Abstract

ESCOBEDO AGUIRRE, Virginia Marisol. “You Get Me?”: Impasses and Bureaucracy, (Dis)protection for Journalists in Mexico. Rev. colomb. antropol. [online]. 2024, vol.60, n.1, pp.50-75.  Epub Jan 01, 2024. ISSN 0486-6525.  https://doi.org/10.22380/2539472x.2588.

The case of Armando, a persecuted journalist who was not admitted to the Protection Mechanism for Human Rights Defenders and Journalists in Mexico, provides guide­lines for discussing how, in interaction, the sovereign decision to leave someone exposed to death is gestated. I suggest the impasse between Armando and the officials during the evaluation process is the cause of his rejection from the program. The impasse can be traced in the staging of two distinct discursive genres in which the non-understanding of the other emerges. My ethnographic approach to the state through the analysis of performance and language highlights (1) the difficulty and density of the interaction between Armando and the officials, and (2) how the sovereign decision to protect or not to protect someone is co-constructed and negotiated through language and its moments of misunderstanding or impasses.

Keywords : bureaucracy; journalism; violence; performance; discourse analysis; ethnography of the state.

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