Introduction

1In February 2013, localities affected by narco-violence in Michoacán, Mexico, organized themselves into autodefensa groups, effectively constituting an armed movement to confront abuses of the cartels operating in the region. This movement, which built on previous experiences of community police initiatives in Michoacán and Guerrero, soon gained a presence among national and international mainstream and independent media. Its appeal for “self-protection” gained sympathy among both entrepreneurial classes and popular and peasant sectors.

2This article does not examine the autodefensa groups in themselves, but rather seeks to understand how the production and circulation of images around this movement, such as press photography and video spots, has echoed certain notions of citizenship as self-protection in Mexico; and how these notions are nourished by historical fantasies about the armed peasant as central agent of political transformation. I analyse two groups of images aimed at reaching two different kinds of publics. First, I show how the figure and rhetoric of José Manuel Mireles, one of the most important self-defense groups’ leaders, became central for the political party Movimiento Ciudadano’s initiative “Frente Nacional de Autodefensa de México” (National Front of Self-defense of Mexico) in 2014. Such an initiative spoke, to a great extent, to the interests of entrepreneurs who felt threatened by the cartels’ campaign of extortion and kidnapping. Second, I analyse a series of press photographs about self-defense groups that appeared in national and international media, and which addressed left urban sectors’ sympathy for rural armed movements. Although produced and circulated for very different political purposes and publics, I suggest that both groups of images reinforce a similar rhetoric of citizenship. At the same time, both groups of images build on historical imaginaries and fantasies about peasants as central agents of political transformation in Mexico. My focus on visual forms related to the self-defense movement allows for an exploration of affective and aesthetic fields that in many ways are contributing to collective reelaborations of citizenship, and which do not necessarily belong to the realm of organized and legal action. In which ways does the circulation of these kinds of images in the public sphere mobilize collective affects and fantasies of future, and how does this mobilization relate to an inconsistent but effective neoliberal “common sense” (Leal 2016) to conceive citizenship as “self-protection”? The analysis includes a preliminary exploration of the ways in which these images engage with the reelaborations that the current, populist government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is making of citizenship and security as part of the new state project.

Are We all autodefensas?

3In the first months of 2013, people living in various regions affected by narco-violence in Michoacán organized themselves into autodefensas or self-defense groups. Seeking strategies to confront cartel abuses such as extortion, kidnapping and killing, these groups obtained weapons and developed mechanisms such as identifying and capturing cartel members, organizing community surveillance strategies, blocking access to people associated with the cartels in specific localities, and collaborating with federal forces to arrest cartel members.

4This movement was based in previous experiences of local surveillance and community police, in places such as Ostula in 2009 and Cherán in 2011 in Michoacán (Maldonado 2014; Guerra 2015), as well as various community police experiences in Guerrero. These recent initiatives built on more traditional forms of community police through figures like topiles or rotating policemen that operate in many Mexican rural communities as part of the cargo system that dates from colonial times. As Guerra Manzo notes, the autodefensas movement in Michoacán has raised numerous public reactions that range from suspicions of a paramilitary phenomenon, to their explanation as a necessary social movement that responds to the failure of the state to protect its citizens (Guerra 2015). This latter explanation relates to the fact that current narco-violence frequently results in an oft-frustrated need to exercise citizenship rights.

https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=QYoGTcYq0Z8 (accessed June 30, 2019).

6The Frente Nacional de Autodefensa de Mexico’s video is only two minutes long. It introduces, one by one, ten political personalities from different regions of Mexico, who briefly explain their reasons for identifying themselves as “autodefensas” and supporting the self-defense movement of Michoacán, reasons that range from being tired of impunity and injustice, to the need to protect their own families. The presenters have heterogeneous profiles that include Priest Alejandro Solalinde, who has a solid trajectory in the defence of Central American migrants’ rights; the controversial former governor of Nuevo León state and “independent” presidential candidate Jaime Rodríguez Calderón “El Bronco”; as well as lawyers and businessmen whose relatives have been kidnapped. Each presenter speaks with an emotional and direct tone facing the camera, with a careful sepia illumination, while a sweet piano music dramatizes the effect of their voices. The last presenter is José Manuel Mireles. As if suggesting that he is the true or original autodefensa, Mireles conclusively invites the public to adhere to the movement by stating, together with the repetitive echoes of each presenter: “I am autodefensa, we are all autodefensas”.

