Indicator 2 of Dignity Deprivation: Incomprehensible Brutality
The second defining characteristic of narcoculture, already alluded to through the sublime authority and its necessary reign through terror discussed in the previous section, is its quality of brutality, which is not mere violence, but a particularly grotesque, sensational kind of violence. As interviewees in the documentary discussed, victims of cartel crimes are murdered in exorbitant numbers, but also often in performative fashions, particularly if that victim was a notable threat to the cartel’s authority. For example, Escobedo, by launching a movement against femicide that informed the masses of the cartel’s link to government corruption was a threat in its exposure of the authority which was meant to be this sublime subversive sort of control. As such, she was shot in clear view of the government, where it was known no justice would be served for the crime in the symbolic, hoped ultimate ironic failure of her protest. Others who posed a threat often had their eyes dug out, bodies dismembered, heads shoved on stakes, burning to the flesh, graffiti on bodies, acid damage, were tossed in landfills, or other stark kinds of brutality that led to the perception of a “bloodbath” rather than mere out of control violence.
Alberto-Sánchez calls the phenomenon a “spectacle of death,” and describes how images of this sensational violence have been normalized to mainstream culture by broadcasting through television and the internet scenes of “dead bodies strewn across dirt roads, riddled with bullets to the head, chest, stomach, face; headless corpses left inside abandoned cars, heads atop the car’s roof, in the trunk, or missing from the picture altogether; the noticeable profile of human bodies wrapped with black trash bags or blankets leaning lazily against walls or fences. In many cases, written confessions accompany these crimes, detailing the reasons for the executions, decapitations, or dismemberments and the person or groups responsible,” (Alberto- Sánchez, 2020, 5). These confessions are a custom of narco-culture, and meant again, to establish a formal show of power from this sovereign entity, such that their power appears calculated and insurmountable. Sometimes, in the case of Escobedo’s daughter, perpetrators would simply admit to random people on the street what they had done, and still get off in court, having to face no consequences under the protection of the corrupt, truly sovereign power. Alberto-Sánchez argues that what is notable about this excessive level of brutality is its ability to dehumanize its victims.
He says when we read headlines like “5 Decapitated, Hearts Left in the Mouths of Severed Heads,” we cannot comprehend the violence, and in this inability to comprehend, we are unable, also, to imagine these victims as people. Often, bodies are dismembered to the point where they cannot be identified at all, but are simply piled in mass graves. Similarly, unable to identify an origin for or explanation for such violence, and not wanting to accept the fear we should feel for such a reality, as Susan Brison points out of the difficulty of understanding trauma, and Hannah Arendt, among others, observes, the brutality simply is absorbed as a cultural norm, such that it cannot disrupt our stability (Alberto- Sánchez, 2020, 17; Brison, 2014). The brutality is absorbed so easily because Narco-culture is a rational extension of the excess and disregard for dignity that comes with the mores of hyper-capitalist economic social consciousness (Alberto-Sánchez, 2020, 17). This capitalist ethical and political culture of individualism fosters a psychology of mastery, as we will come to later, that harbors an aggressive neurotic obsession with domination that dissolve the self as one among a dynamic social body, and posit it as a violent force that stands against “others.” (Butler, 2020) In other words, the narco-culture treatment of the dead in this unintelligibly violent way such that they become just drops in the bucket of so many dead at the hands of this phenomenon is no accident, but again, a necessary piece of the mastery framework, and indicator of a shortage of dignity recognition. It is an inevitable consequence of the historical crisis resultant from human nature interacting with institutions of the particular moment in a contradiction of the consciousness of dignity, not specific to the particular demographic or sociological topology of Mexico. To abide by such a misconception would only aggravate the need for recognition more, leading to building prejudice rather than solutions.
Hegel concurs with this argument through the illustration the analogous brutality of the Reign of Terror of his time which he analyzes through the mastery framework. Here again, there was an unimaginable level of brutality in the killing of religious leaders, or those who pose the greatest threat to the new authority of the Enlightenment regime. They were often drowned in groups through a twisted appropriation of “Baptism” as murder. Heads were again, shoved on pikes, and mass graves dug. Formal orders of crimes, the charges of course, being their religion, were issued by the sovereign authority, just as in the case of the narco-banners, or confessions. For all those who were simply “suspected” of not being on board with the new regime, numbers which were inflated in a culture of accusation with no real justice so as to demonstrate the weight of the power and terror of the administration, they were killed in the most efficient way possible with the introduction of the publicly shown Guillotine. “Being suspected, therefore, takes the place,” he says, “or has the significance and effect, of being guilty; and the external reaction against this reality that lies in the simple inwardness of intention, consists in the cold, matter-of-fact annihilation of this existent self, from which nothing else can be taken away but its mere being.” (Hegel, 1977, §591).
