Corrie Boudreaux

Public Memorialization
and the Grievability of
Victims in Ciudad Jurez

i sit in a small office in central jurez while david, the owner,

talks about the wave of violence that has swept across this Mexican
border city. He blames the violence on the tens of thousands of resi-
dents of Jurez who are not truly from the city, those that moved here
since the birth of the maquiladora industry in the 1960s. The city has
always looked dirty precisely because of that kind of people, he says.
In a way, I didnt see the killings as all that bad, because normally it
was people who were not even really from Jurez, and I dont sympa-
thize with the lower classeven though I am just as screwed. He
laughs. Lets be realists. Who did they start to kill? Dealers, small-scale
drug sellers, car thieves, robbers. And at the end of it all, they finished
off a lot of people who were not beneficial [to society].
In Ciudad Jurez, where nearly 12,000 people have been mur-
dered since 2008, and in the rest of Mexico, where over 100,000 peo-
ple have been murdered since the states battle against cartels began
in 2007, Davids assessment of the violence is not unusual. In Mexico,
death by violence is often a stigma, with victims presumed to have
been involved in something (Gibler 2011; Vernica 2012). According
to such circular reasoning, the dead deserved to die, and we know
this because they are dead. In other words, David, a resident of Jurez,
sees the victims as what Judith Butler (2004) calls ungrievable lives,
lives that are not grieved when lost because they are not perceived as
being connected to the rest of society. For David, and for many other

social research Vol. 83 : No. 2 : Summer 2016391

observers of the violence, the marginalized populations exist as homo
sacer (Agamben 1998), people who lack civic standing vis--vis the so-
cial and political community and so are vulnerable to being killed
with impunity.
The practice of creating public memorials is one form of pro-
test against this characterization of victims of violence in Jurez.
Broadly speaking, survivors create public memorials to make a claim
about public causes of death and to attempt to effect social or politi-
cal change (Santino 2004, 2006). The memorials to homicide victims
in Jurez attempt to effect social change by calling attention to the
public causes of death and by reasserting the grievability of the lives
lost. Memorialization practices both provide evidence for the kinds of
deaths that occurred and reflect the survivors conviction that these
deaths demand public recognition and grief. Public memorials can be
a lens into the ways in which a community accepts or excludes indi-
viduals in its midst, both in life and in death.
The three types of memorials that I address herethe sponta-
neous memorials such as graffiti; the official memorial of Villas del
Salvrcar; and an embroidering movement that creates memorials as
a form of civic protestare not uniformly successful in their claims
of grievability for the lost lives they represent. Their success, or lack
thereof, is highly dependent on the ways they are read by the
public as either perpetuating or contesting the popular notion that
murder victims are guilty of something and therefore their deaths
are tolerable.

BORDER VIOLENCE: PUBLIC CONDITIONS OF DEATH AND

MEMORIALIZATION
One of Jurezs most fundamental conditions, which has contributed
significantly to various forms of violence, is its geography as a border
city. In 1848, the new US-Mexico boundary divided the city then
known as El Paso del Norte into two unequal parts: El Paso, Texas, and
Paso del Norte, Chihuahua (renamed Ciudad Jurez in 1888). Since
then, the border has conditioned all facets of life in Jurez (Gonzlez

392 social research

de la Vara 2009; Lugo 2008; Martnez 1975). The twin violences of
structural exploitation and homicidal gang- and cartel-related activi-
ties derive from the economic logic of production and exportation
across an international boundary between disparate countries. All
that Jurez has suffered, says local historian and journalist Juan de
Dios Olivas, it has suffered because it is a border (personal commu-
nication 2013).
Jurez experienced high rates of growth from the 1960s until
the 1990s as a result of two processes, both due to its border geog-
raphy. First, when the Bracero Program ended, most of the Mexican
temporary workers that had been working in the United States as
part of this bilateral agreement were returned to the country by way
of Jurez. Second, the Mexican government established the maquila-
dora industry in the 1960sa maquiladora being a foreign-owned as-
sembly plant that imports components and exports finished products
duty-freeto take advantage of the border by providing cheap labor
for foreign-owned industries who could then export their goods to
the United States (Fuentes 2012; Garza 2012). Jurez became the col-
lection point for deportees, for migrants hoping to enter the US, and
for migrants attracted by work in the maquiladoras. Private interests
controlled the planning, or lack thereof, of urban growth, and the mi-
grants and workers generally settled in colonias around the outskirts
of the city. (Colonia may refer to neighborhoods or subdivisions, or
to spaces such as squatter colonies and slums. Here I am referring to
the latter interpretation, as Fuentes and Pea [2010a] use the word in
their analysis.) The colonias are characterized by cheap housing, lack
of infrastructure, placement in undesirable locations at considerable
distance from city center, and proximity to the maquiladoras (Fuentes
and Pea 2010b).
Jurezs principal industry was and is its hundreds of maqui-
ladoras, which employ thousands of workers. Like the licit maquila-
dora industry, the illicit drug-trafficking industry prizes Jurez for its
proximity to international shipping and its supply of cheap, dispos-
able labor. Both industries depend on the residents of the peripheral