9Nevertheless, a common issue among most of the “representatives” who appear in the video is their middle and upper-class position: many of them are business people, government officials, journalists and civil society representatives who, after having lived through kidnaps and killings of their relatives, became spokespeople for the fight against kidnapping in Mexico. The fact that all these different political actors became allies at that moment around the self-defense movement, presenting José Manuel Mireles as their caudillo or leader, generates several questions: Why would Mireles and the self-defense groups, as opposed to other struggles, lead this citizens’ movement? What were the implications or advantages for these mainly urban representatives, of uniting around a rural armed movement?

11By discussing how video and photography were deployed during the first years of the self-defense movement to strengthen a call for exercising citizenship in Mexico I do not mean to ignore the tremendous conditions of violence and abuse that have compelled people to create different self-defense groups. I do not seek either to dwell on the contradictions of the Movimiento Ciudadano political party that sought to gain legitimacy and visibility through a discourse of citizens’ self-protection. Nevertheless, the ways in which this party mobilized the idea of citizenship as self-protection through emphatic support for the self-defense groups led by Mireles, helps us reflect on the effects these kinds of armed initiatives have on a public discourse on citizenship that is gaining relevance in Mexican society. Rather than subverting the neoliberal logic, this reconfiguration of civil society, together with the emphasis on self-protection, constitutes a neoliberal phenomenon itself.

12In his analysis of “the cultural dynamics of Mexican citizenship”, Claudio Lomnitz discusses, through various historical moments, how the Mexican state has been unable to extend universal citizenship to all those born in the country (1999: 270). These legal and political formations have involved particular forms of legitimizing exclusion, as well as social strategies, for instance among middle class sectors, to develop personal relations as forms of accessing citizenship -and protection. Lomnitz details how the exercise of citizenship was conditioned by paternalism, clientelism and other nondemocratic practices during the postrevolutionary periods (1999: 293).

13In contrast to such practices, Willem Assies, Marco Calderón and Ton Salman state that one of the consequences of neoliberal democracy within Latin America is that it “prioritizes civil rights [while] emphasizing the individuals’ responsibility for their own and their dependents’ wellbeing” (2002: 72). This implies that “from the moment in which the individual is entitled to protect himself, social protection through the state results unnecessary” (2002: 71). These authors echo Nikolas Rose’s argument that neoliberal governmentality relies on transferring the state’s responsibility to cover society’s needs to individual citizens’ choices (1999). This neoliberal “self-help” view of citizenship (Assies et al., 2002: 60; Goldstein 2005: 396) and its impacts on Mexican society suggest that the responsibility for justice, as with many other responsibilities, should be in citizens’ hands.

14Mexico began to adopt neoliberal policies since the early 1980s. During the last three decades, the Mexican state has reduced public expenditure and promoted privatization and descentralization; while also undergoing a “democratic transition” and state institutional strengthening (Pansters 2012; Leal 2016). In parallel, Mexican efforts to adapt to the global economy included signing international free trade agreements like NAFTA. A neoliberal shift also took place in terms of public policies and social programs, which since the late 1980s sought to ameliorate the impacts of structural adjustment policies on the poor through compensatory health and education programs financed by World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans. A characteristic of these kinds of programs has been their emphasis on “citizen participation”, mostly understood in terms of citizen’s responsibility and self-care (Zamorano 2008). The neoliberal transition in Mexico has also implied the emergence and strengthening of “civil society” which, according to Alejandra Leal, has been studied as “emerging not only against state authoritarianism, but as a response to neoliberal injustices and exclusions” (2016: 52). Lomnitz suggests that despite this emergence of “massive social movements”, the “category of citizen” remains constrained by the persistence of inequality and exclusion (1999: 293). For this reason, uneven access to citizenship might continue to be legitimated under “the pernicious dialectic between the good pueblo and the bad pueblo” (1999: 293). The present analysis of how the self-defense groups have been depicted by some media and urban sectors is helpful to understand how this movement oscillates between those two categories -good pueblo and bad pueblo- in public opinion and at different political moments.

