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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
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retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
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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-
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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
the justice system that guarantees impunity and the repeated commission
of human rights violations are a leitmotif in these narratives. In spite of
the overwhelming reality, Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War on
Drugs discovers strategies of resistance that come into view in the process
of acknowledging the vulnerability of these communities. For example,
the strategies of survival of undocumented migrants, journalists’ urgent
demands for professional training in how to cover violent events, the
effectiveness of independent experts’ accompaniment of victims of the
War on Drugs and the systematization of the knowledge that these victims
acquire when they become involved in the defense of human rights.
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CHAPTER 2
Vulnerabilities and Resistances in Transit:

Narratives of Central American Colonial
Transmigrants
In his book Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migra-

tion on the US–Mexico Border, geographer Jeremy Slack explains that
communities that are characterized by their mobility are “defined as less
than human” (2019, 10). He claims that human mobility is constantly
under threat due to different types of violence connected to those
groups whose lives embody a “radical foreignness” (Slack 2019, 10).
This productive insight allows me to discuss the vulnerability of Central
American irregular migrants in transit across Mexico in the context of
the War on Drugs. I claim that two processes are inextricably linked
to which they are exposed during their movement. The suspension of
their human rights due to their migratory status and the racialization
of their identities when they cross the southern border into Mexico. As
a result of this, “the logics of raciality mark some people as rightless
and make them more vulnerable to violence than others” (Ybarra 2019,
206). These migrants’ “illegality” is constructed socially through their
racialization as people who are considered inferior and underdeveloped
from the perspective of hegemonic cultures.
In analyzing migration to the U.S., Ramón Grosfoguel and Nelson
Maldonado-Torres (2008) have discussed the nexus between race and
migration previously ignored because of assimilation theories. For
example, Grosfoguel and Maldonado-Torres sustain that migrants coming
from Northern and Eastern Europe, who are racialized as white, as well
as those who come from other parts of the world and also share a
© The Author(s) 2020 27

R. Diego Rivera Hernández, Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico’s War
on Drugs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51144-9_2
European background, succeed, beginning with the second, third, or

fourth generation, at rising on the social pyramid and are assimilated into
the metropolis (2008, 123). Over time, these migrants incorporate into
their speech the standards of the dominant culture and adopt a socially
accepted mode of behavior (Grosfoguel and Maldonado-Torres 2008,
123). The work of decolonial theorists Grosfoguel and Maldonado-Torres
challenges the limitations of migration studies that privilege assimilation,
as this perspective is premised on homogenization of the word “migrant”
and does not consider the role of racial factors in the processes of integra-
tion to the metropolis. The assimilationist approach omits a fundamental
point in the discussion of the difficulties that nonwhite populations face in
their attempts to integrate. Grosfoguel’s critical lens on this assimilationist
understanding of migration questions the latter’s failure to consider race
as an analytical category in its attempt to explain the migrant’s incorpo-
ration into the metropolis. In his essay “Latin@s and the Decolonization
of the US Empire in the 21st Century,” Grosfoguel differentiates white
European migrants from “colonial/racial subjects of empire” who are part
of a far-reaching colonial/imperial history which includes the extermi-
nation of the US native populations, the enslavement of Africans, and
the war waged over Mexico’s Northern territories, among other episodes
(2008, 608). Grosfoguel focuses on the racialization of Native Amer-
ican, African American, and Chicano minorities as subjects inferior both
to the dominant culture and to white European migrants to argue that
it shapes the metropolis’s colonial imaginary, even when some of these
groups were established long before the United States was constituted as
an independent nation (2008, 608).
To more accurately account for the complex experiences of present-
day migrants, how do we describe those migrants who do not originate
from Europe or fit the model of the “colonial/racial subjects of empire”?
Grosfoguel, Oso, and Christou address this question by referring to those
populations as “colonial immigrants” and posit that, just as the colo-
nial/racial subjects of empire, these immigrants are also subjected to a
racial inferiorization (2014, 8). These colonial immigrants also come from
the periphery and, although they were never colonized by the imperial
metropolises, their countries of origin were the target of political, mili-
tary, or economic intervention from foreign powers, which accelerated
the factors leading to the flight of millions of people (Grosfoguel et al.
2014, 8). This category describes the populations of Central America’s
Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), as well as
2 VULNERABILITIES AND RESISTANCES IN TRANSIT … 29
those of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, among others,

all of which are classified as minorities, in such a way that in this case,
the US imaginary automatically views them as colonial/racial subjects of
empire (Grosfoguel et al. 2014, 9).
In this chapter, I use the concept of colonial transmigrants to refer
exclusively to the clandestine migratory flows originating from the
Northern Triangle, crossing into Mexico on their way to the United
States.1 This term emphasizes two aspects: the experience of transit and
the phenomenon of forced migration prompted by neocolonial processes,
beginning with the policies of intervention, exploitation, and pillaging of
Central America by the Global North. I analyze the vulnerability of colo-
nial transmigrants in three literary texts, through a critical lens that is
attentive to the effects of hemispheric policies of border securitization
enforced as part of the War on Drugs as it is to the historical power
dynamics structured around an ethnoracial hierarchy between the citi-
zens of the transit countries and colonial transmigrants. I argue that
the ensuing processes of “illegalization” and “racialization” place these
migrants in a position of extreme vulnerability. As they enter Mexico, their
rights are suspended, their identities are racialized, and ultimately inferi-
orized by state agents, delinquent gangs, and local citizens. The novels I
will analyze, Amarás a Dios sobre todas las cosas (You shall love god above
all things, Alejandro Hernández 2013), La fila india (The Indian file,
Antonio Ortuño 2013), and Las tierras arrasadas (The destroyed lands,
Emiliano Monge 2015) depict the myriad forms of this extreme vulnera-
bility while also questioning the notion that characters are defenseless and
lack agency. Instead, they present a variety of practices of peaceful and
violent resistance.
Forced Migration: The Colonial

Transmigrants of the Northern Triangle
Due to Mexico’s geographical location and its historical relation with the
United States, it is the site where we can observe all the facets of the
migratory experience. Mexico is a country of origin for migration and
1 While Mexico is a corridor for the transit of different migratory flows coming from
the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and even Asia, the presence in Mexico of migrants
from the Northern Triangle and Nicaragua almost entirely dominates the statistics tracking
the nationality of those who enter into the country.
a corridor to the North, it is a destination for migrants and a territory