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 393

colonias, which, like their parallels in many Latin American cities, are
a space of marginalization and criminalization (Sibley 1995; Piccato
2001; Goldstein 2004). Poverty, marginalization, and criminaliza-
tion will in turn often push youth to participate in illicit activities
(Ros 2011; Campbell 2012), especially when they exist in combina-
tion with a lack of viable or attractive alternatives (Ros 2010). This
is a very brief summary of complex processes, but these conditions,
including Jurezs haphazard physical growth, its history of public
corruption, the economic exploitation and social exclusion of large
portions of its population, and its position as a border city, are factors
which contributed to the sustained homicidal violence that began in
2008 (Boudreaux 2015; Bowden 1998; Montero Mendoza, quoted in
Sosa 2012).
Years before this violence, Bowden (1998) warned that the un-
dervalued lives of Jurezs exploited and excluded were vulnerable
to murder with impunity. This insecure existence on the edges of
economic, social, and political inclusion is what Agamben (1998) calls
bare life. Bare life is characteristic of homo sacer, an existence on
the threshold or border between inclusion in and exclusion from the
political community. Homo sacer is excluded from social and politi-
cal life, but included because his exclusion is recognized (Agamben
1998,1718), he is not, in fact, simply set outside the law and made
indifferent to it but rather abandoned by it, that is, exposed and threat-
ened on the threshold in which life and law, outside and inside, be-
come indistinguishable (28). Homo sacer lies outside meaningful par-
ticipation in the political and social community, though he may exist
within it, and his lack of standing makes him vulnerable to death
because the community perceives his death as meaningless, ungriev-
able, or even advantageous.
Authors such as Zebada-Yaez (2005) have connected homo
sacer to Judith Butlers (2004) notion of ungrievability in the con-
text of Jurez. In Agambens biopolitical analysis, lack of mourning
is expressed in the fact that the killing of homo sacer is not subject
to punishment. There is no public injury if he is killed because his

394 social research

life is not valued, and so he may be killed with impunity. Agamben
emphasizes the sovereigns power in designating someone as homo
sacer, calling this power the originary political element (1998, 88).
Butler, on the other hand, appeals to the universality of human grief
at loss and death and explains the ungrievability of certain deaths,
which stems from the way that both state and private actors frame
(in image and discourse) the lives of those they see as other. In po-
litical and social life, there is a mutual dependency among ourselves
and others, extending beyond our familiar social circles and encom-
passing people with whom we may never have direct contact (Butler
2004, xii). However, our failure to recognize the interconnectedness
of our lives makes others less human and thus less valuable. These
lives cannot be mourned because they are always already lost (2004,
33); they are already lost in the sense that they have already been
excluded. Though Butler and Agamben differ in their approach, both
speak to the exclusion of some lives from belonging in the larger
political and social body. Such lives are unneeded, disposable, and
biologically but not socially alive. They are bare lives, lives that
are ungrievable.
Zebada-Yaez (2005) depicted the killing of women in Jurez
as a public performance that attempts to build a particular kind of
political community by claiming that the lives of lower-class women
are meaningless. The repetition of nearly identical killings performs
the idea that the victims, and women like them, are interchangeable
and replaceable. Similarly, Eisenhammer (2014) employs homo sacer to
explain both the femicides and the violence of the drug war. When
the Mexican government suspended its normal import/export and la-
bor laws to attract foreign investors in the maquiladora industry, it
created a state of exception in which workers were excluded from
the normal protections of their society and were exposed to violence
with impunity. Likewise, the killings in the drug war are justified by
criminalizing the victims, making their deaths unpunishable because
their lives were not valuable. Eisenhammer argues that some people

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 395

who are designated homo sacer turn their existence outside the law
into a capacity for their own creation of violence.
The homo sacer of Jurez exists on the border of exclusion and
inclusion because his life is valued for its economic value but not
for its social or political contributions. At the same time, the eco-
nomic value of his life is cheapened by its disposability; he is by design
replaceable by hundreds of other workers just like him. Therefore,
his existence is supported only to the extent that he adds economic
value, but he is replaced as soon as his demands upon the system
outweigh his economic usefulness. This is true in both the legal and
illegal economies. Like Zebada-Yaez argues of the femicides, the
precarity of homo sacers life stems in part from this disposability, and
his ungrievability stems in part from the repetition of murder.1 Homo
sacer is de facto abandoned by the law and is not worthy of the laws
punishment or its protection. When he is injured, the state and soci-
ety will often ignore his injuries or blame him, discounting their own
role in the public conditions that structure his choices and outcomes.
The state and society create him as homo sacer and then point to his
status to justify his ungrievability.
Public memorials are a result of the need for survivors to pro-
test the vulnerability to violence and the ungrievability of victims.
Bad deaths, those that occur unexpectedly and often violently, are
more likely to be memorialized (Klaassen et al 2009). In contrast to of-
ficial, often state-sponsored memorials, spontaneous (Santino 2004;
2006) memorials are usually created by bereaved friends or family
members (or by a community of strangers, in the case of large public
tragedies). Usually, public displays of grief are prompted by a belief
that the death was not a private, individual event, but was caused by
social or political conditions (Santino 2006). Therefore, public memo-
rials have both commemorative and performative qualities: commemora-
tive because they honor the memory of the dead and performative
because they attempt to cause social change (Santino 2004, 366).
Performativity means that there is a component of addressing a so-
cial issue, of trying to convince people, of trying to make something

