A War Scenario: The Border in Postcards and Films of the Mexican Revolution

Abstract

Multiple images in different formats, such as postcards and films, documented a scenario of war on the border during the Mexican Revolution. In the following article, I explore these images by critically observing the depiction of executions, corpses, ruins, and mass displacement. To explore these images, I consider the theoretical contributions of infrapolitics regarding the connections between time, image, and history. Taking these links into account, I point out that the images depicting the catastrophe of war serve as materials for a historical memory, contrasting the whitewashing of violence with the monumental representation of the past. To problematize this memory, I focus on two relevant moments in which the techno-militarization at the border triggered a widespread phenomenon of image production by photomechanical means. First, I address the postcards of the US Army’s Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa between 1916 and 1917, mainly attributed to photographer Walter Horne, co-founder of the Mexican Photo War Company in El Paso, Texas. Second, I examine the film footage produced by the Mutual Film Corporation in northern Mexico in early 1914.