16Through an analysis of mob lynching in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Daniel Goldstein explains similar forms of popular discontent as “neoliberal violence”, namely, “an inherent component of the neoliberal project and its associated cultural values, which underlie the general condition of insecurity that is both cause and result of popular violence” (2005: 406).

17I identify the emergence of self-defense groups in Mexico as a similar phenomenon that cannot be understood as a totally oppositional response to neoliberalism, but rather as intrinsic to its violent logic. Yet, as I stated above, the self-defense groups are not the centre of my analysis, but rather the media and political attention they have received among wider, mainly urban “civil society” sectors that are mobilizing the self-defense struggle in order to promote a specific notion of citizenship based on the premise of self-help or corresponsibility. In this respect, Alejandra Leal proposes to understand responsible citizenship as a “dominant common sense” through which “neoliberalism has reactivated and resignified liberal vocabularies about the state, society and citizen, according to which the latter should be responsible for his own wellbeing” (2016: 79).

18By carrying the banner for the autodefensa groups and by amalgamating their image in the figure of Mireles, the Frente Nacional de Autodefensas expanded a “neoliberal common sense” of citizenship as self-protection (Leal 2016). In this context, the video produced by this Front creates a message in which public personalities, representing different sectors affected by violence in Mexico, express a common concern against insecurity, impunity, abuse, injustice and, overall, a feeling of being neglected by the state. Despite their differences, all presenters are framed in a similar shot and with the same background and lighting. The tones of their voices are clear and steady, calm yet vigorous. These image and sound effects, together with the “we are all…” motto, generate a sense of uniformity and agreement. At the same time, by displaying each representative speaking directly to the camera framed in a medium shot, the video creates the effect that their presence is not mediated, as if the presenters were directly speaking to, and challenging, each spectator, assumed as a fellow citizen who shares the same concerns. Altogether, the video carefully presents the images and oral discourse as a forceful call for national union for self-organization to “defend ourselves” “because the state is not doing so”. In this way the National Front of Self-defense initiative, which could be understood as a civic response to neglect by the neoliberal state, is at the same time articulated in the neoliberal discursive and visual vocabulary of citizen’s co-responsibility.

“México Bronco” as a Latent Image

20Photojournalism has contributed to the visibility and legitimacy of self-defense groups. National and international press images presenting positive depictions, mainly produced in the states of Michoacán and Guerrero, have been crucial for visibilizing the contexts of marginality, inequality and violence in which these movements have emerged. Except for Irish photographer Ross McDonnell, whose photos mostly circulated in artistic spaces, the most analysed images were produced by Mexican photojournalists working for prestigious national and international photo news agencies such as Agence France-Presse AFP and Associated Press News AP and Cuartoscuro. Most of the images analysed here have been published in magazines and newspapers from the United States, Europe and Mexico. Additionally, a few of the referred images were published in smaller independent electronic work media; one series of images was published in an academic journal; and a few were only circulated through Facebook and twitter. These dynamics of broad circulation in mainly progressive or non-mainstream media, together with the mostly sympathetic depictions of the movement in published images and articles, denotes a strong public interest in the autodefensa movement both in Mexico and internationally.

21By depicting aspects of daily life and local organizing processes, these images call people to reflect on the conflict and on the reasons why local people resort to these organizations. In addition, many of these images point to the complexity and contradictions of local peoples’ involvement in self-defense movements. Furthermore, the possibilities of photographic technologies are instrumental to communicating the emotional aspects of these forms of organization, and to documenting aspects such as distrust, hopelessness and vulnerability that are also part of these processes. Additionally, it is worth acknowledging journalists and photographers’ efforts to document these processes especially in light of the risks they take, considering the growing violence exercised both by the state and by the organized crime against journalists in Mexico.

