Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2023

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

Oswaldo Zavala

Committee Members

Paul Julian Smith

Magdalena Perkowska

Keywords

21st century Mexico, Journalistic Events, Truth, Historical Memory, Critical Epistemology, Mass Feminisms

Abstract

This dissertation, entitled “Nosotras no somos Ayotzinapa: Feminist Transfigurations of Contemporary Mexico (2000-2022),” examines contested historical truths in Mexico amidst 21st-century mass feminisms. In it, I interrogate the imaginative potential of disruptive violent events by emphasizing notions of controversy, excess, and the image of the palimpsest as symptoms of a burgeoning process of truth-making. In this context, I examine the trajectories of writer Dahlia de la Cerda (1985), actress Kate del Castillo (1972) and journalists Lydia Cacho (1963) and Regina Martínez (1963-2012), conceptualizing significant events in which they are involved as poetic moments of political invention. I argue that these cases exemplify an ongoing process of political legitimation for Mexican feminisms in recent history: metaphors of power as a burned effigy appear in each chapter. This research advances critical reflections on an ongoing political and cultural transformation, positing that a feminist reimagining of the 19th and 20th-century revolutionary subject is underway, even as the countervailing representational dynamics of victims, heroes, and perpetrators rooted in those centuries persist.

The first chapter explores the semantic paradox behind the slogan “Nosotras no somos Ayotzinapa,” created by writer Dahlia de la Cerda, suggesting that it illustrates the flourishing gendered lens in naming what is and isn’t state violence. This analysis suggests the configuration of a revolutionary voice as an alternative to the institutionalized dissidences symbolized by Ayotzinapa. The second chapter examines how actress Kate del Castillo’s account of El Chapo’s capture, which challenges that of the State, exemplifies the feminist reimagining of the historical revolutionary subject. The third chapter discusses how journalist Lydia Cacho’s Los demonios del Edén (2005) sparked a process of truth-telling, suggesting that her elevation to public credibility relies on the State’s symbolization and admission of guilt through the traditional burning of Judas. The fourth and final chapter explores the themes of erasure and rewriting in the memorialization of the murder of journalist Regina Martínez, interpreting it as a symptom of the failing nation model. I suggest that the inclusion of Regina’s name in the Glorieta de las Mujeres que Luchan (Roundabout of Women Who Fight) in 2021 illustrates how feminisms reinterpret other struggles, such as freedom of expression, as their revolutionary force expands.

These four cases exemplify a burgeoning process of truth and subject-making. Drawing on perspectives such as critical epistemology, the phenomenology of history, and theories of art and the subject, this research deviates from discussing how various cultural objects reproduce or disrupt the hegemonic narrative of violence in the country and instead focuses on exploring the creative possibilities opened by these four violent events prior to their assimilation into recognizable historical categories.

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