Search

This article examines the horror of forced disappearance as depicted in the novels La Sombra de Orión and Recuerdos del río volador. It analyzes how the horror is not limited to the violence inflicted on the bodies or the perceived inadequacy of language to communicate the experience but is also revealed in the suspended mourning of the victims’ relatives. Therefore, the importance of memory devices such as photography, art, and literature to capture historical events and periods is highlighted, but also to access a language that allows symbolic processes crucial for victim’s reparation. The contribution of these novels to the current narrative is significant for their historical and literary richness, and, at the same time, for the discussion they raise about memory in territories affected by the dynamics of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I maintain that Nazi concentrationary model was not the par excellence place of modern biopolitics but rather mainly expressed the tanatopolitical face of biopower. For this purpose, I take up Hannah Arendt's analysis, that articulate antisemitism and imperialism to explain the concentrationary phenomenon as the nucleus of Nazi totalitarianism. From her work, as well as from testimonial texts by survivors, I deduce that Nazi concentrationary mechanism attempted to reduce human life from bios to zoé, in a clear biopolitical exercise although, at the same time, by heading towards the direct and selective extermination of certain population groups, responded more to "making die and letting live", typical of sovereignty power, rather than to "making live and letting die", which characterizes biopolitics. Therefore, it had a primarily tanatopolitical dimension. Finally, I recover the possible replications and mutations of the total concentrationary phenomenon, in the presence of current biopolitical dangers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the number of people who have been disappeared in Mexico has increased, so this article (of a theoretical nature) was carried out with the aim of measuring the impact of this violent practice in the different social circles where it daily transited the missing person. As specific objectives, we propose: 1) return to the category of “absent body” from physical anthropology to validate the experience lived by the close relatives of the disappeared person; 2) to recover the testimonies of the relatives of the disappeared to measure the psychological effects, social, economic and health of these violent events; 3) make visible and reconsider about these practices and their implications for the health of the population. We consider that with the category of “absent body” we give a new meaning to the fact suffered by the family members, to help them process this painful experience in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a model of performative analysis on the main episodes that have stimulated the presence in public opinion of the disappearance of the 43 students of Ayotzinapa in the state of Guerrero, Mexico. From the perspective of the civil sphere theory and cultural Pragmatics, we discuss the predominant analytical perspectives to interpret the symbolic construction of Ayotzinapa, while offering an analytical perspective that allows us to understand the way in which this event has been configured as a social trauma subject to deep normative disputes and as a moral performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to conduct an exhaustive review of publications in important database repositories, including Scopus, Scielo and Redalyc, in order to analyse the production of documents related to the disappearance of people worldwide, with a particular focus on America and specifically on Colombia. Various combinations of keywords were used to identify approximately 346,858 documents, such as books, chapters, articles and other reports linked to the topic. Of these, 33,995 documents were identified for Latin America and 14,196 for Colombia. The research follows a qualitative paradigm and uses the Delphi methodology, with techniques such as the selection of documents by related categories and the extraction and interpretation of data. The eligibility criteria cover the broad spectrum of missing persons. Search strategies were applied with logical operators and keywords in English. The documentary review focused on Forced Disappearance and Enforced Disappearance in titles, summaries and keywords. The analysis focuses on trends and effects regarding the physical and mental health of the relatives of the missing, providing an overview of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge of the search for victims of enforced disappearance usually includes the recovery of the identity of the remains that are found. This paper highlights the legal dimension of identification and its quality as a decision about the proof of a fact, which can be analyzed with the conceptual tools of the theory of legal evidence. On that basis, it analyzes the question about the applicable standard of proof considering the recent Chilean experience, which shows how positive DNA evidence has tended to consolidate as a sort of golden standard, exclusive and excluding, for the identification of human remains in the case of enforced disappearances. However, that standard of certainty will be often difficult to meet because of deterioration of DNA in the remains samples obtained, because of the scarcity of samples given the practice of massive clandestine exhumations or because of a lack of relatives' samples for comparison. The paper