I find this image to be exemplorary of multiple instances of toxicity, particularly the ways in which history is produced through structures and flows of power. I wonder then if this image if reflective both of the toxic racisms and technologies that targeted black and brown bodies, as well as the toxictiy of the archive. The juxtapositon between your own description and the text within the newspaper clipping come together to illustrate violent racializing of Mexicans historically and now, as well as the disjuncture between "early morning hanging" narratives to the color-blind liberalism that negate or ignore such histories. This image then becomes an entryway to examine historical and contemporary narratives of violence against Mexicans.
When viewing this image, I am slightly reminded of Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Siliencing the Past as well as Ann Stoler's Imperial Debris, in which the both trace colonial power in the formations of a colonial present or a historical archive. Your image, which also conjures a historicity and history of violence, similarly ties the past and present together. This brings forth the question: How is our present made toxic?
