"Maquiladores de la Ley. Los Operadores Jurídicos del Sistema de Justicia Penal y la Violencia contra las Mujeres en Ciudad Juárez, México"

In 2009 Ciudad Juárez, municipality of Chihuahua, Mexico, was declared the most violent city of the world; with a rate of 130 homicides by each 100 thousand inhabitants. Due to the economic crisis and the “war” against the drug trafficking initiated by the Mexican government in 2008, the levels of violence in the city has increase affecting mainly those who have less material and personal possibilities. Nevertheless, the violence does not affect to all equally; the social inequality in the distribution of resources and opportunities place the women and girls in a situation of special vulnerability. According to figures compiled by specialists, from 1993 to 2010 at least 941 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juárez and the number of women missing is indeterminate. At least a third part of murders have been victims of sexist and snobbish crimes, which have been called feminicidios. Young girls, students, workers of the maquiladora (assembles), dancers, sexual workers, housewife, were kidnapped, torture raped, mutilated, strangled and murdered. The common characteristics of these crimes have produced diverse hypothesis: serial killers, bands of drug dealers, networks of pornography, prostitution and/or videos snuff, traffic of organs, even initiation rituals for drug-traffickers. This study explores the answer of the authorities of the Mexican State to face the violence against the women in Ciudad Juárez doing special emphasis in the influence of the attitudes and perceptions of legal operators of the criminal justice and the way gender stereotypes impact the judicial work.