explores the questions that then open up, regarding both the possibility that other forensic evidence may be acceptable as sufficient and the treatment of the unidentified remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Territorially Focused Development Programs (PDET), derived from the 2016 peace agreement, seek to strengthen state institutions, and reduce the incidence of criminal organizations in areas affected by armed conflict. This article analyzes the correlation between resources allocated to state strengthening in municipalities prioritized by the PDET and criminal violence rates, through a statistical analysis, segmented into four corridors, during the period 2017-2019 and 2020. The results show that only the Amazon-Guaviare corridor reduced violence rates as an effect of investment expenditures, particularly enforced disappearances. It is considered that investment in the PDETs does not necessarily have an impact on violence rates, as there are criminal governance practices in which illegal actors rearrange their interests in the territory and adapt to the institutional transformations of the post-agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, I directed the installation-performance Relatos Nebulosos (RN), featuring relatives of forcibly disappeared individuals in Colombia. In this article, I explore the artistic visibility of these victims, who demonstrate resilience and demand justice, while also contributing to the critical discourse surrounding their struggle. To do so, I establish three key aspects. Firstly, I provide contextualization by sharing the stories of the RN protagonists, offering insights into the regions they refer to and conveying the profound impact of disappearance on their families, who grapple with the uncertainty surrounding their loved ones' whereabouts. Secondly, I delve into the ethical dimension of the project, witnessing how the protagonists meticulously construct a documentary narrative that relies on their own bodies, simultaneously navigating a complex emotional relationship with the documents associated with this process--expressing affection towards photographs and disdain for bureaucratic paperwork. Lastly, I highlight the significance of art in granting a voice to the victims, outlining my endeavors to create new avenues of expression by reimagining the daily lives of the RN protagonists through a montage, while drawing metaphors between the tangible elements of the artwork and the elusive nature of forced disappearance. Ultimately, this article concludes that RN thrives on the improbable, enabling art to give form to the uncertainty experienced by these families and drive social strategies that facilitate the search for the missing, leading to a sense of inner peace for their loved ones. It also asserts that both academic and non-academic realms have the potential to contribute to a world where this heinous crime is combated. The article's uniqueness lies in revealing the behind-the-scenes of the creative process behind RN, analyzing the reconfiguration of the everyday experiences of the relatives into a performative installation and examining their interaction with bureaucratic formats related to disappearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The national educational project seeks to establish a democratic, comprehensive and inclusive culture that addresses the structural problems the country suffers from, as stated and promoted by the New Mexican School (NEM). However, educational strategies reproduce hegemonic discourses, as well as normative frameworks of understanding and valuation that consolidate the structural violences that besiege bodies and territories. Based on the observant participation of schools in the national search brigades for missing persons in Mexico, we propose a critical analysis of formal education from a pedagogy in the face of disappearance, which opens possibilities for an education for the victims of serious human rights violations, such as the victims of enforced disappearance. This approach offers alternatives to the frameworks of normalization of violence, precarization and contempt for systematically violated sectors. From such coordinates, the text is positioned from the philosophy of intersectional education, in an anamnenic key, as a tool for the restoration of historical situations strained by violence and as a device that favors the construction of a culture of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the twentieth century, the work of forensic professionals in contexts of war has become a topic of particular interest, among other reasons, because of its importance in the clarification of serious human rights violations. The purpose of this article is to characterize the experience of frustration and emotional management strategies used by forensic anthropologists working in the context of the Colombian armed conflict. Using semi-structured interviews with ten forensic anthropologists working in the search for victims of enforced disappearance in Colombia, along with autobiographical analysis, the authors identify the strategies through which forensic professionals manage frustration in a context of armed conflict and political violence. All interviews were held in Bogota in 2019. The forensic anthropologists interviewed were found to be confronted with potential sources of frustration such as complex political scenarios, difficulties of the geographical context to carry out the search processes, long-lasting situations of impunity, and high expectations of the victims' families to find their loved ones' remains. The