Desaparecidos: A History of Struggle to Name the Absence

• In Event: Enforced disappearances in Mexico: social and political responses

Abstract

When 43 students were forcibly disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico on September 26th 2014, their schoolmates, mothers and fathers, and their legal defence started talking about them as disappeared. Quickly, the 43 disappeared students became national and international news. Referring to the students as disappeared is the result of the history of struggle in Mexico and many other parts of the world, which is worth analysing.

Mexico has a long history of enforced disappearances, which can be traced back to at least 1969. Two main periods of enforced disappearances can be identified: the first one, from 1969 to the 1980s, in which disappearances were carried out mainly for political reasons; and the second one, from the mid-2000s onwards, in which disappearances are carried out for a number of reasons in the context of the so called “War on Drugs.”

This paper will analyse how victims of disappearances have been named over time. To change the way in which the relatives, the different governments or society refers to these victims carries consequences that will also be analysed here. For example, the legal and social implications of talking about “detenidos-desaparecidos”, of “levantados” or simply “desaparecidos.” These struggles over words and meanings are at the same time a struggle for memory, to determine what happened. Shedding light on this naming issue will consequently do so as well on the battles for memory surrounding the disappeared in Mexico.

Author

• Maria de Vecchi Gerli, UCL-Institute of the Americas