A Manifesto against Femicide

In Ciudad Juárez, a group of feminist activists has established the city's first sexual assault center, called Casa Amiga. They accomplished this feat after launching a social movement on several fronts against the notion that Juarense women are cheap, promiscuous, and not worth efforts to provide them a safe refuge from domestic violence, incest, and rape. The essay explores their efforts as a means for asserting the value of women in Ciudad Juárez, an assertion with reverberating effects in the maquiladora industry that has prospered based on this image of Juarense women. By combining a Marxist critique of value with post-structuralist analyses of the subject, the essay argues that projects such as Casa Amiga represent plausible sites for the organizing of alliances whose objective is to reverse the depreciation of laborers.