Hegel describes how the Guillotine was a physical manifestation of the rule of “Reason” created through the Enlightenment-based French Revolution that shows how contorted, shallow, and brutal these fervent pushes for abstract ideologies that replace overnight all old institutions can be. What was defended as a “more humane, efficient” and therefore “rational” instrument of death of the regime was in fact killing more people as a public demonstration of power than one could possibly wrap their head around. Just as in the case of the cartel killings, Hegel describes the dehumanization of the victims that resulted from this practice using the metaphor of a “head of cabbage” that would roll from its blade to express how devoid of all dignity was this practice of death. “The sole work and deed of universal freedom is therefore death, a death too which has no inner significance or filling, for what is negated is the empty point of the absolutely free self. It is thus the coldest and meanest of deaths, with no more significance than cutting off a head of cabbage or swallowing a mouthful of water [in the case of mass drownings.]” (Hegel, 1977, §590). “…All social groups or classes are abolished…the individual consciousness that belonged to any such sphere, and willed and fulfilled in itself, has put aside its limitation; its purpose is the general purpose, its language universal law, its work the universal work.” (Hegel, 1977, §585). “In this flat, common place monosyllable is contained in the wisdom of the government, the abstract of the universal will…” (Hegel, 1977, §591). None of these victims were identifiable individuals, but instead, were indistinguishable parts of the collective.
The result of submitting these individuals to the domination by this collective power, however, does not, as pointed out in the previous contradiction in the psychology of mastery, lead to the recognition of dignity of the master. Rather, this abstract dynamic of control between powers only works to deny the dignity of those it kills. “All these determinations [honour, wealth, language, etc.] have vanished in the loss suffered by the self in absolute freedom; its negation is the death that is without meaning, the sheer terror of the negative that contains nothing positive, nothing that fills it with a content. At the same time, however, this negation in its real existence is not something alien… on the contrary, it is the universal will which is in this its ultimate abstraction nothing positive and therefore can give nothing in return,” this being the fulfillment of recognition (Hegel, 1977, §594).
Alberto-Sanchez explicitly agrees with this situation of the framework. He argues that “Narco-culture, in its material structure- one constituted by a politics and economics of competition and excess- is thus that form of life where the other can be reduced to an object, where killing him is legitimated under its own rules. Allowing the other [the victim] to be more than a “sensible datum’ would imply a recognition and acceptance of one’s own moral obligations to that other, a recognition that has no place in a culture of violence where the goal is the conspicuous consumption of resources, be they money or people,” (Alberto Sanchez, 2020, 84). He supports this with feminist philosopher Judith Butler’s analysis that “Violence…becomes necessary for an Ego that in the vulnerability of its being exposed seeks to guard itself from murder [threats to power.]…To the extent that we commit violence, we are acting on another, putting the other at risk…threatening to expunge the other,” (Alberto Sanchez, 2020, 83). What Hegel’s analysis is particularly helpful in contributing is the historical setting which has created a lack of dignity through contradiction of its institutions and consciousness of dignity, then, is what creates this thirsty cry for recognition that creates a defining, existential crisis and mores that tend toward violence and brutality or dehumanization rather than a soothing of that problem. It is not, as Alberto-Sanchez fears the misconception of, anything particular to this conflict.
To pursue, again, the question of dignity that will solve the need is an arduous task that leaves people vulnerable in their desperation to the easy answers provided by abstract authorities in a way that defines a historical moment, through what Hegel calls Spirit. “Just as the realm of the real world passes over into the realm of faith and insight, so does absolute freedom leave its self-destroying reality and pass over into another land of self-conscious Spirit where, in this unreal world, freedom has the value of truth,” (Hegel, 1977, §594). “This is just the skepticism [disillusionment with current institutions in historical moments of dignity-based contradictions] which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results. For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content. The skepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any further from there, but must wait to see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss,” (Hegel, 1977, §79).