to which they return (IACHR 2013, 2). Every year some five hundred
thousand migrants originating mainly from the Northern Triangle and
Nicaragua enter Mexico as part of an irregular migration (United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees-UNHCR 2017). As they lack protec-
tion from the country of transit, their undocumented status exposes them
to ever greater dangers and risks on their journey. Colonial transmigrants
must then rely on the support of other fellow travelers who are in the
same situation, as well as a network of shelters, the solidarity of a few
members of civil society, and a handful of national and international
organizations that promote and defend human rights. For colonial trans-
migrants, crossing Mexico is a nightmare where they become victims of
crimes including theft, kidnapping, extortion, sexual exploitation, murder,
and disappearances. This criminal violence stems from the complicity
between police forces, migration authorities, and organized crime (Inter-
national Organization for Migration-IOM 2017). Additionally, the local
citizenry is also responsible for aggressions against these colonial trans-
migrants, as it takes advantage of their vulnerability in order to extract
economic gains and to exercise various types of violence with impunity.
The northward migration of Central Americans is a long-standing
phenomenon that is intimately linked to US interventionism in the
Northern Triangle and Nicaragua. Although this region was not colo-
nized by the United States, during the 1980s military and economic
pressure from the U.S. was a driving force in the Central Amer-
ican exodus. Spurred by civil wars and financial recessions across the
region, typical migratory flows mushroomed into massive displacements
(Hamilton and Stoltz Chinchilla 1991, 96). The migratory boom is
attributable to a dire set of circumstances that include armed conflicts,
state-sponsored violence, the systematic violation of human rights, and
the murders of thousands of people. US interference in the political life
of the region came in the form of support to the Contras in Nicaragua,
the installation of military bases in Honduras, economic support of the
Salvadoran armed forces, and complicity with Guatemala’s genocidal mili-
tary leaders (Sáenz de Tejada 2005, 72). Considering the effects of the
US intrusion in Central American countries is crucial to understanding
the motivations of those who migrate from the Northern Triangle and
Nicaragua. These effects are also at the root of the flood of migrants
from the peripheries who are incorporated into the metropolises as a
cheap labor force and classified racially within the same inferior categories
reserved for the colonial/racial subjects of empire.
The massive migration during the 1980s, provoked by fear and political
violence (largely fomented by the U.S.), gave way to economic migra-
tion in the 1990s. This new wave of migration was brought about by a
market system premised on the precarization of the migrant labor force
on a global scale. The international demand for workers and the chronic
poverty engendered by the neoliberalization of the Central American
economy, prompted thousands of Central Americans to migrate in search
of better opportunities at a time when demand in the U.S. for a low-paid
workforce was increasing (Álvarez 2020, 5). Paradoxically, the Central
Americans’ humanitarian needs and the US demand for a low-paid work-
force stood in stark contrast with US efforts to contain migratory flows.
The U.S. closed its borders and pressured Mexico to establish stricter
migratory controls, which in the 1990s led to the creation of the National
Institute of Migration (INM, for its acronym in Spanish), the opening of
new detention centers, and the participation of security forces tasked with
arresting undocumented migrants (Casillas 2011a, 298).
In addition to the deep changes that characterized this new phase
of economic privatization, rates of criminal violence increased due to
the activities of gangs such as the maras, which turned the area of the
Northern Triangle into one of the most dangerous places in the world
(Amnesty International 2016, 9). The maras are mainly constituted of the
groups MS-13 and MS-18, and are a criminal transnational organization
that was formed in the 1980s by Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles,
California, who had arrived as refugees due to the civil war. The maras
initially took shape as gangs of young people who did not have family ties
or access to education and lived in poverty. These gangs had the specific
purpose of preventing other gangs from taking control of territories in the
midst of a racialized turf war between white, black, and Hispanic youths.
Over time, induction into the mara ceased to be restricted to the defense
of the neighborhood, and the mara became “one of the largest street
gangs in the United States and Northern Central America” (Wolf 2012,
65). The end of the civil war in El Salvador, enshrined with the signing
of the Chapultepec Peace Agreement (1992) in Mexico City, provided
the U.S. with a pretext for eliminating the status of war refugee, which
had up until then been granted to Salvadorans. However, these refugees
had become a real problem for the US administration. The expulsion of
the maras from the U.S. as part of the process of repatriation of these
refugees did not solve the conflict. Instead, the conflict expanded across
the Northern Triangle (International Crisis Group 2017, 5–6). The crim-
inal violence characteristic of the postwar period became a noteworthy
factor in the migratory flows of young people from across Central America
who sought to escape not only from a situation of poverty in which
opportunities for employment were few, but also from the fear of being
either recruited or murdered by the maras (Amnesty International 2016,
17). This represented a true humanitarian crisis. The violence exercised
by Central American gangs forced people to relocate because of direct
threats or the decline in the standard of living and the deterioration of
the social environment in their communities (Albuja 2014, 131). When
referring to these migrants, I speak of “forced migration,” and not simply
of a migratory movement. This population had been expelled from its
community due to the intersection of economic precariousness, extreme
violence, and the high incidence of impunity. The role played by the U.S.
in this expansion of criminal violence into Central America during “times
of peace” is another example of how metropolises, even when they lack
a direct colonial history with some countries of the periphery, intervene
in the Global South’s geopolitics. On the one hand, they endanger the
safety of millions of people, forcing them to emigrate and, on the other,
they subordinate Central Americans into a precarious job market which
becomes their only mode of incorporation into the capitalist systems of
production.
The concept of forced migration is vital to understanding the factors
of expulsion among colonial transmigrants from the Northern Triangle
and Nicaragua. These colonial transmigrants abandon their communities
due to state and intrafamilial violence,2 extreme poverty, environmental
disasters, scarcity of job opportunities, and the plummeting of local
agricultural economies. Further aggravating the effects of these factors
is the ever-stronger presence of extractive industries which, in their
violent pillaging and their “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey
2003, 145) of common goods, give rise to internal forced displace-
ments and massive forced migration toward other countries along the
Central American corridor—Nicaraguans who migrate to Costa Rica, for
example—or toward the U.S. The expulsion of colonial transmigrants
from the Northern Triangle cannot be adequately accounted for without
2 Amarela Varela Huerta (2017a, 3) highlights patriarchal violence as one of the

determining factors in the forced migration of Central American women.
an intersectional perspective that takes into consideration factors such as

insecurity, structural violence, the influence of foreign capital on the ways
of life of social groups, forced internal migrations, natural disasters, and
domestic violence. Together, these elements shed light on the desperation
of millions of people in their quest to escape from this humanitarian crisis.
Journalist and writer Oscar Martínez (2017) posits that this panorama
and the increase of violence against young people has brought about a
change of mentality in which the image of economic success embodied by
the U.S. has lost its ability to provide social hope. In light of this, colo-
nial transmigrants have begun to migrate toward Mexico as a country
of refuge for those who no longer set out in search of the “American
Dream” but, rather, seek to escape violence in their country of origin
(Martínez 2017).
Border Securitization
and Racism as a Migration Policy
Despite the risks and dangers faced by colonial transmigrants on their
journey, the migratory flow from the Northern Triangle to the U.S.
remains steady. Travel across Mexico and Central America has worsened
due to the migratory policies implemented by the US government to
contain migration. Specifically, Operation Gatekeeper, launched in 1994,
aimed to dissuade migrants by closing off the safest clandestine paths
to the U.S., forcing irregular migrants to take more dangerous routes.
Instead of discouraging these migrants, “the result was a crisis of death
and disappearance on the border” (Colibrí Center 2015). Furthermore,
the 9/11 attacks radically transformed immigration policies across the
hemisphere. Migration became a matter of national security and one of
the main targets of the War on Terror (De Genova 2009, 447). The
US policy of border securitization included strategic agreements with
Mexico. Both countries entered these agreements under the pretext of
fighting organized crime, terrorism, and DTOs. In fact, these policies
were meant to extend the reach of the US–Mexico border to Mexico’s
southern border with Central America. With the support of the Mexican
government, the U.S. used the pretense of national security to put in place
a much stricter political agenda regarding migratory flows. The result of
this bilateral cooperation was the Southern Plan (2001), a program that
used methods of containment, detention, and deportation to reduce the
volume of undocumented migrants headed to the U.S.
Border securitization policies increased the danger faced by persons

in transit and, as a result, drove up the costs involved in the journey of
migrating to the U.S. Accordingly, those who aimed to reach Mexico and
the U.S. relied on the industry of coyotaje, or human smuggling operated
by coyotes or polleros: “The terms pollero, coyote or migrant-smuggler are
used interchangeably to refer to persons skilled in transporting migrants
illegally and on a regular basis to a destination point for financial remu-
neration” (Izcara Palacios 2015, 326). This industry is sustained by
international migration and remittances sent from the U.S. to relatives
in Central America to pay in installments for the travel of those popu-
lations in the Northern Triangle and Nicaragua, who cannot afford to
cover the costs of the journey. The mass media and judicial authorities
have stigmatized the coyote by portraying this figure as a nodal problem
in tragedies of migration. However, they fail to understand that relying
on the coyote is a “survival strategy sought out by migrants” seeking
to move across the borders of nation-states (Spener 2008, 129). From
this point of view, it should not seem strange that migrants, particu-
larly women, should seek to negotiate a degree of special protection from
coyotes, granted in exchange for various affective, economic, or intimate
services (Vogt 2016, 368). The industry of coyotaje takes on a different
shape than that of human trafficking, but ever fewer coyotes work inde-
pendently. The typically solitary coyote has been integrated into a “chain
of coyotes,” constituted by people who are located at points along the
road and work to guide the group (Martínez 2017). The extinction of
the coyote is also attributable to his incorporation, forced or voluntary,
into the ranks of organized crime, which cost him his autonomy and,
particularly, his social credibility.
Whether guided by a coyote or not, Central Americans move across
inhospitable areas in an effort to evade the gaze of migration authori-
ties, police forces, organized crime, and other members of the citizenry
who take advantage of their vulnerability. The risks and dangers to which
migrants are exposed along their route are inseparable from US border
securitization policies and the violence caused by the War on Drugs
launched by President Felipe Calderón and later intensified during Pres-
ident Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year mandate. Jeremy Slack explains that
in this violent scenario, migrants in transit “are uniquely situated among
the casualties of the war on drugs” (2018, 200). The combined effects
of these policies pushed transmigrants to tread through unsafe areas so
as to avoid checkpoints, military raids, or raids carried out on the cargo
trains in which they travel without authorization. As irregular migrants,

