Chiasmi International

Volume 23, 2021

Critical Phenomenology after Merleau-Ponty

David M. Bertet, Bettina Bergo
Pages 121-152

Phenomenological aesthetics and the “Manufacture of the Guilty (Fabricación de culpables)”

This article opens with a discussion of incarceration in the time of Covid 19. The story of one of the inmates in the high-security prison of Puente Grande (Mexico) leads us back to the beginning of the fifteen-year-long imprisonment of an innocent and, with it, to a complex narrative. The story concerns the use of the juridical concepts of delincuencia organizada (organized crime), racketeering, and kidnapping. As a charge it has been repeatedly implemented in what has come to be called la fabricaciόn de culpables (the “manufacture of the guilty”) in Mexico, Columbia, Argentina, and Brazil. Although the legal terminology changes, false incarceration is hardly limited to Central and South America. This is therefore a cautionary tale about how charges – and people – are framed, and how the latter are tried on social and corporate media, even before their official trials begin.