Artful Assassins

The grim role of violence in shaping modern Mexican identity

David Mitre finds himself the focus of attention for an assassin while helping FBI Special Agent Delia Delacorte in her latest case in Amsterdam. “It takes a thief to catch a thief . . .” The last thing fugitive crime writer David Mitre expects as he’s cruising along an Amsterdam canal is to be the focus of a bizarre murder attempt . . . But why is he being targeted? He hasn’t even done anything wrong. Recently. After the would-be assassin tries again, David is rescued by Delia Delacorte, the FBI Special Agent he locked horns with in Cyprus. In return, Delia wants his help to prevent the theft of a priceless painting from the Rijksmuseum. Meanwhile David is also attempting to find a friend’s missing daughter, allay the suspicions of the local police and evade the assassin, all the while devising a plan to stop the theft. His plan: he’ll steal the painting himself . . .

A History of Infamy explores the broken nexus between crime, justice, and truth in mid-twentieth-century Mexico. Faced with the violence and impunity that defined politics, policing, and the judicial system in post-revolutionary times, Mexicans sought truth and justice outside state institutions. During this period, criminal news and crime fiction flourished. Civil society’s search for truth and justice led, paradoxically, to the normalization of extrajudicial violence and neglect of the rights of victims. As Pablo Piccato demonstrates, ordinary people in Mexico have made crime and punishment central concerns of the public sphere during the last century, and in doing so have shaped crime and violence in our times.

Border Killers delves into how recent Mexican creators have reported, analyzed, distended, and refracted the increasingly violent world of neoliberal Mexico, especially its versions of masculinity. By looking to the insights of artists, writers, and filmmakers, Elizabeth Villalobos offers a path for making sense and critiquing very real border violence in contemporary Mexico. Villalobos focuses on representations of "border killers" in literature, film, and theater. The author develops a metaphor of "maquilization" to describe the mass-production of masculine violence as a result of neoliberalism. The author demonstrates that the killer is an interchangeable cog in a societal factory of violence whose work is to produce dead bodies. By turning to cultural narratives, Villalobos seeks to counter the sensationalistic and stereotyped media depictions of border residents as criminals. The cultural works she examines instead indict the Mexican state and the global economic system for producing agents of violence. Focusing on both Mexico's northern and southern borders, Border Killers uses Achille Mbembe's concept of necropolitics and various theories of masculinity to argue that contemporary Mexico is home to a form of necropolitical masculinity that has flourished in the neoliberal era and made the exercise of death both profitable and necessary for the functioning of Mexico's state-cartel-corporate governance matrix.

An evocative history of colonial Mexico's 'crime of the century' and its lasting impact on the new Mexican nation in the nineteenth century.

How did men become the stars of the Mexican intellectual scene? Dude Lit examines the tricks of the trade and reveals that sometimes literary genius rests on privileges that men extend one another and that women permit. The makings of the “best” writers have to do with superficial aspects, like conformist wardrobes and unsmiling expressions, and more complex techniques, such as friendship networks, prizewinners who become judges, dropouts who become teachers, and the key tactic of being allowed to shift roles from rule maker (the civilizado) to rule breaker (the bárbaro). Certain writing habits also predict success, with the “high and hard” category reserved for men’s writing and even film directing. In both film and literature, critically respected artwork by men tends to rely on obscenity interpreted as originality, negative topics viewed as serious, and coolly inarticulate narratives about bullying understood as maximum literary achievement. To build the case regarding “rebellion as conformity,” Dude Lit contemplates a wide set of examples while always returning to three figures, each born some two decades apart from the immediate predecessor: Juan Rulfo (with Pedro Páramo), José Emilio Pacheco (with Las batallas en el desierto), and Guillermo Fadanelli (with Mis mujeres muertas, as well as the range of his publications). Why do we believe Mexican men are competent performers of the role of intellectual? Dude Lit answers this question through a creative intersection of sources. Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and critical readings, this provocative book changes the conversation on literature and gendered performance.

Cavernous, often cold, always dark, with the lingering smell of popcorn in the air: the experience of movie-going is universal. The cinematic experience in Mexico is no less profound, and has evolved in complex ways in recent years. Films like Y Tu Mama Tambien, El Mariachi, Amores Perros, and the work of icons like Guillermo del Toro and Salma Hayek represent much more than resurgent interest in the cinema of Mexico. In Screening Neoliberalism, Ignacio Sanchez Prado explores precisely what happened to Mexico's film industry in recent decades. Far from just a history of the period, Screening Neoliberalism explores four deep transformations in the Mexican film industry: the decline of nationalism, the new focus on middle-class audiences, the redefinition of political cinema, and the impact of globalization. This analysis considers the directors and films that have found international notoriety as well as those that have been instrumental in building a domestic market. Screening Neoliberalism exposes the consequences of a film industry forced to find new audiences in Mexico's middle-class in order to achieve economic and cultural viability.

The historical study of crime has expanded in criminology during the past few decades, forming an active niche area in social history. Indeed, the history of crime is more relevant than ever as scholars seek to address contemporary issues in criminology and criminal justice. Thus, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice provides a systematic and comprehensive examination of recent developments across both fields. Chapters examine existing research, explain on-going debates and controversies, and point to new areas of interest, covering topics such as criminal law and courts, police and policing, and the rise of criminology as a field. This Handbook also analyzes some of the most pressing criminological issues of our time, including drug trafficking, terrorism, and the intersections of gender, race, and class in the context of crime and punishment. The definitive volume on the history of crime, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of criminology, criminal justice, and legal history.