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Narratives of
Vulnerability in Mexico’s
War on Drugs
Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández

Translated by Isis Sadek
Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs
“Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs stands apart from a recent

wave of academic books on organized crime and anti-drug policy by exploring
the often-overlooked potential for political engagement and resistance of those
most vulnerable to the country’s unprecedented violence: migrants, journalists
and activists. Through a convincing multidisciplinary examination of literary
works, journalistic chronicles and documentary film, Diego Rivera Hernández
goes beyond the reiterative approaches to ‘narcoculture’ and its mythology of
‘cartels,’ ‘jefes’ and ‘sicarios.’ Instead, his book sheds light on empowered victims
that become political subjects as they confront the complex crisis of human rights
framed by the militarization of the shared ‘national security’ agenda propelled by
both the U.S. and Mexican governments. This is a thoughtful investigation about
the ability of courageous people to reject reductive narratives of victimization
and counteract the horrors of state violence, transnational crime and precarity by
mobilizing to enact social change and seek transitional justice.”
—Oswaldo Zavala, Professor of Latin American literature and culture at the City
University of New York, USA, author of Los cárteles no existen. Narcotráfico y
cultura en México
“In Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs, Raúl Diego Rivera

Hernández explores alternative ways of articulating the dominant narratives of
the ‘War on Drugs’ promulgated by the United States in the early 1970s that
unleashed violence both on Afro-Americans in the U.S. and on communities
throughout Latin America. By focusing on the ongoing migrations, disappear-
ances, and human rights violations precipitated by the ongoing ‘war’ that covers
for rapacious neoliberalism, this book tells another, necessary story. Beautifully
written and meticulously researched, this is essential reading for those concerned
with the urgent issues of hemispheric migration and human rights.”
—Diana Taylor, Professor of Performance Studies and Spanish, New York
University, USA
Narratives
of Vulnerability
in Mexico’s War
on Drugs
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures
Villanova University
Villanova, PA, USA
Translated by
Isis Sadek
Ottawa, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-030-51143-2 ISBN 978-3-030-51144-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51144-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Photo credit: Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero. Used with permission.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Para mi pequeña Luisa,
este libro sobre un México en resistencia que también es tuyo.
Acknowledgments
In preparing Narratives of Vulnerability, the affection, patience, and

support of Barbora Příhodová have played a vital role from the moment
when I began to imagine this book and at every step since. She knows
best how hard it has been to get to this point. Thank you, mi amor, for
your endless encouragement.
I thank my parents Adriana and Raúl, and my brother Rodrigo, for
their presence in my life, which has been constant despite the many miles
between us. They are a wonderful tribe and have motivated me to finish
this project.
My gratitude to Isis Sadek for her outstanding work in translating the
manuscript as I was writing it and her subsequent edits and comments. In
addition to being a brilliant scholar, I am lucky to have her as my friend
and colleague.
I am grateful to my colleague Manuel Gutiérrez Silva for his critical
reading of the manuscript and his perceptive observations.
My thanks to Shaun Vigil for his interest in and enthusiasm for
the initial manuscript proposal. Throughout the process of writing this
manuscript, I have also benefitted considerably from the incisive feedback
that the external evaluators provided.
Thank you to the team at Palgrave, especially Camille Davis, Liam
McLean, and Ashwini Elango, who brought this book into the world.
I am indebted to Daniela Rea for introducing me to the extraordi-
nary team of Pie de Página and to some of the members of Periodistas
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
de a Pie who worked on the documentary series Buscadores en un país

de desaparecidos. Consuelo Morales Pagaza, Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero,
Ximena Natera, Daniela Pastrana, José Ignacio De Alba, and Érika Lozano
are highly skilled journalists and photographers tirelessly engaged in the
struggle for human rights.
My gratitude and admiration to activists and writers Rubén Figueroa,
Marta Sánchez Soler, Alejandro Vélez Salas, and John Gibler for what I
have learned from them along the path.
Finally, I thank Vilanova University’s subvention of publication
program for the funding that allowed me to pay for the rights to use
the images reproduced in this book.
Contents
1 Introduction. Vulnerability and Victimhood

in Mexico’s War on Drugs: A Human Rights Crisis 1
2 Vulnerabilities and Resistances in Transit: Narratives

of Central American Colonial Transmigrants 27
3 “Nos están matando!”: Professional Reflexivity

on Violence Against Mexican Journalists
in Contemporary Chronicles 83
4 Dissident Mourners: Victims’ Political Participation

in Human Rights Activism 133
5 Conclusion 191
Index 201
ix
List of Figures
Fig. 4.1 Mario Vergara’s outfit is adapted to the typical conditions

of the searches of disappeared people in Iguala (Photo
by Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero) 168
Fig. 4.2 Forensic tools and equipment owned by Mario Vergara.
The photo of his brother and the text of the General
Victims’ Law is at the center of the shot. On the right,
t-shirts identifying him as a searcher (Photo by Consuelo
Morales Pagaza) 169
Fig. 4.3 Mario Vergara and the members of The Other Disappeared
Persons of Iguala conduct exhumations (Photo
by Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero) 170
Fig. 4.4 Graciela Pérez Rodríguez explaining the objectives of CFC
to the relative of a disappeared person (Photo by Consuelo
Morales Pagaza) 172
Fig. 4.5 Graciela Pérez Rodríguez collects a DNA sample to identify
disappeared persons as part of her work with CFC (Photo
by Consuelo Morales Pagaza) 173
Fig. 4.6 Sample collection system for citizen-led DNA analysis
(Photo by Consuelo Morales Pagaza) 174
Fig. 4.7 Plaza de los desaparecidos in Monterrey, Mexico (Photo
by Diana Guadalupe Martínez Gálvez) 178
Fig. 4.8 Leticia Hidalgo and an embroidery that seeks to make
the absent visible (Photo by Érika Lozano González) 179
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction. Vulnerability and Victimhood

in Mexico’s War on Drugs: A Human Rights
Crisis
This book originates from a political urgency to understand the current

human rights crisis that has been caused by the War on Drugs in Mexico.
I study this crisis by focusing on three vulnerable populations that have
felt the blunt impact of the War on Drugs: Central American migrants in
transit to the United States of America (Chapter 2), journalists who report
on violence in highly dangerous regions (Chapter 3), and the mourning
relatives of victims of severe crimes, who take collective action by partici-
pating in human rights investigations and searching for their missing loved
ones (Chapter 4). I discuss these communities by reading contempo-
rary novels, journalistic chronicles, testimonial works, and documentaries.
These analyses bring to light how all these fictional and nonfictional repre-
sentations engage with vulnerable social groups affected by the violence
wrought by the War on Drugs. They also capture the unique conditions
of each of these communities, portraying their migratory status, profes-
sional activity, and the reasons why they decided to embrace as their
own responsibilities that the state should and could not fulfill. Violence
against migrants, journalists, and activists reveals an array of human rights
violations affecting the right to safe transit across borders, freedom of
expression and the right to information, and the right to truth and justice.
The three case studies in this book are part of a deeper and broader
human rights crisis. In Mexico, this crisis is further aggravated by other
forms of violence: internal displacement, the expansion of feminicidal
© The Author(s) 2020 1

R. Diego Rivera Hernández, Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War
on Drugs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51144-9_1
2 R. DIEGO RIVERA HERNÁNDEZ
violence, and a security policy that persecutes and criminalizes peas-

ants, indigenous peoples, environmental and political activists. Within this
framework of continuous violence against different vulnerable commu-
nities, I analyze forms of resistance by Central American migrants,
journalists, and the relatives of the victims of extrajudicial executions
and forced disappearances. I have selected these groups as a basis from
which to discuss the War on Drugs as a “necropolitics” premised on
different forms of control and administered by state and non-state actors.
For example, territorial control ensures the development of a multimil-
lion dollar economy centered on the business ensuing from clandestine
migration. Or the control of information, which functions as a means
of domination and shaping public opinion. Or social control by way
of violent mechanisms of disciplining the population and in imposing
multiple administrative steps to those who demand justice through official
channels.
Scholars Alejandro Anaya Muñoz and Barbara Frey explain that
the current human rights crisis in Mexico “is unfolding in the midst
of a context of violence unparalleled in the country’s recent history”
(2019, 2). Both argue that the main factors that contribute to this
grave situation are the War on Drugs launched by former president
Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006–2012) and the lack of accountability
for human rights abuses (2019, 2–3). The lens of transitional justice
offers a lucid perspective through which to comprehend this crisis. Tran-
sitional justice investigates the aftermath of war and mass atrocities by
implementing judicial and nonjudicial measures to redress human rights
violations. Since the early 1980s, “Latin America has been a pioneer in
transitional justice mechanisms aimed at confronting the legacy of past
military rule or internal armed conflict” (Skaar et al. 2016, 1). Although
transitional justice studies have taken shape through the analysis of peace
processes in post-conflict periods, as well as transitions from authoritarian
regimes (typically military) to democratic projects, their framework
provides useful tools for understanding the ongoing forms of violence
and impunity in present-day Mexico (Angulo Nobara et al. 2018, 23–24).
For example, the criteria established by transitional justice to characterize
an individual as a victim of human rights abuses consider two features
specific to the vulnerable groups studied in the book. The first one
analyzes the severity of the crimes of forced disappearance, torture, and
massacres (Angulo Nobara et al. 2018, 6) which have occurred in Mexico
1 INTRODUCTION. VULNERABILITY AND VICTIMHOOD IN MEXICO’S … 3
(Open Society 2016), especially along migratory paths (Inter-American

