I. Introduction
One issue that is of urgent interest to the fields of theology and economic development is that of violence reduction and prevention, particularly violence against women. This is apparent when one examines the texts and documents that inform and form the theory and praxis that are fundamental to both theological formation and scholarship in the realm of socio-economic development. For example Phyllis Trible’s book Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, as well as Theories of Development by Richard Peet and Elaine Hartwick both show considerable interest in the problematic situation of misogynist violence from a theological and a developmental perspective. For this reason, the focus of this particular project will be the theological and developmental challenges created by the phenomena of femicide within the context of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
While it is of significance to fully explicate the relationship that exists between underdevelopment and mysognistic violence, the creation of a theological understanding of the causes and potential solutions to gender-based violence is more important (at least from a Christian perspective). This fact is rooted in the onto-philosophical truth that one’s worldview provides the impetus for, and ultimately determines the efficacy of one’s development stratagem. In recognition of this reality, it is important to consider afresh many theological perspectives that, while they may initially appear alien in juxtaposition with orthodox/traditional Christian theological perspectives, might provide much needed insight.
II. Explication of the Problem: Femicide in the Context of Ciudad Juarez
The term femicide is used in this work to denote the phenomena of gender specific, brutal homicide that has developed within the Mexican state of Chihuahua for nearly two decades. In the introduction to her book, The Daughters of Juárez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border, the author and journalist Teresa Rodriguez elucidates the reality of femicide in Ciudad Juarez. “In 1993, life in Juarez, Mexico, began to change for many young women. One by one, their violated and mutilated bodies began to appear in the vast desert areas that encircle the city.” (Rodriguez, 2007: xi) Rodriguez concluded the introductory portion of The Daughters of Juárez stating that as of the publication of her book the killings had continued. (Rodriguez, 2007: xi) The situation within Juárez remains traumatic and horrific. In 2003 the human rights organization Amnesty International published a report apropos the grave circumstances facing the female population of Ciudad Juarez. This report, entitled “Intolerable Killings: 10 years of Abductions and Murders of Women in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua: Summary Report and Appeals Cases,” details the extremity of the caustic violence being perpetrated against women, the frustration experienced by Mexican non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the de facto impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators due to insufficient evidence and the shear magnitude of the case load being dealt with by the Mexican authorities:
The [Mexican] authorities currently recognize that the fate and whereabouts of around 70 women remains a mystery. For many Mexican non-governmental organizations, the number of women who are missing is more than 400. What is certain is that in the state of Chihuahua, a significant number of cases of young women and adolescents reported missing – in one case an 11 year old – are found dead days or even years later. According to information received by Amnesty International, in the last 10 years approximately 370 women have been murdered of which at least 137 were sexually assaulted prior to death. Furthermore, 75 bodies have still not been identified. [emphasis added] (Amnesty International, 2003: 1)
In light of the above quoted passages it should be readily apparent that the crisis presented by the phenomena of femicide represents a significant challenge with respect to development and theological issues.
