Forced disappearances and the discovery of clandestine graves in Mexico: the case of the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora Collective

Abstract

Forced disappearances are a manifestation of the exacerbated violence that prevails in Mexico, as well as the necropolitics implemented by capitalism in its neoliberal phase. The tracking of clandestine graves has become a daily labor for mothers looking for their children. Due to the government’s negligence and the lack of an efficient justice system, women have faced the need to create and self-manage search networks with the intention of finding their relatives. This paper analyzes the case of the Colectivo de Madres Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Mothers’ Collective of Sonora) with the objective of giving an account of the resistance processes undertaken by this group of women through self-organizational and collective schemes that claim new conceptions of politics opposed to traditional and hegemonic political notions. For this purpose, a qualitative research is presented based on the analysis of information gathered from journalistic articles and social networks. Secondly, a theoretical reflection is generated on the social and political panorama in which the collective is positioned with a view to analyzing the problem of structural violence and its expressive dimension.