Staging Reconciliation: The Possibilities of Mourning in Rafael Bonilla's La carta (2010)

Abstract

Rafael Bonilla’s documentary film La carta (2010), takes Paula Flores—mother of feminicidio victim Sagrario Flores González from Ciudad Juárez—as its centre point. This article traces Paula’s filmic construction as victim, survivor and committed political activist. The documentary is of particular interest for the way in which it reveals the device of letter-writing as a vehicle through which reconciliation between the centre (Mexico City) and its troubled periphery (Ciudad Juárez) can be achieved. I argue that the film stages a moment of national solidarity and mourning at a critical time in the narratives of violence in Mexico since 2006.

Key words:

• documentary film
• Rafael Bonilla
• La carta
• feminicidio
• Mexico
• motherhood
• violence

Notes

1 See, for example, Blanca Juárez, ‘Primera movilización nacional contra violencia de género’, La Jornada, 24 April 2016, <http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2016/04/24/primera-movilizacion-nacional-contra-violencia-de-genero> (accessed 25 May 2016). See also, ‘La marcha contra la violencia machista’, El País, 24 April 2016, <http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/04/24/mexico/1461518400_222932.html> (accessed 25 May 2016). Organized under the hashtag, #vivasnosqueremos, the march garnered international headlines. See also, Fanny Ruiz-Palacios, ‘Concluye marcha contra violencia de género’, El Universal, 24 April 2016, <http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/metropoli/cdmx/2016/04/24/concluye-marcha-contra-violencia-de-genero> (accessed 25 May 2016).

2 See: Julia Estela Monárrez Fragoso, Trama de una injusticia: feminicidio sistemático sexual en Ciudad Juárez (México D.F.: Colegio de la Frontera Norte/Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2009); Víctor Ronquillo, Las muertas de Juárez (México D.F.: Editorial Planeta, 1999); Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, ed. Alicia Gaspar de Alba & Georgina Guzmán (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2010); Terrorizing Women: Feminicide in the Americas, ed. Rosa-Linda Fregoso & Cynthia Bejarano (Durham, NC: Duke U. P., 2010); Rita Laura Segato, La escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez (Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón, 2013); Kathleen Staudt, Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear and. Everyday Life in Ciudad Juárez (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2008).

3 See Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, ed. Gaspar de Alba & Guzmán, for a useful overview of some of these responses.

4 There has been a prolonged debate about how to name the crimes against women in Ciudad Juárez. ‘Femicide’ in English and femicidio in Spanish were initially used frequently, following the prominence given to the terms by established legal scholars such as Diana Russell and Jill Radford. However, Marcela Lagarde de los Ríos, feminist activist and politician in Mexico, proposed the term feminicidio as a more nuanced way of encapsulating the systemic nature of the violence involved, and also to indicate the complicity of the state in the widely acknowledged failure to punish those responsible in many of the cases. In this article, I will follow the established conventions in literature on the subject and employ ‘feminicidio’ as a due acknowledgement of this theoretical term as contributed by Lagarde de los Ríos, but also in recognition of its Hispanic roots. See Femicide: The Politics of Women Killing, ed. Jill Radford & Diana Russell (New York: Twayne, 1992); Marcela Lagarde, ‘Del femicidio al feminicidio’, Desde el jardín de Freud. Revista de Psicoanálisis, 6 (2007), 216–25.

5 The idea that the feminicidios in Juárez were part of an historic cycle of gender-related violence is also forcefully present in much of the cultural representation of the phenomenon. Lourdes Portillo's documentary film, Señorita extraviada, for example, opens with one of the victims' mothers telling the story of her own abduction (and release) in a way that as Amy Sara Carroll notes, ‘stages the scene as one of uncanny repetition’ (Amy Sara Carroll, ‘ “Accidental Allegories” Meet “The Performative Documentary”: Boystown, Señorita Extraviada, and the Border-Brothel→Maquiladora Paradigm’, Signs, 31:2 [2006], 357–96 [p. 385]).

6 A project entitled, ‘Luchando hasta encontrarlas', run by mothers and other relatives, works with local artists to restore the faces of their missing and murdered daughters. See <http://www.codev.org/2015/12/the-painted-angels-of-ciudad-Juarez> (accessed 26 October 2016). Prominent artist and political activist, Maclovio Macías has been involved in this project. See <https://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/women-never-forgotten-the-murals-and-memorials-of-ciudad-Juarez/>; see also, <http://www.latintimes.com/missing-women-ciudad-Juarez-will-never-be-forgotten-thanks-these-haunting-murals-354459> (accessed 26 October 2016).