III. Femicide and Development
Initially it may appear odd to discuss situations of gender based violence within the context of economic development and theological formation. The femicide in Juárez is an issue that can not simply be relegated to feminist theoretical discursive activity or to the realms of social work. Violence, particularly violence against women, is often rooted deep within issues related directly or implicitly to regional economic development. Respected Christian ethicists Glen Stassen and David P. Gushee confirm this correlative relationship between poverty and violence in the book Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. In this text Stassen and Gushee point out that “[e]conomic deprivation is a major cause of homicides, especially when it gets worse than people expected.” (Stassen & Gushee, 2003: 185) The more specific connection between negative fiscal development and misogynist violence and homicide is explicated by the feminist theologian and scholar Yayori Matsui. Within the text of her essay “Violence against women in Development, Militarism, and Culture,” Matsui states that “in the Third World where three out of four human beings on the earth live, people suffer from debilitating poverty because of underdevelopment…in this part of the world women are victimized by men who are so poor, and frustrated because of it, that they tend to express their feelings in cruel ways.” (King, 1994: 128)
One prefatory note must be allowed before initiating the sections relating to the theoretical and theological explanations for the phenomena of femicide in Ciudad Juárez. When discussing the situation in Juarez in the terms of development strategy and aid it is of import to remember that misogynist violence, if it persists, remains problematic when other development goals have been achieved. Activist and author Bill Cane reminds theologically minded activists that “money [or for the purpose of this project a robust national GDP] is never the real bottom line – our [humankind’s] common wealth and relationships are.” (Cane, 1992: 130) To put it in more clarified terms, the resolution and cessation of violence against women and other members within the confines of a particular culture or socio-economic milieu is to be given primacy in relation to economic development. From the perspectives of theology and most secular philosophies the issues relating to violence against women deal with more complex problems rooted in the existential conditions of human life. Each human life is valuable and if the sanctity of human life is easily violated, even if the national GDP is considered to be “healthy,” then serious cultural and social problems are still prevalent and the work of development is incomplete. The feminist activist and theorist Andrea Dworkin elucidates a similar point in her essay “Landscape of the Ordinary: Violence Against Women:”
To understand the enormity of the crimes against women, one must first accept that women are human beings and like all human beings have an intrinsic value that need not be earned. No special pleading is required to say that an assault against a women is anti-human, that it distresses the flesh and wreaks havoc on the mind. The boundaries of a woman’s body are the boundaries the perpetrator violates. (Morgan, 2003: 58)
At this point their exists an implicit connection between the opprobrious phenomena of femicide and theology. The point made by Dworkin above is reflective of the theological position apropos the relational, or gregarious nature of man advocated earlier by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and later developed by Paul K. Jewett. According to this position humankind was created to function relationally, each component (male and female) being fully endowed with the Imago Dei. Jewett’s position mirrors that of Dworkin in his text Man as Male and Female, particularly in the first addendum, which is entitled “Misogyny in Western Thought”:
If the view of Man [to be understood in the general sense as a reference to the human family] we have espoused is true – that God has so created Man that his very being is a being-in-fellowship – and the fundamental form of this fellowship at the human level is the fellowship of man and woman, then any deprecation of the man by the woman or the woman by the man is a perversion of their common humanity. [emphasis added] (Jewett, 1975:149)
While the theological position relating to gender-based violence and development has been introduced here, more explicit connection between theology, misogynistic violence and development will be dealt with to a greater extent at a later point in the text. At this point it is pertinent to examine the secular analysis relating to the femicide in Ciudad Juárez.
IV. Econo-Political Theoretical Explanations for the Increase in Misogynist Violence and Homicide in Juárez
Male frustration apropos economic hardship similar to that described above by Matsui is one explanation for violence against women in underdeveloped regions of the world in general, but more specific (and consequently more helpful) hypotheses have been posited regarding the femicide phenomena in Ciudad Juárez. These hypotheses also connect the nexus of economic development and the maturation of the femicide culture of Juárez in a manner similar to that used by Matsui. The foci of these theoretical explanations, however, tend to be on neo-liberal development, or more appropriately the pseudo-developmental model pursued by transnational capital. Recognizing that these particular perspectives provide more insight with regard to the potential correlation betwixt the femicidal phenomena of Juárez and economic development, the explication and analysis of these theories is important in order to better understand the problematic situation in the aforementioned border town. Though the theses proposed in the following theoretical frameworks diverge at various points within the overall analysis of the problem they all presuppose that the “maquila” model of production (a name given in reference to the maquiladora factories prevalent within Mexican border towns following the inception of NAFTA in 1994) is in deep crisis. (de la Garza Toledo, 2007: 399-429)
