GAINING VOICE THROUGH INJURY: Voice and Corporeality in Animal Rights Activism in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Abstract

Activism in favor of non-human animals is on the rise throughout Mexico despite ongoing and episodic violence. Activists, also known as animalistas, represent themselves as the “voice” of non-human animals as they seek rights and well-being for animals. In Ciudad Juárez, a border city once considered the most dangerous city in the world (2008–2012), animalistas engage in complex ways with non-human bodies as they seek to “speak” for them. This article analyzes the relationship between injured bodies and voice in Ciudad Juárez’s animalista movement, with the act of the rescue as the point of inception. Injured animal bodies prove central for activists because anthropogenic violence transforms dogs’ bodies. Non-human injured bodies, and their visual representations, allow animalistas to position themselves as the voice of an animal that survived an abuse while also individualizing and depolitizicing—through the discourse of pathology—violence against dogs.