Warrior girls against Necropower. Women´s empowerment in Mexican cinema through child characters

Violeta Alarcón Zayas (UDIMA)

We analyze three films in this audiovisual essay: Vuelven (López, 2017), Cómprame un revólver (Hernández Cordón, 2018) y Noche de fuego (Huezo, 2021) which share three fundamental traits: their protagonists are Mexican women, teenagers, within the context of Narco-Power; all of them rebel against the role that patriarchy imposes on them; and the films’ enunciation confronts Narco-Culture. In other words, these films condemn the idealization of narco culture  in contemporary cinema, but without depicting women and teenagers as powerless victims.

The official myth conceives organized crime as an external element that harms and attacks society like a disease. Nowadays, another successful myth has originated within the capitalist dream: the myth of the quick and relatively easy social climbing (Monsiváis, 2004). This can be seen in the mainstream success of “narcocorridos” and the films and television series that extol the figure of the drug dealer. Regarding the case of Colombia, Omar Rincón summarizes the phenomenon of the popularity of drug culture, applicable to the case of Mexico and other Latin American countries: 

“The narco is an aesthetic, a way of thinking, an ethic of quick success, an excessive taste, a culture of ostentation. A culture of anything goes to escape poverty. A public statement that being rich means showing it off and exhibiting it. There is only one method to acquire this culture: to have tickets, weapons, silicone women, loud music, flashy clothing, expressive housing, and visage on cars and objects” (Rincón, 2009: 148).

The praise of the narco figure diverts attention and conceals the political-economic structure that sustains organized crime. Furthermore, although organized crime tends to be conceived as a marginal and subversive element to order, it holds sovereignty from illegality, coercion, and violence, imposing its own order, under the more or less direct consent of governments and institutions. Thus, current narcocinema, narcoseries, and narconovels reproduce, legitimize and strengthen the imaginary of narcoculture in accordance with “gore capitalism” (Valencia, 2010), where violence is extolled and harm of the human body is trivialized.

“The harshness in the exercise of violence follows a logic and drifts conceived from structures or processes planned in the core of neoliberalism, globalization, and politics. We are talking about practices that are transgressive just because their forcefulness demonstrates the vulnerability of the human body, its mutilation, and its desacralization. These practices ultimately constitute a fierce criticism of the hyper-consumerist society and, at the same time, they engage in it and its capitalist machinery” (Valencia, 2010: 17).

In contrast to the  Narco culture imaginary, the films by Issa López, Julio Hernández Cordón, and Tatiana Huezo focus on the social problem around the Necropower from the perspective of women and adolescents who, much more than being mere tragic and passive victims, empower themselves and resist. The fictional universes of these films, which range from realism to terror and dystopia, reflect the violence of “gore capitalism” (Valencia, 2010) prevailing in Mexico and in great parts of Latin America. They show a context of enormous inequalities and lack of protection for society, which particularly affects the most vulnerable groups, such as the racialized population, women, and children in marginalized neighborhoods and rural areas controlled by drug dealers. In this context, we also analyze what Segato (2016) understands as “war against women” and “femi-genocides”, where gender aggressions, beyond personal violence, involve a systematic attack and extermination of “a human type”, that is, women in general, including human trafficking, abandonment of girls, rape, and murder of women (85).

The heroines of these films are forced, as happens in reality, to abruptly abandon childhood and become aware of the fragility of their “precarious life” (Butler, 2006) in a corrupt, extractivist, ultra-violent, sexist, racist, and misogynist system. So, in order to survive they must organize, resist and confront patriarchal Necropower one way or another. In other words, the studied films offer a critical and bitter perspective, but partly hopeful, due to the ways female characters act in “self-defense” (Dorlin, 2017) against the rapes, abuses, femicides, and forced disappearances inherent to the functioning of gore capitalism. This vindication of female agency delves into the different strategies that women often adopt to defend themselves. Mothers and daughters are forced to dissimulate, submit to a male figure or flee. But they also empower themselves, becoming active subjects, legitimizing the adoption of self-defensive tools and actions, both individually and collectively.

Bibliography

• Butler, J. (2006). Vida precaria. El poder del duelo y la violencia. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
• Dorlin, E. (2017). Autodefensa. Una filosofía de la violencia. Navarra: Txalaparta.
  Rincón, O. (2009). “Narco.estética y narco.cultura en Narco.lombia”. Nueva Sociedad, 222, 148-163.
• Monsiváis, C. (2004). “El Narcotrafico y sus legiones” Viento Rojo Diez historias del narco en México. México, D. F., Plaza y Janés, 34-44.
• Segato, L. R. (2016). Guerra contra las mujeres. Madrid: Traficantes de sueños.
• Valencia, S. (2010). Capitalismo gore. Barcelona: Melusina. 

Filmography

• Brancato, C., Bernard, C., Miro, D., O’Connel. K., Newman. E., Padilha, J., Todd Ellis, E. (Productores ejecutivos). (2015-2017). Narcos. Dynamo Producciones, Gaumont International Television.
• Escalante, A. (2014). Heli. Tres Tunas, Mantarraya Producciones, Le Pacte, No Dream Cinema, Unafilm.
• Hernández Cordón, J. (2018). Cómprame un revólver. Woo Films, Burning Blue.
• López, I. (2017). Vuelven. Filmadora Nacional, Peligrosa.
• Huezo, T. (2021). Noche de fuego. Pimienta Films, The Match Factory.
• Naranjo, G. (2011). Miss Bala. Canana Films, Fox International Productions, IMCINE, Conaculta, Fidecine, Promecap.