Feminicide in Abya Yala

Gender and Coloniality

Gender-based violence, feminicide, coloniality of gender, feminisms

Femicide in Abya Yala is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather the most extreme expression of a colonial, patriarchal and capitalist system, that has left women – particularly those who are racialised and impoverished – dispossessed and abused. This entry explores its historical roots, its links with organised crime and state impunity. Moreover, it also brings to the fore those responses offered by community feminism, that seek to identify, resist, and transform the structures that perpetuate these forms of violence.

Katherine Esponda Contreras

Katherine Esponda Contreras is a specialist in Culture of Peace and International Humanitarian Law. She is the director of the specialization in Interculturality and Gender Studies and the master’s degree in Cultural Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente – Cali, Colombia. Katherine combines university teaching with applied research, community work, and support for educational and social institutions.

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Disponible en español: Feminicidio en Abya Yala: Género y colonialidad

Available in English: Femicide in Abya Yala: Gender and Coloniality

Abstract

This entry examines femicide within the broader framework of gender-based violence from a decolonial perspective. We understand femicide to emerge from deep-rooted power imbalances and from cultural norms that perpetuate discrimination against women. Such violence manifests itself in physical, psychological and structural forms, often intensified by institutional rulings and social impunity. In Abya Yala,¹ femicide rates are remarkably high, highlighting the urgency of adopting intersectional approaches that take on board the complex interaction between gender, social class, ethnic origin and sexual orientation. These factors generate diverse experiences of vulnerability among women; hence, it is crucial to address both the structural conditions and the deep-rooted causes that allow such violence to persist and escalate.

With this objective in mind, we analyse the complexity of femicide through a lens that is decolonial and is stemmed in community feminism, delving into its structural, historical and cultural dimensions. We begin by presenting a conceptual definition of femicide, highlighting its structural and institutional character. We then revise its theoretical genealogy, drawing on the contributions of key authors such as Marcela Lagarde, Diana Russell and Rita Segato, in order to discuss the categories and subcategories that help us identify its multiple manifestations. Subsequently, as we contextualise femicide in Abya Yala, we explain the notion of coloniality of gender and emphasize the role of history and the State in its reproduction. We also look into femicide as a form of femicide as a form of propaganda used to dispossess people of their bodies, social ties and territories in contemporary scenarios characterised by the intersection of organised crime and territorial conflicts. Finally, we present forms of resistance developed by community feminisms, which advocate for autonomy, self-defence and collective care vis-à-vis a state that has failed in its duty to protect.

1. Feminicide as a Form of Gender-Based Violence (GBV)

Feminicide represents the most extreme form of gender-based violence (GBV). It is defined as the killing of women based solely on their gender, and constitutes a more specific phenomenon than the killing of women in general, as the latter does not consider gendered motivations as structurally constitutive of the violent act.² This entry seeks to explain what feminicide entails in Abya Yala and how it has been theorised, analysed and problematised by community feminisms.

To understand social phenomena such as gender-based violence and feminicide, it is necessary to conceptualise violence as a multidimensional expression in accordance with its perception, nature, or relationship indicator (Esponda, 2023; Plaza, 2007; OHCHR, 2012; Krug et al., 2002). GBV is manifested through direct violence (actions that affect an individual’s physical and psychological integrity), and indirect violence (it’s possible to recognise its impact on the lives of women and sexually diverse individuals, as well as its consequences). Within indirect violence we find, on the one hand, structural violence, which refers to social, political and legal configurations that create the conditions for inequalities and injustices to be reproduced. Similarly, cultural violence operates within the symbolic sphere in which we all come and go, and to which we contribute through our actions. This form of violence has an influence as a reference in relation to our particular ways of behaving in both public and private spheres.

