Fronteras de violencia en México y Estados Unidos ed. by Oswaldo Estrada

Abstract

Reviewed by: Fronteras de violencia en México y Estados Unidos ed. by Oswaldo Estrada Edward Waters Hood Estrada, Oswaldo, editor. Fronteras de violencia en México y Estados Unidos. Albatros Ediciones, 2021. Pp. 265. ISBN 978-84-7274-384-7. This volume of essays, Fronteras de violencia en México y Estados Unidos, focusing on artistic representations of violence in Mexico, the United States and their shared border, follows a previous [End Page 459] collection also edited by Oswaldo Estrada, Senderos de violencia: Latinoamérica y sus narrativas armadas (2015), which addresses portrayals of violence throughout the greater region. Many of the contributions to this book come from a 2019 literary conference held at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Transient Bodies and Gender Politics in 21st-Century Mexico, and others have been added to broaden the book’s scope and perspectives. In his preface, “Nuevos muros y fronteras de violencia,” Oswaldo Estrada characterizes the violence that has been synomous with Mexico in recent decades in the following manner: “Hablar de México hoy es hablar de la violencia, de la llamada ‘guerra contra el narco’ o los feminicidios, el neoliberalismo, la corrupción política, pero también de su relación problemática con los Estados Unidos, sus inevitables cruces fronterizos y sus desencuentros culturales, simbólicos, subjetivos, a ambos lados de ‘la línea’.” His assessment of the conditions undocumented immigrants face entering and navigating life in the United States is nearly as grim. The authors of the 15 essays included in this volume address recent artistic representations of these stark realities in prose, poetry, film and television from diverse perspectives. The essays are divided between five thematic sections, with three essays in each. The first section, “Estados de violencia,” explores state-directed violence. In his contribution to this section, Oswaldo Zavala examines the depopulation of resource-rich regions of Mexico resulting from the fight against drug trafficking. In his view, this is a strategy employed by the state in collaboration with multinational corporations to dispossess local populations of their land, something that also has fueled immigration. In his essay, “Rescribir el Caso Cassez: Violencia simbólica y estrategias de subjetivación en Una novela criminal de Jorge Volpi,” Tomás Regalado López discusses Volpi’s narrative strategies which humanize Israel Vallarta and Florence Cassez, who were falsely apprehended in 2005 when they were arrested and framed by Mexican authorities that, with the complicity of the country’s main television networks, staged and broadcast their “capture” to the nation on live television. In her piece, “Los nudos inexorables entre la escritura, el arte y los muros fronterizos,” Shelley Garrigan discusses how the US-Mexico border wall elicits contestatory artistic responses from both sides and how those expressions transcend it. The second section, “Violencias de género,” examines literary expressions of gender-based violence, specifically violence propagated by machista conceptions of masculinity against women and men. In his contribution, “Vivir a muerte: Escrituras dolientes y denuncias de género en El silencio de los cuerpos,” Oswaldo Estrada reviews and analyzes this collection of stories by nine women writers on horrific acts of violence against women and feminicides. The critic signals the important role this book can play in raising awareness of these crimes. In her essay, “Contar muertos y muertas: Estrategias escriturales en Antígona González de Sara Uribe y Vike, Un animal dentro de mí de Minerva Margarita Villarreal,” Irma Cantú analyzes poetic strategies employed by these two authors to express alternative perspectives on the violence afflicting women. In the final piece of this section, “Diluvio de violencia: Masculinidad y (trans)feminicidio en Temporada de huracanes de Fernanda Melchor,” Alejandra Márquez examines the violence caused by masculine gender expectations that in this novel result in sexual violence and the murder of a transgendered woman. The third section, “Desigualdades (neo)liberales,” assesses contemporary cinematic representations of violence in films and a Netflix series. In his contribution, “El borramiento del indio en Sueño en otro idioma y ¿Qué le dijiste a Dios?,” Pedro Ángel Palou argues that the stereotype of Indigenous people in Mexican films has not changed over time in large part...