Indicator 3 of Dignity Deprivation: Contrasting Care for Dead Leadership
This works in complete contrast to the final characteristic; the treatment of dead cartel leaders. This treatment in some ways falls under the culture of excess previously discussed, I narrow in on it not only because of the defining quality it has for the movement, but for the place of importance it holds in the Hegelian phenomenological model of dignity. Within cartels, it was noted by the documentary that dead leaders are honored with sophisticated rituals and placed in temples that emulate the glory of Egyptian pharaohs. They are buried with their immeasurable wealth, guarded after death. As described by Alberto Sanchez, they die like a king (Alberto Sanchez, 2020, 152). Where the treatment of victims serves to dehumanize them in response to their threats to the collective power, the treatment of cult leaders does the opposite, and instead, works to recognize them as powerful, “dignified” masters, or individuals with value in their own right. In order to fully understand the significance this has in serving as an indicator of dignity deprivation being the underlying cause of this historical conflict and its character, we must first understand Hegel’s argument around the phenomenological character of death rituals.
Hegel’s historical view argues that social relations occur on two levels; one relating to the construction of particular, temporally contingent individuals which exist in their peculiar circumstances for themselves, and one where individuals exist only as part of a larger whole or universal. Institutionally, Hegel attributes the construction of an individual which exists as a particular being for itself to the Family, and the individual which exists only as part of a larger universal to the Citizen, or the person which is defined by their subservience to the larger Nation. Each of these institutional beings, Citizen and member of the Family, are defined through their activities in ethical life. For Hegel, Ethical life can be understood as the set of social norms or habits which one realizes and carries out because of their role in a particular structure, this being an institution such as the Family or the Nation. As such, the Family and Nation both have ethical norms unique to themselves which define their character as an institution. In a family, or blood relation, this is a set of habits which add onto the natural relationship that exists due to biological connection, but feel as natural as that biological connection. They are not intentional in the same way as chosen love, as we find in romantic, emotional love. Rather, they are obligations set forth from birth, or the origin of a blood connection. A key defining example of such obligations are the care a Family will exhibit for their dead. We do not choose out of a particular love for our blood relations that we should honor their death and perform rituals or care around it. It feels like a naturally bestowed duty upon us, even though it is really a socialized custom of the institution of the Family. This is the work of the True Spirit, or Ethical Order for Hegel. Relative to Narcoculture, we can think of the Family as being the inner circle of the elite leadership of cartels, where citizens are the masses subject to being victims. Their “biological bond” is simulated by membership, and the hierarchical order of intelligence.
Care for the dead is particularly relevant to defining the institution of the Family as that which exists for the individual to uncover a being for itself, rather than being for a universal whole. This is because Death, for Hegel, as something Natural of which we have no choice whether or when to experience, is the ultimate thing which subordinates our lives to the power of Nature. It condemns us to a realm of the ultimate universal where we are one in an infinite collective of the dead, and the experience of our lives becomes an indistinguishable droplet in that sea, rather than meaningful within itself. Yet, we are able to transcend that identity as nothing but indifferent powerless pieces of that collective through the Family, which remembers us as the particular beings we were, and retains that memory through the care for the dead. We remain beings for ourselves through the power of Spirit expressed in these customs. The Family can only do this, however, by actually recognizing or performing the death, this being “taking the act of destruction [death]” onto itself, such that it transforms that event into the meaningful part of the particular individual’s life and part of the broader work of Spirit, rather than only the immediate consequence of Nature’s irrational course. While the customs feel obligatory, they are still conscious actions which give Substance to that consciousness of the meaning of an individual’s life. In this way, it interrupts the natural process and adds to it this conscious meaning.
In other words, where the narcoculture brutality of throwing others in acid and mass graves, totally making them unidentifiable, and analogous Guillotine of the French Revolution are ways of rewriting death as for the collective or as a dehumanization of an individual outside the family ethical life institution, the inner Cartels building temples for their dead leaders is a way of, through the institution of their inner circle, or “Family,” maintaining dignity and personal value of that particular individual. In this way, they transcend death as being something which takes away their dignity, and pose a stark inequality to the lower masses. This, again, falls directly into the psychology of mastery. As such, it fits the model as an indicator of a crisis of dignity.