‘Noticias no son noticias, ¿no?’: Mexican perspectives on violence in the media and the war on drugs

Abstract

Explicit images and descriptions of violent death are typical within the Mexican media landscape, and especially within the context of the War on Drugs. Here, I share observations of my encounters with these media, particularly television narcotelenovelas and tabloids. I also center the voices of people with firsthand experience of the narcoscape in Mexico City and Ciudad Juárez, including Mrs. Luz María Dávila, the mother of two youths slain in a 2010 drug cartel-directed massacre. Across the two main sites of this study, a university seminar and a public town hall meeting, a professor and a self-politicized mother each question the role of the media in upholding investments in violence within news and entertainment. As the professor asks, ‘News are not simply news, right?’ These insights invite reflection on the public’s participation as spectator-voyeurs in the more than 105,000 Mexican deaths facilitated by cross-border trade in illicit narcotics to-date. The interactional data also suggest effective ways of encouraging critical media analysis in and beyond university settings.