School of Social & Political Sciences

What can a women’s embroidery collective in Mexico tell us about structures of patriarchy and femicide in Latin America?

Across Latin America, femicide - the gender-based killing of women - has become an urgent political issue in the region. The term was first written about in Latin America by Mexican feminist Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos in 1997, distinguishing the killing of women against that of men for its expression of broader social issues of gender inequality, colonial legacy and state complicity. In the past two decades, several governments in the region have introduced legislation that recognises femicide as a distinct crime, marking a formal commitment to women’s rights. Yet despite this, high rates of violence and impunity remain widespread. This contradiction reveals the historical and structural forces that prevent women’s safety and access to justice. Gender inequality in Latin America has not emerged in isolation but is deeply rooted in colonial systems that institutionalised patriarchal authority and racial hierarchies, shaping a culture that decides whose lives are valued and whose suffering is ignored. With Latin America recording the second-highest homicide rate of women in the world in 2013, these legacies are continuing to act as powerful influences on both the lives of women and the functioning of contemporary institutions.

In this blog, I will focus on the activism of a feminist embroidery collective in Mexico, looking at grassroots mobilisation in a country where legal protections against femicide exist, but high levels of violence continue to occur. This reveals the nature of femicide as not merely a criminal issue but also a structural and political one. Feminist activism against continued violence and impunity within a formal democracy challenges contemporary institutional failure. Bringing attention to the longer histories of gendered marginalisation that continue to affect politics in Latin America today.

Oscar Lopez’s Guardian article profiles an embroidery collective in Mexico that stitches the names of victims of femicide onto pieces of fabric, which are then used to construct large quilts of political art. Whilst this could be dismissed as a quiet artistic practice, the article conveys how the sewing and presentation of these quilts in the public sphere constitute a powerful act of political resistance. Each embroidered name represents a woman killed because of her gender, with the collective’s aim to prevent these victims from becoming anonymised statistics.

Artist De La Rosa, alongside activist friends Díaz and Guzmán, started this work after the violent killing of Ingrid Escamilla and the subsequent leaking of explicit images of her body. Horrified by both the brutality of this murder and the normalisation of the violence that occurred, they felt a need to memorialise the victims and call attention to the problem of cultural normalisation of these crimes. The article outlines that in 2025, between January and June, 1420 women were murdered, indicating Mexico’s widespread femicide crisis. Activists cited in this article point to persistent impunity, inadequate investigation, and institutional indifference. In bringing private grief into the public space, members of this collective honour the dead whilst also demanding accountability from the state. This article highlights a central issue in Mexican politics that is evident throughout Latin America. Despite formal democratic rights, there is persistent and damaging inequality, with activism needed to draw attention to the structural issues that continue to have destructive effects on women’s lives.

The persistence of femicide experienced across Latin America can be understood as a continuation of long-standing structures of gendered and racialised inequality. The colonisation and Spanish conquest across the region were marked by structural violence that involved intimidation and sexual force, most intensely experienced by indigenous and black women. Men and women were disempowered and subjected to violence throughout the population, with structural mechanisms of racial and gendered subordination used by colonisers to sustain power. These systems of domination were then embedded within emerging legal, religious, and political institutions. This led to the establishment of patriarchal and racially biased cultural norms, as well as formal institutional methods to subjugate and control women and minorities. All of this served to advance the European colonial project and, later, the dictatorships and leaders that emerged during civil wars. In this context, violence against certain groups of women was not treated as a crime but as a mechanism of social rule. Normalising gendered and racialised subordination within the foundations of the state.

Although Latin American countries have since transitioned to independent republics and democratic systems, these institutional foundations were never entirely dismantled. De Souza and Rodrigues Selis (2022) highlight how colonial governance structures have been adapted and reproduced within postcolonial institutions. Explaining contemporary femicide not as individual criminal acts but as a historical continuity of the state’s failure to treat all citizens as worthy of equal rights and protection.