The first analytical model to be considered here was conceived of and authored by the feminist research analyst Jessica Livingston. In the article “Murder in Juárez: Gender, Sexual Violence, and the Global Assembly Line,” Livingston uses a psychoanalytic and neo-Marxist analysis of the global economy, particularly the practice of “outsourcing” used by transnational conglomerates, in order to explain the relationship that exists between the phenomena of femicide and the unique position of Ciudad Juárez in the American system of assembly and production. Livingston constructs her explanatory model of patriarchal-class created violence by examining the modus operandi and victims in Juárez:
By analyzing the crime scene, one can deduce that the sexualized murder suggests anger at the increasing sexual independence of young women in Mexico. The mutilated breasts suggest anger at women’s use of their bodies for more than mothering and nurturing. The victims are primarily working women, suggesting resentment at women’s increasing economic independence. Abandonment of their bodies in the desert like garbage reveals that these women are considered cheap and disposable. What is not apparent at the crime scene is the class hierarchy – embedded in global capitalism and expressed through gender – that plays an integral part in these murders…Economic restructuring in the last two decades has created a new international division of labor that particularly exploits women in third world countries. Necessary to this division has been the construction of female labor as cheap and disposable when, paradoxically, global capitalism depends upon these women to assemble its commodities. While multinational corporations profit from the maquiladoras in Juárez, the murdered women and their families bear the cost of global capitalism. (Livingston, 2004: 71)
Livingston pursues this position throughout the article citing particular instances within the existential managerial and labor relationships that have come to fruition within the context of the maquiladoras, as well as the cultural context of Ciudad Juárez as whole. Among the specific workplace related cases mentioned by Livingston are the managerial practices of monitoring the female employees more closely than their male counterparts, the use of detailed medical exams that inquire about their sexual activities, mandatory pregnancy tests, illegal termination of female employees who become pregnant (due to the fact that Mexican Law requires social security coverage of pregnant women during the third trimester), and the provision of birth control while all other health issues are neglected. (Livingston, 2004: 62) Furthermore, according to Livingston, the socio-cultural context of Ciudad Juárez has been permeated by similar attitudes towards women. This is due to the fact that the “maquiladoras also encourage workers to participate in annual industry-wide ‘Senorita Maquiladora’ beauty contests,” while most of the city’s “[d]ance clubs host ‘Most Daring Bra’ and ‘Wet String Bikini’ contests with cash prizes that are more than an entire week’s wages.” (Livingston, 2004: 62) This situation argues Livingston, encourages female workers and citizens to utilize or commodify their sexuality while at the same time reinforcing the class hierarchy and patriarchy rampant within the urban context of Juárez, as well as the city’s centers of economic production. (Livingston, 2004: 62)
Melissa W. Wright is another theorist that follows a similar line of analytical explication. In her article “A Manifesto against Femicide”, Wright argues that the maquiladora model of commodity production, which is an extension of the productive capacity of United States based transnational corporations, is directly responsible for the economic exploitation of female workers in Mexico and is also partially responsible for the increase in misogynist violence and homicide in Juárez. (Wright, 2001: 554-564) Wright states that
[i]n almost all of the international coverage on the murders, a connection has been made linking the crimes to the existence of the city’s maquilas. By 1999, maquila workers accounted for about 30 of the victims. A suspect convicted for one murder had been a chemist in one factory. Other suspects still awaiting trial include five bus drivers for the companies contracted by the maquiladora industries to provide transportation service to specific neighborhoods. These men were discovered when a 13-year-old girl survived an assault and, having been left for dead in the desert, named her assailant as the driver of her company bus. She had been the last passenger on the route. (Wright, 2001: 557)
