The Archive of Scandal: "El Negro" Durazo and the Corruption in Mexico City's Police Department

In the fall of 1983, Lo negro del negro Durazo hit Mexican newsstands and became an instant bestseller.[i] By 1984, the thin paperback had sold over one million copies, gone through sixteen editions, and inspired comic book series, ballads, and a film. The book detailed José González’s experience working as the bodyguard for Arturo Durazo, Mexico City’s former chief of police (1976-82). The gripping first-hand account exposed Durazo’s alleged crimes of embezzlement, torture, and even murder; and it made his corruption legible through a discussion of the ex-police chief’s race and class. Durazo became a figure through which the public could air longstanding grievances of police abuses and anxieties about rising physical and financial insecurity. The spectacle continued to captivate audiences even after Durazo’s arrest in June 1984. New revelations, often containing salacious personal details, provided an escape valve for popular frustrations with the ruling party and the economic crisis.

This paper analyzes the case of “el negro” Durazo as a lens onto the cultural afterlives of scandals. In Mexico, scandals were not abbreviated interactions, but rather a series of amplifying moments that included recirculation, gossip, new revelations, public responses, denials, punishment, and remembering. By emphasizing scandals as social processes, I foreground the social, cultural, and political echoes that were evident long after the initial disruption passed.

Scandals enjoyed an afterlife that extended beyond the punishment of offenders. Through an iterative process, casual references to a case would evoke a wider set of meanings. This paper considers scandal as a site of meaning-making while also discussing the methods for tracing the history of scandal.

[i] José González, Lo negro del negro Durazo (México, D.F.: Editorial Posada, 1984).