they are vulnerable in their transit because they are not protected or safe-
guarded by any state. They are “the stateless [who] find themselves in a
condition of rightlessness” (Gündogdu 2015, 3). While international law
stipulates that states must guarantee the rights and protection of all those
persons who find themselves within a context of human mobility (IACHR
2013), there is no legislative measure in place to punish those who fail to
provide this protection. Nation-states’ sovereign power determines how
migratory flows are managed, more than international laws.
The drive to securitize is at the root of the adverse narratives about
migrants that contribute to generating a hostile atmosphere, particu-
larly when transit countries and destination countries declare a state of
humanitarian crisis. Governments, far from being genuinely concerned
with reducing the risks and dangers of transit, use the increase in violence
against migrants as a pretext to strengthen border controls. Migra-
tion studies professor Nicholas De Genova argues that “the language
of “crisis” is deployed with the specific aim of authorizing “emer-
gency measures” or “exceptional” powers” (2017, 158). In other words,
governments sound social alarm bells about migration with the aim of
establishing new operatives and implementing actions of containment,
detention, and deportation. These emergency sirens are typically sounded
when states are overwhelmed by their inability to administer and regulate
migratory flows. Alarm bells are activated internationally with catastrophic
utterances such as the so-called “crisis of unaccompanied migrant chil-
dren” in 2014 in the U.S. or the 2016 “refugee crisis” in Europe: “we are
witnessing a crisis in control, a moment of governmental impasse engen-
dered by the sheer incorrigibility of the autonomy and subjectivity of
human mobility” (De Genova 2017, 158). The activation of humanitarian
responses by governments only contributes to increasing the risks and
dangers faced by migrants in transit. The most notorious demonstration
of this dynamic was the 2014 new Plan Frontera Sur (Southern Border
Program) developed by the Mexican government in response to renewed
pressure from the U.S. following the arrest of more than 50,000 minors
on Mexico’s northern border. The Southern Border Program resulted
in increased surveillance and the presence of migratory checkpoints at
strategic locations in the Southeast of Mexico, in addition to joint oper-
atives coordinated by the National Institute of Migration (INM), the
federal police and the armed forces aimed at stymying migrants in their
attempts to jump onto and ride the cargo train best known as La Bestia
(The Beast; Isacson et al. 2015, 6–7). The Mexican government touted
this program, promising that it would diminish the probability that
migrants might become injured or maimed. But this rhetoric hides the
violence present across the clandestine paths where migrants are inter-
cepted by criminals or locals who rob, wound, or kill them with absolute
impunity. These spaces are the stage for what amounts to a “holocaust” of
Central Americans (Sánchez Soler 2017) engendered by both the effects
of the hemispheric policy of border securitization and the context of the
War on Drugs in Mexico.
The complicity between agents of the state and organized crime is
another factor that should be taken into account when thinking about
the vulnerability experienced by those who migrate. The deployment
of measures to control and surveil borders following the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, has created circumstances in which DTOs diversified their oper-
ations and expanded them beyond the circulation of illegal substances.
They have made inroads into a new, multimillion-dollar industry associ-
ated with the management of the territories of clandestine migration for
the ultimate purpose of kidnapping migrants:
The kidnapping of migrants is not a desperate measure on the part of