396 social research

happen (Santino 2006, 1). Public memorials are indications that the
mourners have a need to have private loss socially acknowledged
and shared. The bereaved and their community, as well as the de-
ceased, demand recognition (Senie 2006, 45). In other words, these
deaths are the result of public conditions, so the survivors demand
that the public grieve. The victims name is often a prominent feature
of memorials, sharing the private loss by making the victims indi-
viduality publicly known.
Jurezs landscape is dotted with spontaneous memorials for
different kinds of deaths. Roadside crosses, usually indicating a vehic-
ular death, mark dozens of sites. Memorials to victims and presumed
victims of femicide abound: black crosses painted on a pink field ap-
pear on signposts and light poles; pink crosses fill the landscaping
outside of the Fiscala offices; and there is an official memorial to vic-
tims of femicide located in the Golden Zone near the US Consul-
ate. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the state to
construct this memorial as part of a settlement between the Mexican
government and the families of disappeared girls (El gobierno pide
2011). Small crosses along the chain-link border fence commemorate
both individual deaths and the generalized phenomenon of migrant
deaths. Of these different kinds of death and memorials, my analysis
centers on memorials for victims of homicide as part of my broader
research on the spatial causes and effects of drug war-related violence
(Boudreaux 2015). Given that approximately 90 percent of homicide
victims in Jurez from 2008 to 2011 were men (S. Cruz 2011; Pacheco
Gonzlez), and given that femicide already receives abundant atten-
tion, I focus on memorial practices linked to (mostly male) deaths
stemming from the violence linked to Jurezs social, political, and
economic condition as a border city.2

GRAFFITI MEMORIALS
The majority of the spontaneous memorials take the form of graffiti
or murals. Memorial graffiti is almost always in residential areas. With
few exceptions, the graffiti memorials are in the peripheral north-

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 397

eastern and southwestern colonias. Some are in older, more centrally
located neighborhoods, such as Colonia Aztecas and Barrio Alto, which
were the turf of local gangs that were later absorbed or eliminated
during the war between the rival cartels of Jurez and Sinaloa (ngel
2013; Lalo 2013).3 These gangs had a long tradition of memorializ-
ing their fallen in graffiti. The memorials exhibit great variation in
style, complexity, and artistic merit. They range from quick one-line
scrawls, appearing on derelict or abandoned structures crowded with
other graffiti tags, to detailed murals, often with portraits of the
deceased, on the walls of houses that are occupied and maintained
(see figure 1). The house might be the residence of the deceased, but
sometimes unrelated neighbors agree to let their walls be painted (T
2013). Murals generally remain intact; they are not tagged or marked
with other graffiti.
In most memorials, the name is prominent and often written
larger or in a different style. Edkins (this issue) argues that naming for
the purpose of memorializing, especially when done by the state, is a
highly politicized process that initiates and enforces the closure of
a particular case, event, or period. While this is true of many forms
of memorialization, naming as practiced in graffiti memorials seems
to be, in most cases, a much more intimate and open-ended gesture.
Most graffiti memorials have only first names, and these are often
nicknames. This kind of naming indicates an intimate relationship.
Sometimes the use of names seems to indicate a continuing struggle
with loss. For example, a recreational area in a northwestern colonia
is marked four times with the name Chikito, spray-painted in dif-
ferent colors and handwriting and with different messages. This rep-
etition hints at the ongoing pain of the survivors rather than closure
and acceptance of his death.
Most graffiti memorials use English phrases. The most com-
mon are the acronym RIP (Rest in Peace) and the phrase In mem-
ory of, usually written as In memori of. Occasionally, this phrase
is used in Spanish (en memoria de) and I observed one graffiti with
the Spanish expression Descanse en paz (spelled descace en paz).

398 social research

Figure 1. Calle General Tern, Colonia Mariano Escobedo. Photo by Corrie
Boudreaux.

People speculate that English is used because of Spanglish, it is a fad

that came from Los Angeles in the time of the Pachucos and later the
cholos (Luis 2014); or because the nickname of the person who died
was in English Ive seen it mostly on the border, though it exists in
other states, but not the same (Willy 2014). It is common for graffiti
in Israel and Europe to use English because modern graffiti comes
from America. It is natural for youth [] to take from that culture
what has already been created, including the use of English slogans
(Klingman and Shalev 2001, 412). This suggests the use of English in
Jurez memorials is not just a broad cultural borrowing related to
the proximity of the border, but a borrowing specifically from gang/
graffiti culture.
Graffiti commemorates the dead and functions as a form of
political speech and social protest against the public conditions that
enable killings. The name on the wall makes the absence present to
people who would not otherwise be aware of the absence; it is a dis-
play that tells everyone: Someone is missing. However, the graffiti

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 399

memorials are only implicitly performative. Their primary purpose
is commemoration of the dead. Among the sixty-odd graffiti memo-
rials that I viewed and photographed, none made explicit reference
to public conditions, justice, or questions of social change. The only
evidence of performativity is their appearance in public space (see
figure 2).
Though the creators of these graffiti memorials certainly view
the lives of their friends as grievable, graffiti as a form of memorial-
ization appears to primarily, if involuntarily, cast victims in a negative
light. Graffiti tends to be associated with illegality and delinquency
(Grillo 2004; Iveson 2010; Kramer 2010). Modern graffiti writers, be-
ginning around the 1960s and 1970s, included revolutionaries, gang
members, social activists, and disenfranchised or disillusioned youth
(Cruz Salazar 2008, 141143). All these groups had some element of
illegality, disorder, and/or subversion. Although in many cases graf-
fiti artists and their work are incorporated into the legitimate art
world, graffiti retains these elements. Some scholarly and journalistic
work looks at the role of graffiti in revolutionary or social protest
movements (Abaza 2013; Alvarez 2008; Gopnik 2011), but graffiti is
still so closely associated with gang activity that in Los Angeles, for
example, injunctions prohibit alleged gang members from possessing
anything that can be used to paint, spray paint, etch, mark, [or] draw
(Los Angeles City Attorney 2015). In Jurez, viewers tend to associate
graffiti memorials with delinquency, crime, and gang membersthat
is, precisely with the groups that might be considered homo sacer and
whose lives are ungrievable:4

It [graffiti] is a way for the families and friends to remem-

ber [the victims], I dont have anything against that. Usu-
ally the people that those are made for, thats how they
are, like cholos, from some barrio, that maybe died in a
fight, but really with all the killing there were also many
that died [in other ways], Ive also seen crosses for people
that died in an attack but that didnt have anything to do
with [] a barrio or colonia, nothing like that (Tavo 2014).5

400 social research

Figure 2. Northwestern Jurez. Photo by Corrie Boudreaux.