article thus describes the ways in which forensic anthropologists emotionally manage these difficulties in order to maintain their motivation and efforts to continue their work. The authors employ a novel perspective to explore the emotional management of the impacts of work in contexts of political violence and war, revealing the importance of research that allows us to recognize the subject involved before the pain of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the geopolitics of becoming a digital searcher using the transmissions produced by the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora collective from the crematoriums and clandestine graves identified between December 23, 2020 and July 9, 2021 in the valley of Guaymas in the south of the state of Sonora, Mexico. The study is intended to highlight that the Madres' search is immersed in a process of de-territorialized governmental necropolitical victimization, which drives them to go into the analyzed area. The work is based on the digital observation of the collective's social network transmissions and on an interview with the leader during the protest that took place outside the Attorney General's Office (FGR) on October 11, 2021, three months after the murder of Aranza Ramos Gurrola. The paper's contribution lies in reconstructing the geography of the transmissions broadcast at the indicated place and time. It is argued that such transmissions are a way of sustaining low-resolution digital searching. For the Madres, becoming searchers is a task that involves maintaining a mobile digital infrastructure to translate the barbarism they encounter into a citizen forensis. The article shows that the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora's pursuit of becoming digital searchers is immersed in a governmental necropolitics that does not produce citizens but victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced Disappearance is a more frequent reality in our society: the figures indicate that in Mexico there are 91,500 missing persons as of September 2021. Considering the mechanisms that are necessary for the care of those family members who are looking for their loved one should be a priority for the disciplines of mental health, as they are affected physically and psychologically. The objective of the study was: to carry out an analysis of the psychosocial impact based on the emotions, thoughts, coping and social support in the mothers of the disappeared and their contribution in the search process. Ten mothers of the disappeared from Coahuila, Mexico participated. The methodology was qualitative, the data collection technique was a semi-structured interview, and the resulting data were subjected to a discourse analysis. Results: the emotions of the participants at the beginning of the search process are very specific, then they diversify and multiply, become more intense and directly affect said process. The thoughts are mainly focused on evasions and denial in the face of the disappearance events; coping directly affects your daily life, your habits and customs. Social support focuses on their families and associations that assist them to carry out the search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes community responses and social mobilization that occurred between 2014 and 2019 in response to the forced disappearance of forty-three student teachers from Ayotzinapa in Atoyac de Álvarez (Guerrero), a municipality deeply affected by forced disappearances in the 1970s and the birthplace of four of the forty-three students. The article dialogues with literature on community restructurings that result from extreme violence and with studies that analyze the psychosocial effects of forced disappearances on individuals. From this perspective, I use a microsociological and historical perspective to discuss the development of community solidarity around the families of the four students who disappeared in 2014. I argue that past disappearances have transgenerational effects on a community, such as kinship stigmatization, and configure criteria of familial relationships that affect the ability to mobilize in response to new disappearances. The study contributes new knowledge to this field of study in a country that now has around one hundred thousand people who have disappeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cemeteries are propitious settings in which to mourn the death of a loved one. Such expressions of grief have particular social logics associated with there being a corpse buried in the grave. But how is the relationship of the mourner transformed when there is no body as a result of a forced disappearance? Do the mourners’ interactions differ when there is an identified body as opposed to when there is not? Guided by these questions, Jardín Cementerio Universal de Medellín is presented as a space that unveils strategies used to deal with the complexity of mourning a loved one’s death. