The Spectacle of Violence in Contemporary Mexico: From femicide to juvenicidio (young killing)

Abstract

Images of violence began to dot (and cover) the map of Mexico in 2006, just after then-president Felipe Calderón declared war on drugs and drug trafficking. The number of cadavers multiplied. Some made their debut in mass graves; others just “disappeared”. Still others were exposed in public places, thus obliging citizens to co-exist with this horror. Pictures of mutilated corpses became an everyday sight. The spectacle of violence in Mexico, however, dates from the nineties with the serial killings of women in Cuidad Juárez and other northern cities. Femicide inaugurated an expressive dimension of violence that later was displaced by other subjects, other patterns of extreme violence. In this article I analyze the specificities and continuities of violence in Mexico from a visual perspective: What are the visible and invisible continuities among these forms of violence? To what mechanisms of control do these forms of violence submit themselves?