Wright believes that the metanarrative which the maquiladora industry uses in order to excuse or exonerate itself regarding its complicity with the misogynist violence and homicide that has come to characterize Juárez, also helps to encourage future violence of the same type. In this article Wright argues that “this maquila system, which revolves around the reproduction of disposable women, draws from many of the same discourses that are utilized to exculpate the maquila industry from the violence against women that continues to pervade Ciudad Juárez...[i]t is in the overlapping of these discourses that I locate the complicity between maquiladora activity and the murdering and dumping of women throughout the city.” (Wright, 2001: 558)
Though both of the theorists above are using a Marxian model of theoretical explication and analysis, this should not immediately discredit their findings. While one may remain suspicious of their conclusions it would be irresponsible, in recognition of the seriousness of the situation being discussed, to disregard all of their findings. However, the discussion of this particular development issue is not entirely dominated by theorists, scholars and researchers with a radical discursive tendency. Another article to be discussed in this text is “The Political Economy of Violence: Toward an Understanding of the Gender-Based Murders of Ciudad Juarez”, authored by Deborah M. Weissman. Weissman is a Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In her article Weissman argues that certain aspects of production and labor within the new liberalized political economy and the murder of women in Ciudad Juárez are inseparable. (Weissman, 2005, 795) Weissman situates the rise in misogynist violence and homicide within the context of other externalities resulting from the passage of the NAFTA treaty, namely the detrimental effects of the resultant “economic liberalization on labor and trade unions, habitability, the environment and health, infrastructure and social programs, and crime and drugs.” (Weissman, 2005: 795) In order to develop a better understanding of Weissman’s position, it is worth quoting her article at length:
The transition to an export economy has produced a category of victims: poor women workers who are subordinated, if not rejected, from social protections in the workplace as well as in their communities. This is particularly true for women maquila workers. In the maquila sector, the image of women possessing inherent tendencies within (or outside of) the labor force has been constructed as a means to justify low wages and has taken on new purpose. Women are portrayed in ways that subject them to disrepute. No longer concerned with the need to formulate descriptions of women as model recruits, new stereotypes have developed related to the characteristics of women on the assembly line. Women workers are now represented as inherently unsuitable for training and unworthy of any investment by virtue of their gender, suggesting that they lack significance in the world beyond the workplace. They are denounced as flighty, irresponsible "girls [without] any responsibilities" who "just come [to Cd. Juarez] to meet friends, boys, [and] have fun," and are demonized as rash and untrustworthy. They are victimized first by attribution and then by acts of violence. Violence is perpetrated against women whose place in the hierarchy of market values render them as readily interchangeable cogs in the wheel of production. They are vulnerable precisely because they are easily expendable; they are deprived of human rights because they are denied their humanity. Women are more easily excluded from the social contract by the employment strategies that cast them as culpable for the general state of labor's exploitation. Low-wage jobs in the labor-intensive export zones have been perceived to be the result of the employment of women. Maquila women generally are disparaged as the cause for workplace instability, high turnover, and the justification for labor flexibilization. These circumstances produce a link between gender victimization in the workplace and gender violence that is deliberate and direct. Gender bias in workplace strategies is more readily implemented when it is justified on the basis of gender bias in larger social systems. Similarly, gender discrimination in the workplace influences behavior and contributes to a climate of gender hostility. (Weissman, 2005: 827-829)
Weissman clarifies the relationship between the maquiladoras more than Melissa Wright had previously. She is able to elucidate to a further extent how the economic policies of neoliberal development and the perceptions of female employees engendered by such policies have a detrimental impact upon the rights and personages of women within the context of Ciudad Juárez.
V. Theological Reflections, Interactions and Explications Relating to the Increase in Misogynistic Violence and Homicide in Juárez
Upon evaluating the work of the authors cited above, it should be readily apparent that the femicidal situation in Ciudad Juárez is one that deserves serious and focused consideration by theologians, Christian developers and aid workers alike. It appears as though the economic model of development used by neoliberal economists is at least incomplete, if not, as the more radical theorists believe, inherently flawed. A great deal of theological and developmental work is necessary in order to help alleviate the existential experience of women within Juárez, but that work is both worthwhile and necessary for all Christians who would seek to develop a praxis deeply rooted in Jesus’ command to love and care for “the least” of our fellow human beings found in Matthew 25:31-46. Within the context of the following section a series of theological reflections will be analyzed, dissected and assessed with an interest in bringing the theo-ontological consciousness of both the author and the reader of this project to a point of maturation.
