Mariana Mora’s talk, “Cartographies of justice against the racial effects of preemptive criminalization and the politics of absence in Guerrero, Mexico,” discussed how the September 26th, 2014 case of the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa is reflective of larger state forces of dehumanizing and devaluing indigenous lives in Mexico. The violence against these youth is an active process of racialization and criminalization of poverty and indigeneity. Through her profound and moving talk and references to neoliberal policies and the official “narrative” of the September 26th disappearances, Mora focused on the portrayal of indigenous bodies in Mexico as lacking productivity and utility, in turn becoming disposable and devalued in the eyes of the state.
During the discussion, Mora emphasized how social development projects and efforts to combat crime and poverty in Mexico are often done in a way that criminalize and racialize poverty and indigenous bodies. She opened her talk with Patrick Wolfe’s concept of settler colonialism as a legacy and a process, not an event, to highlight how forms of oppression and domination against indigenous populations are systematized in state powers in Mexico. Mora mentioned how neoliberal development policies in Mexico actually increase poverty in rural communities, for example through modern agricultural reforms and privatization of communal lands. Increasing poverty among indigenous peoples is then blamed on the communities themselves, and they are characterized as unproductive and therefore marked by an inherent disposability. In one of Mora’s own articles, she writes how the “very logic behind neoliberal social development policies—designed to combat extreme poverty in particular regions of the country… generates a racialized effect through the devaluation of the lives of the targeted populations, specifically those categorized as incapable of breaking intergenerational cycles of cultural and economic marginalization. This devaluation of life engenders particular racialized sectors of the Mexican population as by-products of neoliberal policies” (Mora 2017, 71). These arguments relate to ideas by scholar Lisa Lowe.
In her book, The Intimacies of Four Continents, Lowe makes many references to how liberalism, though supposedly founded on ideas of liberty and emancipation, has actually been a historic tool to define what “human” is (the European and Western man) and in turn marginalize certain populations. “Other” populations (non-Westerners) are defined as “less” human (Lowe 2015, 6). Liberalism is inherently based on exclusion in defining humanity, and racial differences are what create these “boundaries of the human and endure as remainders attesting to the violence of liberal universality” (Lowe 2015, 7). Mora’s references to the state’s use of neoliberal policies as a form to subjugate indigenous lives mirrors Lowe’s analysis of liberalism as a colonial tool used to cement notions of racial hierarchies and the valuation of some human lives over others.
The narrative that the state gave to justify the events of September 26th, that of misidentification and drug cartel crime, of trash dumps and burned bodies, is another example of ongoing and active state efforts to diminish the importance of indigenous bodies. Mora detailed how the official explanation for the disappearance of the 43 students was that they were misidentified as members of a drug cartel, and they were subsequently killed, left in a trash dump, and burned. Their bodies were burned so badly, in order to dispose of them, that no DNA was left. As the state put it, these people no longer existed. This narrative accentuates how indigenous bodies are, for one, criminalized and dismissed as inherently unproductive and harmful to society. Even though the state said they were misidentified as members of drug cartels, they nonetheless normalized the assumption of indigenous people as inherently being criminal and participating in illegal activity. Secondly, this narrative also normalizes the devaluation and dehumanization of indigenous bodies- they were left in a trash dump. The fire was so strong these people ceased to exist. The state effectively erased these identities and these humans through this horrible narrative, adding to the devaluation and disposability of these bodies. Through their actions on September 26th, 2014 and the explanation they fabricated afterwards, the Mexican state actively perpetrated the racialization, criminalization and oppression of indigenous people in the country.
One of the most touching parts of Mora’s talk and an important note to end this analysis on are the vignettes of different victims of racialized violence and ongoing colonialism, as well as the video she showed of the aftermaths of the disappearance of the 43. These victims, who we often refer to only in the context of their role in greater struggles of anti-racism or against state violence, need to be humanized and grounded in who they were when they were alive. Indeed, they are martyrs for societies and have sparked greater battles and activism, but they also need to be honored as individuals who lived their own lives. Hearing the names and seeing the family and friends of the disappeared students in the video was an extremely grounding and centering way to start the talk, as it served as a reminder of why these battles are so important. Fighting against state violence and racism matters because it is individuals’ lives who are attacked and robbed. All these students, each of the 43, had their own lives, hopes, dreams, hobbies, aspirations and realities that deserve to be honored and lived out just as any other human’s. Mora’s talk illuminated the importance of recognizing larger forces of oppression and racism while also grounding these discussions in individual stories and lives, giving a voice to both these narratives.
Bibliography
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents . Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.
Mora, Mariana. “Ayotzinapa and the Criminalization of Racialized Poverty in La Montaña, Guerrero, Mexico.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 40, no. 1 (May 2017): 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12208.