They were boys who were badly advised, fertile minds into
which something negative infiltrated, something wrong,
bad advice, and for a mischief of this size they paid with
their life. It is a destroyed generation, that could have func-
tioned better in society (Luis 2014).

Its something that I dont see as so common anymore, be-

fore it was very normal to see memorials in the barrios and
all that, for the deaths mostly among the gangs. Its some-
thing I think we all respect, to remember by way of the
mural, by way of the letters, its good and I think maybe
even necessary for the group from the barrio (Pepe 2014).

When I see this, I think that the person who died must
have been a pandillero [gang member] or delinquent, be-
cause although many innocent people died, only pandil-
leros remember this way. Other people remember with a
picture in their house, maybe, not with graffiti. Anyway

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 401

 most of those use the persons nickname, so that is anoth-
er reason they are pandilleros. Some of the murals are very
beautiful, I can admire the work, but it doesnt change that
he was a delinquent (Flix 2014).

These respondents agree that the street memorials are generally

created for people who were gang members, delinquents, or hood-
lums. Tavo distinguishes between the graffiti made for cholos and the
crosses erected for people that didnt have anything to do with
a barrio. He believes that different groups of people memorialize
victims in different ways, and he clearly relates the graffiti memori-
als with individuals bordering on or involved in criminality. While
Luis relates criminality to structural conditions and expresses regret
for the loss of life, he also still associates the graffiti memorials with
traits of delinquency. Pepe sees graffiti memorials as a legitimate
form of mourningfor gangs. Flix dismisses the lives memorialized
in graffiti and finds merit only in the artists skill. For Flix, the use
of nicknames is even proof of the marginality or criminality of the
deceased individual.
Strangers read the memorial graffiti as indicative not of an in-
dividual person but of a member of a group (a gang) that exists on the
margins of the law and proper life and is therefore disposable. People
who see the victims as delinquents often justify and even approve of
the killings. This is true of some private citizens such as David, but
even more uniformly and glaringly true of state actors such as police
and elected officials. Undoubtedly, many of the victims were perpetra-
tors of violence and other criminal acts, but this makes them ungriev-
able only if we forget that, as Eisenhammer and Bowden argue, the
state first created the conditions for violence. Here, only Luis reflects
on this connection, which suggests that graffiti memorials are rarely
able to elicit an affective response from a stranger and so largely fail
in reclaiming grievability.

402 social research

THE OFFICIAL VILLAS DE SALVRCAR MEMORIAL
In 2010, armed men killed fifteen people in a private party in the
Villas de Salvrcar neighborhood (Masacran a 15; Ramrez 2010).
In response, then-President Felipe Caldern said the incident was a
settling of accounts among gang members (J. L. Cruz 2011). He later
retracted this comment and publicly acknowledged the victims were
mostly students and student-athletes. Partly because of the contro-
versy his comment caused, Caldern visited Jurez and announced the
initiative Todos Somos Jurez (We are all Jurez), whose objective
was to decrease insecurity and violence through social reconstruction
(FCH presenta). One project was the construction of a memorial and
a new sports park, the Unidad Deportiva Villas de Salvrcar, dedicated
to the memory of the Salvrcar victims. This park and memorial were
built with federal, state, and municipal funds, and included a football
field, a soccer field, an amphitheater, tennis courts, basketball courts,
and a track (see figure 3).
It is unclear how much influence the family members of the
victims had on the design of the memorial and the park. Many of
Todos Somos Jurezs projects did have input from civil society in the
city as a whole (Domnguez 2012). The Salvrcar residents themselves
had formed a group to create a memorial library, but this project was
apparently co-opted by the federal government, which took credit for
its development during an inauguration ceremony (Torrea 2011; In-
augura Caldern). The Salvrcar memorial includes plaques for each
victim, personalized by messages from the families, several of which
explicitly refer to the park as a place to remember and feel the pres-
ence of the deceased. This indicates a significant level of involvement
and moral commitment from the families. There are no nicknames;
the plaques contain the full name of each victim. This is an official
record of the victims and an official closure of the event as described
by Edkins (this issue). The park and the memorial are both fenced and
padlocked. While the state represents this space as a memorial to the
victims for the community, the state continues to maintain significant
control over the space.

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 403

Figure 3. Villas de Salvrcar Memorial. Photo by Corrie Boudreaux.