With respect to the economic critical analysis provided by the scholars in the above section there is some commonality with the thematic metanarrative of the Christian theological perspective. Though there is a certain amount of symptomal torsion present betwixt the explicitly materialist Marxist ideologies found within the aforementioned critiques, the main points expressed still possess valuable insight that remains within the scope of possibilities in orthodox theo-philosophy. For instance, the Jesuit priest John F. Kavanaugh provides a critique of the violence present within the system of consumer capitalism which is similar to the theses presented by both Melissa Wright and Jessica Livingston, and to a lesser degree that presented by Deborah Weissman. In his book Following Christ in a Consumer Society Kavanaugh finds an implicit, or esoteric violence within the commodification/fetishization of human interaction:
We do not give invitations to or make requests of objects. Our behavior towards things is use, demand, force, manipulation, and, if required, destruction. Within the Commodity Form of life [Kavanaugh’s designated term for life characterized by the consumer capital mode of productive relations], since self-worth and self-evaluation are measured in terms of quantitative production, consumption, and competition, we are conditioned to relate to each other as things – or, more frequently, as obstructions. If quantity is the goal, conflict is the method. Our value and dignity are rooted , not in the capacity to perform free acts of knowing and loving, but in the dynamics of domination. The interaction of commodity with commodity is not one of the reciprocal mutuality or the collaboration of subjects. It is rather one of price competition (is it true that every man [or woman for the sake of the current project] has his price?), quantitative supremacy, and the power forces of commercial uniformity, control, repetition, and material exchange. (Kavanaugh, 2007: 51-52) [One is reminded at this point of the analysis given by the French post-structuralist philosopher Jean Baudrillard in his famous/infamous text The System of Objects, though Kavanaugh’s point proves to be its obverse. (Baudrillard, 2005: 145-224)]
Kavanaugh continues his analysis indicating that once a person’s selfhood has been reduced to the status of mere objectivity/objectness, once the otherness of persons is perceptually transformed into a thing or commoditized object, “he or she is thereby rendered replaceable.” (Kavanaugh, 2007: 54) This form of reasoning is reflective of Weissman’s analysis of the origin’s of misogynistic violence, oppression and femicide in Ciudad Juárez, particularly at the point when she stated that “[v]iolence is perpetrated against women whose place in the hierarchy of market values render them as readily interchangeable cogs in the wheel of production.” (Weissman, 2005: 829) Thus the dark genesis of femicide, according to both Kavanaugh and Weissman, is found in the translation of the forms of commodity relations into the sphere of human interpersonal interaction. Kavanaugh ultimately equates this transposition with idolatry in a fashion similar to that pursued by the theologian Franz Hinkelammert in the latter’s essay “The Economic Roots of Idolatry: Entrepreneurial Metaphysics.” (Richard, 1983: 191-192) Kavanaugh, along with Hinkelammert, concludes that this particular form of modern idolatry can only be overcome by developing a greater understanding of the anthropology found within the Biblical scriptures. If femicide is a resulting externality of this economic or entrepreneurial idolatry, then to overcome femicide it is also necessary, at least initially, to develop a more scripturally integrated (if not entirely scripturally informed) anthropology.
One clue as to the means for the development or extraction of a biblical anthropological understanding of humankind can be found in the two “great” commandments espoused by Jesus in Mark 12:28-44 and Matthew 22:34-40. The narratives presented in these two sections of scripture are similar, though not entirely identical. Within each story a question is posed (though in the Matthew narrative the context in which the question is asked makes it appear more akin to an aggressive challenge) to Jesus regarding the nature of the law. In both texts Jesus is asked to delineate and assign value to commandments by declaring which of the commandments is to be given primacy over the whole of the Mosaic legal code. Jesus’ answer becomes the starting point for the formulation, description and analysis of any Christian anthropology. For the sake of brevity only the text from Matthew shall be quoted here (all biblical references come from The People’s Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha):
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
The second commandment to which Jesus refers is the essential core of a Christian understanding of Anthropos (Άνθρωπος) proper. This second commandment dissects and deconstructs the root of the problem addressed by Kavanaugh et al. above. One cannot fetishize one’s fellow human creature, or “neighbor,” if one loves his fellow human being as oneself. A mature understanding of this commandment allows us to be fully cognizant regarding the true source of the problem in Ciudad Juárez. Essentially, the women of Juárez (a la the analysis of Kavanaugh, Livingston, Wright and Wiessman) have been reduced to the status of disposable objects, or replaceable consumer items. The relational understanding of human nature espoused by the theologian Paul K. Jewett has been discarded and the human-as-object-obstruction identity prevalent in the Commodity Form of life described by John Kavanaugh has been transposed onto the feminine sex. Their identity as possessors of the Imago Dei has been denied them.