Commission on Human Rights-IACHR 2013). The second principle
highlights high-impact crimes—the murders of journalists, activists, and
community leaders who defend human rights—that aim to either inhibit
society or intimidate authorities with attacks on politicians and public
servants (Angulo Nobara et al. 2018, 6).
Several reports have documented the failure of the Mexican state’s
security policy, which was implemented during the Felipe Calderón
administration, and which assigned the armed forces a central role in
the fight against drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) and organized
crime (Human Rights Watch 2011, 4; IACHR 2015, 11; Open Society
2016, 12). Instead of diminishing conflict, this security strategy had the
opposite effect: “the government’s ‘war’ against criminal organizations
added to the mix of armed violence carried out by the criminal orga-
nizations themselves” (Anaya Muñoz and Frey 2019, 2). As a direct
or indirect result of this anti-drug campaign, 300,000 homicides have
occurred in Mexico since 2006 (Lee et al. 2019). Mexico’s human rights
crisis is further aggravated by the US-led War on Drugs to bolster its
security through a broad hemispheric policy of securitization of borders
(Vogt 2015). The failure of these two national and international security
strategies are at the heart of the human rights crisis.
The cultural productions discussed in Narratives of Vulnerability in
Mexico’s War on Drugs encompass a period that spans from the presidency
of Felipe Calderón to the crisis of forced disappearances that emerged
during President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration (2012–2018).
The War on Drugs was initiated in President Calderón’s native state
of Michoacán where his administration launched Operativo Conjunto
Michoacán (Joint Operation Michoacán) in 2006. This initiative gave
permission to the country’s armed forces to unilaterally carry out missions
related to public security and to combat DTOs. Journalist Marcela Turati
explains that Calderón’s electoral campaign had never promised to launch
a war against drug trafficking organizations (2011, 25). According to
many political observers, the decision to involve the military in this
security strategy was part of Calderón’s attempt to legitimize his admin-
istration in the eyes of voters and counter the shadow of fraud that
lingered from the controversial 2006 presidential elections (Chabat
2010, 1; Morales Oyarvide 2011, 12; Vázquez Moyers and Espino
Sánchez 2015, 494). However, in ¿Qué querían que hiciera? Inseguridad
y delincuencia organizada en el gobierno de Felipe Calderón (2015; What
did you want me to do? Insecurity and organized delinquency during the
Felipe Calderón administration), sociologist Luis Astorga argues against
this interpretation and notes that Calderón’s first military operation had
the support of the influential Conferencia Nacional de Gobernadores
(CONAGO; National Conference of Governors) (2015a, 23–24). The
CONAGO’s support for Calderón’s initiative represents a generalized
attitude of distrust among Mexican governors toward their own police
forces. This stance illustrates how political elites, both at the state and
municipal levels, hoped the military would take on the heavily armed
groups that Mexico’s corrupt institutions had failed to counter.
However, instead of countering the violence that was gripping the
country, the Joint Operations unwittingly contributed to a dramatic surge
in human rights violations perpetrated by state and non-state actors.
Calderón’s militarization transformed cities into battlefields, thereby
increasing communities’ vulnerability and exposure to violence. In my
readings of textual and audio-visual narratives drawn from a large volume
of journalistic and cultural productions that respond to this state of
things, I explore how they address the political potential of vulnera-
bility. In other words, these works document victims’ capacity to adapt
to these perilous scenarios and to define modes of resistance. Some of the
aspects I focus on include the dangers that Central American migrants
encounter in their irregular transit, as represented in literary works such
as Alejandro Hernández’s Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (You shall
love god above all things, 2013), Antonio Ortuño’s La fila india (The
indian file, 2013), and Emiliano Monge’s Las tierras arrasadas (The
destroyed lands, 2015); the risks incurred by journalists covering the
War on Drugs in the chronicles of Javier Valdez (“Tamaulipas y el peri-
odismo del silencio” [Tamaulipas and the journalism of silence, 2016]),
Vanessa Job (“La resistencia cibernética” [Cybernetic resistance, 2012]),
and John Gibler (“Tinta contra el silencio” [Ink against silence, 2012]);
and, the participation of families in human rights investigations described
in the non-fiction texts El tiempo de Ayotzinapa (The time of Ayotzinapa,
2017) by Carlos Martín Beristain, and Procesos de la noche (Processes
of the night, 2017) by Diana del Ángel, along with the documentary
series Buscadores en un país de desaparecidos (Searchers in a country of
disappeared persons, 2017), which is produced by the independent media
outlet Pie de Página in collaboration with Periodistas de a Pie (Journalists
on Foot) and depicts the expertise that family members develop in the
search for their disappeared loved ones.
According to philosopher Judith Butler, vulnerability does not cancel

out resistance (2015, 227). With this in mind, I uncover the political
potential that vulnerability harbors for thinking about the new modes
of organization and collective action that can emerge from vulnerable
subjects (Butler 2016, 12). Vulnerability’s political potential comes to
the fore in the experiences of migration, journalism, and activism that
Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs addresses.
The Cold War and the Expansion

of the US-Led War on Drugs to Latin America
Luis Astorga believes that drug trafficking in Mexico must be studied
from a perspective that accounts for international, bilateral (particu-
larly the borders), and internal coordinates. According to Astorga, the
1909 Shanghai conference defined the path for a global prohibitionist
policy that created institutions designed to uphold US economic and
hemispheric interests (2015a, 158). For example, Astorga describes how
US laws prohibiting the harvesting of marihuana (ratified in 1920) and
poppies (ratified in 1926) in postrevolutionary Mexico created the “trans-
border field of drug trafficking” between Mexico and the U.S. (2015a,
159). These prohibitions spawned a judicial system that regulated the
market for illicit drugs and the activities of drug traffickers and busi-
nesspersons. Finally, Astorga notes that from its inception, drug trafficking
has been subordinated to the political system which implemented a
centralized authoritarian presidency which relied on governors and other
political elites to ensure the control, administration, and protection of
illicit commerce (2015a, 158).
The centralization of power, which led to the tacit control of illegal
trafficking, was achieved by the creation of single-party rule. The
“National Revolutionary Party” (PNR), first known as Party of the
Mexican Revolution (PRM) and eventually as the Institutional Revolu-
tionary Party (PRI) held power for seven decades (1929–2000) (Astorga
2015a, 160). This political structure was held in place by way of strategic
pacts with opposing groups, alliances with media conglomerates, and
electoral fraud. The creation of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS;
Federal Division of Security) in 1947, became “the main instrument for
the political policing undertaken by administrations of the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)” (López Macedonio 2018, 73). The
DFS enabled the PRI to expand its control in various areas: it controlled
the national security apparatus, kept track of the management of drug

trafficking activities, and kept social movements in check. Literary scholar
and journalist Oswaldo Zavala describes how the Central Intelligence
Agency was created the same year as the DFS, observing that both were
vital to “the new era of security,” which marked a reorganization of
US foreign policy under the aegis of the National Security Act of 1947
(2018, 12). According to historian Froylán Enciso, during the 1950s
and 1960s, Mexico’s security apparatus acted in ways that were compat-
ible with the interests of US security policies (2015, 25). However, in
1969, President Richard Nixon closed the U.S.–Mexico border as part
of Operation Intercept which ostensibly aimed to stem the trafficking
of marihuana (Enciso 2015, 25). During the Nixon era (1969–1974)
prohibitionist policy marked the start of the War on Drugs. In June
of 1971, Nixon declared drug abuse in the U.S. to be “public enemy
number one” (Nixon 1971). On that occasion, the president also stated
that his government would demand from Congress a budget to launch an
offensive that would stretch beyond the U.S.: “This will be a worldwide
offensive dealing with the problems of sources of supply, as well as
Americans who may be stationed abroad, wherever they are in the world”
(Nixon 1971). Following Nixon’s address, the press coined the phrase
“the War on Drugs” to describe the Nixon administration’s initiatives.
Within the framework of the Cold War, the US government, eager to
confront the threat of Communist expansion across the American hemi-
sphere, enacted an interventionist policy toward Latin America: Opera-
tion Condor. This campaign of political repression and state-sponsored
terrorism tends to be better known for its impact on the countries of
the Southern Cone than on Mexico, where the implementation of Oper-
ation Condor had as its official goal the eradication of drug use in the
U.S. Accordingly, in 1975 the Mexican government was pressured by US
leaders to destroy illegal crops and to persecute those who planted and
harvested them (Enciso 2015, 25). The effects of this strategy were imme-
diately felt in the state of Sinaloa, where severe human rights violations
were perpetrated against the population (Fernández-Velázquez 2018,
82). In Mexico, Operation Condor became a blueprint for the US mili-
tary’s anti-drug strategies throughout the American continent (Astorga
2015b, 8). In addition to drug eradication, Operation Condor was a
counterinsurgency strategy (Enciso 2015, 25). In consonance with the
unfolding Cold War, US anti-drug policies shaped military strategy in
the Mexico–U.S. border, and allowed it to influence Mexico’s Dirty War
(1964–1982) against left-wing political activism which challenged the

