Women, violence and tourism: modes of domination in the Mexican Caribbean

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze and determine the factors that reinforce the precariousness experienced by women in Cancún, Mexico’s most important international tourism city. For this research, we follow the literature on the structure of coloniality, as well as critical research on the relations between domination and violence against women. We identify three aspects. First, the mechanisms inherited from the social differentiation since colonization between central (Western) and peripheral (non-Western) actors. Second, the fracture of the social fabric built by tourism between tourists and locals. Third, the patriarchal structure that particularly affects women. We ask ourselves to what extent the democratization process has not modified a postcolonial society for women. We show this through the study of a threefold event: a feminicide, the protest it triggered and the implausible repressive response of the state. We realize that bringing the debate on femicides to the public arena in Cancún implies a significant barrier (because the city depends on its international reputation). Usually, research on the subject concentrates on one or two variables; our work contributes to the state of the field by intertwining multiples ways of domination experienced by woman who suffer most from the so-called intersectionality (racism, classism, xenophobia, heterosexism). This allows us to understand how and why women in civil society demonstrating against gender violence can be repressed with impunity. We conclude with the fact that oppression is physical but also legal (justice and Rule of Law) and that both are pending issues in the democratization process.