organized crime, nor is it a form of flight or the adoption of a new niche of
criminal activity that supplants the previous one, it is, rather, the concrete
expression of its capacity of development, organization, and innovation
which links local populations to nationals from other places than Mexico,
as well as some Central Americans. (Casillas 2011b, 161)
The members of the criminal organization known as Los Zetas control the
migratory routes to the North. This group was trained in the U.S. and
formed by deserters of the Special Forces of Mexico, which were over-
seen by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA, for its acronym
in Spanish). The deserters constituted the armed wing of the Gulf DTO
up until the arrest in 2003 of the organization’s leader, Osiel Cárdenas
Guillén. The Zetas seceded from the Gulf Cartel in 2010 and, since then,
its main activity and source of subsistence is that of maintaining territorial
control through violence and the collection of monetary dues for any type
of traffic (Open Society 2016, 14). Their specialty is the management of
migratory transit. They control gangs in the states of Tabasco, Veracruz,
Tamaulipas, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, all of which primarily carry out kidnap-
pings, extortions, as well as the recruitment and sexual exploitation of
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LE GRAND CONTRAT POUR LA FOURNITURE DU BŒUF
CONSERVÉ
Aussi brièvement que possible, je désire exposer à la nation la part, si
petite soit-elle, que j’ai eue dans cette affaire qui a préoccupé si grandement
l’opinion publique, engendré tant de querelles et rempli les journaux des
deux continents de renseignements erronés et de commentaires extravagants.
Voici quelle fut l’origine de cet événement fâcheux. Je n’avance, dans le
résumé suivant, aucun fait qui ne soit confirmé par les documents officiels
du gouvernement.
John Wilson Mackensie, de Rotterdam, comté de Chemung, New-Jersey,
actuellement décédé, fit un contrat avec le gouvernement général, le 10
octobre 1861, ou à peu près à cette date, pour fournir au général Sherman la
somme totale de trente barils de bœuf conservé.
Très bien.
Il partit à la recherche de Sherman, avec son bœuf. Mais quand il fut à
Washington, Sherman venait de quitter cette ville pour Manassas. Mackensie
prit donc son bœuf, et l’y suivit, mais il arriva trop tard. Il le suivit à
Nashville, et de Nashville à Chattanooga, et de Chattanooga à Atlanta, mais
sans pouvoir le rejoindre. A Atlanta, il reprit sa course et poursuivit Sherman
dans sa marche vers la mer. Il arriva quelques jours trop tard. Mais apprenant
que Sherman s’était embarqué pour la Terre Sainte, en excursion, à bord de
la Cité des Quakers, il fit voile pour Beyrouth, calculant qu’il dépasserait
l’autre navire. Une fois à Jérusalem, avec son bœuf, il sut que Sherman ne
s’était pas embarqué sur la Cité des Quakers, mais qu’il était retourné dans
les plaines pour combattre les Indiens. Il revint en Amérique et partit pour
les montagnes Rocheuses. Après soixante-huit jours de pénible voyage à
travers les plaines, et comme il se trouvait à moins de quatre milles du
quartier général de Sherman, il fut tomahawqué et scalpé, et les Indiens
prirent le bœuf. Ils ne lui laissèrent qu’un baril. L’armée de Sherman s’en
empara, et ainsi, même dans la mort, le hardi navigateur put exécuter une
partie de son contrat. Dans son testament, écrit au jour le jour, il léguait le
contrat à son fils Barthelemy Wilson. Barthelemy rédigea la note suivante, et
mourut:
Doit le Gouvernement des États-Unis.
Pour son compte avec John Wilson Mackensie, de New-Jersey, décédé:
Dollars
Trente barils de bœuf au général Sherman, à 100 dollars 3.000
Frais de voyage et de transport 14.000
Total 17.000
Pour acquit...
Il mourut donc, mais légua son contrat à W. J. Martin, qui tenta de se faire
payer, mais mourut avant d’avoir réussi. Lui, le légua à Barker J. Allen, qui
fit les mêmes démarches, et mourut. Barker J. Allen le légua à Anson G.
Rogers, qui fit les démarches pour être payé, et parvint jusqu’au bureau du
neuvième auditeur à la Cour des comptes. Mais la mort, le grand régulateur,
survint sans être appelée, et lui régla son compte à lui. Il laissa la note à un
de ses parents du Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins on le nommait, qui dura
quatre semaines et deux jours, et battit le record du temps; il manqua de
vingt-quatre heures d’être reçu par le douzième auditeur. Dans son testament
il légua le contrat à son oncle, un nommé O Gai-Gai Johnson. Ce legs fut
funeste à O Gai-Gai. Ses dernières paroles furent: «Ne me pleurez pas. Je
meurs volontiers.» Il ne mentait pas, le pauvre diable. Sept autres personnes,
successivement, héritèrent du contrat. Toutes moururent. Il est enfin venu
entre mes mains. Je l’héritai d’un parent nommé Hubbard, Bethléhem
Hubbard, d’Indiana. Il avait eu de l’inimitié pour moi pendant longtemps.
Mais à ses derniers moments, il me fit appeler, se réconcilia avec moi
complètement, et en pleurant me donna le contrat de bœuf.
Ici finit l’histoire du contrat jusqu’au jour où il vint en ma possession. Je
vais essayer maintenant d’exposer impartialement, aux yeux de la nation,
tout ce qui concerne ma part en cette matière. Je pris le contrat et la note
pour frais de route et transport, et j’allai voir le président des États-Unis.
—«Monsieur, me dit-il, que désirez-vous?»
Je répondis:—«Sire, à la date, ou à peu près, du 10 octobre 1861, John
Wilson Mackensie, de Rotterdam, comté de Chemung, New-Jersey, décédé,
fit un contrat avec le gouvernement pour fournir au général Sherman la
somme totale de trente barils de bœuf...»
Il m’arrêta là, et me congédia, avec douceur, mais fermeté. Le lendemain
j’allais voir le secrétaire d’État.
Il me dit:—«Eh bien, Monsieur?»
Je répondis:—«Altesse Royale, à la date ou à peu près du 10 octobre
1861, John Wilson Mackensie, de Rotterdam, comté de Chemung, New-
Jersey, décédé, fit un contrat avec le gouvernement pour fournir au général
Sherman la somme totale de trente barils de bœuf...»
—«Cela suffit, Monsieur, cela suffit; ce bureau n’a rien à faire avec les
fournitures de bœuf.»
Je fus salué et congédié. Je réfléchis mûrement là-dessus et me décidai, le
lendemain, à voir le ministre de la marine, qui dit:—«Soyez bref, Monsieur,
et expliquez-vous.»
Je répondis:—«Altesse Royale, à la date, ou à peu près, du 10 octobre
1861, John Wilson Mackensie, de Rotterdam, comté de Chemung, New-
Jersey, décédé, fit un contrat avec le gouvernement pour fournir au général
Sherman la somme totale de trente barils de bœuf.»
Bon. Ce fut tout ce qu’on me laissa dire. Le ministre de la marine n’avait
rien à faire avec les contrats pour quel général Sherman que ce fût. Je
commençai à trouver qu’un gouvernement était une chose curieuse. J’eus
comme une vision vague qu’on faisait des difficultés pour me payer. Le jour
suivant, j’allai voir le ministre de l’intérieur.
Je dis:—«Altesse Royale, à la date, ou à peu près, du 10 octobre...»
—«C’est assez, Monsieur. J’ai entendu parler de vous déjà. Allez,
emportez votre infâme contrat de bœuf hors de cet établissement. Le
ministère de l’intérieur n’a absolument rien à faire avec l’approvisionnement
de l’armée.»
Je sortis, mais j’étais furieux. Je dis que je les hanterais, que je
poursuivrais tous les départements de ce gouvernement inique, jusqu’à ce
que mon compte fût approuvé. Je serais payé, ou je mourrais, comme mes
prédécesseurs, à la peine. J’attaquai le directeur général des postes.
J’assiégeai le ministère de l’agriculture. Je dressai des pièges au président de
la Chambre des représentants. Ils n’avaient rien à faire avec les contrats pour
fourniture de bœuf à l’armée. Je fus chez le commissaire du bureau des
brevets.
Je dis:—«Votre auguste Excellence, à la date ou à peu près...»
—«Mort et damnation! Vous voilà enfin venu ici avec votre infernal
contrat de bœuf! Nous n’avons rien à faire avec les contrats de bœuf à
l’armée, mon cher seigneur.»
—«C’est très bien. Mais quelqu’un a affaire de payer pour ce bœuf. Il
faut qu’il soit payé, maintenant, ou je fais mettre les scellés sur ce vieux
bureau des brevets et tout ce qu’il contient.»
—«Mais, cher Monsieur...»
—«Il n’y a pas à discuter, Monsieur. Le bureau des brevets est comptable
de ce bœuf. Je l’entends ainsi. Et, comptable ou non, le bureau des brevets
doit payer.»
Épargnez-moi les détails. Cela finit par une bataille. Le bureau des
brevets eut l’avantage. Mais je trouvai autre chose pour me rattraper. On me
dit que le ministère des finances était l’endroit exact où je devais m’adresser.
J’y allai. J’attendis deux heures et demie. Enfin je fus admis auprès du
premier lord de la trésorerie. Je dis:
—«Très noble, austère et éminent Signor, à la date ou à peu près du 10
octobre 1861, John Wilson Macken...»
—«Je sais, Monsieur. Je vous connais. Allez voir le premier auditeur de
la trésorerie...»
J’y allai. Il me renvoya au second auditeur, celui-ci au troisième, et le
troisième m’envoya au premier contrôleur de la section des conserves de
bœuf. Cela commençait à prendre tournure. Le contrôleur chercha dans ses
livres et dans un tas de papiers épars, mais ne trouva pas la minute du
contrat. Je vis le deuxième contrôleur de la section des conserves de bœuf. Il
examina ses livres et feuilleta des papiers.—Rien.—Je fus encouragé, et
dans la semaine j’allai jusqu’au sixième contrôleur de cette division. La
semaine suivante, j’allai au bureau des réclamations. La troisième semaine
j’entamai et achevai le département des comptes perdus, et je mis le pied sur
le département des comptes morts. J’en finis avec ce dernier en trois jours. Il
ne me restait plus qu’une place où pénétrer. J’assiégeai le commissaire des
affaires au rebut. Son commis, plutôt, car lui n’était pas là.
Il y avait seize belles jeunes filles dans la salle, écrivant sur des registres,
et sept jeunes clercs favorisés, qui leur montraient comment on fait. Les
jeunes filles souriaient, la tête penchée vers les commis, et les commis
souriaient aux jeunes filles, et tous paraissaient aussi joyeux qu’une cloche
de mariage. Deux ou trois commis, en train de lire les journaux, me
regardèrent plutôt fraîchement, mais continuèrent leur lecture, et personne ne
dit mot. D’ailleurs j’avais eu le temps de m’habituer à ces accueils cordiaux
de la part des moindres surnuméraires, depuis le premier jour où je pénétrai
dans le premier bureau de la division des conserves de bœuf, jusqu’au jour
où je sortis du dernier bureau de la division des comptes perdus. J’avais fait
dans l’intervalle de tels progrès que je pouvais me tenir debout sur un pied
depuis le moment où j’entrais dans un bureau jusqu’au moment où un
commis me parlait, sans changer de pied plus de deux ou peut-être trois fois.
Ainsi je demeurai là, jusqu’à ce que j’eusse changé de pied quatre fois.
Alors je dis à un des commis qui lisaient:
—«Illustre vagabond, où est le Grand Turc?»
—«Qu’est-ce que vous dites, Monsieur, qu’est-ce que vous dites? Si vous
voulez parler du chef de bureau, il est sorti.»
—«Viendra-t-il visiter son harem aujourd’hui?»
Le jeune homme fixa ses yeux un moment sur moi, puis reprit la lecture
de son journal. Mais j’avais l’expérience des commis. Je savais que j’étais
sauvé s’il terminait sa lecture avant qu’arrivât le courrier suivant de New-
York. Il n’avait plus à lire que deux journaux. Au bout d’un moment il eut
fini. Il bâilla et me demanda ce que je voulais:
—«Renommé et respectable imbécile. A la date du...»
—«Vous êtes l’homme du contrat de bœuf. Donnez-moi vos papiers.»
Il les prit, et pendant longtemps farfouilla dans ses rebuts. Enfin, il trouva
ce qui était pour moi le passage du Nord-Ouest. Il trouva la trace depuis si
longtemps perdue de ce contrat de bœuf, le roc sur lequel tant de mes
ancêtres s’étaient brisés avant de l’atteindre. J’étais profondément ému. Et
cependant j’étais heureux, car j’avais vécu jusque-là. Je dis avec émotion:
—«Donnez-le-moi. Le gouvernement va le régler.»
Il m’écarta du geste, et me dit qu’il restait une formalité à remplir.
—«Où est ce John Wilson Mackensie?» dit-il.
—«Mort.»
—«Où est-il mort?»
—«Il n’est pas mort du tout. On l’a tué.»
—«Comment?»
—«D’un coup de tomahawk.»
—«Qui donc?»
—«Qui? un Indien, naturellement. Vous ne supposez pas que ce fut le
directeur général des cours d’adultes.»
—«Non, en effet. Un Indien, dites-vous?»
—«C’est cela même.»
—«Le nom de l’Indien?»
—«Son nom? Mais je ne le connais pas!»
—«Il nous faut avoir le nom. Qui a assisté au meurtre?»
—«Je n’en sais rien.»
—«Vous n’étiez donc pas là, vous?»
—«Comme vous pouvez le voir à ma chevelure. J’étais absent.»
—«Alors, comment pouvez-vous savoir que Mackensie est mort?»
—«Parce qu’il mourut certainement à ce moment-là, et que j’ai toutes
sortes de raisons de croire qu’il est resté mort depuis. Je le sais d’ailleurs
pertinemment.»
—«Il nous faut des preuves. Avez-vous amené l’Indien?»
—«Sûrement non.»
—«Bien. Il faut l’amener. Avez-vous le tomahawk?»
—«Je n’y ai jamais songé.»
—«Vous devez présenter le tomahawk. Vous devez produire l’Indien et le
tomahawk. La mort de M. Mackensie une fois prouvée par leur comparution,
vous pourrez vous présenter devant la commission chargée des réclamations
avec quelques chances de voir votre note accueillie assez favorablement
pour que vos enfants, si leur vie est assez longue, puissent recevoir l’argent
et en profiter. Mais il faut que la mort de cet homme soit prouvée. D’ailleurs,
j’aime autant vous le dire, le gouvernement ne réglera jamais les frais de
transport et frais de voyage du malheureux Mackensie. Peut-être paiera-t-il
le baril de bœuf capturé par les soldats de Sherman, si vous pouvez obtenir
un vote du Congrès autorisant ce paiement. Mais on ne paiera pas les vingt-
neuf barils que les Indiens ont mangés.»
—«Alors on me doit seulement cent dollars, et cela même n’est pas sûr!
Après tous les voyages de Mackensie en Europe, Asie, Amérique, avec son
bœuf; après tous ses soucis, ses tribulations; après la mort lamentable des
innocents qui ont essayé de toucher cette note!... Jeune homme, pourquoi le
premier contrôleur de la division des conserves de bœuf ne me l’a-t-il pas dit
tout d’abord?»
—«Il ne savait absolument rien sur le bien-fondé de votre réclamation.»
—«Pourquoi le second ne l’a-t-il pas dit? Et le troisième? Pourquoi toutes
ces divisions et tous ces bureaux ne me l’ont-ils pas dit?»
—«Aucun d’eux n’en savait rien. Tout marche par routine ici... Vous avez
suivi la routine et trouvé ce que vous vouliez savoir. C’est la meilleure voie.
C’est la seule. Elle est très régulière, très lente, mais très sûre.»
—«C’est la mort qui est sûre, et qui l’a été pour tous les gens de ma tribu.
Je commence à me sentir frappé, moi aussi. Jeune homme, vous aimez la
belle créature qui est là-bas. Elle a des yeux bleus, et un porte-plume sur
l’oreille. Je le devine à vos doux regards: vous voulez l’épouser, mais vous
êtes pauvre. Approchez. Donnez votre main. Voici le contrat de bœuf. Allez,
mariez-vous, et soyez heureux. Dieu vous bénisse, mes enfants!»
Voilà tout ce que je sais au sujet de ce grand contrat de bœuf, dont on a
tant parlé. Le commis à qui je l’avais donné est mort. Je n’ai plus eu de
nouvelles du contrat ou de quelque chose s’y rapportant. Je sais seulement
que, pourvu qu’un homme vive assez longtemps, il peut suivre une affaire à
travers les bureaux des circonlocutions de Washington, et découvrir à la fin,
après beaucoup de travail, de fatigue et de patience, ce qu’il aurait pu
découvrir dès le premier jour, si les affaires du bureau des circonlocutions
étaient classées avec autant d’ordre qu’elles le seraient dans n’importe quelle
grande entreprise commerciale privée.
UNE INTERVIEW
Le jeune homme nerveux, alerte et déluré, prit la chaise que je lui offrais,
et dit qu’il était attaché à la rédaction du Tonnerre Quotidien. Il ajouta:
—«J’espère ne pas être importun. Je suis venu vous interviewer.»
—«Vous êtes venu quoi faire?»
—«Vous interviewer.»
—«Ah! très bien. Parfaitement. Hum!... Très bien...»
Je ne me sentais pas brillant, ce matin-là. Vraiment, mes facultés me
semblaient un peu nuageuses. J’allai cependant jusqu’à la bibliothèque.
Après avoir cherché six ou sept minutes, je me vis obligé de recourir au
jeune homme.
—«Comment l’épelez-vous?» dis-je.
—«Épeler quoi?»
—«Interviewer.»
—«Bon Dieu! que diable avez-vous besoin de l’épeler?»
—«Je n’ai pas besoin de l’épeler, mais il faut que je cherche ce qu’il
signifie.»
—«Eh bien, vous m’étonnez, je dois le dire. Il m’est facile de vous
donner le sens de ce mot. Si...»
—«Oh, parfait! C’est tout ce qu’il faut. Je vous suis certes très obligé.»
—«I-n, in, t-e-r, ter, inter...»
—«Tiens, tiens... vous épelez avec un i.»
—«Évidemment.»
—«C’est pour cela que j’ai tant cherché!»
—«Mais, cher Monsieur, par quelle lettre auriez-vous cru qu’il
commençât?»
—«Ma foi, je n’en sais trop rien. Mon dictionnaire est assez complet.
J’étais en train de feuilleter les planches de la fin, si je pouvais dénicher cet
objet dans les figures. Mais c’est une très vieille édition.»
—«Mon cher Monsieur, vous ne trouverez pas une figure représentant
une interview, même dans la dernière édition... Ma foi, je vous demande
pardon, je n’ai pas la moindre intention blessante, mais vous ne me paraissez
pas être aussi intelligent que je l’aurais cru... Je vous jure, je n’ai pas
l’intention de vous froisser.»
—«Oh! cela n’a pas d’importance. Je l’ai souvent entendu dire, et par des
