“La vida no vale nada”: Violencia, imagen y cuerpo en la ‘Guerra contra el narcotráfico’ en México

Abstract

30,000 killed between 2006 and 2010 it is the count left for the so-called war against drug trafficking in Mexico. This armed conflict involves many fronts, not only armed but also symbolic; the visual communication is essential both for the government and to various organized crime gangs which use any means, even corpses to communicate their messages: is also a war of propaganda, of symbols. This essay, after a brief positionig about modernity and violence, looks for an approach to the role of the image and the dead body as visual media in the in the Mexico´s drug war, with the aim to uncover some of the symbols, myths and fundamental searches that underlay the armed conflict.