At this point it should be readily apparent that the above analysis possesses much in common with the Marxist analysis relating to the conditions of human alienation and the fetishization of objects. (Ollman, 1976: 131-232) This may be referred to as a common theology, or understanding possessed by both the Christian and Marxist philosophical perspective. Indeed a number of Latin American liberation theologians have embraced, at least in part, the Marxist analysis of Capital proper and the capitalist market system in general. For example, Jose Miguez Bonino made use of Marx’s theories of historical, dialectical engagement and class struggle in his book Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (1975: 106-153) and José Miranda borrowed themes from throughout Marx’s entire corpus for his book Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression (1974: 1-298). It is also important to note that the exchange is not one way. Marxist scholars and philosophers, such as Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou and Roland Boer[1] are all engage in work (sometimes expanding into multiple tomes) that borrow and retain Christian philosophical positions in an explicit manner. Therefore there is a possibility for dialogue between secular theorists, especially those who have a vested interest in Marxian critical analysis, and Christian theologians and aid workers when working on the development and human rights problems created by the situation of femicide in Juárez, Mexico.
At this particular theoretical juncture it is instructive, however, to remember that Marxism, like other Enlightenment projects is rooted in the theological projects of Christian Europe, or as political philosopher Michael Allen Gillespie had pointed out these projects are “in fact parasitic on the Christian worldview.” (Gillespie, 2008: 280) This is the raison d'être of the common theology that exist between Christian thought and Marxism. Marx’s concept of human kind is not rooted in the anthropology et Imago Dei, and so strains to find the impetus for defending human rights as such. The crisis of the Marxist endeavor, exacerbated by postmodern/deconstructionist critique, is thus the crisis of Enlightenment philosophy as a whole. Its concerns have been stripped of their theological foundations, and thus lack substance; a reality that is magnified when these philosophies are confronted with human atrocity. (Gillespie, 2008: 278-287) Thus, while Marxist thought may be able to explain the “mechanics”/material causes of the phenomena of femicide, it is incapable of fully addressing this opprobrious and problematic situation. A transcendent or Christian anthropology is needed to fully address the volatile human rights quandary posed by the misogynistic murders in Juárez. Ultimately Kavanaugh, Miranda and Bonin all recognize this, and thus move beyond a materialist Marxist analysis and toward, in Kavanaugh’s terminology, a Christian philosophical anthropology. (Kavanaugh, 2007: 75-87)
VI. Discursive Biblical Iterations: Listening to the Voice of the Biblical Text Apropos Misogynist Violence
Another point of initiation apropos the theological investigation of gender-based violence/femicide in the milieu of Ciudad Juárez would be that surrounding an analysis of misogynist violence within the biblical text itself. As with most theological conversations, the Christian scriptures prove to be a unique and perplexing source of information. The biblical text provides one with a number of narratives that appear to have misogynist violence as an implicit or overt theme.
One particular story, however, is distinctive and can be exceptionally helpful for those seeking theological understanding with such an opaque, sinister and complex problem that proves to be anathema to Christians and others interested in human development and flourishing. The story referred to above can be found in the nineteenth chapter of the book of Judges. Within the narrative of this story a number of elements can be exegetically examined in analogous relation to the situation of femicide in Juárez.
