'La libertad del diablo': a Visual Ethnography of Contemporary Violence in Mexico’s northern border

Abstract

This article analyzes the documentary film La Libertad del diablo (Mexico, 2017), by Everardo González, based on theories of image, affect and public space. In La libertad del diablo, the director interviews victims and perpetrators of the government’s war against drug trafficking throughout the Mexican territory but favoring the landscapes of the northern border of Mexico, specifically the Chihuahua desert. Each interviewee appears wearing a mask that only reveals eyes and lips while recounting the kidnapping and disappearance of a loved one or their participation in the disappearance, execution, or torture of people. We propose that this film device uses the masks that hide the faces, showing how violence disaffiliates and generates a space for the disappearance of the social and human bond. However, at the same time, these masks, by revealing eyes-looks and lips-words, can make an ethical call to create a testimony and a public witness of suffering and horror. Thus, this documentary has the potential to become an image since a moving triad is generated between what is shown, the public witness who exercises a gaze and the shared meanings that it generates. In this way, documentaries like this participate in anti-necropolitical movements.