PRI’s authoritarian politics. Although Mexico did not experience a mili-
tary dictatorship like other Latin American countries, the state did commit
human rights abuses against its population. Extrajudicial executions,
forced disappearances, and torture gradually disrupted and dismantled
dissident social movements (Mendoza García 2015, 90). In Mexico’s
Dirty War, between 500 and 1500 persons were disappeared (Castillo
García 2003). The Dirty War exposes both the state’s ability to conduct
actions of counterinsurgent violence and the PRI’s hardline policy mani-
fested both in its monopoly of the business of trafficking illegal drugs and
in the violence exercised through the DFS and the military apparatus.
The War on Drugs gained support among US voters and other polit-
ical stakeholders during the Ronald Reagan administration (1981–1989).
Political Scientist Waltraud Morales explains that US anti-Communist
sentiment succeeded in promoting the idea that US democracy had
to be protected at all costs. The ratification of the 1947 National
Security Act made anti-Communism into an official US government
stance (Morales 1989, 147). However, in the 1980s a fundamental
shift occurred, away from this rhetoric and toward a National Security
Doctrine that persuasively connected drug traffickers to leftist guerrilla
groups in Latin America (Waghelstein 1987). For the Reagan adminis-
tration, anti-Communism and anti-drug policies were one and the same
(Morales 1989, 167). The president’s office even coined the term “narco-
terrorism” to frame Latin American insurgencies as a threat to national
security.
“Narco-terrorism” would provide the justification for US interven-
tion in Latin America and for strengthening US global hegemony under
the auspices of the War on Drugs (Morales 1989, 161). This ratio-
nale would also further a specific social agenda within the U.S. For
example, the CIA’s complicity with the US-led War on Drugs flooded the
US West Coast with a crack that devastated African American commu-
nities. Additionally, the sales of these drugs would in turn finance
Nicaraguan counterrevolutionary militias known as the “contras” (Dock-
terman 2014). These activities and ramifications demonstrate that the War
on Drugs did not stem from a genuine concern for public health. In the
U.S., it was a punitive policy that targeted African-American communities
and other peoples of color. This logic created the mass incarceration that
would emerge as a comprehensive and well-disguised system of “racial-
ized social control” that functioned in a manner “strikingly similar to Jim
Crow” laws (Alexander 2010, 4). In other words, contemporary drug

prohibition policies are linked to past mechanisms of social control that
were designed to subjugate racial groups and other minorities.
Mexican Democratization and the End

of a State Security Policy
While US policies bolstered the country’s political power in the region,
drug trafficking in Mexico also underwent a series of transformations.
The murder of DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent Enrique
Camarena in 1985 intensified US resolve to wage war against Mexican
DTOs. Camarena’s killing prompted the US government to pressure for
the dissolution of the DFS (Astorga 2015a, 159). As a result of this, drug
trafficking organizations gradually became more autonomous from polit-
ical powers, as they could foresee the fracture of the single-party system.
This rupture between DTOs and government authorities took place when
the opposition entered into positions of power at the municipal levels
and the PAN won a governorship in Baja California in 1989 (Astorga
2016, 185). Mexican democratization, propelled by the rise of new polit-
ical parties in the country, created openings of which drug traffickers took
advantage.
The PRI’s seven-decade political reign maintained a policy of state
security enforced by the president’s office and state governors. This
micromanaged apparatus ensured a centralized system of power. When
the PRI lost its absolute majority in Congress, the fragmentation of the
Mexican state’s central power “contributed to the emergence of new
and more vicious intrastate and bureaucratic conflicts” thus weakening
its hold over the national security infrastructure (Davis 2006, 58). For
political scientist Carlos Antonio Flores Pérez, the end of the PRI’s hold
on power interrupted a long-established balance which reigned in DTOs
(2009, 45). The victory of a new political party, the PAN, and its candi-
date for president, Vicente Fox Quezada (2000–2006), brought to power
an administration that lacked the experience necessary to consolidate a
nationwide security policy. Questions of public security that had previ-
ously been framed within a single-party state now fell within the purview
of local, politically divided administrations that tried to impose new rules
upon the DTOs. Seizing the moment, the criminal field broke away from
its traditional relation of subordination to state power.
In the past, when the PRI controlled the national security apparatus,
DTOs were granted some margin to maneuver their enterprise, so long as
the political class was able to reap monetary benefits (Astorga and Shirk
2010, 8). This political class restricted competition among illegal organi-
zations, and averted any possible threat that these could pose to the PRI’s
political power (Buscaglia 2016). Drug traffickers who refused to play by
the PRI’s rules could opt to abandon the business, go to prison, or be
killed (Astorga 2015a, 158). However, this dynamic changed when the
PRI lost power and international demand for cocaine boomed (Astorga
and Shirk 2010, 33). Soon after that, Colombian drug traffickers affected
by US surveillance and the shutdown of traditional routes of trafficking
began to subcontract Mexican DTOs, which further bolstered their power
(Beittel 2019). As DTOs emancipated from the tutelage of the political
field, they too began to reconfigure the relations of power among political
elites.
DTOs adapted to the political sea change of the late 1990s and seized
on new opportunities to protect the routes they used for drug trafficking.
For example, they created their own private armies comprised of merce-
naries (Ríos Contreras 2015, 1448). The first such army was cobbled from
deserters of the elite military unit Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Espe-
ciales (GAFE; Aeromobile group of special forces). They were recruited
to protect the head of the Gulf DTO, Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (Osorno
2012, 102). This newly armed wing of the Gulf DTO named itself the
Zetas and became a deadly paramilitary group that operated outside of the
state’s control, was financed by drug trafficking, and had deep ties to the
Mexican military’s infrastructure (Paley 2018, 13). According to Correa-
Cabrera, the Zetas were unique among DTOs. They varied their portfolio
of criminal activities, created a decentralized horizontal organizational
structure, and professionally trained their members. Their ambition for
territorial control set them apart from traditional DTOs that operated
within specific areas. Finally, the Zetas operate under a strategy of terror
(Correa-Cabrera 2017, 59): they target members of civil society to ensure
territorial control and profits (Open Society 2016, 52). Their willingness
to resort to brute violence was unlike anything Mexico had ever seen
(Correa-Cabrera 2017, 59).
President Vicente Fox’s national security agenda was structured to
respond to the increasing insecurity across Mexico due to drug traffickers
like the Zetas (Benítez Manaut 2008, 188). Fox attempted to reform the
Mexican police apparatus, but these efforts were thwarted by a lack of
support and allies (Davis 2006, 70). Police forces were overwhelmed by
rapidly modernizing criminal organizations. Seeking to bypass an ineffi-
cient and corrupt police apparatus, Fox’s administration encouraged the
Mexican army to intervene in activities linked to drug trafficking and
public security (Astorga and Shirk 2010, 27–28). The government, in
deploying the armed forces and the navy in 2005, during the last year of
Fox’s mandate, assigned a central role to federal forces in domestic issues
and, in doing this, began to displace municipal- and state-level police
forces from public security tasks.
In addition to this change in the national security policy, the Fox
administration signed treaties with the U.S. for the extradition of crimi-
nals and to exchange of information, receive police and legal training, and
share equipment and technology across the border (Astorga and Shirk
2010, 25). Throughout the twentieth century, the relationship between
Mexico and the U.S. had always been mediated by political and economic
interests along the border region. However, in the twenty-first century,
the 9/11 attacks catapulted Mexico’s role in the US global war against
terrorism. The latest policies of border securitization launched by the
newly created Department of Homeland Security, obligated Mexico to
sacrifice its sovereignty (Mabee 2007, 385). The U.S. placed pressure on
the Mexican government to step up its fight against DTOs, and to control
migratory flows along both the northern border with the U.S. and its
southeastern border with Central America. Mexicans’ genuine high hopes
for a new democratic state were dashed by a geopolitical reconfiguration
in which they had no say and a War on Drugs that was about to unleash
unprecedented violence on its streets.
The Victims of Mexico’s War