22In spite of this acknowledgement, I propose a critical reflection about how most visual documentation of the self-defense groups takes part in, and often celebrates, the public articulation of the discourse on citizenship as self-protection. I suggest that this articulation results in an effective mobilization of affects and political empathy among certain publics. On the one hand, the notion of citizenship as self-protection seems to seek continuity with emblematic referents of popular justice and revolutionary fantasies in Mexico. If we think about this in temporal terms, what kind of future can be visualized from this notion of citizenship as self-protection? How does it help to visualize, for the future, the role of citizens and their interaction with the state? What kinds of moral values are displayed? An analysis of self-defense groups’ press photography production and circulation is useful in order to engage such questions.

27Another image that became iconic of the autodefensas’ Adelitas was the one by Purepecha photojournalist Juan José Estrada Serafín of an aged campesino woman wearing a traditional white dress and black rebozo, holding in her arms an AK47 weapon, and laughing directly at the camera.

29As mentioned, a second and recurrent reference for the images of the self-defense movements is marked by relatively recent indigenous uprisings in Mexico, which include the EZLN which started in 1994, as clearly shown by an image in which photographer Juan José Estrada Serafín superimposes the portrait of a masked and armed member of community police of Cherán over a mural of 1910 revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, as if the contemporary fighter’s cause was backed by the ancient caudillo.

30The pro-autonomy movement started by Purepecha community of Cherán Michoacán was a source of inspiration for autodefensa groups. The community of Cherán organized in 2011 community patrols, barricades and other strategies in order to confront the clandestine felling of its forests by organized crime. By emerging in communities that define themselves as indigenous, these kinds of mobilizations are framed within a larger context in which indigenous people vindicate their rights to self-determination, and which includes the right to implement local forms of government and justice.

31Academic, journalistic and citizens’ references to these kinds of indigenous struggles often acritically attribute to them qualities that may be more related to utopic desires that have become collective or as forms of “cruel optimism” (Berlant 2011), than to other intrinsic qualities of these movements. These attributed qualities include praising these movements as a result of indigenous peoples’ collectivity, unity and coherency against enemies that are often explained as external, leaving aside for instance historical processes of “structural violence” (Maldonado 2010, 2014), internal political fragmentation and competition for resources within a specific community that doubtlessly impact current regional conflicts (Román 2014, Vázquez León 2010).

32I therefore suggest that when acritically associating the phenomenon of self-defense groups with community police processes, much media coverage, and even some academic approaches to the problem in fact obscure the historical and political density in which these kinds of phenomena are immersed. Alternatively, other visual products, such as the documentary “Cartel Land” by Mathew Heineman (2015), have sought to display more critical or balanced approaches to the Autodefensa movement. This documentary sought to make visible not only the organizing strategies and local achievements of this movement; but also its weak moments, Mireles’ gender issues, as well as the complex alliances with specific local sectors. At the same time, this documentary does not succeed in breaking with spectacular depictions of local violent action. Altogether, these different approaches contribute to relate these mobilizations to expectations and fantasies of political possibility that are becoming significant amongst different sectors of Mexican civil society.

Photographing Self-defense Groups

33I have briefly discussed the ways in which images of self-defense groups build on previous historical references such as the Mexican Revolution and imagery about indigenous movements in places like Chiapas, Guerrero or Michoacán. I focus now on the technological possibilities of photography and on contemporary photojournalism’s aesthetic conventions and strategies of circulation. Photojournalism essays on Michoacán and Guerrero’s self-defense groups, which were frequently published and even won prizes, raise questions about the ways in which current photojournalism, from its already established aesthetics, contributes to mobilizing desires, hopes, frustrations and political values that engage with the growingly predominant discourse of citizenship as self-protection. In this regard, how do these images add to the assumed mission of citizens’ self-defense of building a more promising vision of the future?