Within this context, the persistence of femicide reveals fundamental struggles in the politics of Latin America. Whilst democratic governance has expanded formal rights, the deeply embedded colonial hierarchies continue to impact societal structures. Women, particularly those who are poor and indigenous, experience a form of citizenship where protection from the state is conditional and not guaranteed. The violence in Mexico outlined in this article, therefore, indicates not just individual tragedy but historical legacies that have limited the effectiveness of institutional reform.

So how exactly does this manifest in contemporary governments? High impunity rates and failures to adequately police and provide judicial justice for acts of violence against women are common. Whilst widespread implementation of laws and human rights commitments has been formally outlined to tackle the epidemic, they are failing to reduce female homicide rates significantly. Marszalkowska highlights two leading causes of this impunity. Firstly, this is due to inadequate protection, crime investigations, and justice/support for victims. Public officials and state structures are failing women, with many individuals continuing to be influenced by long-standing patriarchal cultures. Secondly, an established and accepted legal definition of the crime is not present across Latin America, so approaches vary widely between countries. There is no uniform and practical approach to tackle the issue, and so perpetrators continue to get away with their crimes. This, in turn, furthers a culture of normalisation and impunity, which then only intensifies the issue. Improvements may be seen on paper, but they are not being effectively implemented. Politics in Latin America showcases democratic institutions that are unevenly consolidated, with formal rights but inconsistent enforcement.

Given this institutional failure, feminist activism has emerged as a crucial site of political intervention. The embroidery collective profiled in the Guardian article exemplifies alternative political spaces growing in response to impunity. As Hume and Wilding (2020) argue, women’s agency in violent contexts cannot be reduced to formal acts like reporting abuse or securing prosecution. Instead, it is relational and shaped by structural constraints, often expressed through everyday practices of survival, solidarity, and dignity. When engagement with state institutions is ineffective or risky, collective and informal strategies become politically meaningful. The embroidery collective reflects this grounded agency, as while not operating through formal legal mechanisms, it directly challenges the conditions that allow femicide to persist.

Branigan further shows how activism not only holds states accountable but also highlights the human impacts of impunity. Impunity extends beyond the legal sphere, damaging relationships, fostering isolation, and shifting the burden of justice onto victims’ families. Often, grieving relatives must conduct their own investigations and sustain public pressure to access legal action. This civic labour illustrates how impunity is sustained not only through legal failure but through deeper patterns that normalise limited state accountability.

Femicide reveals a model of citizenship in Latin America in which protection and representation are not guaranteed but demanded through collective struggle. Grassroots mobilisation thus exposes the political system’s limitations and the historical continuities shaping contemporary governance.

Even during my own time in Latin America, which must be understood as coming from an external perspective, I experienced aspects of the lack of safety for women. Whilst this is a global issue and there is a lot of regional variability, it was apparent in my time there that harassment and assault were treated as routine rather than exceptional. Whilst I had many privileges that helped me feel safe, in moments when I was unsafe, it was never state presence that provided protection, but local networks of women who intervened and ensured my wellbeing. It was clear that safety operated through informal solidarity rather than state protection. Adding to an understanding of femicide, not as individual crimes but because of the uneven distribution of security and citizenship that normalises violence towards women.

Ultimately, the persistence of femicide across Latin America shows that formal democratic rights do not automatically ensure equal protection under the law. Access to safety and justice remains shaped by historical hierarchies of gender, race, and class that continue to structure political life. The activism explored in this blog demonstrates that resistance emerges when institutions fail. These movements do more than demand punishment; they expose structural weaknesses in the state and insist that women’s lives be treated as politically significant. Femicide, therefore, reveals something fundamental about politics in Latin America. It highlights not only legal failures but also the impact of enduring systems rooted in colonial hierarchies of control, exposing flaws in democratic governance where justice must be collectively demanded rather than guaranteed.

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This blog is part of the SPS Student Academic Blog series. You can read more contributions from the series here.

First published: 21 May 2026