Neoliberal Transactions: Staging Prostitution in the Mexican Nation

Abstract

This essay explores the theatricalization of neoliberal violence in two Mexican plays, Las Chicas del 3.5 Floppies by LEGOM and Sin/con/Fianza by H. Iván Arizmendi Galeno. These two remarkable works delve into the lives of sex workers in unnamed Mexican border towns to stage the intimacy and pervasiveness of a transactional economy and index the incorporation of violence into the body itself as a space of referentiality. More specifically, they use the aesthetics of parody to expose the gendered dyad of (female) prostitute and (male) narco that symbolize the "new" neoliberal Mexican nation. Through a sustained transgression of social and gender norms, the plays critique a neoliberal national imaginary that conceives of the body solely in transactional terms. Las Chicas del 3.5 Floppies and Sin/con/Fianza therefore advance the conversation regarding neoliberalism and performance by delving directly into the invisible forms of damage that are carried out in the name of a market-driven economy, and how that damage plays out upon the most vulnerable of bodies.