Memoryscapes of Disappearance in Mexico

Memory and Disappearance in Mexico

This book argues for a broadening of the ways memory is conceptualised and practised. Drawing on extensive fieldwork with artists, relatives, activists, and academics who are engaging in memory practices to fight for justice and search for Mexico's disappeared, it takes a rich empirical approach to explore memory work in depth, foregrounding how people are responding to and articulating their experiences of living with disappearance. Disappearance in its ambiguity is always present, never in the past, and so disrupts many assumptions about how and when to memorialise traumatic events, and in Mexico, disappearance is ongoing, further challenging assumptions of the role of memory work to atrocity. Prioritising the understandings and contradictions of those practising memory work and foregrounding a politics of space and time in these builds a sense of the memoryscapes of disappearance in Mexico, going beyond formal or public sites and memorials to spaces and practices not usually recognised as memorialisation.

Broader Implications

Moving from the experiences of disappearance in contemporary Mexico to broader questions of societal and political structures, this book is inherently interdisciplinary and has relevance for those studying politics, critical international relations, Latin American studies, the history of human rights, transitional justice, and sociology, and anyone with an interest in the issue of disappearance.