The Unidad Deportiva and memorial were received with mixed

reactions. At the inauguration, the mother of one victim said, From
the root of the departure of so many angels sprung many blessings:
scholarships for young people, spaces, spaces that we did not have
[before] (quoted in Caldern inaugura memorial). Some friends of
victims demonstrated against the inauguration, arguing that it was
the governments attempt to shut their mouths and to silence the
error of not knowing how to manage the violence (Rosas 2012). In
2013, when ten people were killed in a massacre in Loma Blanca, just
outside of Jurez, a relative of those victims said, Here, we want jus-
tice [] We are not Jurez, we are not going to settle for a park (Sosa
2013), referring to the Villas de Salvrcar Park and the perception
that it was built as a substitute for justice.
While the performativity of most graffiti memorials is relative-
ly subconscious, the Salvrcar memorial is highly and self-consciously
performative. Originally, Calderns comment about the victims be-
ing gangsters implied that their deaths were not surprising or unex-
pected; that is, they were not bad deaths (Klaassen et al 2009) be-

404 social research

cause the victims were not innocent. Thus part of the public project
of the families was to clean the names of the victims (Villalpando
and Breach 2010) and make their deaths into bad deaths. This is done
very explicitly with the general dedication plaque, which says: The
Unidad Deportiva de Villas de Salvrcar Project signifies what our
children were: good, athletic youth and outstanding students. This
statement is an answer to Calderns characterization of the victims
as gang members, but it is not entirely accurate. Some students were
not athletes, and two victims were in their thirties or older. The act of
dedicating the memorial to young student-athletes excludes a num-
ber of the victims themselves. Yet the memorial, and the popular nar-
rative that accompanies the Villas de Salvrcar story, maintains this
false generalization, making these deaths especially bad.
Even more remarkably, for all the protests registered against
Calderns gangster comment, the memorial does not contest the
underlying logic of his statement. It only contests the application of
that statement to this particular case. The memorial and its surround-
ing rhetoric claim that these victims are grievable because they were
good people, i.e., Caldern was mistaken to call them gangsters.
Such rhetoric never considers the possibility that the victims might
be grievable even if they had been gangsters. It never contests the
status of other victims who remain ungrievable because they con-
tinue to be criminalized and marginalized. Possibly, the very exis-
tence of the good victims of Villas de Salvrcar even works to rein-
force the ungrievability of other victims who do not measure up to
their standards.
The rehabilitation of the Salvrcar victims has been widely suc-
cessful while other victims, especially those memorialized through
graffiti, are still seen almost invariably as delinquents. The status
that Salvrcar has achieved is even more unusual considering that it
is not the only massacre of innocents in Jurez. For example, the
massacre of Horizontes del Sur occurred just ten months later under
similar circumstances. These victims were never publicly rehabilitat-
ed or memorialized; their only memorial is the anonymous graffiti

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 405

tag In memori of los carnales scrawled on the gate of the house. In
contrast, the Salvrcar incident and its victims are an international
symbol of the violence in Jurez.6 Most significantly, their impor-
tance as a symbol and their grievability is predicated on their status
as good and innocent people.

BORDEANDO POR LA PAZ

In the early years of the drug war-related violence, a small group in
Mexico City began searching for reports of homicide in the newspa-
pers each day and embroidering these stories onto handkerchiefs
that they then displayed publicly. This movement spread to other
cities as citizens in each locale established their own versions of the
project. Local groups are generally referred to as collectives. Cecilia,
a Jurez resident, became involved with an embroidering collective
while living in another Mexican city. When she returned to Jurez in
early 2014, she founded a local collective. Beln, a resident of Jurez
from another state, had lived an insulated life in a gated community
where she rarely considered the effects of violence. A housewife with
little public interaction outside of what she calls her bubble, she
happened to meet Cecilia in the plaza where she embroidered on
Sunday afternoons. Beln took up embroidering memorials nearly
full-time. Cecilia and Beln form the core of the Jurez collective,
which they named Bordeando por la Paz. This phrase roughly
means Embroidering for Peace but has an intentional wordplay on
the words border/embroider (bordar, in Spanish) in recognition of
Jurezs geography.
I categorize the Bordeando por la Paz movement as a sponta-
neous memorial, though there are some differences. The primary dif-
ference is that Cecilia and Beln memorialize strangers whose deaths
they know of only through newspaper reports. They attempt to simul-
taneously draw attention to the overall scale of the violence by pro-
viding a visual reminder (one handkerchief for each death) while also
personalizing these often-overwhelming numbers by naming and rec-
ognizing each individual victim. The newspaper accounts from which

406 social research

the records of homicides are drawn, however, thwart their attempts
at personalization. Many of these accounts do not name the victim(s),
so the handkerchief memorials often end up being anonymous.
Brief, economized sentences tell understated tales of tragedy, such as
Worker shot to death in hamburger stand. The name, that element
of the memorial that seems so essential for personalizing and human-
izing the victim, is lacking. When present, the name does not serve
as an official identity, as in the Salvrcar memorial, nor as indicative
of an intimate relationship, as in the graffiti memorials. Rather, the
name serves to humanize and individualize the victim and to set him
or her apart from the thousands of other victims. In some cases, it
might serve to create a fictitious relationship between the victim and
the embroiderer: Beln relates that she will speak to the victims by
name while embroidering their handkerchiefs.
The handkerchiefs are displayed every other week in the Plaza
del Monumento, so named because its central feature is a monument
to Benito Jurez. Cecilia and Beln hang their handkerchiefs on the
fence that surrounds the monument (see figure 4). Cecilia chose this
location because of its centrality and the Sunday pedestrian traffic.
Hanging the handkerchiefs on the fence is a snub to the government
because, Cecilia explains, its a public monument, its public space,
and the government closed it [by erecting the fence]. Okay, well then
I am going to resignify the space by hanging the handkerchiefs on
your fence. Its about resignifying the space, reappropriating the
same space. The fences purpose was allegedly to protect and pre-
serve the monument, but Cecilia and Beln believe that the fence was
the governments reaction against social and political protests held
there. Cecilias choice of location demonstrates the overtly politicized
nature of her project. Her aim is to achieve maximum visibility, while
also taking advantage of the opportunity to slight a government that
she feels is unresponsive and thus implicated in the killings.
The women see their work as a political and social protest
addressed to local and national leadership, other citizens, and even
the perpetrators of violence themselves. It is also a highly personal