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the manifestations of mourning present in graves with identified and unidentified bodies. To this end, an ethnographic exercise was conducted involving a qualitative analysis of funerary material culture and non-participant observation. The study documents the importance of having a physical space, the gravestone, where one can grieve the loss of a loved one. It is revealed that this space is especially relevant in the case of the indirect victims of forced disappearance, who go through complex mourning processes in the absence of a grave to hold their loved one’s body. In this case, the burial ground is a space that bears witness to the acts of violence that Colombia has suffered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a methodological framework based on cultural studies concerning transgenerational memory and trauma, on the one hand, and theoretical contributions on affection and emotions, on the other, this article analyzes and compares a series of novels and films written and made by Chilean and Argentine novelists and filmmakers in which they reflect on exile, forced disappearance and the violence perpetrated by the dictatorships of the Southern Cone. In particular, it investigates the way in which affection is encoded in the contemporary literary and audiovisual production of these sons and daughters of the disappeared and of former militants. For this purpose, the relationships of tension, resignification, dialogue and / or questioning about the role of fathers and mothers in the lives of these children and their configuration in some illustrative works are analyzed. We begin with a consideration of the compositional and formal resources of these stories in order to then, on an interpretive level, link these aesthetic decisions with different strategies that are used to deal with the complex situations experienced in childhood and with relationships with parents. Finally, the interpretation leads to identifying different aesthetic choices and possible resolutions related to the affective world that help to promote memory and build a present and an identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to determine the 10-year impact of the Colombian National Police's canine human remains detection teams since the dog-guide partnership protocol was initiated in 2007. Five partnerships that have carried out searches in various Colombian regions were used to establish the environmental factors, type of terrain, the possible criminal group involved, and geographic location, among many other variables involved in the searches, carried out in natural disasters, disappearances, and associated crimes. As a result of analyzing of these scenarios, a contribution is made to the strategy for addressing murders and disappearances and finding material evidence for justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, an analysis on the collection of information as a phase of a search plan for people considered missing and their importance in the Norte de Santander department (Colombia) is carried out, for which guidelines that should be considered, taking into account the characteristics of the territory, are identified. A mixed methodology is adopted. From the qualitative point of view, and based on a documentary review, a descriptive framework of the information gathering phase in the search for missing persons was developed; from the quantitative point of view, an analysis of data related to the disappearances occurred in the department was undertaken. As relevant findings, it is highlighted that, for the information gathering phase in the region, it is necessary to bear in mind its characteristics and the mode of action in which the crime was committed, and, from there, study the temporality, focus differential, and the dynamics of the territory. This implies that more context information must be available, taking into account its geostrategic location and border condition, to achieve an effective search. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to perform a communicational mapping of enforced disappearances in Colombia. We do this by studying maternities that proliferate their meaning, feelings and pains as a consequence of the stresses and forces triggered by such happenings. These painful events are always reenacted by words, by social performances and in life itself. This article originates in an investigation performed about the social movement "Asociación Caminos de Esperanza Madres de la Candelaria". This organization is mostly integrated by peasant women from the Antioquia Department, who have lost their beloved ones as a result of the Colombian armed conflict. We study the role of expressive collective agency in empowering a transformation of female or feminized subjects- either collective or individual-, through the accounts of five women who confronted violence before and after the enforced disappearance episode. Data was gathered through in-depth Interview and workshops. Personal conversations permeated the whole process and allowed to secure close communication with the participants. Rather than searching for answers, it was possible instead to formulate new questions about trajectories, connections, cuts, linkages and disjunctions among subjects. We were able to identify women who managed to successfully use the process as a way of further developing their subjectivity, which, in turn, led them to transform their lives and increase their autonomy and public prominence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is used to talk about migrants that cross the border, also for citizens that go missing, for those who were murdered during the Spanish civil war and the following dictatorship, it is also the name used to call those erased of the registers in Dominican Republic or Mexico, and sometimes it is how people refer to uncontacted tribes of the Amazonian... The name for those and many others is disappeared. None of those situations correspond, nevertheless, to what the law qualifies as "enforced disappearance". This Special Topic considers the uses of the category disappearance looking mostly into the social, rather than the savantes, uses. The five articles gathered in this