Matamoros

This video consists of the documentation of the voyage and the places that Pedro Vasquez Reyes traveled to transport drugs between Oaxaca and the northern border of the country during the eighties – until the moment he was arrested and imprisoned. The visual record is accompanied by the voice of the former drug trafficker, who recalls the locations he ed through while doing his job.  

In this first-person narrative, you discover a character sensitive to everything he observes, describing the landscape and its inhabitants, as well as his dreams and wishes, while imagining a better future for himself and his family. The hopes and idylls of the drug trafficker, combined at times with poetic and dreamy images of the Mexican landscape, contrast with the illicit task to which he is dedicated. With this strategy, more than in the documentary scope, the video is part of a subjective exploration of the Mexican landscape and memory. At the same time, Matamoros functions as the record of a kind of performative action, because in order to record the material of this piece, the artist made exactly the same journey that the drug trafficker did, but more than two decades later.  

Matamoros, along with Family Effects (2007-2009) and The Trap (2011), forms part of a trilogy of audiovisual projects in which the artist delves into marginality, violence, and drug trafficking in Mexico through reconstruction strategies that explore the mechanisms of memory and the landscape of this country.    

EKA, December 2019

https://esse.ca/fr/ley-fuga-edgardo-arago

https://revistacodigo.com/arte/estetica-del-desacuerdo-entrevista-con-edgardo-aragon/

https://www.alcalorpolitico.com/informacion/el-narcotrafico-es-la-bolsa-de-trabajo-mas-grande-del-pais-edgardo-aragon-67736.html#.XesGoJNKiRs

https://vimeo.com/20341170