigm reveals
its complex relationship to the rising poverty, migration, prostitution
and drug abuse, as well as the lack of regulation of taxis, which
plague San Cristóbal. These conditions are the cumulative effects of
the expansion of globalization and militarization in the region. They
exacerbate certain existing socio-cultural factors: the lack of media
coverage and official action in response to violence against women as
well as gender inequity in both the legal system and the socialization
of men and women. In this larger context, it is clear that preventing
the deterioration of San Cristóbal into another "Ciudad Juarez"
requires comprehensive changes to the structures of violence which
victimize the general population here and sanction the increase in
violence against women.