on Drugs Take Center Stage
In 2006, Felipe Calderón succeeded Vicente Fox in the presidency.
His inauguration was marred by protests and questions regarding the
legitimacy and legality of election results. In an attempt to assert his presi-
dential power, Felipe Calderón continued his predecessor’s security policy
and expanded it by deploying Operativos Conjuntos, fourteen military
operations that started the War on Drugs in 2006 and that would extend
beyond his term in office (Madrazo Lajous et al. 2018, 380). Calderón’s
Estrategia Nacional de Seguridad (2006; National Security Strategy) was
part of the international model of the War on Drugs and was premised on
prohibitive punishment. According to Vélez Salas, this model was focused

on the fight against the production and availability of narcotics outside of
the U.S. and was envisioned “from a military perspective” (2016, 105).
Leaders in Mexico and the U.S. endorsed this vision of the War on Drugs
and signed the Mérida Initiative (2008), a plan that funneled US$1400
million in aid to Mexico and Central America to fight DTOs (Wolf 2011,
670). The central role given to the armed forces in national and regional
security was an important feature in the Mérida Initiative and other US-
led interventionist operations such as the Plan Colombia (2000) and
the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI; 2007) (Paley
2018). Unintentionally, militarization, while bolstering hemispheric secu-
ritization, spurred an increase in human rights violations in Mexico and
Central America.
The military logic of the War on Drugs shaped how victims caught in
the crossfire of the conflict were perceived. For example, official commu-
nications, in an eager attempt to justify the new security strategy and
hide or minimize various human rights violations aggravated by milita-
rization, adopted denial tactics and described these as collateral damages,
an inevitable consequence of the War on Drugs (Treviño Rangel 2018,
487–489). To buttress this rationale, President Calderón often used the
expression “collateral damage” to refer to those who lost their lives in
shootouts. At times these bystanders’ deaths were deceitfully linked to
organized crime (Tarica 2015). This narrative about victims enabled the
president’s office to conduct a particular “politics of mourning” which
sought to regulate affects by “disqualifying the dead a priori” (Lemus
2011, 35). This government-led strategy effectively foreclosed the possi-
bility of mourning these deaths publicly. For Mexico’s president, those
who died of violent causes indicated that the public security strategy was
succeeding. Their deaths were not seen as signs of failure but as evidence
that criminals were being combatted and that the innocent lives lost were
consequences of a noble war.
The rhetoric and jargon of collateral damage dehumanized members
of civil society not involved in the war and masked the horror that the
War on Drugs reaped on innocent populations. It also created a distance
between society and the victims’ families’ pain and suffering. In other
words, this euphemism reduced official culpability while depriving the
dead of their names, faces, and unique histories. By classifying civilian
casualties as collateral damage, the government officially considered their
lives as unworthy of protection from the danger of the War on Drugs.
Moreover, as Judith Butler notes, the violence continues when the loss of
victims’ lives cannot be grieved by surviving family members and friends
(2009, 38). Fearing further violence, mourning relatives keep quiet out
of generalized anxiety of reprisals from criminal groups and state actors.
Finally, mourning might be perceived as an affront to the state, or as
“proof of their moral complicity with drug traffickers” (Lemus 2011, 35).
In 2011, an unexpected event shattered the official narrative about
“collateral damage.” On March 28th of that year, Juan Francisco Sicilia
Ortega—son of the well-known poet, novelist, and journalist Javier
Sicilia—was found dead with six other bodies in Temixco, Morelos.
Unlike previous unnoticed homicides perpetrated across the country,
Sicilia Ortega’s murder sparked a massive process of public mourning led
by his father, Javier Sicilia, a Catholic, who wrote a final poem to his
son which captured the attention of the country.1 Sicilia Ortega’s murder
placed the poet Sicilia at the center stage of the public sphere. Sicilia
demanded justice for his son and embraced all the victims of the War on
Drugs (Febbro 2014). In this new role as spokesperson for victims and
mourning victims, Sicilia defied the narrow focus of the state’s politics
of mourning and loudly criticized President Felipe Calderón’s strategy
for fighting organized crime and denounced the rhetoric of “collateral
damage.”
By humanizing victims, Sicilia became part of the “leaders in pain,”
a collective of prominent individuals who have channeled the national
sentiment and placed it at the core of an emerging politics of collective
identification (Maihold 2012, 189). The politicization of pain is crucial to
understanding how indignation spurred a victims’ movement in Mexico
and how these social mobilizations placed the victims’ vulnerability and
suffering at the center of public discourse. Javier Sicilia became the symbol
of the “spirit of the moment” (Barroso 2014, 219). He embodied a range
of collective feelings whose public expression the government had prohib-
ited and blanketed over with the term “collateral damage.” In unforeseen
ways, Sicilia, who transitioned from literature to activism, created a space
for victims to mourn in public. For the first time since the militarization
of the War on Drugs, victims were able to take to the streets and public
1 The world is not worthy of words/they have been suffocated from the inside/as they
suffocated you, as they tore apart your lungs …/the pain does not leave me/all that
remains is a world through the silence of the righteous,/only through your silence and
my silence, Juanelo.
squares to demand justice. This mobilization spawned the Movimiento

por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD; Movement for Peace with
Justice and Dignity) a group of relatives of victims that was formed in the
wake of Sicilia Ortega’s death.
The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity generated the
political and social conditions which would enable thousands of victims’
relatives to break their silence and come out from their private mourning,
which was confined to the domestic space. In an extraordinary way,
a poet’s public grief mobilized a collective catharsis in the midst of a
profound human rights crisis. The movement also successfully described
for national and international observers how violence operates on a
transnational scale. This pedagogical task was carried out in the U.S. by
La caravana por la paz en Estados Unidos (2012; The Caravan for Peace
in the U.S.A.).2 Javier Sicilia and the MPJD participated in the caravan
that crossed fourteen states and made stops in twenty-seven cities. The
caravan’s strategic activism targeted specific points about the violence
in Mexico. Across the U.S., they drew attention to the profitability of
drug trafficking, arms sales, and money laundering. The Caravan and the
MPJD skillfully explained the economic dimension of the root problem.
According to independent journalist John Gibler, instead of viewing
“drug trafficking” and the “war against drug traffickers” as two opposed
entities, they should be treated as part of one market that is united and
inseparable: “the more the resources channeled toward the War on Drugs,
the more the business of drug trafficking benefits” (2014, 17–18).
Many scholars and journalist have elucidated the connection between
capitalism and the War on Drugs. For example, journalist and researcher
Dawn Paley notes the role that structural reforms enacted by Presi-
dent Enrique Peña Nieto played in the ensuing violence. In Capitalismo
antidrogas. Una guerra contra el pueblo (published in late 2014 as
Drug War Capitalism: A War on the People), Paley describes the poli-
cies that were created to fight drug trafficking, and shows how they
in fact served as a pretext to spread terror and to further aggravate
forced internal displacement. These policies also created favorable condi-
tions for investors and transnational capital to advance on Mexico. The
War on Drugs, Paley sustains, becomes an excuse to dispossess peasant
2 Diego Enrique Osorno narrates in his book Contra Estados Unidos. Crónicas desam-
paradas (Against the U.S.A. Chronicles of neglect, 2014), the day-by-day account of the
Caravan tour activities.
communities, indigenous peoples, and miners from their homes and

