“Since
Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s decision in 2006 to put military troops on
the streets in order to fight against drug trafficking, Mexico has been living
in a state of emergency. This government policy has resulted in more than
40,000 deaths and a dramatic increase in violence,” writes Adriana
Estrada-Centelles, curator of Broken Borders, a Vancouver exhibit that analyzes
the artistic production of four Mexican artists in the context of the Mexican
Drug War. “The resulting violence and collateral damage to society have shifted
the everyday lives of Mexicans into a permanent state of alert, uncertainty, and
horror.”
This
sets the tone, and theme, for Broken Borders. The relevance of the exhibit,
Estrada-Centelles believes, is that it “reflects on the sociopolitical situation
that has affected Mexico and more recently other countries, such as Canada and
the United States for the past six years – the drug war.”
The
Mexican Drug War, according the United States Justice Department, is an armed
conflict between eight rival drug cartels, or gangs, throughout Mexico in an
attempt to gain the most control over drug trafficking routes, as well as the
Mexican government, which is attempting to stop drug trafficking.
Mexico
and the United States have been actively countering the drug cartels since Operation
Man (1991), a cooperative anti-drug funding effort between the United States
Drug Enforcement Administration, Mexican Federal Investigations Agency (AFI),
and world financial institutions in an attempt to suspend monetary assets of
various drug cartels. However, violence has peaked in the last ten years as a
result of military operations undertaken by successive Mexican presidents
Vincente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderon (2006-Present).
The
violence has been heightened by corruption scandals throughout Mexican law
enforcement, including the AFI, INTERPOL, and the Mexican military. For
example, the Attorney General (PGR) reported in Dec. 2005 that nearly 1,500 of
the AFI’s 7,000 agents were under investigation for suspected criminal activity
and 457 were facing charges.
The
war is further complicated by the fact that 90 per cent of the weapons used by
the cartels come from the United States, and the drugs being traded are
primarily going northward to markets in the United States and Canada.
Broken
Borders is strategically located and split between the Satellite Gallery,
located on 560 Seymour St., and the Access Gallery, located on 222 East Georgia
St., just off Main. In regards to the strategy behind the split location,
Estrada-Centelles says that it gives the public an “opportunity to engage
differently with the streets of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.”
These
locations represent to Estrada-Centelles an area of Vancouver where “drug trafficking
and consumption is a constant and evident problem.” However, she explains that
the exhibit is “without any prejudice against illegal drug consumption.”
“[The
idea is that the] exhibition opens up spaces of reflection on the public’s
(in)direct participation that feeds violence and strengthens the expansion of
the war on drugs,” she concludes.
The
Satellite Gallery is on the second floor above Club 560, a nightclub in the
centre of downtown Vancouver. A large television with two headphones is immediately
visible upon entrance, the work of Rosa Maria Robles, a Culiacan-based artist
(a state on Mexico’s west coast).
Robles’
work is themed around the subculture created by the violence, impunity, and
power, surrounding the drug war; what she calls “narcoculture”. The exhibit she
presents is a documentary which pieces together news, film, and interviews from
people, and reports around the Americas in an attempt to connect the nations involved
with the conflict.
After
Robles piece comes Teresa Margolles Irrigation, a 30-minute video
projected on a wall (15 x 10 feet), of a truck driving along a highway with
water pouring out of a 5,000 gallon tank. In the gallery, there are three rugs
that lead to a bench that you can sit on to watch the video.
On
a tiny piece of paper scotch-taped to a dark wall is an explanation of what the
video is about. Margolles, a mortician for Mexico’s Medical Forensic Service,
placed pieces of blankets – similar to the blankets used in Mexico to collect
the dead mutilated bodies of the victims of the war, and similar to the
blankets placed before the bench on the gallery floor – in the locations of 500
murder sites in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. The remains of these
fabrics were then soaked in 5,000 gallons of water, which was then dumped on
Texas Highway 90 in an attempt to connect the two places; a connection
irrigated with death and blood.
Estrada-Centelles
explains, “Due to Mexico’s state of emergency, it has become essential to analyze
the global impact of the war on drugs in contemporary societies.” Through the
artwork of these artists, she continues, “[it] is possible to unveil the
structure of the drug war as a well-organized and complex global structure of illegal
activities that involves robbery, extortion, kidnapping, prostitution, and
money laundering, as well as weapon and human trafficking.”
The
effects of the drug war extend well beyond one isolated incident. While often
referred to as Mexico’s drug war, the war on drugs exists everywhere.
//Mike Conway, writer
//Graphics by Tiare Jung
//Mike Conway, writer
//Graphics by Tiare Jung
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