Special Topic show how the category disappearance is exceeded and its potentiality as a tool to analyze subjects expelled, pariahs, the precarious, the vulnerable, abandoned lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than solving a problem, in this text we propose to shape it by outlining some of its lines. We start from the category of enforced disappearance, analyze its origin and underline its success in terms of the notorious international expansion it has had. So much so that it has illuminated other situations in which individuals are removed from the protection of the law. We therefore say that the concept has exceeded its limits and we illustrate this situation with four cases that have the air of a family with forced disappearance: the uncontacted indigenous people in Brazil, the homes of migrants in Mexico, the erased citizens in the Dominican Republic, the unregistered subjects, also in Mexico. We present these four situations in dialogue between legal theory and ethnographic observation in order to present some ideas that allow us to think about the common background that makes disappearance: subjects that do not count. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrants, remains, UBC (Unidentified Border Crosser or Undocumented Border Crosser), bodies in the desert, unidentified and unknown, John/Jane Doe, disappeared migrants, death person, missing, etc. Those are the categories that governmental and non-governmental agents, as well as scholars, use in the city of Tucson, Arizona, to refer to migrants who cross the border and whose whereabouts are unknown. In this article, based on qualitative fieldwork (mainly in-depth interviews), we analyze the names that those agents use or create to talk about the situation. We show, at the same time, how the more consolidated categories -- specially forced disappearance--, are exceeded when dealing with complex phenomenon such as transnational migrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this work is to analyze the attribution standards employed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) in order to account for the State's responsibility in the forced disappearances perpetrated by non-state actors. This article initially focuses on the classification of perpetrators of disappearances. It then addresses the IACHR sentences about forced disappearances perpetrated by non-state actors who committed these acts with the support, authorization and acquiescence of the State. This article also analyzes the laws about disappearances perpetrated by non-state actors with no connections to the State. In this manner, this work identifies the stages of the law superseded by the IACHR and analyzes the content of the attribution standards employed. Therefore, besides presenting a description of the state in question, this research outlines critical contributions of the path the IACHR followed in order to guide the interpretation of the standards of similar cases and to hypothesize about the cases the IACHR did not address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disappearance of people in Peru generates a sense of rupture in the rural Andes. It is a product of recruitment and armed conflicts between guerrilla groups and law enforcement agencies and paramilitary groups during the decades of 1980 and1990. This sense of rupture is regained through the continual presence of the absent, expressed in a particular concept of posthumous life which extends beyond the death of the person who has disappeared. Through field work and in-depth interviews, this article recovers the stories of those who live in places where death was not peaceful or properly ritualized, meaning, where death was not domesticated. In order to understand the ontological ambivalence of the figure of the disappeared, who is neither dead or alive, and the consequences of its liminality, this article exposes the religious traditional representations created and the repertory of rites maintained in Peru. Tormented souls, known pathologically as a product of folklore, have not been considered interpretative categories for understanding the experience of violence. Therefore, this research addresses the social meanings of these accounts as a contribution for understanding the impact of forced disappearances and the approaches of searching for victims and relating to them. This task is undertaken in order to reconstruct a sense that may fill to some extent the emptiness left by the disappearance of a loved one, prolonging and reactivating their social existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enforced disappearance is a violence that in its materiality configures, builds and produces geographic space. Thus, the spatial analyzes that are made of this, make it possible to show that its perpetration towards the being that suffers it, goes beyond a space merely conceived from the physical coordinates of the location of the places where it happens and the places where the victims disappeared in their mortal remains, their dimension also exceeds the moments of these events. In this sense, the materiality of this violence will present a complex amplification in a non-absolute space, since it is relativized by the experiential relations experienced, showing the production of territorialities from the possible multiplicities given in the territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to rethink some of the well-established notions regarding Argentinian clandestine detention centers, especially those with an almost exclusive focus on repression as destruction, at the expense of other