places of work. Consequently, foreign companies benefit from constitu-
tional liberties designed to attract transnational capital (Paley 2018, 15).
In Dawn Paley’s insightful analysis of the reforms implemented by Pres-
ident Enrique Peña Nieto to enhance privatization and neoliberalism in
the areas of energy resources, telecommunications, workers’ rights, educa-
tion, and finance, she argues that these reforms are designed to creating
appealing conditions for foreign economic powers to invest in these areas
and to simultaneously intervene in Mexico’s foreign and domestic policy
(2018, 104). In exposing these dynamics, Paley substitutes the narrative
put forward in the official discourse on the War on Drugs that pits the
state against organized crime. Instead, Paley articulates in her book a
convincing explanation of the War on Drugs that situates it within the
broader coordinates of capitalism and US hegemony on a hemispheric
scale.
Journalist Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez (2015) agrees with Paley and
describes a “scorched-earth policy” in regions with a high concentration
of natural resources, where tactics of terror are used to force out local
populations. Further describing this process, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera
explains that in states like Tamaulipas, organizations such as the Zetas
work jointly with municipal and state-level authorities, including police
and the armed forces, to secure these natural resources (2017, 5). This
amounts to a form of violence by dispossession, the exercise of which is
further supported by constitutional clauses that are favorable to foreign
capital.
Scholars examining the War on Drugs attribute the violence gripping
the country to several complex and intertwined motivations. Political
scientist Pilar Calveiro (2018) compares the disappearances in Mexico
dating from 2006 and the forced disappearances carried out during the
1970s. She concludes that both functioned as a “repressive state mecha-
nism” against Latin American political dissidents. Her comparison also
enables her to more clearly grasp the distinctive features of the more
recent disappearances: victims don’t have a clear or single profile, state
agents are in collusion with private actors, and the political backdrop of
these disappearances is the quest for territorial control (Calveiro 2018).
In his book Ni vivos ni muertos (2014; Not alive nor dead), journalist
Federico Mastrogiovanni connects, as Dawn Paley does, the contempo-
rary wave of forced disappearances with the locations where they occur.
According to Mastrogiovanni, areas dense in natural resources, particu-

larly unexploited gas and oil reserves, are also the territories where most
human rights violations occur (2014, 35). Along migratory routes, for
example, forced disappearances are a systematic practice that result from
an unacknowledged collaboration between organized crime, migration
authorities, and police forces. Together, they regulate the flow of migra-
tion and the illegal business of extracting money and labor from these
migrants (Vogt 2013, 771). Present-day disappearances are motivated by
the thirst for profit of local municipal and federal authorities and crim-
inal organizations alike. There are, of course, exceptions. Some disappear
because of their activism and their defense of human rights, freedom of
press, and educational models accessible to the nation’s poorest commu-
nities. The crimes perpetrated against these groups represent forms of
violence that aim to discipline a population that opposes the interests of
political and criminal powers.
Narratives of Vulnerability
in the Midst of the War on Drugs
In the seminal Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence
(2004), theorist Judith Butler describes vulnerability as a condition that
is collectively shared, though unevenly distributed across the social, class,
and political spectrum, as some populations are more vulnerable and
exposed to violence than others (2004, 29). Butler’s interest in vulner-
ability arose from the 9/11 attacks. As she observed, the loss of certain
lives commanded public attention while others were not recognized as
worthy of grief. In other words, certain marginalized communities did
not belong to a national community of grief: “we define some lives
as more grievable, and more human, than others” (2004, XIV). This
exclusion of entire communities from national grief has led to collective
actions in Mexico and abroad to acknowledge the lives of murdered and
disappeared people as irreplaceable losses and absences, and contest their
characterization as “collateral damage.”
Another of Butler’s concerns is to elucidate the criteria and conditions
that make a life “worth grieving” (2004, 45–46). In her Frames of War:
When is Life Grievable?, Butler focuses on vulnerability and connects it
with the body’s exposure to other bodies and persistent forms of violence.
Butler posits that the body is a social, and not individual phenomenon,
and that, as a result of this, it is dependent on a range of structures and
institutions that enable it to live (2009, 23). Butler’s formulation allows

us to think about victims of the War on Drugs in the following ways:
How does vulnerability function in a context where there are no social
bases for the care and protection of life? What can people do when the
state not only fails to guarantee care and protection through institutions
and infrastructures, but is also one of the main producers of violence?
To what extent can vulnerability become a political tool for migrants,
journalists, and the relatives of victims of severe crimes?
Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs explores how
victimization and vulnerability take on a political dimension in the midst
of ongoing violence in Mexico. This book does not treat victims as
passive subjects that lack agency, nor does it resort to romanticization or
archetypes of those who are vulnerable. Clinical psychologist and Director
of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children, Yael
Danieli, associates this typical construction of victims as passive, defense-
less, and silent to the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials. She claims that
these trials’ prominence as documentary evidence overshadowed “the
nature and meaning of the survivors’ Holocaust experiences” (Danieli
2006, 1641). Claire Garbett affirms that institutions of international crim-
inal justice, such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) created in
1998, started to shift their institutional practices in favor of victims as
“active agents” instead of “passive objects” (2016, 40). This book treats
a diverse community of victims as political subjects engaged in forms resis-
tance that seek to confront violence throughout the country and across
different mediums. The narratives of vulnerability studied here reveal the
violence that occurs along migratory routes (Chapter 2) and consider
the survival strategies of journalists working in highly dangerous regions
(Chapter 3). It also examines the mechanisms of impunity that hinder
the victims’ family members right to truth and justice (Chapter 4). By
discussing these narratives of vulnerability, this book outlines an alterna-
tive mode of conceptualizing the dominant cultural production on the
War on Drugs. Thus, it dialogues with contemporary scholars, such as
Oswaldo Zavala and others working to undo insidious ways of thinking
about cultural productions about the War on Drugs. Zavala specifi-
cally considers “narconarratives,” a specific “corpus of cinematic, musical,
literary works, among other arts, that are focused on drug trafficking”
(2014, 341). In his latest book Los cárteles no existen: Narcotráfico y
cultura en México (The cartels do not exist: Drug trafficking and culture
in Mexico; 2018), Zavala demonstrates how the state’s official discourse
shapes these narratives and, over time, conditions the social imaginary. In
other words, narconarratives have defined contemporary understandings
and perceptions of drug trafficking while reinforcing the state’s official
discourse about the War on Drugs. Building on Zavala’s insight, I focus
on the effects of the War on Drugs on specific vulnerable communities
and their practices of resistance as described in contemporary fiction and
nonfiction.
Chapter 2 discusses the vulnerability of Central American transmi-
grants. It studies three novels that portray characters stripped of their
rights and civil protections when they cross Mexico’s southern border.
Alejandro Hernández’s Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas , Antonio
Ortuño’s La fila india, and Emiliano Monge’s Las tierras arrasadas
capture the vulnerability of undocumented Central American migrants as
they confront the risks and dangers of Mexico’s migratory routes. The
novels address the effects of border securitization and Mexico’s militariza-
tion. In the three novels, migration is controlled by state agents and by
the criminal groups that work with them, and the characters are forced to
transit along remote paths that are inhospitable and dangerous. Consid-
ering these dire conditions of transit, I describe how these novels bring
to light these migrants’ condition as “colonial transmigrants.” I demon-
strate how the novels link this condition to these characters’ vulnerability
by connecting different forms of violence with the processes through
which their identities are racialized and, their bodies deported, exploited,
and disposed of. These processes expose victims to all sorts of crimes:
massacres, sexual violations, human trafficking, and recruitment by gangs.
In reading these novels, I highlight how victims have some level of agency
that enables them to resist the mechanisms of control, containment, or
death imposed by state and non-state actors, and even abuses by common
Mexican citizens. Their vulnerability does not cancel out their capacity
to resist. On the contrary, it invites us to ponder how literature can
bring to light the strategies that migrants develop for survival. Migrants
camouflage themselves to pass as Mexicans (Arias 2007, 212), develop
“ethnic solidarity” (Stone-Cadena 2016, 357), use their experience as
social capital, and resist entrapment and systematic sexual abuse. The
novels also demonstrate how these forms of resistance are not peaceful.
Migrants take justice into their own hands and kill others to survive.
Chapter 3 explores the vulnerability of members of the press. It studies
contemporary journalistic chronicles that expose journalists’ vulnerability
while reporting on the War on Drugs. Javier Valdez’s “Tamaulipas y el
periodismo del silencio,” Vanessa Job’s “La resistencia cibernética,” and

