Public Violence in Three Latin American Silent Films: Spectacle, Scandal, and the Limits of Representation

This presentation examines the spectacularization of real-life acts of public violence in three silent-era Latin American films from Colombia, Mexico and Bolivia, exploring how unstaged footage and filmed re-enactments of assassination and execution provoked and defused scandal. In Colombia, El drama del 15 de octubre (The Drama of October 15th, Vicenzo and Francesco di Domenico) a re-enactment of the assassination of Liberal politician Rafael Uribe Uribe in which the killers played themselves, provoked a public outcry led by the politician's family and the Bogotá newspaper El Liberal that limited the film's release. If El drama del 15 de octubre tested the limits of political and representational acceptability, the Mexican film El automóvil gris (The Grey Automobile, 1919) blended fiction and nonfiction to mitigate scandal. General and presidential hopeful Pablo González enlisted its director Enrique Rosas to help defuse rumors and news report linking the criminal activities of the "Grey Automobile Gang" with high-ranking Carrancista officers. Re-enacting the gang's crimes in a suspenseful narrative that (falsely) exonerated higher-ups of wrongdoing, El automóvil gris incorporates an unstaged execution scene that presents the exercise of state violence as authentic and thus irrefutable. In Bolivia, by contrast, an unstaged execution scene sparked a broader debate about criminal justice and the national image. Alfredo Jáuregui's death by firing squad for the assassination of ex-president José Manuel Pando was filmed and incorporated into El bolillo fatal o el emblema de la muerte (The Fatal Lot or the Emblem of Death, 1927). Banned by La Paz's mayor and the subject of a presidential decree prohibiting its screening abroad, El bolillo fatal. In each of these moments, scandal tested and defined acceptable limits on the depiction of real-life deaths, while generating debate about the legitimacy of acts of violence.