Please join the Comparative Politics Workshop on Wednesday, October 3 from 4:15-6:15 pm at the Political Science Thesis Room (5th floor). Philip L. Johnson (The Graduate Center, CUNY) will be presenting his paper, “Message in a Battle: Preliminary Findings on Narco-messages and the Legibility of Violence.” The paper is attached and the abstract is below. Come to support your peer, engage in a lively discussion, share free wine and snacks, and network with your department.

Best,

CPW organizing committee

Abstract:

In early 2005, two bodies were found on the side of a highway in the Mexican border city of Reynosa. While this was an increasing common occurrence in the area at the time, one unusual feature distinguished this crime scene; by the bodies was a sheet of cardboard, upon which was written, “For Chapo Guzman… and those that help him.” In 2009, in the city of Cuernavaca, a banner appeared overnight on the wall of a kindergarten. Addressed to an infamous assassin, the banner declared, “You have my complete support to start a war here.” In 2011, 19 young men were killed at a church-run rehab clinic in Chihuahua city. The killers left scrawled messages at the scene, including one that said, “This is what happens to pigs, rats, kidnappers, murderers, rapists, and extortionists.” These three events are examples of what is known in Mexico as a narco-message. Since the earliest cases in late 2004 and early 2005, thousands of such messages have appeared throughout the country. The increased appearance of narco-messages roughly follows the increase in levels of violence in Mexico, but as the above examples indicate, not every act of violence is accompanied by a message, nor do messages only appear in the immediate vicinity of violence.

There are several puzzling features of this phenomenon. Many theories of violence emphasize its coercive, communicative nature, treating violence as an effective form of messaging or signaling. The appearance of written messages either in the presence of, or which make reference to, acts of violence challenges the supposed effectiveness of violence as communication. An obvious explanation for the use of written messages is that threats and warnings can substitute for acts of violence, achieving the same coercive effect at a lower overall cost. If this were the case in Mexico, we should see narco-messages replace direct violence, whereas in fact we see messages proliferating with violence. The starting proposition of this project is that the legibility of violence varies. In certain contexts, the meaning of violence becomes particularly difficult to read, and thus the perpetrators (although not necessarily only the perpetrators) will utilize tactics intended to fix the public’s understanding of violence. The overarching question of this project is thus: when and why does the meaning of violence become illegible, and how is the meaning of violence re-asserted?

To download the paper, click here