REFLECTIONS ON
NOTA ROJA IMAGES

Photography and Coloniality
of Power in Mexico

2024–On going

This research examines the Mexican Nota Roja, a type of sensationalist journalism that frequently features images of corpses alongside sexualized portrayals of female bodies on its front pages. The study aims to determine whether the Nota Roja can be understood as a form of media terrorism, exploring this concept through the lenses of Sara Ahmed, G. Didi- Huberman, Harun Farocki, Vilém Flusser, Rita Segato, and Sayak Valencia.

The text argues that the use of affections such as fear in the nota roja serve as a mechanism for systematic objectification of victims and legitimizes violence as a normative component of social relations. Furthermore, these representations are analyzed as a tool that operates for surveillance and social control, reinforcing neoliberal practices that commodify human suffering. This exploitation is contextualized within the framework of gore capitalism and pedagogies of cruelty, ultimately suggesting that media terrorism is evidenced not only in the general portrayal of violence but also in the systematic violence against women and its persistent representation in the media.