gens qui ne voulaient pas me flatter, et qui n’avaient aucune raison de le
faire. Je suis tout à fait remarquable à ce point de vue. Je vous assure. Tous
en parlent avec ravissement.»
—«Je le crois volontiers. Mais venons à notre affaire. Vous savez que
c’est l’usage, maintenant, d’interviewer les gens connus.»
—«Vraiment, vous me l’apprenez. Ce doit être fort intéressant. Avec quoi
faites-vous cela?»
—«Ma foi, vous êtes déconcertant. Dans certains cas, c’est avec un
gourdin qu’on devrait interviewer. Mais d’ordinaire ce sont des questions
que pose l’interviewer, et auxquelles répond l’interviewé. C’est une mode
qui fait fureur. Voulez-vous me permettre de vous poser certaines questions
calculées pour mettre en lumière les points saillants de votre vie publique et
privée?»
—«Oh! avec plaisir, avec plaisir. J’ai une très mauvaise mémoire, mais
j’espère que vous passerez là-dessus. C’est-à-dire que j’ai une mémoire
irrégulière, étrangement irrégulière. Des fois, elle part au galop, d’autres
fois, elle s’attardera toute une quinzaine à un endroit donné. C’est un grand
ennui pour moi.»
—«Peu importe. Vous ferez pour le mieux.»
—«Entendu. Je vais m’y appliquer tout entier.»
—«Merci. Êtes-vous prêt? Je commence.»
—«Je suis prêt.»
—«Quel âge avez-vous?»
—«Dix-neuf ans, en juin.»
—«Comment! Je vous aurais donné trente-cinq ou trente-six ans. Où êtes-
vous né?»
—«Dans le Missouri.»
—«A quel moment avez-vous commencé à écrire?»
—«En 1836.»
—«Comment cela serait-il possible, puisque vous n’avez que dix-neuf
ans?»
—«Je n’en sais rien. Cela paraît bizarre, en effet.»
—«Très bizarre. Quel homme regardez-vous comme le plus remarquable
de ceux que vous avez connus?»
—«Aaron Burr.»
—«Mais vous n’avez jamais pu connaître Aaron Burr, si vous n’avez que
dix-neuf ans!»
—«Bon! si vous savez mieux que moi ce qui me concerne, pourquoi
m’interrogez-vous?»
—«Oh! ce n’était qu’une suggestion. Rien de plus. Dans quelles
circonstances avez-vous rencontré Aaron Burr?»
«Voici. Je me trouvai par hasard un jour à ses funérailles, et il me pria de
faire un peu moins de bruit, et...»
—«Mais, bonté divine, si vous étiez à ses funérailles, c’est qu’il était
mort. Et s’il était mort, que lui importait que vous fissiez ou non du bruit?»
—«Je n’en sais rien. Il a toujours été un peu maniaque, de ce côté-là.»
—«Allons, je n’y comprends rien. Vous dites qu’il vous parla, et qu’il
était mort.»
—«Je n’ai jamais dit qu’il fût mort.»
—«Enfin était-il mort, ou vivant?»
—«Ma foi, les uns disent qu’il était mort, et d’autres qu’il était vivant.»
—«Mais vous, que pensiez-vous?»
—«Bon! Ce n’était pas mon affaire. Ce n’est pas moi que l’on enterrait.»
—«Mais cependant... Allons, je vois que nous n’en sortirons pas. Laissez-
moi vous poser d’autres questions. Quelle est la date de votre naissance?»
—«Le lundi, 31 octobre 1693.»
—«Mais c’est impossible! Cela vous ferait cent quatre-vingts ans d’âge.
Comment expliquez-vous cela?»
—«Je ne l’explique pas du tout.»
—«Mais vous me disiez tout à l’heure que vous n’aviez que dix-neuf ans!
et maintenant vous en arrivez à avoir cent quatre-vingts ans! C’est une
contradiction flagrante.»
—«Vraiment! L’avez-vous remarqué? (Je lui serrai les mains.) Bien
souvent en effet cela m’a paru comme une contradiction. Je n’ai jamais pu,
d’ailleurs, la résoudre. Comme vous remarquez vite les choses!»
—«Merci du compliment, quel qu’il soit. Aviez-vous, ou avez-vous des
frères et des sœurs?»
—«Eh! Je... Je... Je crois que oui, mais je ne me rappelle pas.»
—«Voilà certes la déclaration la plus extraordinaire qu’on m’aie jamais
faite!»
—«Pourquoi donc? Pourquoi pensez-vous ainsi?»
—«Comment pourrais-je penser autrement? Voyons. Regardez par là. Ce
portrait sur le mur, qui est-ce? N’est-ce pas un de vos frères?»
—«Ah! oui, oui, oui! Vous m’y faites penser maintenant. C’était un mien
frère. William, Bill, comme nous l’appelions. Pauvre vieux Bill!»
—«Quoi! il est donc mort?»
—«Certainement. Du moins, je le suppose. On n’a jamais pu savoir. Il y a
un grand mystère là-dessous.»
—«C’est triste, bien triste. Il a disparu, n’est-ce pas?»
—«Oui, d’une certaine façon, généralement parlant. Nous l’avons
enterré.»
—«Enterré! Vous l’avez enterré, sans savoir s’il était mort ou vivant!»
—«Qui diable vous parle de cela? Il était parfaitement mort.»
—«Ma foi! j’avoue ne plus rien comprendre. Si vous l’avez enterré, et si
vous saviez qu’il était mort...»
—«Non, non, nous pensions seulement qu’il l’était.»
—«Ah! je vois. Il est revenu à la vie.»
—«Je vous parie bien que non.»
—«Eh bien! je n’entendis jamais raconter chose pareille. Quelqu’un est
mort. On l’a enterré. Où est le mystère là-dedans?»
—«Mais là justement! C’est ce qui est étrange. Il faut vous dire que nous
étions jumeaux, le défunt et moi. Et un jour, on nous a mêlés dans le bain,
alors que nous n’avions que deux semaines, et un de nous a été noyé. Mais
nous ne savons pas qui. Les uns croient que c’était Bill. D’autres pensent
que c’était moi.»
—«C’est très curieux. Et quelle est votre opinion personnelle?»
—«Dieu le sait! Je donnerais tout au monde pour le savoir. Ce solennel et
terrible mystère a jeté une ombre sur toute ma vie. Mais je vais maintenant
vous dire un secret que je n’ai jamais confié à aucune créature jusqu’à ce
jour. Un de nous avait une marque, un grain de beauté, fort apparent, sur le
dos de la main gauche. C’était moi. Cet enfant est celui qui a été noyé.»
—«Ma foi, je ne vois pas, dès lors, qu’il y ait là-dedans le moindre
mystère, tout considéré.»
—«Vous ne voyez pas. Moi, je vois. De toute façon, je ne puis
comprendre que les gens aient pu être assez stupides pour aller enterrer
l’enfant qu’il ne fallait pas. Mais chut!... N’en parlez jamais devant la
famille. Dieu sait que mes parents ont assez de soucis pour leur briser le
cœur, sans celui-là.»
—«Eh bien, j’ai, ce me semble, des renseignements suffisants pour
l’heure, et je vous suis très obligé pour la peine que vous avez prise. Mais
j’ai été fort intéressé par le récit que vous m’avez fait des funérailles
d’Aaron Burr. Voudriez-vous me raconter quelle circonstance, en particulier,
vous fit regarder Aaron Burr comme un homme si remarquable?»
—«Oh! un détail insignifiant. Pas une personne sur cinquante ne s’en
serait aperçue. Quand le sermon fut terminé, et que le cortège fut prêt à partir
pour le cimetière, et que le corps était installé bien confortable dans le
cercueil, il dit qu’il ne serait pas fâché de jeter un dernier coup d’œil sur le
paysage. Il se leva donc et s’en fut s’asseoir sur le siège, à côté du
conducteur.»
Le jeune homme, là-dessus, me salua et prit congé. J’avais fort goûté sa
compagnie, et fus fâché de le voir partir.
ROGERS
Je rencontrai le nommé Rogers, et il se présenta lui-même, dans le sud de
l’Angleterre, où je résidais alors. Son beau-père avait épousé une mienne
parente éloignée, qui, par la suite, fut pendue. Il paraissait croire, en
conséquence, à une parenté entre nous. Il venait me voir tous les jours,
s’installait et causait. De toutes les curiosités humaines sympathiques et
sereines que j’ai vues, je le regarde comme la première. Il désira examiner
mon nouveau chapeau haut de forme. Je m’empressai, car je pensais qu’il
remarquerait le nom du grand chapelier d’Oxford Street, qui était au fond, et
m’estimerait d’autant. Mais il le tourna et le retourna avec une sorte de
gravité compatissante, indiqua deux ou trois défauts et dit que mon arrivée,
trop récente, ne pouvait pas laisser espérer que je susse où me fournir. Il
m’enverrait l’adresse de son chapelier. Puis il ajouta: «Pardonnez-moi», et se
mit à découper avec soin une rondelle de papier de soie rouge. Il entailla les
bords minutieusement, prit de la colle, et colla le papier dans mon chapeau
de manière à recouvrir le nom du chapelier. Il dit: «Personne ne saura
maintenant où vous l’avez acheté. Je vous enverrai une marque de mon
chapelier, et vous pourrez l’appliquer sur la rondelle de papier.» Il fit cela le
plus calmement, le plus froidement du monde, je n’ai vu de ma vie un
homme plus admirable. Remarquez que, pendant ce temps, son propre
chapeau était là, sur la table, au grand détriment de mon odorat. C’était un
vieil éteignoir informe, fripé et déjeté par l’âge, décoloré par les intempéries
et bordé d’un équateur de pommade suintant au travers.
Une autre fois, il examina mon vêtement. J’étais sans effroi, car mon
tailleur avait sur sa porte: «Par privilège spécial, fournisseur de S.A.R. le
prince de Galles», etc... Je ne savais pas alors que la plupart des maisons de
tailleurs ont le même signe sur la porte, et que, dès le moment qu’il faut neuf
tailleurs pour faire un homme, comme on dit, il en faut cent cinquante pour
faire un prince. Rogers fut touché de compassion par la vue de mon
