Feminicide and the Funeralization of the City: On Thing Agency and Protest Politics in Ciudad Juárez

Using evidence from ethnographic work in the US–Mexico border region, this article develops the term "the funeralization of the city" as a novel category through which to analyze the protests that emerged in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua City to denounce the murder and disappearance of nearly 1,500 women and girls since 1993. The funeralization of the city, a peculiar repertoire of protest that operates through the public display of memorial objects, like pink crosses, monuments, graffiti, victims' photographs, and others, extends the activists' struggle to make feminicide visible amid widespread attempts to conceal it. The article contributes to ongoing debates on object-oriented ontology beyond the scope of environmental and green politics by providing a rich description of both, the objects themselves and the activists' interpretations of their role in the anti-feminicide struggle.