Testimonio and new media in Mexico: Telling the (real) stories of 72 migrantes

• In Event: Visa para un sueño: Mexico, jóvenes, inmigrantes.

Abstract

Representing the Other from a region that is already an Other, in Said’s and Todorov’s use of the concept, has been a challenge for Latin American authors who are politically and socially committed to their societies. However, from Barnet’s invention of the novela-testimonio to post-dictatorship literature and recent documentary films, narrative strategies for representing “true stories” have changed and now commonly occupy a blurred borderline between fiction and non-fiction.

As an example of the use of new technologies to represent testimony, this paper analyses 72 migrantes (2011), a collective project coordinated by Alma Guillermoprieto through a webpage. Created with the purpose of making a “virtual altar” to the migrants from Central and South America found dead in a ranch in Tamaulipas, Mexico in 2010, the project consists in life stories by 72 Mexican fiction writers and journalists, as well as the pictures from twenty photographers.

In the context of the “war against drug trafficking” in Mexico, I intend to explore how the intellectual community is responding to an ethical and also formal challenge in order to deal with a reality so close to fiction. Moving between literary theory and media studies, I will focus on the representation of otherness and the point of view that these texts and images create on migration and violence.

Author

• Liliana G Chávez Díaz, University of Cambridge