The Skinny Ones. Approach to female hitmen in Mexico

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the crossroads of violence and culture that frames the entry of young hitwomen into the drug world in northeastern Mexico. The “Cartel de las Flacas” is used as a case study: a group of women who distinguished themselves by being young, thin, attractive and, of course, who were engaged in murder for hire in different criminal groups. Specifically, the article explores how the social production of this anthropological subject was in a context of narcoviolence and how it was configured in the narcoculture. Methodologically, a strategy of virtual ethnography and netnographic analysis of news was adopted in different portals and visual and auditory references to “Las Flacas” in social networks. It is concluded that the social production of the female hitwomen begins with violent events and is configured in the narcoculture through the legitimation of a hitwoman femininity.