Gender-based violence is any violent act associated with the exercise of power resulting from a social and cultural configuration that grants asymmetric and differentiated power to men and women, and discriminates against individuals based on their gender and/or non-normative sexual orientation. According to Colombia’s National Observatory of Violence (Observatorio Nacional de Violencia, ONV), analysing the concept of gender-based violence requires revisiting the cultural and social factors that shape social representations of power relations, social values and expectations, identifying in so doing all those elements that constitute a risk factor for becoming a victim of GBV. Gender-based violence occurs mainly in interpersonal contexts, though not exclusively within the family context or a relationship. In fact, interpersonal relations can also give rise to community violence against women, which presents certain characteristics worth highlighting:

it may take place between people who are not related or who do not know each other;
it may occur in public spaces; and
it could well come hand in hand by institutional violence (Krug et al., 2002).

2. A Genealogy of the Concept

The concept of femicide first appeared in academic literature in the early nineteenth century in the United Kingdom to denote the murder of a woman. Although the term fell into disuse for some time, Diana Russell (2008) reintroduced the category in 1976 in order to highlight the sexist nature of fatal violence against women within the North American context. Her approach underscored the killing of women as a consequence of their gender, encompassing both the misogynistic character of the violence and the sexist motivations underlying such murders (Caputi and Russell, 1990).

The incorporation of the term femicidio into Spanish is generally used to refer on a more general basis to the killing of a woman on the basis of her gender. It serves as a nominative parallel to the term homicidio (from the Latin homo, meaning “man” or “human being”). Marcela Lagarde (2008) adapts this category within the Latin American context, introducing the concept of feminicidio and adding dimensions of impunity, institutional violence, and lack of diligence in investigating deaths – all situations that are not unusual in the Latin American region, where state inaction or neglect often exacerbates gender-based violence. The concept has since evolved to encompass all forms of gender-based violence against women that result in death, whether directly or indirectly. This, in turn, allows for the existence of crimes such as covert feminicide which, according to Russell (2006, 2008), include veiled forms of killing women, or allowing for the termination of their lives because of misogynistic attitudes and decisions. It also comprises practices that devalue women’s lives or lead to their deaths. Additionally, feminicidal suicide (Gambetta, 2022) refers to a form of forced suicide, in which suicide becomes a woman’s only possible means of escape from an escalating spiral of violence.

Feminicidio illustrates the causal relationships among these various forms of violence. It is defined as a femicidal crime against girls and women, insofar as it emphasises the social construction underlying such acts. In other words, these are crimes resulting from an escalation of gender-based violence and misogynistic hatred towards women (Lagarde, 2006). It is therefore key to distinguish between femicide and feminicide: the former refers to the killing of any woman or girl, regardless of the circumstances, whereas the latter denotes the murder of women and girls specifically because of gender-related reasons.

The killing of a woman can only be classified as feminicide if during the investigative process it is ascertained that the circumstances of her death were specifically gender-motivated. Despite the apparent precision of this definition, identifying such cases is not always straightforward, since in the context of Abya Yala, gender-related causes are experienced differently within social structures. Consequently, in many instances, institutional responses themselves become another source of re-victimisation.

Carcedo (2010) admits a broad understanding of feminicide, encompassing all avoidable deaths resulting from women’s subordination. This includes both femicides and suicides that occur within contexts of violence and discrimination. The scope further extends to deaths caused by malnutrition, HIV/AIDS – particularly when women are unable to come to an agreement regarding the use of sexual protection –, and medical negligence arising from delayed or discriminatory healthcare. In this sense, Carcedo aims to analyse the issue through the lens of “feminicide scenarios”, whereby she recognises several conditions that contribute to or enable the killing of women only because they are women, including those linked to organised crime.

From a different angle, feminicide is also understood as a hate crime that comes as a result of the disruption or attempted disruption of the patriarchal structure, which rests on two foundational pillars: (1) the control or possession of the female body, and (2) male superiority. Consequently, these are deemed as “crimes of power” insofar as they seek to retain, uphold, and reproduce an unequal distribution of power (Segato, 2006).