7 It should be noted that a man was convicted of Sagrario's murder, though her mother maintains that there remain multiple irregularities in the way in which the case was handled and tried and that many questions remain unanswered. Paula features in a number of other documentary films and books about the Juárez cases, including: Lourdes Portillo, Señorita Extraviada (2001); Rossella M. Bergamaschi, Desde que no estás (2007); and Teresa Rodríguez & Diana Montané, The Daughters of Juárez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border (New York: Atria Books, 2007).

8 See, for example, the Comadres of El Salvador, the Conavigua Widows of Guatemala and the Damas de Blanco in Cuba. For more information and analysis, see Jennifer Schirmer, ‘The Seeking of Truth and the Gendering of Consciousness: The Comadres of El Salvador and the Conavigua Widows of Guatemala’, in Viva: Women and Popular Protest in Latin America, ed. Sallie Westwood & Sarah A. Radcliffe (London/New York: Routledge, 1993), 30–64. See also <www.damasdeblanco.com> (accessed 1 June 2016). I am indebted to James Clifford Kent for information about ‘Las Damas de Blanco’ and indeed for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

9 <http://nuestrashijasderegresoacasa.blogspot.ie/> (accessed 1 June 2016).

10 Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989) and Diana Taylor, ‘Trapped in Bad Scripts: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, in her Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's Dirty War (Durham, NC/London: Duke U. P., 1997): 183–222. See also, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Lanham/Boulder/New York/Toronto/Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 1994).

11 See Rosario Castellanos’ short story, ‘Lección de cocina’ from her collection, Álbum de familia (México D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1971). See also, ‘La abnegación: una virtud loca’, Debate Feminista, 3:6 (1992), 287–92. This article by Castellanos was based on the speech she delivered as part of the celebrations of International Women's Day in 1971.

12 Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2004), 439.

13 The theatricality of motherhood as performed in these contexts has been noted. See Diana Taylor, ‘Making a Spectacle: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 3:2 (2001), 97–109.

14 The full extract shown on screen from the newspaper reads: ‘Encuentran a pareja muerta en Anapra autoridades sospechan que pudiera tratarse de un caso de homicidio-suicidio [ … ] se presume que eran amantes. [ … ] En el caso de la mujer, de confirmarse que fue asesinada, vendría a ser el feminicidio núm 13 cometido en Juárez, del primero de enero del 2006 a la fecha’.

15 The killings of women in Ciudad Juárez have come to be associated with certain locations in the city and the discoveries of multiple bodies. These locations include Lomas de Poleo, as described, and Campo Algodonero, which featured as part of a case investigated by the Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos which found against the Mexican State in 2009. Other sites where victims were buried include Lote Bravo where three bodies were discovered in 1995.

16 The documentary Poleo hablando (León de la Rosa, 2006), showing how they destroyed homes and expelled families, reveals how the actions of the Zaragoza brothers would have been impossible without the complicity of the relevant local authorities, thus continuing the insistent narrative of protests against the ongoing corruption and culture of impunity in the region.

17 In real life Paula was forced out of Ciudad Juárez and back to Durango, as a result of her prominence as an activist, and in the face of growing violence against activists more generally. High profile activists who have lost their lives in recent years include Susana Chávez, poet and human rights campaigner (2011) and Digna Ochoa, human rights lawyer (2001).

18 As Diana Taylor writes: ‘The women consciously modelled themselves on the Virgin Mary, the ultimate mother who transcends the public/private bind by carrying her privacy with her even in public’ (Taylor, ‘Making a Spectacle’, 102). In support of this view, Alejandro Diago writes: ‘At first they marched as if in ritual procession: faces serious, eyes turned upward in supplication, heads covered … peaceful, rapt, pleading’ (Hebe Bonafini: memoria y esperanza [Buenos Aires: Ediciones Dialéctica, 1988], 29; cited in Taylor, ‘Making a Spectacle’, 102).  

19 The scandal of the ex-Braceros has received much print and other media coverage. Broadly speaking, it concerns the struggle of the Braceros who participated in the government-funded worker programme during World War II to extract the pension payments they are entitled to from the Mexican government. For further information, see: <http://elnuevosol.net/2011/05/programa-bracero-la-lucha-por-los-derechos-de-los-trabajadores-del-campo/> (accessed 12 July 2016); and Jesús Aranda, ‘Más de $5 billones, la cantidad que el gobierno deberá devolver a ex braceros’, La Jornada, 10 de marzo 2016 <http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/03/10/politica/013n1pol> (accessed 12 July 2016).

20 Statistics are taken from the respected source, Frontera List, compiled by Molly Molly. This source utilizes data from El Diario de Juárez, <https://fronteralist.org/category/ciudad-juarez/> (accessed 21 October 2016).

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.