The "red note" - also known as "police information" - is the journalistic genre that covers bloody facts. The raw material of this sensationalist branch of the press are accidents, murders, robberies, lynchings, rape, acts of torture, and other events that violate daily life. Since the 19th century, the "red note" has had an important place in the Mexican press. Vicente Riva Palacio's Red Book, based on violent historical events, is a classic in the national bibliography of that century; the (...) engravers Manuel Alfonso Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada illustrated dozens of leaflets with news about bandits, crimes and shootings; In the twentieth century, notable narrators such as Víctor Ronquillo and Rolo Díaz worked for years at the police source; likewise, some of Mexico's great photographers made a career in this section, including Adrián Devars and Enrique el NiñoMetinides; his school finds important followers in photojournalists such as Pedro Valtierra, FernandoBrito and the team of the newspaper La Jornada. The stories that this journalistic genre gathers intersect with the history of the nation and include episodes that range from the murder of the Dongo family in 1789 to the massacre of migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, in 2010; from the Gray Car Band to organized crime; of the shooting of Maximiliano de Habsburgo in the Hill of the Bells in 1867 to the murder of Luis Donaldo Colosio in Lomas Taurinas, Tijuana, in 1994. Carlos Monsiváis was a scholar of the subject and in his book The Thousand and One Watchmen he wrote: Alarmed and pleased, the crowds stop as before a shop window: there at your fingertips the endowment of rivers of blood, betrayals, iniquities, perversions, robberies. At the beginning of the 21st century, in Mexico, the genre has a larger presence than ever. In 2010, the writer explains the phenomenon: In 15 years, the biggest change is the fierce emergency, at times militarized, of drug trafficking, which radically modifies the meaning of the "red note" and transfers it almost daily to the altar of eight columns. The singularity of murders and murderers disappears, and the massive scale of crime also dehumanizes on a similar scale. The collection of the Museo del Estanquillo houses numerous publications, prints, models, photographs, flyers and memorabilia related to the "red note", as well as a considerable number of vintage photographs of Metinides that some researchers considered lost. In the archive of collector Pedro Barrios and other collectors, friends of the museum, as well as in the work of contemporary artists, we find the works that make up this exhibition. In these dark times, in which the "red note" has left the inside pages and become a front page issue, it is important to meditate on violence in our country. This visual chronicle of the history of the "red note" in Mexico seeks to contribute to this reflection. (shrink)
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