Across Abya Yala, the specific circumstances of feminicide vary from one country to another (Fregoso & Bejarano, 2010; Carrigan & Dawson, 2020). Nevertheless, there is institutional consensus around four subcategories of feminicide (WHO, 2012):

Intimate feminicide– committed by a man with whom the female victim had or used to have an interpersonal relationship, be it intimate, familial, or as cohabitants;
Non-intimate feminicide– committed by a man who had no intimate or familial relationship with the victim, though it includes other forms of close acquaintance with women;
Feminicide by connection– when a woman is killed while attempting to intervene, or while she is caught up, in a feminicidal act directed at another woman;
Sexual feminicide– is the type of femicide preceded by torture and sexual violence.

However, as Ospina (2023) observes, within this consensus, the subcategories remain grounded in a binary sex/gender system, thereby excluding the diverse gender identities and expressions recognised today.

3. Femicide in Abya Yala

Latin American scholars (Lagarde, 2006; Segato, 2006, 2012, 2016; Carcedo et al., 2000; Carcedo, 2010a, 2010b) have analysed feminicide within a context of misogyny and state failure. These authors emphasize that feminicide is often the product of broader social structures and historical patterns of discrimination. Such stances have given rise to decolonial, postcolonial, and community-based feminist reflections, which, by critically examining the dynamics of state oppression, bring to the fore negligence and systemic patterns as key aspects when it comes to understanding this phenomenon.

Gender-based violence is not accidental but rather is born from the condition of subordination that women have across different spheres. According to Ana Carcedo (2010), this is a matter of structural, directional, and asymmetrical violence, with a two-fold effect: on an individual level, impacting the life and integrity of a woman in her specificity; and on a collective level, serving as a mechanism of control and domination through fear. Gender-based violence is directional because it constitutes a systematic violation of human rights targeted at specific population groups, occurring within a condition of asymmetry whereby one gender has been historically subordinated to another (Nahuel, 2017). Institutional violence exacerbates feminicidal violence through acts of commission or omission, creating conditions conducive to femicide (Lagarde, 2006) and reaffirming the oppressive character of the state figure, which reproduces its colonial models. Along these lines, Lucía Melgar (2008) emphasizes that these contexts are marked by impunity and the State’s inability to adequately fulfil its duty to punish cases of fatal violence against women. Such failure constitutes a form of revictimization, as it perpetuates impunity and extends the magnitude of the damage already caused.

3.1. The Coloniality of Gender

It is essential to consider the historical structures that perpetuate gender-based violence, particularly from a decolonial perspective, in order to understand the deep-rooted causes of feminicide and its contemporary manifestations in Abya Yala. As previously noted, feminicide is the most extreme manifestation of gender-based violence, a phenomenon whose understanding is deepened even further when examining the concept of coloniality of gender. This concept, developed by postcolonial scholars such as María Lugones (2008, 2011), allows us to address dynamics of oppression, which are not only contemporary but are also deeply rooted in the colonial past.

In her analyses, Lugones highlights the ways in which colonial power structures imposed a system of racial and gender classification that subordinated Indigenous and Black women in Abya Yala, and which continues to define present-day power relations. This coloniality of gender refers to the way in which the patriarchal system, imposed by colonizers, not only forced women to be in a subordinated position, but it also structured power relations and forms of violence in ways that continue to reproduce themselves systematically. It is fair to say that gender-based violence existed prior to colonization; however, colonization imposed a specific kind of patriarchal system that embodies the logic behind the coloniality of power, which in turn is inextricably linked to other colonial hierarchies such as race and social class. In the case of feminicides, the bodies of those racialized women in conditions of poverty women, continue to be a domain of control and exploitation.

When we understand feminicide through the lens of coloniality of gender, it becomes apparent that gender-based violence is not merely the product of recent socio-cultural factors but is deeply marked by a colonial history that continues to shape power and oppression structures in our territories. Feminicidal violence is neither accidental nor individual; it is a manifestation of the historical and structural denial of women’s rights, particularly the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and women in conditions of poverty, within a Eurocentric economic-political system imposed in Latin America. Aníbal Quijano (2014) argues that the coloniality of power provides the framework under which social hierarchies, including in this case, gender hierarchies are organised.