vêtement. Il me donna par écrit l’adresse de son tailleur. Il ne me dit pas,
comme on fait d’ordinaire, en manière de compliment, que je n’aurais qu’à
mentionner mon nom de plume, et que le tailleur mettrait à confectionner
mes habits ses soins les plus dévoués. Son tailleur, m’apprit-il, se dérangerait
difficilement pour un inconnu (inconnu! quand je me croyais si célèbre en
Angleterre! ce fut le coup le plus cruel), mais il me prévint de me
recommander de lui, et que tout irait bien.
Voulant être plaisant, je dis:—«Mais s’il allait passer la nuit, et
compromettre sa santé?»
—«Laissez donc, répondit Rogers, j’ai assez fait pour lui pour qu’il m’en
ait quelque égard.»
J’aurais aussi bien pu essayer de déconcerter une momie avec ma
plaisanterie. Il ajouta:
—«C’est là que je fais tout faire. Ce sont les seuls vêtements où l’on
puisse se voir.»
Je fis une autre tentative.—«J’aurais aimé en voir un sur vous, si vous en
aviez porté un.»
—«Dieu vous bénisse, n’en porté-je pas un sur moi?... Cet article vient de
chez Morgan.»
J’examinai le vêtement. C’était un article acheté tout fait, à un juif de
Chatham Street, sans doute possible, vers 1848. Il avait dû coûter quatre
dollars, quand il était neuf. Il était déchiré, éraillé, râpé, graisseux. Je ne pus
m’empêcher de lui montrer où il était déchiré. Il en fut si affecté que je fus
désolé de l’avoir fait. D’abord il parut plongé dans un abîme sans fond de
douleur. Il se remit, fit le geste d’écarter de lui avec ses mains la pitié d’un
peuple entier, et dit, avec ce qui me parut une émotion fabriquée: «Je vous
en prie. Cela n’a pas d’importance. Ne vous en tourmentez pas. Je puis
mettre un autre vêtement.»
Quand il fut tout à fait remis, qu’il put examiner la déchirure et
commander à ses sentiments, il dit que, ah! maintenant, il comprenait. Son
domestique avait fait cela, sans doute, en l’habillant, ce matin.
Son «domestique»! Il y avait quelque chose d’angoissant dans une telle
effronterie.
Presque chaque jour il s’intéressait à quelque détail de mon vêtement. On
eût pu s’étonner de trouver cette sorte d’infatuation chez un homme qui
portait toujours le même costume, et un costume qui paraissait dater de la
conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normands.
C’était une ambition méprisable, peut-être, mais je souhaitais pouvoir lui
montrer quelque chose à admirer, dans mes vêtements ou mes actes. Vous
auriez éprouvé le même désir. L’occasion se présenta. J’étais sur le point de
mon retour à Londres, et je venais de compter mon linge sale pour le
blanchissage. C’était vraiment une imposante montagne dans le coin de la
chambre, cinquante-quatre pièces. J’espérais qu’il penserait que c’était le
linge d’une seule semaine. Je pris le carnet de blanchissage, comme pour
m’assurer que tout était en règle, puis le jetai sur la table, avec une
négligence affectée. Naturellement, il le prit et promena ses yeux en
descendant jusqu’au total. Alors, il dit: «Vous ne devez pas vous ruiner», et
le reposa sur la table.
Ses gants étaient un débris sinistre. Mais il m’indiqua où je pourrais en
avoir de semblables. Ses chaussures avaient des fentes à laisser passer des
noix, mais il posait avec complaisance ses pieds sur le manteau de la
cheminée et les contemplait. Il avait une épingle de cravate avec un morceau
de verre terne, qu’il appelait un «diamant morphylitique», quoi que cela pût
signifier. Il me dit qu’on n’en avait jamais trouvé que deux. L’empereur de
Chine avait l’autre.
Plus tard, à Londres, ce fut une joie pour moi de voir ce vagabond
fantastique s’avancer dans le vestibule de l’hôtel avec son allure de grand-
duc; il avait toujours quelque nouvelle folie de grandeur à inaugurer. Il n’y
avait d’usé chez lui que ses vêtements. S’il m’adressait la parole devant des
étrangers, il élevait toujours un peu la voix pour m’appeler: «Sir Richard» ou
«Général» ou «Votre Honneur», et quand les gens commençaient à faire
attention et à regarder avec respect, il se mettait à me demander
incidemment pourquoi je ne m’étais pas rendu la veille au rendez-vous du
duc d’Argyll, ou bien me rappelait que nous étions attendus le lendemain
chez le duc de Westminster. Je suis persuadé qu’à ce moment-là il était
convaincu de la réalité de ce qu’il disait. Il vint un jour me voir et m’invita à
passer la soirée chez le duc de Warwick, à sa maison de ville. Je dis que je
n’étais pas personnellement invité. Il répondit que cela n’avait aucune
importance, le duc ne faisant pas de cérémonies avec lui ou ses amis.
Comme je demandais si je pouvais aller comme j’étais, il dit que non, ce
serait peu convenable. L’habit de soirée était exigé, le soir, chez n’importe
quel gentleman. Il offrit de m’attendre pendant que je m’habillerais. Puis
nous irions chez lui. Je boirais une bouteille de champagne et fumerais un
cigare pendant qu’il s’apprêterait. Fort désireux de voir la fin de cela, je
m’habillai et nous partîmes pour chez lui. Il me proposa d’aller à pied, si je
n’y voyais pas d’inconvénient. Nous pataugeâmes environ quatre milles à
travers la boue et le brouillard. Finalement nous trouvâmes son appartement.
C’était une simple chambre au-dessus de la boutique d’un barbier, dans une
rue écartée. Deux chaises, une petite table, une vieille valise, une cuvette et
une cruche (toutes deux dans un coin sur le plancher), un lit pas fait, un
fragment de miroir, et un pot de fleur avec un petit géranium rose qui
s’étiolait. C’était, me dit-il, une plante «séculaire». Elle n’avait pas fleuri
depuis deux cents ans. Il la tenait de feu lord Palmerston. On lui en avait
offert des sommes fantastiques. Tel était le mobilier. En outre, un chandelier
de cuivre avec un fragment de bougie. Rogers alluma la bougie, et me pria
de m’asseoir et de me considérer comme chez moi. Je devais avoir soif,
espéra-t-il, car il voulait faire à mon palais la surprise d’une marque de
champagne comme tout le monde n’en buvait pas. Aimais-je mieux du
sherry, ou du porto? Il avait, me dit-il, du porto dans des bouteilles toutes
recouvertes de toiles d’araignées stratifiées. Chaque couche représentait une
génération. Pour les cigares, j’en jugerais par moi-même. Il mit la tête à la
porte et appela:
—«Sackville!» Pas de réponse.
—«Hé! Sackville!» Pas de réponse.
—«Où diable peut être passé ce sommelier? Je ne permets jamais
pourtant à un de mes domestiques de... Oh! l’idiot! il a emporté les clefs! Je
ne puis pas aller dans les autres pièces sans les clefs.»
(J’étais justement en train d’admirer l’intrépidité avec laquelle il
prolongeait la fiction du champagne, essayant de deviner comment il allait se
tirer de là.)
Il cessa d’appeler Sackville et se mit à crier: «Anglesy!» Anglesy ne vint
pas non plus. Il dit: «C’est la seconde fois que cet écuyer s’est absenté sans
permission. Demain, je le renverrai.»
Il se mit alors à héler «Thomas!» Mais Thomas ne répondit pas. Puis
«Théodore!» Pas de Théodore.
«Ma foi, j’y renonce, fit-il. Mes gens ne m’attendent jamais à cette heure-
ci. Ils sont tous partis en bombe. A la rigueur on peut se passer de l’écuyer et
du page, mais nous ne pouvons avoir ni vin ni cigares sans le sommelier. Et
je ne puis pas m’habiller sans mon valet.»
J’offris de l’aider à s’habiller. Mais il ne voulut pas en entendre parler.
D’ailleurs, dit-il, il ne se sentirait pas confortable s’il n’était arrangé par des
mains expérimentées; finalement il conclut que le duc était un trop vieil ami
pour se préoccuper de la manière dont il serait vêtu. Nous prîmes donc un
cab, il donna quelques indications au cocher, et nous partîmes. Nous
arrivâmes enfin devant une vieille maison et nous descendîmes. Je n’avais
jamais vu Rogers avec un col. Il s’arrêta sous un réverbère, sortit de la poche
de son vêtement un vieux col en papier, où pendait une cravate usée, et les
mit. Il monta les marches et entra. Je le vis reparaître presque aussitôt; il
marcha vers moi précipitamment et me dit:
—«Venez. Vite!»
Nous nous éloignâmes en hâte, et tournâmes le coin de la rue.
—«Nous voici en sûreté», fit-il.
Il quitta son col et sa cravate et les remit dans sa poche.
—«Je l’ai échappé belle», dit-il.
—«Comment cela?» fis-je.
—«Par saint Georges, la comtesse était là!»
—«Eh bien, quoi? Ne vous connaît-elle pas?»
—«Si, elle me connaît! Mais elle m’adore. J’ai pu jeter un coup d’œil
avant qu’elle m’eût aperçu. Et j’ai filé. Je ne l’avais pas vue depuis deux
mois. Entrer comme cela, sans la prévenir, eût été fatal. Elle n’aurait pas
supporté le coup. Je ne savais pas qu’elle fût en ville. Je la croyais dans son
château... Laissez-moi m’appuyer sur vous... un instant... Là, je me sens
mieux; merci, grand merci. Dieu me bénisse. Quelle échappée!»
En définitive, ma visite au duc fut remise aux calendes grecques. Mais je