John Gibler’s “Tinta contra el silencio” are remarkable in their ability
to describe the press’s state of precarity. The chapter begins with a brief
historical overview of the origins, the role, and the cultural uses of the
chronicle in Mexico to explain how, in contemporary chronicles, journal-
ists have become the protagonists of their own stories in their position
as witnesses of the generalized violence resulting from the War on Drugs
and, above all, of violence perpetrated against them due to their profes-
sional activity. I propose to read these chronicles as part of an exercise in
“professional reflexivity” (Ahva 2012, 791) about the risks incurred by,
and the vulnerability of, journalists threatened by criminal organizations
and by public servants in Tamaulipas, Veracruz, and Morelos. In addition
to these matters, I discuss the coverage of violence, specifically, the impact
of the language used to describe scenes of unspeakable horror. Further-
more, I address journalists’ self-regulation as attempts to engage in ethical
and responsible journalism while preserving their lives in these irreg-
ular circumstances. The vulnerability of journalists increases in regions
controlled by the DTOs (Tamaulipas), where an atmosphere of terror
intimidates the press (Veracruz), or in states that are in rapid transition
toward the domination of criminal violence (Morelos). The chronicles
document strategies of survival such as self-censorship (Valdez 2016),
in addition to other more affirmative actions, such as ordinary citizens’
appropriation of social media to divulge information about violent events
(Job 2012), and the networks of journalists that emerged in response to
the threat to freedom of expression and information (Gibler 2012).
Chapter 4 discusses two non-fiction narratives about the different
forms of activism emerging in the wake of the Ayotzinapa case—Carlos
Martín Beristain’s El tiempo de Ayotzinapa and Diana del Ángel’s Procesos
de la noche—and the documentary series Buscadores en un país de desa-
parecidos by Pie de Página in collaboration with Red de Periodistas de a
Pie. The vulnerable subjects examined in this chapter are the relatives of
the forty-three student teachers of the Ayotzinapa rural teachers’ college
who were disappeared during the night of September 26–27, 2014, in
Iguala, Guerrero. I also address the struggles of the relatives of Julio César
Mondragón, one of the three student teachers murdered in Iguala whose
body was found with signs of torture, and his face skinned. In Mexico, the
Ley General de Víctimas (General Victims’ Law) distinguishes between
two types of victims: direct and indirect victims. According to this logic,
the student teachers would be “direct” victims, while the relatives would
be classified as “indirect” victims. In this chapter, I do not follow this

distinction. For me, the relatives are also victims of ongoing institutional
and bureaucratic violence perpetuated by incompetent authorities. The
vulnerable relatives are revictimized by the obstacles they encounter in
their attempts to access the Mexican justice system. Beristain’s El tiempo
de Ayotzinapa and del Ángel’s Procesos de la noche focus on the victims
(survivors and relatives of the disappeared student teachers), but also on
other subjects who experience a different kind of vulnerability. In these
accounts, vulnerability is understood as “a basic kind of openness to being
affected and affecting in both positive and negative ways” (Gilson 2011,
310). This characterization of vulnerability distances it from its typical
connotation of bodily harm, and relocates it in the empathy of experts
who accompany victims, in this case, those of Ayotzinapa. The experts
that Beristain and del Ángel portray in their work practice accompaniment
in a variety of ways including psychosocial support, legal representa-
tion, and emotional care. They adopt a stance known as sentipensar that
combines the heart’s reason and the emotion of thoughts. This method
systematizes the experience of accompanying victims, as described by
Beristain, a former member of the Grupo Interdisciplinario de Expertos
Independientes (Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts) formed
to investigate the Ayotzinapa case. Del Ángel also narrates the accompa-
niment provided by lawyers, forensic experts, and sympathetic advocacy
groups to relatives involved in the judicial proceedings to exhume the
body of Julio César for reexamination.
In the final part of this chapter, I discuss the documentary series
Buscadores en un país de desaparecidos , which profiles twelve relatives
of disappeared persons who, through sheer will and necessity, become
what I call “experts without credentials.” With their newly acquired skill
sets, they investigate forced disappearances, discuss forensic matters, and
address human rights violations. By strategically showing the searchers’
“forensic technologies” and other working tools, the series emphasizes
their empowerment as they familiarize themselves with expert knowl-
edge typically restricted to accredited communities of professional experts.
The non-fiction texts and the documentary series demonstrate how
these victims, with or without the help of experts, create opportuni-
ties to participate in the field of human rights, individually or as part
of their victims’ advocacy groups. The participation of the relatives of
victims of human rights abuses in the search for justice is not new in
Mexico and its roots can be traced to expressions of “maternal activism”
(Orozco Mendoza 2016, 1). For example the emergence of the Eureka
Committee, which under the leadership of Rosario Ibarra de Piedra
searched for those who had been detained and disappeared in Mexico’s
Dirty War (Mendoza García 2015, 93). Another representation of this
struggle are las madres de Chihuahua (the mothers of Chihuahua) who
in 1998 started the practice of rastreos , or collective searches of the dead
bodies of their missing daughters in the desert, as a result of the increase
in feminicides along the U.S.–Mexico border (Orozco Mendoza 2019,
221). The current rastreos undertaken by the relatives of disappeared
people in the context of the War on Drugs are connected to the maternal
activism in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
The corpus examined in Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War
on Drugs has been selected because these works assign a crucial role to
the state in the production of violence. In this aspect, they are different
from “narconarratives” which focus more specifically on subjects who
have a criminal profile. Luis Astorga asserts that these fictionalized narra-
tives generate a popular knowledge of the world of drugs that is laced
with mythical and fantastic elements as well as other clichés concocted by
official discourse and corridos about drug trafficking (1995, 11–12). In
contrast with these, the present book documents other forms of vulner-
ability that are not necessarily connected to the subjectivities of the
underworld of drug trafficking. This is why I do not discuss corridos,
television series based on the lives of drug traffickers, or fiction related
to narcoliterature. The works I analyze facilitate a perspective that under-
stands the War on Drugs as a human rights crisis. They are novels that
describe the violence and forms of vulnerability caused by the militariza-
tion of the borders and the racialization of Central American migrants in
transit. They are chronicles in which journalists explicitly discuss the risks
and vulnerability of members of the press. Works of non-fiction that docu-
ment experiences of accompanying the relatives of victims in the process
of demanding justice, and documentary films that make visible how the
relatives of disappeared persons become experts in the search for their
loved ones.
In these cultural productions, the state is the principal party respon-
sible for the current human rights crisis. The works discussed in this book
underscore this by depicting the direct involvement of state actors in
high-impact crimes, as well as their collusion with organized crime and
authorities’ neglect of their duty to protect the rights and the physical
integrity of migrants, journalists, and relatives of victims. The collapse of
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
247. Lib. VII. Così traduce Magenta:
Qualunque cosa d’Ombria a te conduce,

O d’Etruria il castaldo o il tusculano,
O quel tre miglia da costì lontano,
Tutto ciò la Subura a me produce.
248.
Di Cesare son questi i fori, ei disse,

Questa è la via che dai sacrati luoghi
Assume il nome.
Tristium, Lib. III.
249. «Singolare ne sarebbe dovunque la struttura e maravigliosa anche per

consenso degli Dei».
250.
Poi mi getto a dormir senza pensiere

Di dovermi levar insiem col sole,
E Marsia riveder.
Trad. Gargallo.
251. Tien nel gran foro i consacrati templi. Lib. III.
252. «Se ciò approvate, andatevene, o Quiriti. — Procedete al suffragio, col

favore degli Dei, ed ordinate voi quello che i padri sancirono.»
253. De Architectura, lib. 1, c. 7.
254. V. Popidio figlio d’Epidio Questore ha fatto costruire i portici.
255. Lib. V. c. 1 e 2.
256. Pompei descritta da Carlo Bonucci: Foro Civile.
257. Lo squarcio che reco è la traduzione della traduzione francese

dell’opera del Bonucci, perchè io non potei avere che questa. Quando
l’Italia era sbocconcellata, i libri che si publicavano in Napoli era difficile
che pervenissero alle nostre biblioteche di Lombardia e viceversa.
258. A Marco Lucrezio Decidiano Rufo duumviro, tre volte quinquennale,

pontefice, tribuno dei militi per voto di popolo, prefetto de’ fabbri, Marco
Pilonio Rufo.
259. A Marco Lucrezio Decidiano Rufo, duumviro, tre volte quinquennale,
pontefice, tribuno dei militi per voto di popolo, prefetto de’ fabbri, per
decreto de’ Decurioni, eretto dopo la morte.
260. A Quinto Sallustio figlio di Publio, duumviro, incaricato della giustizia,

quinquennale, patrono delle Colonie, per decreto de’ Decurioni.
261. A Cajo Cuspio Pansa figlio di Cajo, duumviro incaricato della giustizia,
quattro volte quinquennale, per decreto de’ decurioni, col danaro
publico.
262. A Cajo Cuspio Pansa, pontefice, duumviro, incaricato della giustizia, per
decreto de’ decurioni eretto con denaro publico.
263. «Scrive Rutilio avere i Romani istituito le nundine, perchè per otto giorni
i contadini dessero opera a’ lavori de’ campi, nel nono poi interrottili
venissero a Roma pel mercato e per ricevervi le leggi e riportassero con
maggior concorso di popolo gli sciti e consulti (voti popolari), i quali,
proposti per diciasette giorni, facilmente si potevano da tutti conoscere.»
264. «A Marco Claudio Marcello figlio di Marco patrono.»
265. Lib. VII c. 70.
266. Così parmi di dover tradurre:
«Possano i Numi esterminar chi primo

L’ore inventò, chi primo in questa nostra
Città poneva un quadrante solare!
Lo sciagurato m’ha per mio malanno
Tagliato a pezzi il giorno! Oh! non avevo
Ne’ miei giorni d’infanzia altro orologio
Che lo stomaco mio, ed era quello
Il migliore, il più esatto ad avvertirmi,
A men che nulla da mangiar vi fosse.
Ora, quantunque la cucina piena,
Non si serve la tavola che quando
Al sol talenta, e di tal guisa avviene
Che dall’istante in cui la città intera
Da’ quadranti solar’ venne segnata,
Quasi tutta la gente non si vegga
Che scarna trascinarsi ed affamata.»
267. I. Sylv. I. 29.