aspects. This survey places emphasis on other complex forms of repression that, without questioning the role of victims and victimizers nor destruction as an aim, render necessary a more thorough analysis of the phenomenon of clandestine repression. To this purpose, this article takes the clandestine detention center located in ESMA (Navy Mechanics School) during the military dictatorship (1976-1983) as a case study. This center featured a number of specific operational dynamics that were further developed with a considerable degree of autonomy, but which were not exclusive, and so can be observed in other detention centers, though at a minor scale. These dynamics, which reflect more complex manifestations of the repressive apparatus and have so far been understudied, are here presented as follows: a) The particular experience of the "recovery" of prisoners; b) the relationships between practices and repressive crimes and their political extension at a national and international level; and c) financial crime in the context of political repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the counterinsurgency policy and the practice of enforced disappearance deployed by the Mexican State against dissident organizations, particularly guerrilla groups, during the seventies. Based on the analysis of national security documents and case studies, the article proposes a framework that is both explanatory and interpretative, characterizing the logic of counterinsurgency violence in a broadly way. Additionally, it highlights the shifts in the implementation of that violence. This study identifies the particularities of the politics of counterinsurgency in Mexico within the Latin America Cold War process, so that it can cease to be seen as an exceptional case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In analyzing the actions undertaken by victimized women forced disappearance in Granada, (Antioquia) and the incidents that these actions have on their senses of life, it is necessary to investigate the ways that victimized women have given a new meaning to the fact related to disappearance, due to the lack of significance between the state and the citizenry. In this sense, the research project becomes relevant in the phenomenological study as a way of analyzing each one of the phenomena represented in the forced disappearance, which allows to narrate and to describe each one of the affections, actions and incidents of each of the victimized women of the Association of Victims of Granada (Asovida). For this reason, the logotherapeutic approach is necessary as a methodological proposal for the resignification of the senses of life in order to channel each of the experiences as a guideline for the restoration of each one of their rights, in the construction of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) related to the forced disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa Teachers College students in Iguala, Guerrero, set a precedent in the Inter-American System because it was an investigation taking place in real time and simultaneously with the one conducted by the authorities. Based on this novel international scrutiny mechanism, this essay offers a thorough analysis of the two GIEI reports, published in September 2015 and April 2016, whose conclusions run counter to the official record. I affirm that both fulfill two central functions: the discrediting of the government with a conclusive investigation of its responsibility in the crimes and the diagnosis of the psychosocial effects of forced disappearance. I argue that the main contribution of the GIEI, in spite of not clarifying the whereabouts of the students, is the reports themselves that serve as a guide to lay the foundations of how to conduct an independent investigation based on scientific evidence and on an ethics of accompanying the victims. The essay has four sections. First, I explain the crimes in the context of the war on drugs and of a political economy of security assistance. Then, I tackle the work of the GIEI and transnational human rights networks. Next, I analyze the contribution of the reports in disproving the "historical truth" of the government. Finally, I emphasize the value of the reports given the urgency of the psychosocial attention to the victims. I conclude that the reports provide a comprehensive view of the new scenarios of the forced disappearances and the human rights crisis in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in 2014 breathed life into a broad social movement. What occurred this time to generate a broad mobilization of citizens? To answer this question, I believe we need to understand why and how Mexican society has framed the Ayotzinapa events. My starting hypothesis is that the Ayotzinapa events have produced a social process of collective trauma, and I will support this with Jeffrey Alexander's proposal of cultural trauma, rarely used when analyzing collective action. The analysis is based on ethnographic work carried out over one year (September 2014-2015) during the different demonstrations to show solidarity with the parents of the disappeared students, which were held in Mexico City, and 70 interviews held at the national demonstration on 26th September 2015 to commemorate a year since the 43 rural teachers' college students went missing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 26 September 2014, Mexican police forces in Iguala, Guerrero, attacked and abducted four dozen students known asnormalistas(student teachers); some were killed on the spot and the rest were never seen again. Within and beyond