Bodies on the line: identity markers among Mexican street youth

Abstract

This paper presents material from extended interviews and observations with 25 street youth in Mexico, revealing how their attempts to control and understand their lives relies on a control of and identification with their bodies. Using Goffman's ideas of stigma and performance, and Butler's performativity, the paper illustrates that even if these young peoples' bodies fall short of mainstream ideas for youthful bodies, they have developed some strategies that allow some control over their bodies. These bodily performances differ according to audience. This intention is by no means fully achieved. Their bodily actions sets out a series of identity markers but street life implies all sort of events, from painful childhoods to vicious leisure pursuits, and restricts the ability to affect material conditions. Moreover, care needs to be taken in interpreting these signs as the participants' own understandings and practices are neither easily categorized nor consistent.

Keywords:

• identity markers
• body
• performance
• street youth
• Mexico

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was conducted as part of the project ‘Being in Public: the multiple childhoods of Mexican ‘street’ children' with ESRC grant RES 148-25-0050. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the Latin American Studies Association conference, Montreal, and the International Conference of Critical Geography, Mumbai. We wish to thank participants at those meetings for their questions, Kathrin and Rachel and referees for their helpful comments.

Notes

We adopt the term youth to describe our key participants who were mostly aged from 12 to 29, the definition of youth adopted by the Mexican government. In fact, we had contact with people much older, into their fifties, and infants, but whose accounts do not contribute to this paper.

There is an abundant imagery of street life as aberrant and non-normative in Mexico, most notably the 2001 film De la Calle (Dir. Gerardo Tort) which won a number of national and international awards, and lower budget films such as Perro Callejero and Ratas de la Ciudad.

Beazley (2002) and Hecht (1998) are notable exceptions. For a discussion of the absence of concern for the body and bodily movement even in anthropology see Farnell (1999).

This field approach might be summarized as ‘street ethnography’ (see Gigengack and Gelder 2000).

The picture was of La Santa Muerte, the death saint, that is popular among the group, as well as associated with drug addicts, criminals, prostitutes and HIV carriers, but actually has much wider appeal as a ‘crisis religion’ stemming from the economic crises of the last 20 years (see Jones et al. 2007).

Ambiguities in the narratives of street youth are not unusual. Some have events to hide and many, such as Moises, have histories of abuse including beatings in childhood and assaults in juvenile detention.

Women are present in both groups and perform a number of important and explicitly gendered roles, re controlling drug consumption and baby care, and the emotional support of some group members (see Jones et al. 2007). But for the purposes of this article we focus mainly on the males.

Moises would often retain elements of his clown make-up long after working on the buses was finished for the day. Around the Jardineras too was ample evidence to anyone passing of the detritus of drug use, illness (vomit), hygiene (excrement, flies, dogs) and violence (blood).

Many of our research participants had spent considerable periods of time in government shelters (Casa de la Familia) or the Juvenile Detention and Rehabilitation Centre (CORSMIEP, known as the Tutelar). Some had considerable ‘institutional careers’ but had ended back on the streets, being categorized in the NGO jargon as ‘permanentes’, those beyond rehabilitation.

The use of tattoo in Mexican counterculture is widespread with punk, ‘Dark’ and Goths using elaborate and often highly displayed symbols, see Castillo Berthier (2002). Only a few of our participants' tattoos hold affinities with the counter-culture interpretations that speak to group memberships and intimate self-identification that may have (combinations of) spiritual, sexual or political dimensions (Fisher 2002).

In tattoo iconography tears sometimes symbolize the death of a family member or close friend while in detention, and are often related to gang membership in Central America and the US (Phillips 2001, Rocha 2003, Zilberg 2007).

Jacobson and Luzzatto (2004) show how similar attitudes to permanent tattoos are expressed by young Israelis some of whom will be eligible for military service.

Most use PVC, but thinners (tiner) and industrial solvents (‘chemo’ or ‘activo’) are also common.

Crack (roca) is used rarely, not by many, and never on the street.

As Entwistle (2001) highlights, dress is both a social and bodily experience, that in this case marks the boundary between the self-representation as ‘street involved’ or outside of a street life.

On youth gang identities see Castillo Berthier and Jones (2009). Most participants contested any ascription to being gang members or being like a gang, and it angered them when NGO workers were not so cautious.

Rodrigo and Ramon went into prison because of their individual involvement in burglary.

Anexos are Alcoholics Anonymous rehab facilities, run by ex addicts. See Thomas de Benitez (2008).

Boredom, depression and other psychological explanations can be understood as a result of the unfavourable environment surrounding the detainees rather than as a manifestation of individual psychopathology (see Thomas et al. 2006).

A Spanish camera crew made a documentary that included the Jardineras group, some of whom performed their roles to an expected ‘script’ while others sloped off disinterested or disappeared until the couple of days filming had finished.