This thesis examined the media framing of the Juarez femicide. The media framing of femicide is significant because women have always been the victims of widespread violence. Violence against women exists in all societies and is not restricted to economic class, race, ethnic, and ideology. Despite the prevalence of gender-violence, this issue is taboo in most cultures and difficult to discuss. The study is also significant because it provides insight into the cultural codes in communities where violence against women is prevalent, offers what may be the first comparative academic analysis of U.S. and Mexican media frames, and adds to our understanding of a cross-cultural femicide. This study examined the types of media framing utilized by both the U.S and Mexican media, the implications of the frames, and the differences in framing strategies between the U.S. and Mexican media. The method used to conduct this media framing analysis of the Juarez femicides employed Burke’s (1989) dramatism theory and Noelle-Neumann’s (1971) spiral of silence theory. This method entailed applying the cycle of redemption and silencing theory to newspaper articles from the El Paso Times published in El Paso, Texas, and El Diario published in Ciudad-Juarez, Mexico to determine if the artifact illustrated components of the redemptive process and silencing. This study found eight total themes from both El Paso Times and El Diario that illustrated the components of the redemption, victimage, and silencing. / Department of Communication Studies

This dissertation examines representations of feminicide victims in documentary film, novels, non-fiction, art, and graffiti and argues that these images express anxiety about they way women traverse and inhabit the geography of Ciudad Juárez, often giving precedence to the idea of the public female body as hypersexualized. In order to reclaim memory of the victims some cultural producers focus on the testimonial form in which victims’ families and other activists share their stories or construct informal memorials in the city; these remembrances later appear in works of non-fiction, film, and art, as markers of the process of creating and preserving memory. My dissertation analyzes such works as the documentary Señorita extraviada (2001) by Lourdes Portillo, the non-fiction work Huesos en el desierto (2002) by Sergio González Rodríguez, and the novel 2666 (2004) by Roberto Bolaño, among other cultural expressions, to show how feminicide victims and their families have been marked by and have challenged a pervasive public discourse about female sexuality.

En Ciudad Juárez, el estado de Chihuahua en el norte de México, hay desde los años 1990 un problema con el fenómeno conocido como feminicidio, homicidios de mujeres y niñas con motivos de género. Entre enero del año 1993 y septiembre del año 2005, hubieron al menos 372 homicidios de mujeres registrados en el estado de Chihuahua. A pesar de investigaciones y recomendaciones realizadas sobre este problema de la ciudad siguen siendo asesinadas mujeres y niñas. Las autoridades se encuentran, al parecer, en una situación sin solución. Mientras tanto es problemático el concepto del feminicidio, ya que en la realidad es difícil clasificar qué es la violencia de género y la relación entre los dos conceptos. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo discutir el problema del feminicidio en Ciudad Juárez, y el contexto en el cual ocurre. Se utiliza un método cualitativo, y se hace uso de fuentes secundarias, tal como investigaciones previas hechas sobre el tema. La investigación tiene como objetivo indagar y discutir el problema del feminicidio en Ciudad Juárez para obtener una mejor comprensión de lo que sucede en la ciudad. Para hacer esto se han presentado dos preguntas de investigación que se pretende contestar, partiendo del contexto en lo cual ocurre la violencia de género de Ciudad Juárez, tal como a qué se debe la violencia de género que ocurre en la ciudad. El estudio incluye el período desde 1993 y 2012 y está delimitado a la región de Ciudad Juárez, México. Se ha llegado a la conclusión que existe en la ciudad un clima de exclusión y de una desigualdad. La desigualdad se manifiesta en el poder injustamente repartido en la sociedad, debido a prioridad a intereses económicos transnacionales y globales, así como una desigualdad entre los géneros.

Para el logro de un desarrollo sano es de vital importancia contar con un equilibrio económico en los diferentes rubros de la actividad productiva de las ciudades hermanas (CJS- ELP) y no sólo concretarse al ámbito de la 'maquila'. Si bien el turismo como una opción es viable, su incorporación como forma activa para otras regiones económicas del mismo estado no se ha presentado, de manera que la búsqueda de alternativas para atraer visitantes es aún un desafío para la actividad turística de Juárez-El Paso. La interrogante para los inversionistas y el gobierno es cómo encaminar los esfuerzos en la actividad turística que permitan un crecimiento armónico en la región binacional.La nvestigación, plantea valorar el fenómeno del turismo transfronterizo y se acomete una aproximación de las condiciones reticulares de los actores- stakeholders del turismo de la actividad turística en la frontera México - Estados Unidos bajo un entorno de inseguridad, mediante el análisis del caso de las ciudades hermanas de Ciudad Juárez - El Paso. Los objetivos específicos del examen reticular permiten concebir una relación entre la conformación de redes dinámicas en un espacio territorial fronterizo con potencialidades de alianzas, colaboración y cooperación en un destino binacional. / To achieve healthy development is essential to have an economic balance in the different areas of productive activity in the sister cities (CJS-ELP) and not only realized the scope of the 'maquila'. While tourism is a viable option, its incorporation as a proactive manner to other economic regions of the state has not been submitted, so that the search for alternatives to attract visitors is still a challenge for tourism in Juarez - El Paso. The question for investors and the government is how to direct efforts in tourism to allow balanced growth in the binational region. The research raises assess the phenomenon of cross-border tourism and begin an approximation of the reticular conditions of the actors- stakeholders in tourism in the Mexico - United States under a climate of insecurity, by analyzing the case of sister cities of Ciudad Juárez - El Paso. The specific objectives of the reticular review design allow a relationship between the formation of dynamic networks in a territorial area bordering potential partnerships, collaboration and cooperation in a bi-national destiny.

In the early 1990s, a series of gruesome murders of young women in Ciudad Juárez, a city located in the U.S.-Mexico border, shook the political landscape of Mexico. A decade later, the strange and violent murders, known as the feminicides or feminicidios of Juárez, reached international infamy across hemispheres and continents. During this time, the city and the cases became the subjects of an extensive body of scholarship and of any imaginable artistic medium (narrative, poetry, theater, performance, music, and so on). Eventually, the complexity and overexposure of the cases and the sociopolitical conditions of Ciudad Juárez placed them at the center of a paradoxical debate: on one hand, the work of activists, feminists, and scholars of social sciences (like anthropologists and sociologists) studied the murders as a localized example of a larger phenomenon of mysoginistic violence; on the other, journalistic and media investigations of Juárez understood the murders as the products of specific agents (serial killers, murderers, drug cartels, amongst others) and the fractures within the Mexican Nation-State. And yet, despite the expansion and overlapping of these discourses, fictional representations of Juárez remained tangential to this intricate debate. Thus, this research explores the different ways in which writers, artists, and filmmakers deployed and negotiated existent perspectives on the feminicides within fictional environments. As a result of the vast amount of published work available on Ciudad Juárez, I narrowed the objects of my research through a transnational scope. The resulting sample of texts transverses borders (Mexico and the U.S.), continents (Latin America and Europe), genres (fiction and nonfiction), and mediums (literature and film). The first chapter explores the connections of Sergio González Rodríguez’s Huesos en el desierto and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 through the theoretical framework of the possible worlds of fiction. The second chapter moves to issues of representation, gender, and race through the analysis of two novels written by Chicana scholars: Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders and Stella Pope Duarte’s If I Die in Juárez. Finally, the third chapter focuses on film representations of Juárez and the feminicides in the form of Gregory Nava’s Bordertown and Carlos Carrera’s Backyard/El Traspatio. / text