Mexico, rights activists immediately raised the alarm that thenormalistashad joined the country's growing population of “the disappeared,” now numbering more than 28,000 over the last decade. In this article, I draw from a growing scholarship within and beyond critical geography that explores forced disappearance as a set of governing practices that shed insight into contemporary democracies and into struggles for constructing more just worlds. Specifically, I explore how an activist representation of Mexico'snormalistasas “missing students” opens up new political possibilities and spatial strategies for fighting state terror and expanding the Mexican public within a repressive neoliberal and global order. I argue that this activism brings to life a counterpublic as protestors declare that if disappearance is &#x201c.compatible” with democracy, as it appears to be within Mexico, then disappeared subjects demand new spaces of political action. They demand a countertopography where the disappeared citizens of Mexico make their voices heard. Activists demonstrate such connections as they compose countertopographies for counterpublics across the Americas landscape of mass graves, prisons, and draconian political economies, mostly constructed in the name of democracy and on behalf of securing citizens. Understanding how Mexico's activists confront the intransigent problems of state terror, spanning from dictatorships to democracies, offers vital insights for struggles against policies for detaining and disappearing peoples there and elsewhere in these neoliberal times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the recollections of detained and disappeared relatives of 19 women from the Association for Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared. Testimony was collected using group reflective interviews, with an analysis of the verbal data. The main results indicate that the family memories transmitted trans-generationally are of high intensity and affectivity, constituting a post-memory (Hirsch, 1998). The recollections of the victim's relatives also work against negation and impunity of the disappearance of the detained relative. This study contributes to the development of policies for memory which permit the social recognition of the family history of the victims of State terrorism. Both the theoretical-methodological proposal and the results obtained in this study indicate pathways to new lines of research oriented to the understanding of inter-generational transmission of traumatic experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs symbolic elements and practices that underline the recent dispute over the characterization and nature of "forced displacement" in Mexico. The point of departure for this analysis is that of the contemporary Mexican context in which political and criminal violence are often interlinked. This has resulted in new challenges when attending to the demands of the victims of these crimes. These new challenges necessitate a questioning of the limits and scope of human rights discourse in relation to forced displacement in Mexico. The conclusions of this study emphasize the necessity to "vernacularize" the typology of forced displacement in order to challenge the forms of exclusion established by the existing definitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses some social, political, and psychological effects of enforced disappearance as an effect of the strategies used during the Brazilian military dictatorship. Such strategies are buttressed and anchored at the certainty of impunity and indifference to the victims and survivors. One of the main consequences of this indifference today is the aggravation of the suffering of the family members that are still alive, which is preserved by the lethargy of the Brazilian state after the end of the dictatorship period, before the obligations to comply with the main international human rights resolutions relating to the combat of the forced disappearance of people. We recognize in the dream-work traces tracks and footprints of experiences that still insist and seek their status of language and social recognition 50 years after the civil-military coup in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forensic anthropologists seek to decipher traces of anonymous dead, to restitute identities of human remains and to provide their families with the possibility to conclude mourning and even of justice. The article explores the contributions and meanings of forensic anthropology as state-independent practice beyond a mereley criminalistic approach, as it was conceptualized by the Argentine pioneers after the last dictatorship in this nation. I conceive this practice as a sort of arqueol - ogy of contemporary terror that seeks to confront a specific violence as the forced disappearance of persons and the deshumanization of their dead bodies. The article proposes reading forensic anthropology as a 'situated cience', with its complexities and ambigueties, that operates between nameless bones (the human remains) and names without bodies (the so-called disappeared) in settings of violent pasts such as Argentina or Guatemala, and especially in Mexico, where mass graves became the new symbol of a horrified present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our battered democracy, enforced disappearance of 43 students for the Normal "Isidro Burgos" Rural Schhol in Iguala, Guerrero, on de the night of 26 to 27 september 2014, visualize a daily violation of human rights. 