True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (review)

This collection consists of eight essays, plus an introduction by the editors. The introduction states that the authors wish to “examine how crime stories have shaped the way Mexican society thinks about criminals and about itself” (p. 4). Many of the essays are well written and insightful, employing an unusually lengthy and sophisticated line-up of influential theorists that includes the usual suspects (Crime? Modernity? Surely we will find the fingerprints of Michel Foucault and Anthony Giddens!), as well as some surprise cameo appearances, much like a classic episode of the long-running Law and Order television series.

Yet, like this television show, one of the book’s attractions, which ultimately threatens to undermine its goals, is that many of the essays are ripped from the headlines, both thematically and methodologically. Homicidal beauty queens, corrido-worthy thugs, vengeful prostitutes, and deranged assassins who drew the attention of the urban media: the modus operandi for most of the essays is analysis of such singular crimes and, often, the trials and media coverage of them, which, each author argues, allowed Mexicans at the time—and/or historians (sometimes this is not clear to the reader)—to explore the broader transformations roiling Mexico. Sensational crimes and the public responses to them are called upon to serve as synecdoches. In addition to a co-authored piece by the editors, plus a solo essay by Pablo Piccato, other contributors who employ this approach include Elisa Speckman Guerra, Renato González Mello, and Víctor Macías-González.

In the hands of such skillful scholars, one does indeed gain insights into some of the dislocations and anxieties through which Mexicans passed from the 1870s into the 1930s. Yet, this approach has its limits, as the types of crimes that received extensive media exposure and the geographical focus of most of the essays circumscribe the field of vision. As a result, there is a skew towards particular kinds of crime in particular places and to particular modes of analysis. Interestingly, an inherent critique of this approach appears in the remaining essays. One, by Cristina Rivera-Garza, turns the model above on its head, as the author delves into the obscure case of a patient with mental problems, highlighting the unique, rather than the general, characteristics of the historical records she stumbled across. The essays that stray furthest from the capital or hint at the vast number of alternative methodologies and data that might be employed—Christopher Boyer’s piece on Michoacán and Katherine Bliss’s contemplation of maternity and the state—highlight the shortcomings of this volume. Nonetheless, aware of these limits of chronology, geography, and methodology, readers can approach the collection better able to benefit from what it does offer.