Posthumous Transnationalism: Postmortem Repatriation from the United States to Mexico

This article discusses the sustained and increasingly institutionalized transnational practice of repatriating the bodies of deceased Mexican migrants from the United States to their hometowns in Mexico. Far from being a strictly private transnational practice, migrants’ desire for a posthumous return and burial in their homelands is popularly expressed in the memories, music, and everyday exchanges of the Mexican diaspora. Drawing on transnational ethnographic research in Los Angeles, California, and Zacatecas, Mexico, this article documents how the Mexican state has institutionalized this process at the transnational, national, state, and municipal levels of governance. Last, the article discusses the role of migrant family and social networks in these repatriations. The goals of this article are to provide a preliminary cultural and institutional understanding of the practice of repatriating cadavers from the United States to Mexico and to discuss the implications of this process for the scholarly debate on migrant transnationalism.