43 says a lot more tan 130 000 executed mention violence in México; 43 is more forceful tan quote a millón and a half displaced; awareness shakes plus the 43 that the reference to not less 30 thousand disappeared during the war absurd and useless to drug trafficking. Ayotzinapa 43 were shaking consciences for social energy contained in years and still looking make adult that causes indignation in actions organized for a radical and peaceful change in México. We must add to this barbarism to the other 80 thousand Central Americans by the Bermuda thiangle of the extreme violence that it has become the mexican republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fernando -the protagonist of this story- was born in Tarazá, Antioquia, Colombia, and would be 40 years old at the time this paper is written. His hard childhood, which took place surrounded by poverty, marginality and violence, traced the lines of a hard fate to elude. He became an orphan at a very early age and was displaced from his homeland due to violence and at the end he became a victim of forced recruitment as a soldier for an illegal group and, later, a victim of forced disappearance. His youth, inexperience and lack of skills toface armed conflict would lead him to step on a landmine, and his family could never recover his body, which ended up in a mass grave. Fernando, who is a relative of mine, was the inspiration to make this reflection about the violations to human rights made within the Colombian armed conflict at the end of the 80's and the first years of the 90's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research approach the phenomenon of forced disappearances and false positives in Colombian context. This paper then attempts to address the issue from two perspectives that eventually intertwine with each other. By one hand it is significant to establish patterns of enforced disappearance using the judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, particularly in cases where Colombia is involved. By the other hand, it is useful to consider whether summary and arbitrary executions, for example, false positives, represent an isolated behavior or, conversely, identify a kind of systematicity. After that it is essential to establish if in both cases, is it possible to define some elements to identify those as crimes against humanity and more so, if they can be the result of a state policy, although not official, but recognizable trough some specific violent actions, such as the struggle with the armed conflict within a possible democratic security plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced disappearances leave families without a body to mourn. Many individuals do not accept the loss and refuse to let go of the bond with the disappeared person. The experience of Luz, whose brother disappeared in the context of the Colombian armed conflict, interpellates those who have reflected on mourning. Her testimony narrates her encounter with two prisoners presumed guilty. The article examines Luz's motivations in meeting with the perpetrators, on the basis of a guiding question: to what extent does Luz's behavior seek to heal her wounded narcissism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forced disappearance marks a before and an after in those who experiment this tragedy; victims say it leaves an inerasable trace that can only be eliminated with the death of the bereaved. The inefficiency of justice and the motivations behind the disappearance have decisive effects on mourning processes. From a Freudian perspective, the article examines the elements that differentiate this process from other types of mourning and loss. Mourning, taboo regarding the dead, grief and angst are some of the Freudian concepts that contribute to the understanding of this drama experienced by many Colombians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the content of the report Nunca Más (Never Again) elaborated by the "National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons" (CONADEP) created in Argentina in 1983 by the President Raúl Alfonsín to investigate the destiny of the thousands of missing persons caused by the state repression, It examines its strategy to expose the system of disappearance and its reading of the political violence. The paper conclude that Never Again articulated the premises of the restored democracy to think the political violence on the basis of the constructed narrative done to denounce these crimes by the affected of the disappearances. These elements did not illustrate the past in historical terms and they did not even assume the citizenship universal condition of people affected by the state violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

La desaparición forzada de personas es un crimen de lesa humanidad, que surgió como una práctica generalizada de los estados totalitarios, con el fin de eliminar a disidentes políticos, cuyos antecedentes se remontan, a la Revolución francesa, la revolución bolchevique, y la Segunda Guerra Mundial1. Sin embargo, esta conducta penal cobró fuerza en Latinoamérica, convirtiéndose en una táctica represiva de las dictaduras militares instauradas en nuestro continente a lo largo del siglo XX y su objetivo principal, fue la eliminación de disidentes políticos. Este texto se centra en el análisis del delito de desaparición forzada en América Latina y contiene una breve descripción de su ejecución durante los gobiernos militares de Argentina y Chile, pues estos regímenes marciales implementaron con mayor frecuencia, frente a otros gobiernos de América, la práctica de las desapariciones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]