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 407

Figure 4. Embroidering for Peace handkerchiefs in the Plaza del
Monumento. Photo by Corrie Boudreaux.

project that seeks to rehabilitate the victims, but in a different way

than the Salvrcar memorial. That memorial declared: these victims
are grievable because they were innocent. The collectives work is
to rehabilitate the victims regardless of their guilt or innocence.
Beln expresses this sentiment as follows: When I take up the hand-
kerchief, I feel like I am embracing these people, whether they were
good or bad, or rather, the circumstances of life are what make you
belong to one group or another. For me embroidering is simply an act
of love (see figure 5).
She extends this offering of love to all victims, regardless of
their background. Cecilia describes her philosophy in similar terms:

Yes, it is very probable that we are embroidering for sicari-

os[7] or for people who were involved [in violence], but you
cant know from a newspaper article who someone was.
Weve received criticism, or people who have said, I wont
embroider because I dont know if they were sicarios, well

408 social research

Figure 5. Beln embroiders a memorial handkerchief. Photo by Corrie
Boudreaux.

fine, dont embroider. But I really think that we are all

part of the system and the fact that a person has decided
to become a drug dealer, a sicario, a lookout for organized
crime, it is part of the system, the lack of education, the
lack of work opportunities, the system itself is so corrupt.
Im not saying those people are good, but I believe that
there is a social responsibility and it is much broader, we
are all part of the same system and even though you were
a sicario, you ended up dead in a very violent manner and I
cant say if you deserved it or not. The only thing we do is
give testimony, leave evidence of whats happening in this
country.... [The criminals are also] part of the victims.

Cecilia and Beln protest the abandonment of certain lives and claim
grievability for all. Even bad guys ought to be grieved because they
were a part of the same society and their deaths are both born of and
have an impact on the conditions of that society. They argue that the

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 409

killings, however much the result of the victims individual choices,
are also linked to the structural violence (Galtung 1969) of poverty,
economic conditions, and political corruption. This conviction is the
inspiration for their memorials, which they publish in a space they
see as symbolic of these conditions.
The Embroidering for Peace project is an invitation to reflect,
not only on the individual victim but also on the effect of the kill-
ings on family members, on the community, and on the social fabric
of an entire city and country. Beln says that her efforts to recover
the humanity and dignity of the victims are her small contribution
to Jurezs recovery from violence. It is likely true that many vic-
tims were involved in something. But ultimately, the handkerchief
memorial stands for the idea that guilt is secondary. Every life lost
counts as a part of the victims of public conditions and so deserves
to be grieved.

CONCLUSION
Jurezs history and experience make it a salient case study, but in
every community one finds excluded groups and individuals whose
lives are somehow valued less. With each memorial, survivors insist
This life mattered, and they demand that the rest of their community
also recognize the value of the life. This demand is valid for many
reasons, but I limit my discussion here to two issues that are more
practical because they refer to the communitys self-interest rather
than resting solely on moral exhortations about the inherent value
of life.
One way that we abandon a life and make it ungrievable is
by viewing it as irrelevant, by maintaining our physical and social
distance. Because it is outside the borders of our social interactions,
its existence does not affect us, nor do we affect it. We never knew
it existed to begin with; therefore its loss is not a loss at all. But
these deaths are in fact relevant because they occur within a system
in which we all play a part. The relevance is admittedly difficult to
detect sometimesthe conditions that lead to deaths are often hid-

410 social research

den, and the sheer numbers of deaths in Jurez, especially during the
worst years of violence, surpassed what the police and even the media
had the time and resources to investigate.
Yet even as compassion fatigue set in, resulting in the deper-
sonalization and dehumanization of victims, the entire community
was injured by the killings. The magnitude of violence was so great
that people who might not otherwise have been aware of the situation
became highly sensitive to the environment of insecurity and reacted
by making adjustments in their daily lives. The violence had a pro-
found negative effect on the economy, for example, which touched
the city as a whole as people closed businesses and abandoned their
homes. Even in their personal lives, most residents, whether or not
they experienced violence directly, felt forced to change their habits
such as dress, speech, and patterns of social interaction. They stopped
wearing certain clothing or driving certain cars in order to avoid be-
ing targets of theft or kidnapping; they stopped making small talk
with strangers in public and became very careful of their words; they
changed their daily routes to school and work and avoided being out
in public after dark. In this way, the community as whole was injured
by the killings.
Ungrievability can also stem from the justification of killing
based on the victims past or potential bad acts. In this vein, some
killings are seen as beneficial to the community because they remove
a threat and deliver justice. These cases go beyond the indifference
through which the law abandons people to encompass an active ap-
proval of their death. However, even if we accept that these victims
were guilty of something for which they deserved punishment, kill-
ing them in the streets is not justice. This kind of street justice
ignores the role of structural conditions for violence and places the
blame entirely on the individual without considering how exclusion
and abandonment contribute to violence. Additionally, the killing
does not allow for public recognition of guilt and justice according
to the law. It only continues the cycle of persons who exist on the
border between inclusion and exclusion and creates a new genera-

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 411

tion of homo sacer. Homo sacer is abandoned by the law, which means
he is subject to violence with impunity, but he is also not subject to
relevant sanctions of the law. A person guilty of murder should be
tried and punishedby the law. The laws failure to do so gives him
impunity for his victims injuries (thus, his victims have been aban-
doned by the law); he is vulnerable to death but not execution (literally
or figuratively). His victims and their survivors may still never know
who was responsible for their loss. This is not justice.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
The author thanks Jimmy Huck; the Stone Center for Latin American
Studies of Tulane University for research support; the editors of this
special issue for their comments; and the residents of Ciudad Jurez
who contributed to this research.

