Toward a Better Understanding of Twenty-First-Century Drug Violence
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SOBRE LAS VÍCTIMAS (ON VICTIMS): TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DRUG VIOLENCE AND NARCO CULTURE by Stacie Laurel Kirk APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ___________________________________________ Dr. Monica Rankin, Chair ___________________________________________ Dr. Shilyh Warren ___________________________________________ Dr. Jennifer S. Holmes Copyright 2018 Stacie Laurel Kirk All Rights Reserved To my mother, Shannon, for all her support. To my grandmother, Edna, for her insight and wisdom. SOBRE LAS VÍCTIMAS (ON VICTIMS): TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DRUG VIOLENCE AND NARCO CULTURE by STACIE LAUREL KIRK, BA THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The University of Texas at Dallas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS May 2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I humbly thank my committee members—Dr. Monica Rankin, Dr. Shilyh Warren, and Dr. Jennifer S. Holmes—for their time, insight, and suggestions. Their feedback was invaluable and a vital part of this project. I especially want to thank Dr. Monica Rankin for her advice that I should go to Oaxaca despite an unforeseen personal challenge. As always, her suggestion was the right choice. I also would like to acknowledge Hermanos en el Camino and Centro de Orientación del Migrante de Oaxaca for the opportunity to visit their shelters and to meet with migrants fleeing violence. I thank the Center for U.S.-Latin America Initiatives (CUSLAI) at the University of Texas at Dallas for its events and academic resources, along with the wonderful opportunities it provides to students. I extend my gratitude to CUSLAI’s staff, Toni Loftin and Pedro Gonzales, for their advice and support. Finally, I would like to thank each of the undergraduate students who attended UT Dallas’s study abroad in Mexico during the 2016 and 2017 summers. Your enthusiasm and dedication give me great hope in the future of Latin American Studies. April 2018 v SOBRE LAS VÍCTIMAS (ON VICTIMS): TOWARD A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY DRUG VIOLENCE AND NARCO CULTURE Stacie Laurel Kirk, MA The University of Texas at Dallas, 2018 ABSTRACT Supervising Professor: Dr. Monica Rankin Since the militarization of Mexico’s “war” on drugs in late 2006, violence has escalated to extreme levels. Contemporary narcotic trafficking in the Western Hemisphere serves as a crucial topic for Latin American scholars due to the severity and grotesque nature of the associated brutality. In addition, Central American refugees fleeing northward from violence perpetuated by transnational criminal organizations demands social attention. Employing an interdisciplinary framework that incorporates the perspective of victims—frequently migrants, women, and other marginalized Latin Americans swept up in narco culture—this thesis seeks a greater understanding of the violence and culture that surround twenty-first-century drug trafficking. It highlights scholarship that, despite its different academic fields, adopts an approach in some way focused on violence, culture, or victims. In exploring theory from Performance Studies, it engages with recent research pertaining to the performative qualities of narco violence and argues that a victim-centered framework—one that deciphers performative violence’s messages vi within the context of the victims’ suffering—offers a compassionate perspective and sheds light on the language of violence. This thesis also explores ethical victim representation in documentaries that provide the victim’s perspective or “voice.” In Señorita extraviada (2001), Lourdes Portillo facilitates empathy for victims without perpetuating graphic images by featuring photographs of victims alive and well, rather than their gruesome remains. Finally, this thesis analyzes an unpublished collection of recent drawings by inmates near the U.S.-Mexican border, many of whom are trapped in the gang lifestyle. Much of this artwork features images of the Mexican Revolution and a glorified indigenous past. Applying previously discussed assertions regarding messaging and patterns, it argues that, despite the artwork’s haphazard and surreal nature, it speaks a “language” of violence that echoes themes expressed by earlier Mexican intellectuals. Although this thesis makes distinct claims regarding scholarship, performative violence, victim-centered documentary film, and even artwork drawn by gang members, all assertions address and support one main argument—that academics and society at large will gain a deeper understanding of the crisis that twenty-first-century narcotic violence presents by approaching this tragic topic within the context of those who experience its brutality. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 A BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW OF DRUGS AND VIOLENCE .....................9 CHAPTER 2 VICTIMS AND VIOLENCE ................................................................................26 CHAPTER 3 DOCUMENTARY FILM AND THE VICTIM’S VOICE ...................................45 CHAPTER 4 “ES MEJOR MORIR DE PIE…” AND OTHER MESSAGES IN TWENTY- FIRST-CENTURY GANG ARTWORK .......................................................................................58 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................86 APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................................89 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................................97 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................102 CURRICULUM VITAE viii LIST OF FIGURES A.1 Female Clowns .......................................................................................................................89 A.2 Skulls and Crosses .................................................................................................................90 A.3 La Prieta Linda ......................................................................................................................91 A.4 Woman in Feathered Headdress ............................................................................................92 A.5 Women and Aztec Warrior (unfinished) ................................................................................93 A.6 Three Indigenous Women ......................................................................................................94 A.7 Rodriguez Pair........................................................................................................................95 A.8 Mexico’s Past and Mi Vida Loca ...........................................................................................96 ix INTRODUCTION This thesis would fit well into an edited book featuring warriors and cultures of violence—not because it focuses on the aggressors, but ironically, because it privileges the victims. One of my most interesting history classes explored warrior studies through a cross-cultural comparison of European medieval knights and Tokugawa period samurai. Thus, as I developed an interest in modern Latin America, and in light of the trafficking crisis developing at the border, I focused on the cartels and gangs who profited from narcotics. From the sicario hitmen of the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels, to transnational enterprises like MS-13, to U.S. distribution gangs like Barrio Azteca—in essence, the modern-day Latin American “warriors”—these soldiers of vice and criminality identify with a culture of violence that defines their occupations, associations, and very existence. But one trip to Mexico changed my perspective and I am grateful for this opportunity. While visiting an Ixtepec shelter with a group of students, I asked if any migrants wanted to share their experiences regarding the violence they encountered while traveling north from Central America. One wheelchair-bound man volunteered to tell his horrific experience in which gang members attacked his party. They slashed his legs with a machete and demanded his cell phone so that they could call his relatives for ransom money. As he recounted his narrow escape from the extortionists, a small crowd of men formed just outside of the shelter’s mess hall, nodding in agreement and briefly interjecting their own stories and brushes with death along their journeys. But it was another story that forced me to reconsider what victims endure—as opposed to what “warriors” or perpetrators inflict. Before the man finished his story, a volunteer at the 1 shelter notified me that a young woman had quietly come forward, requesting to share her tragic experience away from any men and in private. The volunteer escorted the women from our group to a small, cramped, austere room towards the back of one of the rustic buildings. As everyone gathered