Moreover, the debate on the coloniality of gender contributes to questioning binary categories which, as noted in the concept of feminicide, perpetuate a rigid understanding of what it means to be a woman. Scholars such as Rosi Braidotti (2015) emphasize the importance of deconstructing such categories and recognizing the plurality of gender identities and expressions beyond the traditional binary framework. From this perspective, feminicide does not only affect cisgender women, but is also linked to structural violence against trans and non-binary individuals, whose lives are equally vulnerable to gender-based violence (Ospina, 2023).

It is crucial to emphasize that historical structures and colonial hierarchies are not matters of the past, but in fact they continue to shape current power relations that intersect with gender. Feminicide is not merely the outcome of individual or cultural violence, but rather the culmination of centuries of oppression and dispossession. These practices are reproduced in contemporary structural violence, as we will see below. Only by making these historical foundations visible can we construct a more effective and decolonial response that will not only eradicate feminicide, but also transform the structures that allow for it to exist.

3.2. State Violence, Patriarchal Violence, Colonial Violence

It is necessary to acknowledge that institutions that should protect women, such as the state, are structured in accordance with colonial logics. The institutional violence mentioned by scholars such as Marcela Lagarde (2006) and Lucía Melgar (2008), is largely the representation of the persistence of a state apparatus aiming to replicate over and over women’s lack of protection. In this sense, the impunity that defines many cases of feminicide in Latin America is not merely a contemporary failure of the state; it is linked to a history of dispossession, control, and dehumanization of women under colonial domination.

In many approaches of critical feminist thought, especially within the context of Abya Yala, the idea of the state as a neutral or protective agent for women’s rights comes under questioned due to its colonial, patriarchal, and often violent history, particularly toward women from Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and/or rural communities. Therefore, instead of being an agent of liberation, the state has historically been an agent of oppression.

The structural and systematic violence endured by women – from discrimination to feminicide – often originates in the state itself, be it through impunity, corruption, or inadequate responses to gender-based violence. Consequently, community-based feminisms have emerged in various territories, advocating for the autonomy of communities and rejecting state-imposed security models.

Lugones (2008), for instance, has examined how colonialism and patriarchy are interrelated and how the modern state has served as a vehicle to maintain these power structures. According to Lugones (2008), the state has not only been a colonial instrument, but in actual fact, continues to reproduce forms of domination that oppress women, particularly Indigenous and Afro-descendant women. The colonial state, just as the contemporary state, have imposed both physical and symbolic forms of violence upon these populations, and many of those remain in effect today. Similarly, Francesca Gargallo (2020) has written about the structural oppression women experience through various institutions, including the state. She points out that: “women must be intellectually and physically weak, prone to receive aggression, passive subjects so that their consent can sustain male dominance” (Gargallo, 2020). Gargallo critiques the persistence of a patriarchal stance in law, justice, and public policy, highlighting that the state not only fails to protect women but often reinforces structural forms of violence such as feminicide, women trafficking, and workplace discrimination.

3.2.1. Contexts of Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime

Organized crime in Latin America³ has a profound impact on gender-based violence, although statistics do not always reflect this accurately. One of the main challenges is the absence of a clear, homogeneous system for classifying femicides, making it difficult to ascertain with certainty how many of these deaths are linked to criminal groups and under what conditions they take place.

A significant proportion of women’s violent deaths is related to gang disputes, drug trafficking, or territorial violence in countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, as well as Mexico and Colombia, where major drug cartels operate or have operated, and organized crime has a well-defined presence. On many occasions, these deaths are not classified as feminicides (Esponda, 2023). Nevertheless, even without legal recognition, we insist on the fact that they should be included in contextual analyses of the region, even if the cases are not explicitly marked by misogyny or sexual violence, characteristics which, under certain legalist perspectives, go unrecognised as gender-based crimes.

These discrepancies arise from varying legal definitions of feminicide across countries. Murders of women by criminal gangs are often not registered as feminicides if they do not involve an intimate partner or family member. Yet, victims of organized crime, even if killed for “personal reasons” or “revenge,” are often women caught in the dynamics of drug trafficking or gang disputes, reflecting the structural misogyny inherent in organized crime – a phenomenon Rita Segato repeatedly describes as a war against women, disproportionately affecting racialized and impoverished women.

