Abstract

RAVELO BLANCAS, Patricia. The custom to kill: The proliferation of violence in Ciudad Juárez Chihuahua, Mexico. Nueva antropol [online]. 2005, vol.20, n.65, pp.149-166. ISSN 0185-0636.

In Ciudad Juárez, the violence is part of its history, its culture, its economy and its political system. That's why the custom to kill springs from a context where nothing is safe nor minimaly stable. The life in the border and its proximity with death produces a diversity of feelings, emotions and sensations, because the danger is permanent. The deaths are violent and they take place in a scene dominated by fear, where the law is enforced by the mafias, through the hidden control of the political and economic system. Many sectors of the population are in the service of "the picaderos" hundreds of young people operate from the gangs and, obviously women constitute one of booties of these mafias. The women illegal traffic, is the more complex problem because it is surrounded by many social and cultural aspects that this article tries to show.

Keywords : sexual violence; borders; drug trafficking.