Temporada de huracanes represents the violence phenomenon in Mexico as operating in many different ways, including bloody violence, domestic violence, psychological violence and child abuse. Melchor wonders about the conditions that prevail in society for horrible events to happen: ‘so many missing people, so many dead, people dedicated to organised crime, stealing, murder, in an ambition that leads them to corruption’.
1 Spanish original: ‘tantas personas desaparecidas, tantos muertos, personas dedicadas al crimen organizado, a robar, asesinar, en la ambición que los lleva a ser corruptos’; Gerardo Antonio Martínez, ‘Literatura entre el arte y la violencia extrema’, Confabulario, El Universal, 10 August 2019; https://confabulario.eluniversal.com.mx/entrevista-fernanda-melchor-temporada-de-huracanes/ [accessed 18 January 2021]. Therefore, the novel reflects her interest in understanding why and how Mexicans have reached this point.
We will now review some data on the virulence of the violence and security crisis in Mexico. This will help us to understand Melchor’s interest in reproducing the violence phenomenon in her novel.
Violence against women is a widespread practice throughout the country that manifests in different ways, including emotional, physical, sexual, economic and patrimonial mechanisms that aim to annihilate the individual. According to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), 30.7 million women in Mexico (66 out of 100 women aged 15 years and over) have been victims of violent and discriminatory acts at some time in their lives.
2 National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), ‘Estadísticas a propósito del Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia Contra la Mujer’, 21 November 2019; https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/aproposito/2019/Violencia2019_Nal.pdf [accessed 27 January 2021]. Such violence is carried out by different aggressors, mainly males, including partners, relatives, school or work colleagues, school or work authorities, friends, neighbours and strangers.
Gender crimes (femicides and intentional homicides) constitute one of the most extreme cases of gender-based violence in Mexico. Since July 2018, the number of women killed has remained at very high levels, with 3,834 female murders in 2019.
3 INEGI, ‘Estadísticas a propósito del Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia Contra la Mujer’. The incidence of trans people murders in Mexico is very high too. The Observatory of Murdered Trans Persons (TMM) places Mexico in second place after Brazil in the world ranking of murders of trans and gender-diverse people.
4 Observatory of Murdered Trans Persons, ‘Recursos del TMM’; http://transrespect.org/es/trans-murder-monitoring/tmm-resources [accessed 27 January 2021]. Trans Remembrance Day (TDoR) is held every 20 November in many countries, when trans and gender-diverse people who have been killed are remembered. The 2020 TDoR report shows that a total of 57 trans people were murdered in Mexico between 1 October 2019 and 30 September 2020, representing a 6% increase from the 2019 report.
5 Observatory of Murdered Trans Persons, ‘Actualización TMM: Día de la Memoria Trans 2019’, 11 November 2020; https://transrespect.org/es/tmm-update-tdor-2020/ [accessed 27 January 2021].I have already said that
Temporada de huracanes’ setting was inspired by Veracruz. Despite having a lower rate of violence than the average in the country, Veracruz is a battleground for drug traffickers and State agents who undermine the rights of citizens, including women, children and sexual minorities. In 2018, the number of victims of criminal violence in Veracruz was 15.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, which was lower than the national average of 28.3 per 100,000 inhabitants.
6 INEGI, ‘Estadísticas a propósito del Día Internacional de la Eliminación de la Violencia Contra la Mujer’, p. 10. Weighted by population size, the incidence of crimes per 100,000 citizens in Veracruz in 2018 was 25.3, while the national incidence was 37.8.
7 Ibid., p. 15. The most frequent criminal acts among the adult population in Veracruz in 2019 were: (1) alcohol consumption in the street; (2) burglaries or assaults; (3) drug use; (4) shootings; and (5) kidnappings.
8 Ibid., p. 44. These are, as we shall see later, the main occupations of the central characters in the novel.
In 2005, Veracruz became the main base of operations of the criminal organisation Los Zetas, which appears in the novel under the name ‘Sombra’. Violence in the State escalated and reached its peak during the administration of Javier Duarte de Ochoa (2010–16), which has been described as the most corrupt administration in the recent history of the State.
9 A. J. Olvera, ‘Los regímenes autoritarios subnacionales en la región del Golfo-Sur de México’, Interregnos subnacionales: la implementación de la reforma de la justicia penal en México: el caso de la Región Golfo-Sureste, coordinated by A. Zavaleta and A. Alvarado (Mexico City: Colofón, 2018), pp. 39–60. The news in Mexico constantly broadcasts reports about findings of headless and dismembered bodies, shootings, murders and
levantones (kidnappings), and in March 2017, 250 skulls were found in a mass grave. Finally, Veracruz is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to report the news.
10 Reporters Without Borders, ‘RSF Publishes Report on “Veracruz: Journalists and the State of Fear”’, 30 January 2017; https://rsf.org/en/news/rsf-publishes-report-veracruz-journalists-and-state-fear [accessed 3 February 2021]. Actually, the two journalists who reported the event that inspired
Temporada de huracanes, Yolanda Ordaz and Gabriel Huge Córdoba, were killed by organised criminals in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
Drawing on Mbembe’s approach, Valencia relates the necropolitical techniques that regulate citizens’ deaths with the logic of the harsh capitalism operating in Mexico. She argues that the drug cartels in Mexico operate in strict compliance with what she calls ‘gore capitalism’, which she defines as the ‘systematically uncontrolled and contradictory dimension of the neoliberal project’ that aims to benefit from the illegal markets and risk people’s lives.
