The Spectacle of Violence under the PRI

• In Event: The Intermediality of Memorialisation: Inflections and Reflections in Mexican Visual Culture - Part I

Abstract

In the midst of perhaps the worst political, security and socio-economic crisis in decades, the Mexican political apparatus appears incapable of acting rationally. It responds to every new crisis, social movement and political challenge with violence and coercion. This constant recourse to violence is matched by increased investment in political propaganda. No other government in Mexico has spent as much on PR and media campaigns as that of the PRI under President Enrique Peña Nieto. In the absence of a political system willing to address the expression of grievances and dissent, this paper argues, politics is managed by the constant use of media spectacle, of propaganda, and PR, as a means to distract attention from the deepening socio-economic crisis. Current political propaganda decontextualises, reifies and uproots the frequent and brutal violence, almost rendering it ahistorical. State violence and its function as a spectacle suggest all manner of political failure, of a profoundly undemocratic political system and an almost total absence of economic democracy. Expression of grievances, dissent and discontent can no longer take place via the traditional political channels. Since the 1980s and particularly since the "democratic transition", I argue, the political elites in Mexico have created a kind of consensus at the top, one which overwhelmingly excludes the political participation of the majority and which is managed by a combination of military tactics and propaganda.

Author

• Peter M Watt, University of Sheffield