NOTES
1. Jurez averaged 810 murders per day at the height of the violence in
2010.
2. I use the term drug war-related (though I am not completely satis-
fied with it) because I believe that most violence in Jurez since
2008 is related to the battle among rival criminal organizations and
the state, that is, the drug war. I do not say drug-related violence
because much of this violence, while stemming from the generalized
conditions of heightened violence and impunity caused by the drug
war, is not necessarily related to drugs. The drug war, not drugs, has
been a root cause of generalization of violence as a means of conflict
resolution.
3. I refer to the period of violence as the war because most of my
acquaintances and interviewees in Jurez use this term.
4. During individual interviews, I asked people what they thought when
they saw memorial graffiti.
5. Cholo roughly translates to gangster but it is frequently applied to
people who are not actual gangsters but who express a style of dress,
speech, taste in music, etc, that is associated with gang or hood life.

412 social research

 Barrio means neighborhood but often connotes a low-class area,
meaning something more like the hood.
6. I believe that this difference in treatment stems from Calderns
involvement in the Salvrcar massacre. He did not get involved in the
aftermath of the Horizontes del Sur massacre and so there was never
the same degree of media coverage and public outcry.
7. A sicario is a hitman for organized crime.

REFERENCES
Abaza, Mona. 2013. Walls, Segregating Downtown Cairo and the
Mohammed Mahmud Street Graffiti. Theory, Culture & Society 30 (1):
122139.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Alvarez, Maribel. 2008. La Pared que Habla: A Photo Essay about Art
and Graffiti at the Border Fence in Nogales, Sonora. Journal of the
Southwest 50 (3): 279304.
ngel. 2013. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Beln. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Boudreaux, Corinne. 2015. The City Framed: A Photographic
Examination of Space and Violence in Ciudad Jurez. PhD diss.,
Tulane University.
Bowden, Charles. 1998. Jurez, The Laboratory of our Future. New York:
Aperture.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.
London and New York: Verso.
Campbell, Howard. 2012. Narco-Propaganda in the Mexican Drug War:
An Anthropological Perspective. Latin American Perspectives, April
30.
Cecilia. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Cruz, Juan Luis. 2011. Las Masacres Mancharon la Historia de Jurez. El
Universal, January 2. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/estados/79135.
html.

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 413

Cruz, Salvador. 2011. Homicidio Masculino en Ciudad Jurez. Costos de
las Masculinas Subordinadas. Frontera Norte 23 (46): 239262.
Cruz Salazar, Tania. 2008. Instantneas Sobre el Graffiti Mexicano:
Historias, Voces y Experiencias Juveniles. ltima Dcada 29:
137157.
David. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Domnguez, Daniel. 2012. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Telephone
interview.
Edkins, Jenny. 2016. Names without Bodies, Bodies without Names.
Social Research 83 (2): 359390.
Eisenhammer, Stephen. 2014. Bare Life in Ciudad Jurez: Violence in a
Space of Exclusion. Latin American Perspectives 41 (2): 99109.
El Gobierno Pide Perdn y Abre un Memorial para los Feminicidios en
Jurez. 2011. CNN Mexico, November 7. http://mexico.cnn.com/
nacional/2011/11/07/el-gobierno-pide-perdon-y-abre-un-memorial-
por-los-feminicidios-en-juarez.
FCH Presenta Estrategia para Ciudad Jurez. 2010. El Economista
February 11. http://eleconomista.com.mx/sociedad/2010/02/11/
fch-llega-ciudad-juarez-12-dias-multi-homicidio.
Flix. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Fuentes, Csar. 2012. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Fuentes, Csar M., and Sergio Pea. 2010a. Globalization, Transborder
Networks, and US-Mexico Border Cities. In Cities and Citizenship at
the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Paso del Norte Metropolitan Region, edited by
Kathleen Staudt, Csar M. Fuentes, and Julia E. Monrrez Fragoso,
119. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
. 2010b. Globalization and its Effects on the Urban Socio-spatial
Structure of a Transfrontier Metropolis: El Paso, TXCiudad
Jurez, Chih.Sunland-Park, NM. In Cities and Citizenship at the
U.S.-Mexico Border: The Paso del Norte Metropolitan Region, edited by
Kathleen Staudt, Csar M. Fuentes, and Julia E. Monrrez Fragoso,
93117. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Galtung, Johan. 1969. Violence, Peace, and Peace Research. Journal of
Peace Research 6 (3): 167191.

414 social research

Garza, Victoriano. 2012. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Gibler, John. 2011. To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War. San
Francisco: City Lights Books.
Goldstein, Daniel. 2004. The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in
Urban Bolivia. Durham: Duke University Press.
Gopnik, Blake. 2011. Revolution in a Can. Foreign Policy 189: 9293.
Grillo, Ioan. 2004. Concrete Canvas. Business Mexico 14 (6): 4849.
Irwin-Zarecka, Iwona. 1994. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of
Collective Memory. New Brunswick: Transaction.
Iveson, Kurt. 2010. The Wars on Graffiti and the New Military Urbanism.
City 14 (12): 115134.
Klaassens, Mirjam, Peter Groote, and Paulus P. P. Huigen. 2009. Roadside
Memorials from a Geographical Perspective. Mortality: Promoting
the Interdisciplinary Study of Death and Dying 14 (2): 187201.
Klingman, Avigdor, and Ronit Shalev. 2001. Graffiti: Voices of Israeli
Youth Following the Assassination of the Prime Minister. Youth
and Society 32: 403420.
Kramer, Ronald. 2010. Moral Panics and Urban Growth Machines:
Official Reactions to Graffiti in New York City, 19902005.
Qualitative Sociology 33: 297311.
Los Angeles City Attorney. 2015. Permanent Civil Injunctions. http://
www.lacityattorney.org/#!gang-injunction/c1y6a.
Lalo. 2013. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Luis. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Masacran a 15 jvenes en Jurez. 2010. El Universal, February 7. Accessed
December 1, 2012. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/175481.
html.
Olivas, Juan de Dios. October 2013. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux.
Ciudad Jurez.
Pacheco Gonzlez, Sergio. Homicidios en Ciudad Jurez, 20082011.
Observatorio de Seguridad y Convivencia Ciudadanas del Municipio
de Jurez. Pepe. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad
Jurez.