The lack of detailed investigation and difficulty in gathering information, due to fear among victims, witnesses, or family members of reprisals from criminal organizations, compounds the problem. High levels of impunity in many countries of the region also contribute to these deaths being inadequately classified and addressed by the judicial system. The result is substantial underreporting that results in the distortion of the scale of the problem, limiting the potential for effective intervention.

What is clear is that there has been a shift in the phenomenon from the private to the public sphere. Data indicate an increase in women being murdered in public spaces, which shows a change in the dynamics of these crimes: they are no longer solely the result of intimate partner relationships, but also of widespread violence linked to organized crime. In territories controlled by drug cartels or gangs, women become victims of indiscriminate violence, be it because of their relationship with group members or simply as part of territorial conflicts between gangs.

Within these dynamics, impunity persists, as Lagarde (2006) notes: colonial power structures allow such violence to continue. Corruption among authorities and a lack of resources to investigate crimes thoroughly leave many female deaths unresolved, preventing identification of links to organized crime and the extent to which these contexts reproduce colonial power structures.

3.2.2. A Communicative Strategy of War

Rita Segato offers a complementary perspective on feminicide through the study and analysis of the cases of rape followed by homicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She proposes two categorical elements for defining feminicide: 1) in the criminal act of rape, there is an expressive and communicative dimension, and not just a not an instrumental one, and 2) there are interlocutors who are not the victims of rape, receiving this expression or message. Thus: “It is not the victim to whom the perpetrators address their discourse, but rather her peers, in an expression of the victim’s death and cruelty” (Segato, 2006, p. 6). In this sense, feminicides are not gender crimes in the conventional (intimate) sense; they are not merely expressions of gender-based violence. On the contrary, they are closer to the sense of genocide, because they attack categorical existence through specific individuals; not this woman in particular, but women in general (Segato, 2012).

From this point of view, analysing feminicide contextually and specifically is necessary to avoid what Segato (2016) calls the “will to indistinction”, which stops the characteristics of the crime from coming to light. Its specificity lies in the concentric circles representing aggressions against the female body. Therefore, to talk about feminicide requires recognizing that various factors may converge that can hide more complex realities; for instance, cases where domestic, gender-based, and social violence all overlap.

Betty Ruth Lozano (2019) contributes to the discussion on feminicidal violence by emphasizing that studies of gender-based violence must move beyond the private and familial spheres, and transcend simplistic interpretations such as romantic-passionate justifications embedded in sexist cultural violence. Lozano proposes understanding feminicide as a strategy of war that involves “a process of conquest and colonization of territories, bodies – especially women’s – and of the imaginaries of their ancestral inhabitants: Black and Indigenous communities” (2019), p. 47).

For this research, it is understood that in order to transcend the reflection of passion, there needs to be an understanding and a contrasting of the contexts in which women die. It is, therefore, urgent to present violence against women as a strategy of war within the projects of global accumulation of capital, so as to identify solutions that ensure peaceful lives for all, women and men.

In territories, GBV is used as a weapon of war, with sexual violence being the most common form (Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, 2022). In territorial disputes and control dynamics, cycles of violence often target women specifically. A very clear example can be found in the so-called “feminicide plan”. According to the statements brought about by organizations within civil society and mass media, in September 2024, the self-proclaimed Gaitanista Army of Colombia in Quibdó threatened via social media to put into action a “feminicide plan”, a systematic war strategy targeting women (mothers, sisters, friends, or partners) who were directly or indirectly connected to conflict agents (Pares, 2024).

4. “The State Does Not Protect Me. My Friends Protect Me”

Considering resistance to feminicide from a decolonial perspective is not only possible but necessary. This is why Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s reflections (2010) invites us to think of forms of struggle emerging from the margins, specifically from women and historically oppressed collectives. The fight against feminicide is not limited to highlighting crimes within institutional frameworks but also requires radical transformation of colonial power structures that allow such violence to persist.

