Abstract
Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Juarez
Nancy Pineda-Madrid
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. 200 pp. $18.00
What are the theological implications of the murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez? Nancy Pineda-Madrid responds to this question with a Catholic feminist-liberation theology of salvation from suffering.
To begin, Pineda-Madrid (who was raised across the border in El Paso, Texas) sets out the facts of “feminicide”: the systematic killing of more than 600 women in Juarez since 1993. Victims are poor young women, typically migrants from interior Mexico, abducted as they travel alone, on foot or by bicycle, to and from the maquiladora factories. The murders of these young women have ritualistic qualities including rape, mutilation, dismemberment, and public abandonment of the body. Police and government officials are unsuccessful in apprehending the perpetrators, and they often blame the female victims for leading a double life of prostitution. Journalists and citizens who investigate have been harassed, threatened, and even killed. This feminicide is connected with drug gangs and narcotraffickers, who may celebrate a successful smuggling operation with rape and murder.
As background to the feminicide, the author investigates the social imaginary of Mexico based on popular narratives about Malinche (the despised consort of Cortez), La Llorona (who cries for her dead children), the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Aztec mythology involving female ritual sacrifice. These portrayals of women have misogynistic themes that emphasize women’s suffering, passivity, and sacrifice. Pineda-Madrid argues that the derogatory images illustrate how feminicide is also sociocide, with a destructive impact on the community as a whole, a reality which theology must address.
In the middle chapter, the author shifts gears to examine the theology of suffering and salvation in Saint Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, evaluated in light of the Ciudad Juárez feminicide. In Anselm’s doctrine of atonement, Jesus serves as a surrogate for sinful humanity, a role that bears uncomfortable resemblance to women’s passive suffering and self-sacrifice. This classical soteriology, which still influences Catholic thought, lacks an eschatological vision for society transformed by salvation, and it is judged inadequate and lacking in ethical response.
Returning to her case study, Pineda-Madrid reflects on the activist groups in Juarez and social protests against both the murders and government inaction. The prevalent symbols at these rallies are crosses painted either pink or black as grave markers for the missing murdered women. She argues that these acts of resistance count as religious practices, not just political ones, because of the cross symbolism and the salvific intent to stop the destruction of community along the Mexican border.
The conclusion develops a constructive theology of salvation. On the cross, it is Jesus’ love that is salvific, not his suffering as Anselm emphasized. The author develops a thoughtful definition of community, which includes sharing a consciousness of past, present, and future, which for Mexicans centers on key historical events and symbols, such as the cross, the Virgin, and the Exodus. From a feminist perspective, feminicide represents the crucifixion of women, and the response of salvation offers the possibility of the empty tomb, the defeat of death, and new life in community released from oppression.
While the book’s arguments for resistance to suffering and a social concept of salvation are persuasive, they are found in previous womanist and feminist theology. The chapter on Anselm functions as a straw man to provide a negative backdrop for the author’s position and to avoid direct critique of current Catholic theology. Nonetheless, this book makes an original contribution in analyzing the feminicide in Ciudad Juarez, its political context, and its precedents in the Mexican imaginary’s validating of women’s suffering. It offers a stimulating Latino/a theology situated on the Mexican border and a persuasive ethical summons to active resistance.