Recalcitrance: The foreclosure of news about violence in Mexico

Abstract

Since President Felipe Calderón declared his so-called "war on organized crime" in December 2006, the dominant discourse about violence in Mexico has created the idea of a battle against or disputes between organized crime groups, and it has framed victims of murders and disappearances as themselves criminals. Recent scholarship highlights the role that journalists and news outlets have played in bolstering this narrative; however, ethnographic fieldwork with Mexican journalists complicates the notion that they and others unknowingly or uncritically reaffirm dominant interpretations about violence. This article introduces the concept of recalcitrance to elucidate how, even when reporters actively work to investigate beyond official statements, fear contributes to the reproduction of dominant discourses and forecloses the possibility of creating different kinds of news, truths, and narratives.