UC San Diego

The intensification of [im]migration to the United States during the first two decades of the 21st century has prompted artists to produce a number of projects addressing this human reality, of the most immediate and compelling is the fictionalization of this migration by contemporary Mexican authors who discuss the role of the Mexican State and transnational criminal networks in negotiating the enfranchisement of human trafficking enterprises that capitalize off migrant bodies as they embark a journey north. This dissertation project examines how migrant figures and voicesare illustrated, interpreted, conditioned, and [re]imagined into works of Mexican fiction published between 2006-2018. Relatedly, the discussion brings to bear the methodological approach of interweaving of journalism, testimonio, and fiction, to ethically relate accounts of migration. Informed by Sayak Valencia's Capitalismo Gore: Control económico, violencia y narcopoder (2010), Jason De León’s Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (2015), and Wendy A Vogt’s Lives in Transit: Violence and Intimacy on the Migrant Journey (2018) this dissertation asks, how does the fictionalization of violent events, such as the kidnapping, mutilation, and burning of migrant bodies provide spaces for collective reflection while maintaining migrants’ humanity at the core? How does fiction contribute to the recollection of a cultural archive that seeks to defend the lives of Central American migrants in the 21st Century? This project proposes that narratives criticizing Mexican state corruption, modes of hyper-violence, and the commodification of the migrant body as merchandise, not only denounce human rights violations, but do so by simultaneously risking employing figurative language that dehumanize and stereotype, unmasking hegemonic discourses of Mexican nationalism.