notai la maison pour information plus ample. Je sus que c’était un hôtel de
famille ordinaire, où perchaient environ un millier de gens quelconques.
Pour bien des choses, Rogers n’était nullement fou. Pour certaines, il
l’était évidemment, mais sûrement il l’ignorait. Il se montrait, dans ces
dernières, du sérieux le plus absolu. Il est mort au bord de la mer, l’été
dernier, chez le «comte de Ramsgate».
L’INFORTUNÉ FIANCÉ D’AURÉLIA
Les faits suivants sont consignés dans une lettre que m’écrit une jeune
fille habitant la belle ville de San José. Elle m’est parfaitement inconnue, et
signe simplement: Aurélia-Maria, ce qui est peut-être un pseudonyme. Mais
peu importe. La pauvre fille a le cœur brisé par les infortunes qu’elle a
subies. Elle est si troublée par les conseils opposés de malveillants amis et
d’ennemis insidieux, qu’elle ne sait à quel parti se résoudre pour se dégager
du réseau de difficultés dans lequel elle semble prise presque sans espoir.
Dans son embarras, elle a recours à moi, elle me supplie de la diriger et de la
conseiller, avec une éloquence émouvante qui toucherait le cœur d’une
statue. Écoutez sa triste histoire.
Elle avait seize ans, dit-elle, quand elle rencontra et aima, avec toute
l’ardeur d’une âme passionnée, un jeune homme de New-Jersey, nommé
Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, de quelque six ans son aîné. Ils se
fiancèrent, avec l’assentiment de leurs amis et parents, et, pour un temps,
leur carrière parut devoir être caractérisée par une immunité de malheur au
delà du lot ordinaire de l’humanité. Mais, un jour, la face de la fortune
changea. Le jeune Caruthers fut atteint d’une petite vérole de l’espèce la plus
virulente, et quand il retrouva la santé, sa figure était trouée comme un
moule à gaufre et toute sa beauté disparue pour toujours.
Aurélia songea d’abord à rompre son engagement, mais, par pitié pour
l’infortuné, elle se contenta de renvoyer le mariage à une autre saison, et
laissa une chance au malheureux.
La veille même du jour où le mariage devait avoir lieu, Breckinridge,
tandis qu’il était occupé à suivre des yeux un ballon, tomba dans un puits et
se cassa une jambe, qu’on dut lui amputer au-dessus du genou. Aurélia, de
nouveau, fut tentée de rompre son engagement, mais, de nouveau, l’amour
triompha, et le mariage fut remis, et elle lui laissa le temps de se rétablir.
Une infortune nouvelle tomba sur le malheureux fiancé. Il perdit un bras
par la décharge imprévue d’un canon que l’on tirait pour la fête nationale, et,
trois mois après, eut l’autre emporté par une machine à carder. Le cœur
d’Aurélia fut presque brisé par ces dernières calamités. Elle ne pouvait
s’empêcher de ressentir une profonde affliction, en voyant son amoureux la
quitter ainsi morceau par morceau, songeant qu’avec ce système de
progressive réduction il n’en resterait bientôt plus rien, et ne sachant
comment l’arrêter sur cette voie funeste. Dans son désespoir affreux, elle en
venait presque à regretter, comme un négociant qui s’obstine dans une
affaire et perd davantage chaque jour, de ne pas avoir accepté Breckinridge
tout d’abord, avant qu’il eût subi une si alarmante dépréciation. Mais son
cœur prit le dessus, et elle résolut de tenter l’épreuve des dispositions
déplorables de son fiancé encore une fois.
De nouveau se rapprochait le jour du mariage, et de nouveau se
rassemblèrent les nuages de désillusion. Caruthers tomba malade de
l’érysipèle, et perdit l’usage de l’un de ses yeux, complètement. Les amis et
les parents de la jeune fille, considérant qu’elle avait montré plus de
généreuse obstination qu’on ne pouvait raisonnablement exiger d’elle,
intervinrent de nouveau, et insistèrent pour qu’elle rompît son engagement.
Mais après avoir un peu hésité, Aurélia, dans toute la générosité de ses
honorables sentiments, dit qu’elle avait réfléchi posément sur la question, et
qu’elle ne pouvait trouver dans Breckinridge aucun sujet de blâme. Donc,
elle recula de nouveau la date, et Breckinridge se cassa l’autre jambe.
Ce fut un triste jour pour la pauvre fille, que celui où elle vit les
chirurgiens emporter avec respect le sac dont elle avait appris l’usage par des
expériences précédentes, et son cœur éprouva cruellement qu’en vérité
quelque chose de son fiancé avait encore disparu. Elle sentit que le champ de
ses affections diminuait chaque jour, mais encore une fois elle répondit
négativement aux instances de tous les siens, et renouvela son engagement.
Enfin, peu de jours avant le terme fixé pour le mariage, un nouveau
malheur arriva. Il n’y eut, dans toute l’année, qu’un seul homme scalpé par
les Indiens d’Owen River, cet homme fut Williamson Breckinridge
Caruthers, de New-Jersey. Il accourait chez sa fiancée, avec la joie dans le
cœur, quand il perdit sa chevelure pour toujours. Et dans cette heure
d’amertume, il maudit presque la chance ironique à laquelle il dut de sauver
sa vie.
A la fin, Aurélia est fort perplexe sur la conduite à tenir. Elle aime encore
son fiancé, m’écrit-elle,—ou, du moins, ce qu’il en reste,—de tout son cœur,
mais sa famille s’oppose de toutes ses forces au mariage; Breckinridge n’a
pas de fortune et est impropre à tout travail. Elle n’a pas d’autre part des
ressources suffisantes pour vivre à deux confortablement.—«Que dois-je
faire?» me demande-t-elle, dans cet embarras cruel.
C’est une question délicate. C’est une question dont la réponse doit
décider pour la vie du sort d’une femme et de presque les deux tiers d’un
homme. Je pense que ce serait assumer une trop grave responsabilité que de
répondre par autre chose qu’une simple suggestion.
A combien reviendrait-il de reconstituer un Breckinridge complet? Si
Aurélia peut supporter la dépense, qu’elle achète à son amoureux mutilé des
jambes et des bras de bois, un œil de verre et une perruque, pour le rendre
présentable. Qu’elle lui accorde alors quatre-vingt-dix jours sans délai, et si,
dans cet intervalle, il ne se rompt pas le cou, qu’elle coure la chance de
l’épouser. Je ne crois pas que, faisant cela, elle s’expose à un bien grand
risque, de toute façon. Si votre fiancé, Aurélia, cède encore à la tentation
bizarre qu’il a de se casser quelque chose chaque fois qu’il en trouve
l’occasion, sa prochaine expérience lui sera sûrement fatale, et alors vous
serez tranquille, mariée ou non. Mariée, les jambes de bois et autres objets,
propriété du défunt, reviennent à sa veuve, et ainsi vous ne perdez rien, si ce
n’est le dernier morceau vivant d’un époux honnête et malheureux, qui
essaya sa vie durant de faire pour le mieux, mais qui eut sans cesse contre lui
ses extraordinaires instincts de destruction.—Tentez la chance, Maria, j’ai
longuement réfléchi sur ce sujet, et c’est le seul parti raisonnable.
Certainement Caruthers aurait sagement fait de commencer, à sa première
expérience, par se rompre le cou. Mais puisqu’il a choisi une autre méthode,
décidé à se prolonger le plus possible, je ne crois pas que nous puissions lui
faire un reproche d’avoir fait ce qui lui plaisait le plus. Nous devons tâcher
de tirer le meilleur parti des circonstances, sans avoir la moindre amertume
contre lui.

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Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexicos War On Drugs 1St Ed Edition Raul Diego Rivera Hernandez Full Chapter

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Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's

War on Drugs 1st ed. Edition Raúl

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

Responsibility: U.S.-Mexico Policy Options for Confronting Organized Crime,

Del Ángel, Diana. Procesos de la noche. Oaxaca: Almadía Ediciones, 2017.

Lemus, Rafael. “Políticas del duelo.” Letras libres (2011): 32–38.

Osorno, Diego Enrique. La Guerra de los Zetas: viaje por la frontera de la

Wolf, Sonja. “La guerra de México contra el narcotráfico y la Iniciativa Mérida:

Vulnerabilities and Resistances in Transit:

In his book Deported to Death: How Drug Violence Is Changing Migra-

© The Author(s) 2020 27

European background, succeed, beginning with the second, third, or

those of Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, among others,

Forced Migration: The Colonial

a corridor to the North, it is a destination for migrants and a territory

2 Amarela Varela Huerta (2017a, 3) highlights patriarchal violence as one of the

an intersectional perspective that takes into consideration factors such as

Border securitization policies increased the danger faced by persons

trains in which they travel without authorization. As irregular migrants,

The kidnapping of migrants is not a desperate measure on the part of

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