36In this and many other images about this movement, the use of zoom lenses is avoided, perhaps to accentuate the testimonial effect of presence and verifiable data. Additionally, in agreement with contemporary photojournalistic aesthetics, both images privilege the sense of taking part in action, which implies immediacy and spontaneity.

37In other cases, posing and staging are key coverage elements because they create a more direct effect of interaction with subjects, as three images of members of self-defense groups in Michoacán by Saúl Ruiz show. In one of them a man wearing a white autodefensa shirt poses standing in a relaxed pose, resting his arm on his rifle, in a backyard (Ruiz 2014, photo 7). The second one shows a woman also posing with her weapon in a house that autodefensas confiscated from cartel members in Michoacán (Ruiz 2014, photo 9). The third picture shows a group shot of 11 autodefensa members pointing their long weapons to the camera in a backyard.

38These images exemplify some common aesthetic tendencies of contemporary photojournalism which convey specific narratives of reality about the self-defense movement. For instance, the closeness of the camera to depict situations evokes a sense of action, while also affirming the photographer’s access merit for being there. Alternatively, the aesthetic resource of producing posed portraits evokes a sense of intimacy and dignity by allowing self-defense members to interact with the photographer in more ludic and self-representational ways.

40We have, therefore, a visual repertoire that nostalgically evokes the multitudinous resurrection of a “México Bronco”, the armed struggles of people extremely affected by narco-violence and who now work as models of strength, but also as utopic fantasies of them as saviours and guardians of our justice.

41Those who lead these struggles are often fantasized as Others who are coherent and authentic, rooted in the land, in their ways of organizing, in their self-determination. This image fuses itself with a peasant with a hat, a romanticized Other whose contradictory and dramatic implication with weapons make it possible for many others, often others who are more privileged, to celebrate this misfortune by mechanically repeating: “I am self-defense. We are all self-defense”.

42In this regard, I would like to close this article by asking how these kinds of images mobilize collective affects and fantasies of the future, and how this mobilization adds to the growing tendency to conceive citizenship as self-protection?

43Let us think, for example, about how the picture of a child holding a long weapon by Félix Márquez evokes many others of children with arms. This image communicates the irremediable situation that provoked this ordinary relationship of the child with the gun. This relationship constitutes a contradictory metaphor containing a future that is both promising and threatening.

45What kinds of phantoms do these images evoke? On which side do we position ourselves? How do we differentiate between victims and executioners? And, what kinds of futures do these images allow us to envisage?

48From a less optimistic interpretation, this portrait of the horizon results in a visual metaphor that Koselleck explains as “horizon of expectation” which, for this concrete case, I refer to as a horizon of expectation of peace and security. Koselleck says that horizon is: “that line behind which a new space of experience will open, but which cannot yet be seen. The legibility of the future, despite possible prognoses, confronts an absolute limit, for it cannot be experienced” (2004: 260-61).

49Hence, the horizon of peace and security that can be envisaged in Mexico through the notion of citizenship as self-protection is rather similar to Alexander Drozdzynski’s definition in a joke cited by Koselleck: “Horizon, an imaginary line that separates sky from earth, and which moves away as one moves closer” (Drozdzynski 1974: 80 as cited by Koselleck 2004: 261).

Conclusion

50The self-defense movements from Michoacán and Guerrero are rural armed movements led both by campesino and well-established agricultural producers whose families and economies have been affected by cartel violence. In this article I have discussed how these movements, and particularly their emphasis on “self-protection”, have inspired or echoed among urban middle-class sectors neoliberal commonsensical notions about citizens’ corresponsability for security. For this purpose, I have focused on the ways in which a political party’s promotional strategies on the one hand, and photojournalism on the other, have visually referred to the autodefensas phenomenon.

52At the same time, the growing idealization of the campesino armed struggle as the last resource for “awakening” national consciousness, may lead to overlooking the complexities and power dynamics that rural areas hit by narco-violence are currently experiencing. Together with the relationships that the current regime might develop with Mireles and the autodefensa movement, this represents a challenge, questioning the symbolic relevance that revolutionary references have in the current transformations of the Mexican state and in its resulting redefinitions of citizenship.