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 415

Piccato, Pablo. 2001. City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 19001930.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Ramrez, Carlos. 2010. Ejecutan a Estudiante de la Generacin Diez,
Premiado por Gobernador. El Mexicano February 1. Ros, Victor.
2011. Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York:
New York University Press.
Ros, Viridiana. 2010. To Be or Not to Be a Drug Trafficker: Modeling
Criminal Occupational Choices. April 27. Unpublished working
paper, Department of Government, Harvard University.
Rosas, Juan Ramn. 2012. Nos Quieren Callar la Boca con un Parque:
Amigos de Vctimas de Villas de Salvrcar. El Mexicano, February
12. http://www.oem.com.mx/elmexicano/notas/n2432826.htm.
Santino, Jack. 2004. Performative Commemoratives, the Personal, and
the Public: Spontaneous Shrines, Emergent Ritual, and the Field of
Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore 117 (466): 363372.
, ed. 2006. Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death.
New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Senie, Harriet F. Mourning in Protest: Spontaneous Memorials and the
Sacralization of Public Space. In Spontaneous Shrines and the Public
Memorialization of Death, edited by Jack Santino, 4156. New York:
Palgrave MacMillan.
Sibley, David. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion. New York: Routledge.
Sosa, Luz del Carmen. 2012. Plasma CASA en Libro 18 Aos de Apoyo
a Jvenes que Viven en Ambiente Hstil. El Diario, December
12. Accessed December 13. http://diario.mx//Local/2012-12-
11_525615aa/ plasma-casa-en-libro-18-anos-de-apoyo-a-jovenes-
que-vivenen-ambiente-hostil/.
. 2013. Llora el Pueblo; Reclaman a Policas: Dnde Estaban? El
Diario de Jurez September 25. Page 1A.
T. 2013. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Tavo. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Torrea, Judith. 2011. Jurez en la Sombra: Crnicas de una Ciudad que se Resiste
a Morir. Madrid: Santillana Ediciones Generales, S.L.
Vernica. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.

416 social research

Villalpando, Rubn, and Miroslava Breach. 2010. Sube a 16 el Nmero
de Vctimas de la Masacre en Ciudad Jurez. La Jornada, February 2.
http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/02/02/estados/028n1est.
Willy. 2014. Interviewed by Corrie Boudreaux. Ciudad Jurez.
Zebeda-Yaez, Vernica. 2005. Killing as Performance: Violence and
the Shaping of Community. E-misfrica 2 (2). http://hemispheric
institute.org/journal/2_2/zebadua.html.

Public Memorialization and the Grievability of Victims in Ciudad Jurez 417

Notes on Contributors
maurizio albahari, a fellow at the
Nanovic Institute for European Studies
and faculty affiliate at the Center
for Civil and Human Rights, is the
author of Crimes of Peace: Mediterranean
Migrations at the Worlds Deadliest Border
(2015). He has also published on migra-
tion, refugee issues, and religious
diversity in the Euro-Mediterranean
context.
corrie boudreaux holds a PhD in
Latin American studies from Tulane
University, where she teaches in the
Communication Department. Her
research interests include violence,
Latin American cities, drug trafficking,
security, media, and photography.
mariana prandini assis, a PhD candi-
date in politics at the New School for
Social Research, is interested in how
social movements make use of rights
discourse on both the transnational
and local levels. Her current research
focuses on the feminist movement and
womens human rights.
arely cruz-santiago is a doctoral
researcher based at Durham
Universitys department of geogra-
phy. A co-investigator on the ESRC
(UK)-sponsored Citizen-Led Forensics
project, she has been president of the
Mexican NGO Gobernanza Forense
Ciudadana since 2012.
alexandra dlano alonso is assis-
tant professor of global studies and
co-director of the Zolberg Institute on
Migration and Mobility at The New
School. She is the author of Mexico and
Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of
Emigration since 1848 (2011, 2014).
pablo dominguez galbraith, a PhD
candidate in the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton
University, studies migration, security,
and human rights, drawing on narra-
tives of violence, exclusion, refugee
status, and human mobility across
Latin America.
mercedes doretti is a cofounder
of the Latin America Forensic
Anthropology Association. A recipient
of the Human Rights Watch Monitor
Award in 1991 and 1998, among other
awards, she has also served as a board
member of the UN Voluntary Board for
Victims of Torture.
jenny edkins is a professor of inter-
national politics at Aberystwyth
University. Her recent books include
Face Politics (2015) and Missing: Persons
and Politics (2011). She is currently
completing a monograph entitled
Memory, Security, Politics.
erdem evren studied sociology, social
anthropology and political science in
Istanbul, London, and Berlin. He has
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.