Francis Comes to Murderville

Last updated on: February 23, 2016 at 9:08 am by Elias Crim

Francis Comes to Murderville 2016-02-23T09:08:53-05:00 Elias Crim

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My friend Gerald called me about his recent trip down to Ciudad Juarez for the papal mass. His interest in the event was noteworthy because it is certainly Pope Francis that has overcome Gerald’s decades-old grudge match with the Church hierarchy. He is on the verge of taking up the rosary again, I suspect.

But this was not a light-hearted phone call. Gerald shared a ride down with a couple of religious sisters he knows in the Ruidoso, New Mexico area where he now resides. He only knew a little about Juarez before the trip, he explained, but the sisters filled him in as they rode along together.

Everyone knows about the drug cartels in Mexico and their casual violence. But there’s more to know, the sisters explained. The Holy Father is coming to Juarez for a reason besides its border location, they felt sure. Juarez is the hell on earth for which the legal term femicide was invented. Every year, some 2,500 Mexican women die of gender-related violence. The National Citizen Femicide Observatory, or OCNF, says at least six women are targeted and killed every day in Mexico. Of those, less than a quarter are investigated. Of those investigations, fewer than 2 per cent lead to a sentence.

Since 2006, Human Rights Watch estimates some 26,000 Mexican women have gone missing, with few in the way of solved investigations. The authorities, for their part, try to blame the effects of drug use, the sex trade, or simply undercover disappearance somewhere in the States. Numerous groups of women activists–family members–aren’t buying it.

In June 2012, the bodies of 18 women were discovered in a mass grave in Juarez, the sisters went on. Because their bodies were hacked to death so violently, it took authorities months to identify the women.

Most of the women who have been murdered or disappear share a striking strain of similarities: they are young, thin, poor and often indigenous workers at one of the city’s large maquiladoras, which manufacture cheap products for export abroad. Why kill these poor women? Says the Council on Hemispheric Affairs:

Some people see the femicides as a product of a cultural image of women in Latin America. A female worker in a maquiladora is can be looked upon as a form of variable capital; the labor value of a Mexican maquiladora worker declines over time because, according to her managers, her value as a worker is used up after years of endless, exhausting hours of factory work.

Some activists play down the gender emphasis in these crimes, noting that even more men have been murdered or have disappeared during this time period. And yet this factor seems impossible to deny.

Gerald knew very little about this savage history until just before arriving in Juarez. As he approached the huge stage set up next to the border fence and the crowd of 200,000, he told me, he could feel the unresolved grief and the spiritual yearning mingling somehow in the crowd. He began weeping, overcome at finally seeing up close the both the faces of these families and (at a great distance) the figure who had come to offer them mercy and hope. How could such things happen in this world, he asked me, crying again. I could not say. We could only agree: this Year of Mercy came none too soon.

Catholic Social Teaching

Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy

Elias Crim

Poverty, economic inequality, consumerism, unemployment, underemployment, living wage

Previous Post

February 22, 2016

The Bright Side of Dark Times

Next Post

February 25, 2016 A Conversation on War, Torture, and the Limits of Evil - Part 1

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Alternative economics, worker and family empowerment, the spirituality of work, the economy of sharing Art Care for Our Common Home Catholic imagination Catholic Social Teaching Christian Friendship Christian Persecution Community building, models or forms of community, radical hospitality Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy Daniel Schwindt Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, CW aims and means, spirituality Elias Crim Grace Potts Greg Guest Josh Brumfield Mark Gordon Matthew Cooper Mercy Michael Stafford Paul Grenier Peace, nonviolent resistance, conscience and conscientious objection Pope Francis Poverty, economic inequality, consumerism, unemployment, underemployment, living wage Racial Reconciliation Radical Christianity Stan Goff Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What Christian group emphasizes speaking in tongues as evidence of faith?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pentecostals Catholics Presbyterians Methodists