Government Gore: The Images of Beltrán Leyva's Body and the Mexican (Failed) State

摘要

In December 2009 a military operation took down Mexican drug boss Arturo Beltrán Leyva. Following the combat that resulted in his demise, photographs were taken of his dead body, some of them showing it covered in money and personal effects. This paper looks at the role that the photographs of Beltrán Leyva's death have played in the overall media strategy of president Felipe Calderón's ‘war on drugs’. The aim is to analyse the photographs through Foucault's theorization of an economy of punitive power with a special focus on the deployment of spectacularity in the presentation of the dead criminal as an expression of the state's exercise of particular forms of punishment. The paper also considers the effectiveness of the public presentation of such images and the consequences of their widespread distribution in the media.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2011.609884