The Search: Following Metaphorical FootprintsOn a City’s Margins

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v7n13.337

Keywords:

Disappeared, clandestine graves, search, bodies, Mexico

Abstract

Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón launched the war on
drugs in 2006 as a strategy to dismantle vast drug trafficking networks. That war has cost the lives of thousands of people, many of whom are buried in mass graves. By focusing on a single day in the search for bodies, this ethnography describes and analyzes one of the brutal aftereffects of this security strategy. One key topic is the different ways in which actors stake out the rights of the lifeless bodies in these graves, from the mothers who dig into the earth to find tesoros
(treasures) to the state apparatus that attempts to control the process.

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Author Biography

  • Isaac Vargas, Universidad de Toronto

    Isaac Vargas is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, his project focuses on the analysis of the forensic context in western Mexico. He also collaborates as a researcher for the Drug Policy Program of the cide Central Region, where he coordinates research on the archives of militarization. He is also co-producer of the audiovisual project
    "Glossary of the War on Drugs" (CIDE, June 2023). He holds a master's degree in Social Anthropology from El Colegio de Michoacán; his thesis deals with the search for missing persons in Jalisco.

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Published

2024-03-21

Issue

Section

Realidades socioculturales

How to Cite

The Search: Following Metaphorical FootprintsOn a City’s Margins. (2024). Encartes, 7(13), 189-212. https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v7n13.337