11 Valencia, Capitalismo Gore, p. 19. In the contest for the control of the territory, security and the population, necropowers like businessmen, corrupt State officials and others exploit natural resources and human beings by facilitating chronic poverty and social exclusion.
I have said that the plot of
Temporada de huracanes was inspired by the murder of a sorcerer by his young lover and his handicapped stepfather. In the novel, Bruja Chica is a victim of femicide. Femicidal violence is present throughout the book. ‘Femicide’ refers to the set of violent acts and behaviours against women for reasons associated with their gender, which can lead to homicide.
12 Marcela Lagarde, Los cautiverios de las mujeres: madres, esposas, monjas, putas, presas y locas (Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1990). The threat of femicidal violence and death limits girls’ and women’s freedom, impedes their social development, and deteriorates their mental health and self-esteem. The threat of physical annihilation also causes significant suffering to their relatives and a social rupture.
Femicidal violence is seen as a process that begins before the homicide and continues through institutional violence and the impunity over these.
13 Marcela Lagarde, ‘¿A qué llamamos feminicidio?’, Comisión Especial para Conocer y dar Seguimiento a las Investigaciones Relacionadas con los Feminicidios en la República Mexicana y a la Procuración de Justicia Vinculada. LIX Legislatura Cámara de Diputados H. Congreso de la Unión, 14 April 2005; https://xenero.webs.uvigo.es/profesorado/marcela_lagarde/feminicidio.pdf [accessed 18 January 2021], p. 1. In this way, femicide is a mechanism of control that is entrenched in the corrupt and hyper-capitalist environment of the country. Ultimately, this type of murder reflects the
machista and misogynistic ideology that is embedded in the simplistic code of conduct of the ‘good’ Mexican woman – a notion that is shared by males and females alike and is currently being contested by, for example, Cristina Rivera Garza and Ana Clavel, among other Mexican writers.
14 See Cristina Rivera Garza, Los muertos indóciles. Necroescrituras y desapropiación (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2013); Ana Clavel, Cuerpo náufrago (Madrid: Alfaguara, 2005). On the deconstruction of masculinities in contemporary Mexico, see also Chapter 9 on Lydia Cacho. As we shall see later, the ‘good’ Mexican woman prototype follows the three biblical archetypes of the women who attended Jesus Christ at his crucifixion: his mother (the Virgin Mary), the mother of James and Joseph (Mary the innocent) and Mary Magdalene (Mary the prostitute).
In this way, Melchor reports that human trafficking and sexual exploitation have become growing businesses in the country that mainly affect poor girls and women, such as Norma, her mother and Chabela.
15 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, The Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2016 (Vienna: United Nations, 2016). In this regard, the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy estimated that 42% of the Mexican population (61.1 million people) lived in poverty in 2018.
16 Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, ‘Medición de la Pobreza’, 2018; https://www.coneval.org.mx/Medicion/Paginas/PobrezaInicio.aspx [accessed 27 January 2021]. In the context of structural poverty and violence, female bodies are at risk of being (sexually) objectified for the benefit of illegal companies. Their bodies have become a new commodity and objects of desire for violent males in the area. Their bodies are useful as long as they serve the businesses’ purposes. Once the benefit has been exhausted, they can be disappeared.
The violence against women and sexual minorities in the area is therefore embedded in a specific process for gaining control over women’s bodies. This violence occurs at the hands of
sujetos endriagos, using Valencia’s terminology, who are violent males who exert violence against women, girls and sexual minorities and treat them as (sexual) commodities. The
endriago is a mythical character in medieval Spanish literature. It is a tall, strong and agile beast that inhabits infernal lands and produces great fear among its enemies. Valencia refers to the triple condition of
endriagos: (1) they appropriate State tools through violence to gain power and comply with neoliberal demands; (2) they question the efficacy of a disciplinary society; and (3) they arise from the population.
17 Valencia, Capitalismo Gore, p. 144. She presents
endriagos as dissidents of neoliberalism, yet they do not embody a legitimate form of resistance away from the patriarchal order prevalent in the region. Finally, they aspire to take control over female bodies for their own interests and needs.
18 Valencia, Capitalismo Gore, p. 149.Inspired by the work of Valencia, the Mexican scholar Ariadna Estévez focuses on the dispossession of women’s bodies in necropolitical Mexico.
19 Ariadna Estévez, ‘La violencia contra las mujeres y la crisis de derechos humanos: de la narcoguerra a las guerras necropolíticas’, Estudios de Género de El Colegio de México, 3.6 (2017), 69–100. Estévez presents women’s bodies as merchandise from which males can profit. Women thus become victims of a long process of annihilation through which they must protect their integrity and their bodies. In this way, femicides entail more than criminal acts that ‘dispossess’ women of their bodies, using Estévez’s terminology; rather, they are a process that appropriates women’s minds, first by paralysing them with fear and the belief that they are inferior to males and later by appropriating their bodies with criminal acts.
Next, we will address La Matosa as an invented place located in Veracruz, where life is subordinated to the power of death, causing people to become so marginalised that they actually live like the dead. This happens because their bodies have become a new commodity and this, I will argue, makes them objects of desire for violent males in the area. Let us now explore what elements make La Matosa a necropolitical system.