Quivi i Giulii delubri venerati,
Del belligero Paolo indi la reggia
Sublime.
268. Satyra IV. Lib. I.
Del foro
Nel bel mezzo, e nel bagno (in chiuso luogo
S’ode più grata risonar la voce)
Recitan molti i loro scritti.
Trad. Gargallo.
269. Satyra III. Lib. I.
Ecco a tutti i cantor vizio comune;

Pregati, non c’è capo che s’inducano
A cantar tra gli amici: non pregati,
Non la finiscon mai.
Id. ibd.
270. Æneid. Lib. VIII:
E come pria cader vedrai le stelle,

Porgi solennemente a la gran Giuno
Preghiere e voti.
Trad. del Caro.
271.
Convien pregar perchè la mente sia

Sana nel corpo sano.
272. «La miglior parte di ciascun giorno sono le sette delle prime, non delle
ultime ore del giorno.» Lib. I.
273.
Poichè del dì la miglior parte è scorsa,

Quel che avanza cercate allegramente
Di ben esercitar le vostre membra.
274. Satyra V Lib. I. Sermonum:
Al giuoco Mecenate,
A letto andiam Virgilio ed io; chè il giuoco
De la palla a’ cisposi e agli indigesti
Certo non fa buon pro.
Trad. Gargallo.
275. Specie di lettiga, o palanchino, portato da due muli, uno davanti, l’altro di
dietro, ad uso più specialmente delle donne.
276. Quando si annunzia l’ora del bagno, cioè la nona nel verno, e la ottava
nella state. Plinio Lib. III. Epist. I.
277.
Con i clienti ei dissipa

La prima e second’ora mattutina;
L’altra ai rauci causidici destina.
Sino alla quinta s’occupa
In varie cure; alla quiete è data
La sesta; ogni opra a settima è cessata.
L’ottava della nitida
Palestra basta agli esercizii e sprona,
Gli eccelsi letti a premere la nona. [278]
Alta, Eufemo, è la decima
Ora a’ miei libri, quando per tua cura
Le dapi eterne al ventre suo misura.
Epig. Lib. IV. 8. Trad. Magenta.
278. I letti del triclinio sui quali i Romani sedevano a mensa. Nel capitolo che
tratterà delle Case ne parleremo.
279. «Imperocchè quivi erano e i mercati delle merci e le trattative dei

contratti, le proposte delle nozze e le pratiche delle transazioni.»
280. «Paolo, Maria, Pietro, Lorenzo e Giovanni tengono nella città il nome di
patriarcato.»
281.
Nefasto è allor che taccionsi i tre stili

Del pronunziare [283]; e quello è giorno fasto,
In cui lice trattar cause civili.
Nè creder già che il giorno quanto è vasto
Sua ragion serbi: talor fasto fia
La sera quel che al mattin fu nefasto.
Che quando fatto il sagrificio sia,
Può di tutto parlarsi; e al pronunziare
Si apre al nobil pretor libera via.
Trad. di G. B. Bianchi.
282.
Quando grida il Liburno: olà correte,

Egli già siede.
283. I tre stili, tria verba, sono le tre seguenti formule del pretore: Do, Dico,
Addico; ed ecco, secondo il Sigonio, il significato di queste parole: «Il
Pretore dicebat ex. gr. aliquem liberum esse. Addicebat v. g. ad un’altra
famiglia come nell’adozione. Dabat, ex. g. il possesso dei beni, o i
giudici, poichè il Pretore era cosa straordinaria che facesse da giudice.»
284.
Nembo d’altre faccende al capo, a’ fianchi

Ecco assalirmi. «In tribunal ti prega
Roscio pria delle due trovarti seco
Per domani.» I notai, Quinto, per oggi
Preganti di tornar: l’affar rammenta
Ch’è di tutto il collegio: è grande, è nuovo.
Fa che Mecena a queste tavolette
Ponga il suggel. Mi proverò; le dici,
Replica, insiste — «Purchè il vogli, il puoi.
Trad. Gargallo.
285.
Fugge intanto il ribaldo, e me abbandona

Sotto il coltel. Quand’ecco l’avversario
Gli vien tra’ piedi e — O tu svergognatissimo
Dove? dove? gli introna ad alta voce.
E a me — Mi faresti tu da testimonio?
Allor subito subito l’orecchio
Gli presento, strascinalo in giudizio;
Di qua, di là rumor.
Trad. Gargallo.
286. Se scientemente sbaglio, allora Giove mi respinga, salva però sempre la

città, dai buoni, come io getto questa pietra.
287.
«Ai Triumviri andrò e i vostri nomi
Denunzierò.»
Asinar. I. 2. 4.
288.
Nè la bianca benda
La composta ricopra onesta chioma,
Nè la stola che a pie’ lunga discenda.
Epist. ex Ponto III. 3, 51. Art. Am. 1, 31.
289.
Vergogna egli è che due, testè già amanti,

Veggansi avversi divenir d’un tratto:
Odia Venere tali litiganti.
Sovente avvien che sia processo fatto
A chi s’adora, ma trïonfa amore,
Se un odio acerbo non dettò quell’atto.
Un dì assistetti a giovane amatore:
Stava l’amante sua nella lettica,
Fieri oltraggi ei diceale in suo furore.
«Che principio al processo ora s’indica,
Grida, e avanzi la rea» — ella apparia; —
Ma restò muto nel veder l’amica.
L’una tabella e l’altra allor gli uscìa
Dalle mani, per correre all’amplesso,
Dicendo: hai vinto, hai vinto, amica mia!
Meglio è così ch’ora ne sia concesso
Ambo in pace partir, anzi che al foro
Dal talamo passar per un processo.
E sia per tanto la sentenza loro:
«Senza lite ella tenga i doni tuoi.»
Remed. Amor. v. 659-671,
mia traduzione.
290.
Se de’ suffragi suoi libero avesse

Il popolo a venir, qual mai ribaldo
Seneca preferir dubiteria
Un istante a Neron, al cui supplicio
Vi vorrebbe più assai che d’un serpente,
D’una scimia e d’un sacco?
Mia trad.
291.
A codesto sguajato, acciò non chiaccheri,

Si spezzeran in fede mia le gambe.
292. «È delitto imprigionare un cittadino romano: scelleraggine il farlo battere

con verghe; quasi parricidio l’ucciderlo; ma che dirò il sospenderlo in
croce?» Cicero, Orat. In Ver.
293.
A far baldoria andrai

Fiaccola in mezzo a quei che per la gola
Ritti e fitti all’uncin fumano ed ardono.
Sat. I. v. 155. Trad. Gargallo.
294. «Rifletti al carcere ed alla croce, e all’albero infitto per mezzo all’uomo sì
che gli esca dalla bocca.»
295.
Ei diverrà l’adultero di Roma,

Tremando ognor ch’abbia a pagar il fio
Del maritale onor dovuto a l’onta:
Nè credersi vorrà più fortunato
De l’astrifero Marte, a non lasciarsi
Coglier mai nella rete. Ira gelosa
Vendetta più crudel talor ne trae
Che quella dalle leggi al reo prescritta:
Uno uccide col ferro, un altro sbrana
Con sanguigno staffil: ci ha sin di quelli
Che sviscerar si sentono per altra
Bocca che per l’usata, un mugil vivo.
Sat. X. III. 317. Trad. Gargallo.
296.
Oh allor te misero ti colga il danno,

Che stretti i piedi, dentro le viscere
Rafani e mugili ti cacceranno.
Carmen XV.
297. Dufour. Storia della Prostit. Vol. I. Cap. XV.

