Saving whiteness: spectacular violence and the politics of white supremacist patriarchy

ABSTRACT

The frequency with which women are subjected to sexual assault along migratory corridors travelling through Mexico and into the United States is a disturbing phenomenon, one that has been spotlighted by human rights watches and organizations in advocating for migrant rights. Frustratingly, this sexual violence has also become a point of focus for nativist groups and militias patrolling the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, leveraged as evidence of the threat of a porous border. This paper investigates the intersections in the racialized and gendered processes that reaffirm the United States as a white, patriarchal, and heteronormative national space, by spotlighting the ways in which vigilante and nativist groups use spectacles of sexual violence against migrant women as justifications for their surveillance activities. Through images and narratives of migrant women as victims to violent Mexican men, vigilantes and nativist groups objectify and other these women in order to simultaneously disavow their own violence and position themselves as the privileged occupants and guardians of the United States.

KEYWORDS:

• U.S.-Mexico border
• sexual violence
• nativism
• militias
• masculinity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The name “Veterans on Patrol” refers to their activities searching for homeless veterans, rather than their actual status as veterans. The group’s leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, is not a veteran, for example.

2. Many of the migrant deaths result from exposure to extreme conditions of heat or cold, or from dehydration. In Arizona, for example, this has been the cause of thousands of deaths in recent decades (Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner 2018).

3. Credited to a joint study by Organization of American States (OAS) and International Human Rights Law Institute of DePaul University College of Law.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucia M. Palmer

Lucia M. Palmer is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Middle Georgia State University. She has published articles in journals such as International Journal of Communication, Studies in Popular Culture, and Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas. Her interests primarily revolve around the intersections between media, culture, and constructions of nationality, gender, race and sexuality. Currently, her research focuses on how cultural and political movements utilize media, in particular alternative and independent formats, to struggle over meanings of the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration. E-mail: [email protected]