Laura Gillman (Virginia Tech) & Tobias Jochum (Free University Berlin)
Introduction
For more than two decades now, Gloria Anzaldúa’s famed metaphor for the U.S.-Mexican border as an open wound where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds has been imposing itself in shockingly literal manifestations of increasing intensity. The case of Ciudad Juárez, plagued by a gruesome epidemic of extreme gender violence since at least 1993, stands out. When at his presidential inauguration in December 2006, Felipe Calderón declared open warfare against Mexico’s transnationally operating drug cartels, the city’s international infamy for its “femicides” was already firmly established…