In this particular text a Levite had taken a concubine for himself (an action of questionable legitimacy) from the city Bethlehem. Over the course of time, the young woman became angry (the reason[s] for her anger are never discussed in the text) with the Levite and returned home to her father’s household. After about four months passes the Levite decides to retrieve his concubine. After spending a few days in the household of his concubine’s father, the Levite decides to return home in the late afternoon or early evening; a precarious decision, as the biblical text indicates. The later actions of the Levite further exacerbate the already treacherous journey back to his hometown. Rather than stopping to find shelter in the city of Jebus, as was suggested by his male servant, the Levite objected to this idea saying, “[w]e will not turn aside into a city of foreigners, who do not belong to the people of Israel; but we will continue on to Gibeah…and spend the night at Gibeah or Ramah.” (Judges 19:12-13) Upon the party’s eventual arrival at Gibeah no one offered the Levite or the other members of his party any shelter except for an elderly gentleman near the later portion of the evening. While the old man and his guests are “enjoying themselves” a group of men (in the text described as “a perverse lot”) surrounded their safe house, pounded on the door, and demanded that the old man send out his male guest so they could have intercourse with him. The old man pleaded with the crowd and offered them an alternative to violating his male guest:
No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing. (Judges 19:23b-24)
The men of the city, however, did not accept the old man’s alternative. Seeing that he is in immanent danger, the Levite seized his concubine and pushed her out to the crowd of men, at which point “[t]hey wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning.” (Judges 19:25b) In the morning the men let the concubine go. She then returned to the house where the Levite was staying and collapsed upon the door’s threshold. The Levite later wakes up, takes the corpse of his concubine home, dismembers it and sends it throughout Israel in order to provoke a response against the men of Gibeah and the tribe of Benjamin.
There exist several points of analogous contact between the story found in Judges 19 and the state of affairs in contemporary Juárez. Violence is the most prominent and most obvious connection. Though the violence is not initiated on the basis of gender in the Judges narrative (the men of Gibeah originally intended to violate the Levite), the gender of the concubine was ultimately the reason for her victimization. Feminist theologian Phyllis Trible reminds us that the story presented in Judges 19 is a story about “[t]he betrayal, rape, torture, murder, and dismemberment of an unnamed woman,” that “depicts the horrors of male power, brutality, and triumphalism; of female helplessness, abuse, and annihilation.” (Trible, 1984: 65) The above description mirrors the plight of most of the femicide victims in Ciudad Juárez. Most of the victims are tortured, raped, mutilated and left for dead in waste areas surrounding the city. Many of the corpses of the women and girls are not identified and a large number of them are never found. (Rodriguez, 2007: xv-xvii)
The central victim in the story of Judges, the unnamed woman, is also a concubine. Her social status was that of property or chattel. Trible elucidates the woman’s socio-political and economic stature stating that “a concubine has an inferior status…[l]egally and socially, she is not the equivalent of a wife but is virtually a slave, secured by a man for his own purposes.” (Trible, 1984: 66) One is reminded of Weissman’s description of that status ascribed to maquila women laborers, and of Kavanaugh’s description of the violence implicit within the Commodity Form of life. The female maquiladora workers are treated as inferior and are seen mainly as replaceable units of productive labor and objects to be used for the purposes of sexual gratification.
Finally, the concubine in the story is not permitted to speak. Though she most certainly would have protested her fate, only the male characters words are recorded. (Trible, 1984: 69) The women of Ciudad Juárez also share in this plight. Often the situation facing them is ignored or glazed over by the Mexican Officials. (Rodriguez, 2007: 231-261)
VII. A Voice of Their Own: Mujerista Theology and Femicide in Juárez
It is out of similar complex nexus of phenomenologically integrated problems that Mujerista Theology emerged. Mujerista theology refers to the theological position developed and describe by the Hispanic theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz. Though Isasi-Díaz has formulated her Mujerista theology in a number of articles and essays, the most complete account of this theo-philosophical position to date can be found within her book Mujerista Theology. (Isasi-Díaz:1996) Though it was not developed in direct response to the situation in Juárez, in many ways it addresses many of the problems and issues facing the women of that city. Mujerista theology is an attempt to reclaim many of the elements of human identity that Latina women are denied. It is an attempt to recover the Imago Dei present within Latina women and thus dispel the oppression, objectification, violence, racism and misogyny that is characteristic of their daily existence. These purposes are described in an essay by Isasi-Díaz entitled “Mujeristas: A Name of Our Own:”