Community feminisms believe that the solution lies in the strengthening of local support networks, creating autonomous justice systems, and managing violence independently (Martínez, 2019; Cabnal, 2010). This is why there exist multiple forms of activism aimed in this direction. For instance, the performance of the Chilean collective Las Tesis sing to denounce: “The rapist is you. / The cops, / the judges, / the state, / the President. / The oppressive state, you are all a male rapist.” Through performative action, these women publicize the central tenets of feminism, including the patriarchal mandate in which individuals are educated and within which they socialise today.

From a decolonial, feminist, and popular education perspective, Claudia Korol (2016) recognizes the centrality of communities in life’s preservation. In the 1990s, she co-founded the Juana Azurduy team in Bolivia and later the Popular Education group Pañuelos en Rebeldía at the University of Mothers, focused on the pedagogical core of autonomy and on the study of GBV.

The growth of the Ni Una Menos movement and community feminisms such as Korol’s, prompted deeper analysis of violence as part of a patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist system rather than isolated acts. Incorporating historical perspectives on gender violence in the context of Abya Yala’s genocides led her to work with other organizations in a collective denunciation of the patriarchal justice system to expose its legitimization of violence.

In this sense, community feminisms emerging in Indigenous and rural contexts in Abya Yala, hold that women’s safety cannot be guaranteed by the state. Instead of waiting for the state to provide solutions, these feminisms advocate for more community-based approaches, where the very organized communities take on responsibility in the creation of protection and justice mechanisms, recovering traditional forms of justice and solidarity that have always been present in their cultures (Korol et al., 2019).

Thus, the state cannot be trusted as a protector of women’s rights, since the state is often part of the problem. Given that feminicides are an extreme manifestations of violence and taking into account that the state has been complicit through inaction or impunity toward aggressors, the discussion focuses not only on exposing this reality from a decolonial perspective, but also on questioning how the state perpetuates deeply entrenched colonial and patriarchal forms of violence. In this sense, what’s being proposed as alternatives are strategies for action and for community care.

As a way of conclusion

Feminicide in Abya Yala cannot be understood merely as an individual or domestic crime, but rather as the product of enduring colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist structures that sustain systemic violence against women – particularly those who are racialised, impoverished, or who resist, or seek to resist, patriarchal and colonial norms. Throughout this entry, we have argued that such violence is deeply rooted in the coloniality of gender, that is manifests itself in contexts of state impunity, and that it intensifies in situations of organised crime and territorial conflict.

We have also highlighted that binary and legalistic frameworks are inadequate when it comes to capturing the complexity of this phenomenon. In response to the inefficiency of the state and its complicity, community feminisms have emerged as political, ethical, and pedagogical projects proposing alternative forms of justice, care, and autonomy grounded in local territories. To understand feminicide from this perspective is not only to make the violence visible, but also to pursue the radical transformation of the conditions that enable it.

Translated from Spanish by Carolina Orloff from Charco Press.

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Classic Approaches to Security

Traditionally, only states were actors of security in security research. This meant that states were seen as the ones who act and who were capable of performing security in the international arena, at least in the eyes of International Relations canon and particularly in terms of military security (Morgenthau, 1954; Waltz, 2001, 2010). However, after the end of the Cold War and the subsequent widening of the security agenda, new research laid more emphasis on the social construction of security (Katzenstein, 1996), and since the development of these new approaches to security the field has made substantial progress in understanding, conceptualising and utilising empirical and conceptual insights in the dynamics of producing, ordering and maintaining security within and beyond the state’s framework. These further developments range from security communities (Adler & Barnett, 1996, 2008) to the various constructions, controversies and (re-)negotiation of security and order in public-private relations (Abrahamsen & Williams, 2009, 2010) and hybrid security governance (Schröder, Chappuis, & Kocak, 2014).

How to cite this entry:

Esponda Conteras, K. 2025: “Femicide in Abya Yala: Gender and Coloniality”. Virtual Encyclopaedia – Rewriting Peace and Conflict. 12.11.2025. https://rewritingpeaceandconflict.net/feminicide/.