Is it me or is NPR doing an inordinate amount of reporting on violence in Mexico? The latest headline, "Fed Up, A Mexican Town Resorts to Mob Justice," depicts Mexico as the new Wild West, a town turned into a type of collective Batman. Today's headline stories on Mexico in Fox News and Democracy Now focus on the "protection" of Mexican journalists, rather than the epidemic violence apparently surging among the Mexican population.
NPR, our National Public Radio, continues to fuel the nationalist machinery that nation builds other countries through U.S. cultural pathways. It is not exactly imperialism, but it is not responsible journalism either.
This image of a violent Mexico risks becoming the unspoken precursor to authenticating anything identified as Mexican. The very notion of an "authentic" Mexico requires an image of violence: the "artificial" act of eating a meal becomes a triumph over the "natural" violence of Mexico. A background of violence forms the conditions against which everything Mexican must emerge.