To name oneself is one of the most powerful acts any human person can do. A name is not just a word by which one is identified. A name also provides the conceptual framework, the mental constructs that are used in thinking, understanding, and relating to a person. For many years now, Hispanic women in the United States [and elsewhere] – who struggle against ethnic prejudice, sexism, and, in many cases, classism – have been at a loss as to what to call ourselves…we have felt the need for a name that would indicate the primary struggle against sexism that is part of out daily bread while also helping us identify one another in the trenches as we fight for our survival… (Peter-Raoul et al., 1990: 121)
It should be easy to see the importance of such a theological position in relation to the community of struggling Latina/Hispanic women. It attempts to liberate this marginalized group by, at least initially, rereading the biblical texts from the perspective of this community and, in doing so, reclaim its position in the created order:
For mujeristas the primary role of the Bible is to influence the “horizon or ultimate way in which the Christian looks at reality.” This biblical influence yields mainly and ethical model of relationality and responsibility that is/can be/should be operative in the struggle for liberation…Specific biblical stories can and should serve as interpretive keys in the struggle for liberation of Hispanic women. (Peter-Raoul et al., 1990: 124-125)
Such a bibliocentric approach is of significant import, for, as was illustrated in the discussion relating to the crises of the Marxist and Enlightenment philosophical positions, without a theological/biblical foundation a struggle for freedom, liberation, or rights of any sort becomes precarious.
VIII. Conclusion
Any theological reflection or development stratagem that aspires to be efficacious and transformative must address the problems delineated above. Those who seek to develop a theology relating to poverty or any other form of human oppression must be able to address the afflicted people within their own context, and according to the specific problems they face. One must develop middle axioms out of one’s theological convictions rather than attempting to transpose information gleaned directly from the scriptures onto the situation at hand, expecting it to function in the form of a solution. Ada María Isasi-Díaz points out in her essay “Mujeristas: A Name of Our Own,”
the Bible should be used to promote a critical consciousness, to trigger suspicion, which is the starting point of the process of conscientization. The Bible should be used to learn how to learn – “to involve the people in an unending process of acquiring new…information that multiplies the previous store of information.” This new information becomes a source that can be consulted “in order to solve problems the people have not faced before.” The Bible must not be directly applied to a problem – it does not offer a solution to any given problem. Instead the Bible must become a resource for learning what questions to ask in order to deal appropriately with the problem at hand. (Peter-Raoul et al., 1990: 125)
In the same manner Christian theologian and aid workers must come to terms with the existential problems they encounter within the context in which the dilemmas are found. They must engage each problem critically, creatively and cognitively. Apropos the situation of femicide in Juárez one must work with members of the community to restore the identity of women in this city; to help them recover their awareness of the feminine component of the Imago Dei, or image of God. The Christian must also work to transform the culture of Ciudad Juárez so that women, particularly the female maquiladora workers, are seen as integral members of the socio-political milieu and not simply replaceable units of labor or sex objects.
Ultimately, however, Christian aid workers and theologians can only assist and accompany the people of Juárez. The Christian “witness” must be dynamic, holistic and incarnational, but the ultimate goal should be the empowerment and transformation of the members of impoverished or afflicted community themselves. In his book Walking With the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development, World Vision aid director Bryant L. Meyers states that
A web of lies results in the poor internalizing a view of themselves as being without value and without a contribution to make, believing they are truly god-forsaken. No transformation can be sustainable unless this distorted, disempowering sense of identity is replaced by the truth. Healing the marred identity of the poor is the beginning of transformation. (Meyers, 1999: 115)
This analysis of marred identity is equally applicable to the women of Ciudad Juárez. Both Meyers and Isasi-Díaz are both correct in their contention that the victimized or marginalized community must be empowered in order for any development or change to be sustainable. It is certainly true that women within the context of the misogynist and dehumanizing culture of Juárez need to be reminded of their worth if they are to engage in the struggle for their liberation and the recognition of their rights. A transformation of the marred identity of the women of Ciudad Juárez should be both the means and the end of any Christian engaged in development work in that context.
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[1] For those who are interested, a list of the titles in which these authors engage the theology of Christianity will be provided in the bibliography of this essay.
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