Disrupting la nota roja: a shift in the portrayal of feminicide in Mexico?

A CIRCLE seminar with Daniela Villegas.

In the last ten years, the feminist movement in Mexico has seen large waves of rallies demanding access to abortion in the whole country, defying stereotypical women’s representations and denouncing gender violence, especially in its most lethal form: feminicide. Understood as the murder of women because of their gender, feminicide occurs at a rate of ten per day in Mexico according to the United Nations. The fight against these acute forms of violence towards women and feminized bodies is pivotal in the contemporary Mexican feminist movement.

The case of Ingrid Escamilla, a young victim of feminicide in Mexico City in 2020, whose body was portrayed by the Mexican media in gruesome forms, brought to the table the discussion of how media plays an important role in presenting these cases. Particular criticism was served to the nota roja section (crime section), which has a history of displaying graphic photography of crimes accompanied by witty headlines.

In this presentation I analyse the treatment of extreme cases of violence towards women by the Mexican press, and how that influences the social imaginary. First, I focus on how nota roja revictimizes the victims by feeding into already existing stigmas, and Mexican behavioural patterns. Second, I evaluate the backlash by the feminist movement in the country against nota roja practices to consider if/how it has impacted new legislative and regulatory arrangements. Finally, I reflect on whether these could reflect a deeper societal shift concerning the depiction of these types of violence.

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Bio

Daniela Villegas is a journalist, feminist and social researcher with a PhD in Gender and Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney. She investigates the intersection of cultural history, feminist activism, pop culture representations in the media, and gender and politics. Her latest research has focused on the construction of feminist identities from young urban working-class female activists in the periphery of Mexico City. Specifically, how identities and through them, visual activism, emerge to denounce feminicide (the murder of women because of their gender), and the fight to access abortion. Latin America, its women, and feminist movements are some of her regional areas of expertise.