298.
Una gran causa trattasi nel foro

D’un amico e vuo’ essergli avvocato.
Epidicus. Act. III. x. W.
299.
Lo scoppiante polmon rompiti, o gramo,

Per veder, lasso alfin, di palme intesti,
De le tue scale onor, verdi festoni.
Qual prezzo a tanti strilli? Un presciutello
Ben magro, di pelamide salate
Qualche bariglioncin, viete cipolle
(Mensil dono degli Afri), ovver del vino,
Per Tevere approdato, un cinque fiaschi.
Che se quattro comparse un aureo in saldo
T’abbian valuto, pattüita usanza
Parte di quello a’ curïali addice.
— Emilio ottien più del dover; e a noi
Qual merito si dà di maggior opra? —
N’è cagion la superba ne l’androne
Quadriga in bronzo eretta; e n’è l’equestre
Sua statua la cagion. Vè come, assiso
Su feroce destrier, del curvo astile,
Già da lunge ammiccando, i colpi assesta;
Già medita fra sè pugne e trofei.
Così sossopra va Pedon: Matone
Va fallendo così: ne fia diversa
Di Tongillo la fin, c’usa lavarsi
Con immenso alicorno, e col seguace
Suo treno inzaccherato infesta il bagno;
O il collo a Medi gestator premendo,
In lettiga a lung’aste il foro scorre;
Vasi argentei e mirrini, e ville, e servi
Sceso a comprar. Quel suo piratic’ostro
Di tirio stame a pro di lui fidanza.
Pur queste appariscenze a lor son lucro:
La porpora dà prezzo; le ametiste
Dàn prezzo a l’Orator: compie a costoro
E strombettar, ed ostentare un censo
Maggior del vero: omai già più non serba
A lo splendor confin prodiga Roma.
I bisnonni orator tornino al mondo:
Sesterzi chi darìa, se grossa gemma
Non gli vedesse sfolgorar dal dito?
In prima in prima il litigante adocchia
Se otto servi ti portino: se diece
Ti circondino intorno; se una seggiola
Ti tenga dietro, ed i togati avanti.
Quindi arringando Paolo fea pompa
D’un cammeotto a fitto, e quindi a prezzo
Maggior che Cosso e Basilo arringava:
Va di rado facondia in cenci avvolta.
E quando il duol di lacrimosa madre
Lice a Basilo esporre? e chi su’ rostri
Soffre un Basilo udir, benchè facondo?
Te Gallia accolga, o meglio, di causidici
Nutricatrice l’Africa, se agogni
Espor la lingua mercenaria a prezzo.
300. «Per passare poi la vecchiaja con decoro e con credito, qual può mai
essere più onorata via che l’occuparsi dello interpretare le leggi? Io per
me insin dalla mia giovinezza mi son provveduto di questo soccorso,
non solamente per farne uso nelle cause e nel foro, ma per aver
eziandio un ornamento ed un pregio col quale, quando mi sieno colla
vecchiezza venute meno le forze (il qual tempo già s’avvicina), io mi
assicuri di non avere in casa mia a patir solitudine.» De Oratore Lib. 1.
XLV. tr. di Gius. Ant. Cantova.
301. Lib. 1, c. 13.
302. «La curia, dove il Senato cura la republica.»
303. L’erario, la carcere e la curia si hanno a situare accanto al foro; ma in

modo tale, che la grandezza loro sia proporzionata a quella del foro. E
soprattutto dee principalmente la curia corrispondere all’eminenza del
municipio, o città che sia... Oltre a questo, a mezza altezza delle mura vi
si hanno a tirare attorno attorno delle cornici o di legname o di stucco.
Che se queste non vi si fanno, dissipandosi in alto la voce de’ disputanti,
non giungerà chiara all’orecchio degli ascoltatori; come all’incontro
quando le mura avranno queste cornici attorno attorno, si sentirà bene
la voce, perchè vien trattenuta da quelle, prima che si dissipi in alto. —
Trad. di Berardo Galiani.
304. Le basiliche unite ai Fori si hanno a situare nell’aspetto più caldo,

acciocchè possano i negozianti radunarvisi l’inverno senza sentire
l’incommodo della stagione... E se il luogo fosse più lungo del bisogno,
si situeranno piuttosto nell’estremità le Calcidiche, appunto come si
veggono nella Basilica Giulia Aquiliana. — Vitruvio, De Architect. Lib. V.
eI
305. Dec. IV, c. 36.
306. Pompeja. Pag. 125 in nota.
307. L’usò il Salvini nella versione dell’Iliade per camera degli sposi:
Egli scese nel talamo odorato

Di cedro e in alto soffittato.
308. Ad Eumachia figlia di Lucio, sacerdotessa publica, i Tintori.
309. Parole della classica traduzione di Tacito del Davanzati il quale le voci
arcta ed obscura rende per prigionia nè stretta nè dubbia.
310. «Sentirà esistere in questa città una carcere, la quale vollero i maggiori
nostri che fosse vendicatrice degli uomini malvagi e delle più aperte
scelleratezze» c. 12.
311. Juvenal. Sat. III:
Tante son le maniere onde si foggia

Per ceppi il ferro, da temer che manchi
Al vomere ed al sarchio ed alla marra.
312. Vers. 312-314. Traduco:
Ben felici puoi dir gli avi, beata

Puoi appellar l’antica età, quand’era
Da’ suoi Re e dai Tribuni governata
Che un carcer sol bastava a Roma intera.
313.
Così gli otto littor’ d’incude al pari

Me infelice martellino.
Atto I. Sc. I. 7.
314.
Comanda a quei che meco ho qui condotti

Per essere al carnefice affidati
Che a me dalla città vengano al porto
Incontro; poi qua di ritorno, tienli
Ben custoditi.
Atto III. Sc. VI. 18.
315.
«Io vo scrivendo come amor mi spira [316],

E pera io pur, se di mutarmi in Dio,
Senza di te, la volontà m’attira.»
316. Dopo dell’Innamorato Pompejano, scrisse pur l’Allighieri in questo verso

il medesimo concetto.
Nota del Trascrittore
Ortografia e punteggiatura originali sono state

mantenute, correggendo senza annotazione minimi
errori tipografici. Le correzioni indicate a pag. 390-91
sono state riportate nel testo.
Copertina creata dal trascrittore e posta nel pubblico
dominio.
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Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's

War on Drugs Raúl Diego Rivera

Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs Peter

Votes drugs and violence the political logic of

The Peyote Effect From the Inquisition to the War on

Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative

Telematics and Computing 7th International Congress

Telematics and Computing 9th International Congress

Telematics and Computing 9th International Congress

Controversies in Latin American Bioethics Eduardo

Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández

“Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs stands apart from a recent

“In Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on Drugs, Raúl Diego Rivera

ISBN 978-3-030-51143-2 ISBN 978-3-030-51144-9 (eBook)

Photo credit: Prometeo Rodríguez Lucero. Used with permission.

In preparing Narratives of Vulnerability, the affection, patience, and

de a Pie who worked on the documentary series Buscadores en un país

1 Introduction. Vulnerability and Victimhood

2 Vulnerabilities and Resistances in Transit: Narratives

3 “Nos están matando!”: Professional Reflexivity

4 Dissident Mourners: Victims’ Political Participation

Fig. 4.1 Mario Vergara’s outfit is adapted to the typical conditions

Introduction. Vulnerability and Victimhood

This book originates from a political urgency to understand the current

© The Author(s) 2020 1

violence, and a security policy that persecutes and criminalizes peas-

(Open Society 2016), especially along migratory paths (Inter-American

According to philosopher Judith Butler, vulnerability does not cancel

The Cold War and the Expansion

the national security apparatus, kept track of the management of drug

(1964–1982) against left-wing political activism which challenged the

Crow” laws (Alexander 2010, 4). In other words, contemporary drug

Mexican Democratization and the End

The Victims of Mexico’s War

prohibitive punishment. According to Vélez Salas, this model was focused

squares to demand justice. This mobilization spawned the Movimiento

communities, indigenous peoples, and miners from their homes and

According to Mastrogiovanni, areas dense in natural resources, particu-

institutions that enable it to live (2009, 23). Butler’s formulation allows

periodismo del silencio,” Vanessa Job’s “La resistencia cibernética,” and

be classified as “indirect” victims. In this chapter, I do not follow this

Qualunque cosa d’Ombria a te conduce,

Di Cesare son questi i fori, ei disse,

249. «Singolare ne sarebbe dovunque la struttura e maravigliosa anche per

Poi mi getto a dormir senza pensiere

251. Tien nel gran foro i consacrati templi. Lib. III.

252. «Se ciò approvate, andatevene, o Quiriti. — Procedete al suffragio, col

253. De Architectura, lib. 1, c. 7.

254. V. Popidio figlio d’Epidio Questore ha fatto costruire i portici.

256. Pompei descritta da Carlo Bonucci: Foro Civile.

257. Lo squarcio che reco è la traduzione della traduzione francese

258. A Marco Lucrezio Decidiano Rufo duumviro, tre volte quinquennale,

260. A Quinto Sallustio figlio di Publio, duumviro, incaricato della giustizia,

264. «A Marco Claudio Marcello figlio di Marco patrono.»

265. Lib. VII c. 70.

266. Così parmi di dover tradurre:

«Possano i Numi esterminar chi primo

267. I. Sylv. I. 29.

268. Satyra IV. Lib. I.

269. Satyra III. Lib. I.

Ecco a tutti i cantor vizio comune;

270. Æneid. Lib. VIII:

E come pria cader vedrai le stelle,