The editors of this volume draw on methodological, interpretative and analytical strategies from different fields and disciplines in order to address gender-motivated violence at the US–Mexico border. In the last decade new perspectives to explain gender violence at the border have emerged: the authors of this volume engage with the implications of and connections between gendered forms of violence and structural factors, the micro-social effects of economic models, and asymmetries of power in local, national and transnational configurations.
Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba discusses the stereotypical depictions of the border in local television broadcasts. In many visual productions the border is depicted as a place of primitive culture, an uncivilised fringe that is barbaric, uncontrolled and still marginalised from the modern Mexican nation (p. 62). He rightly highlights the problematic nature of such representations. The adherence to a dichotomy of centre and margin is problematic because it obscures the contradictory realities that the centre produces. According to the author, border television envisions male counter-violence as a solution to misogynist violence, thus enforcing a male-centred value system whereby the femicides are reduced to disputes between men over the bodies of women (p. 64). Countering an ideology of punishment, Domínguez-Ruvalcaba draws our attention to the current climate of insecurity at the border: where citizenship is characterised by the dynamics of fear, witnesses remain silent, and local television news programmes become the public arena that functions as ‘substitute for the courtroom’ (p. 71). While the ineptitude of public security forces discourages local communities from speaking out, border television fails to challenge structural generators of violence, instead providing simplistic, melodramatic elaborations of the evil and the innocent (p. 66).
María Socorro Tabuenca Córdoba explores representations of the femicides in border cinema, critically examining the image of the police corporation. She draws our attention to the major flaws that appear in those cinematographic accounts, such as a glorification of the police accompanied by a stigmatisation of the victims (p. 89). Several films she discusses construct an image of a police corporation devoted to the investigation of the femicides: inspectors and detectives are depicted as paternal figures, efficient and dedicated to solving the crimes (p. 95). These representations are a slap in the face for those who in the past have suffered from the unwillingness of law enforcement agencies to collaborate with the families, investigate the crimes and punish the perpetrators. Furthermore, several movies depict the murderers as psychopaths, madmen or deviant maniacs; in doing so, Tabuenca Córdoba highlights, those representations contribute to a normalisation of violence against women. The reality suggests very much the contrary. Violent men in general do not consider themselves as deviant; instead, authorised by an ‘ideology of supremacy’ (p. 95), they feel justified that they are exercising a right. Narrating from a masculine perspective, the border cinema explored by Córdoba wrongly excuses local authorities and perpetuates a patriarchal ideology.
Ignacio Corona examines newspapers with regard to gender violence, arguing that ‘violent journalism’ (p. 104) reproduces the border's violent culture. His main concern is the passive attitude of the press towards the origins, manifestations and consequences of gender-based violence. Attending to sensationalist interests with violent news stories, the media become complicit in creating a dominant narrative of contemporary reality in the Mexican borderlands as a ‘violence-obsessed culture’ (p. 105). Corona's main point of critique is the border media's failure to contextualise violence. There is an obvious informational void regarding femicides, which the media inappropriately fill with erotic or sexual elements and speculations linked to moral values (p. 110). Lamentably, female corpses in headlines increase the market value of a media product. In a highly competitive newspaper market, a narrative of violence becomes available for social consumption. Corona points to the crucial problem that non-contextualised journalistic narrative deflects any blame from society: when the focus is on the factual instead of the contextual, social violence becomes subtly invisible, with the result that violence is seen as an abstract force beyond human agency (p. 117). By refusing to examine the roots of the problem – such as the basic structures of patriarchal society and its relationship to the economy, the use of urban space, political power, class privilege, the role of the authorities, and extra-legal practices of the security forces – newspaper editors engage in a ‘politics of “not-knowing”’ (p. 119), which is ultimately counterproductive to solving the femicides.
The three novels that Miguel López-Lozano looks at highlight the precarious value of women in globalised industrial capitalism, arguing that the maquiladora industry is at the core of a process of dehumanisation of women that has culminated in the femicides (p. 128). The accounts are dramatisations of the different theories that have appeared in recent decades in an effort to explain the femicides and establish a link to systemic problems of capitalism and a related lack of corporate accountability. These fiction writers are deeply concerned with and committed to a contextualisation of the crimes: they depict violence as a product of the dark side of an economic process, questioning the rapid industrialisation of the border region and its human costs (p. 131). Pointing at corruption and the impact of ‘savage capitalism’ in the border region, they question the value of the neoliberal model for Mexico, and suggest that the femicides constitute a by-product of globalisation in a patriarchal context. The argument of blaming external economic factors, such as the interests of multinational companies, as the source of new forms of exploitation and killings stems from a justifiable concern among left-leaning academics and fiction writers to highlight the daunting disposability of unskilled workers in globalised industrial capitalism. However, López-Lozano also accuses these accounts of perpetuating the stereotype of the border as a zone of terror, in which justice, dignity and humanity cannot thrive, but he does not provide substantial backup for his critique.
One of the articles does not directly relate to either media representations or public responses, but rather deals with oral testimonies on gender violence experienced by transgender sex workers in Tijuana. The levels of abuse from which they suffer are tremendous, and yet transgender persons are an often overlooked group when talking about gender violence at the border, which is why this article addresses an academic omission that has long been ignored.
In the opening chapter the editors outline their intention to contribute to building bridges between different communities at the local and national level, as well as between organisations of civil society and government institutions. This is an immensely ambitious undertaking, and one at which the book can surely achieve only a modicum of success. However, with its focus on analysing current media representations of gender violence at the US–Mexico border, the volume provides readers with useful tools to deconstruct current media discourses. It makes readers aware of the need to be critical of sensationalist use of violence and accusatory depictions of victims and their families, and calls for contestation of disempowering portrayals of the border community. The volume also promotes a careful scrutiny of depictions of murderers as criminal masterminds and pathologic others on the one hand, and a glorification of the police on the other, highlighting the illegitimacy of the current politics of not-knowing, and the underlying patriarchal ideologies.
