Pure Corpses, Dangerous Citizens: Transgressing the Boundaries between Experts and Mourners in the Search for the Disappeared in Mexico

• Published in: Social research 2016-07, Vol.83 (2), p.483-510
• Main Authors: Schwartz-Marin, Ernesto, Cruz-Santiago, Arely, CRUZ-SANTIAGO, ARLY
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activism; Atrocities; Boundaries; Case studies; Children; Citizen participation; Citizens; Citizenship; Experts; Females; Forensic anthropology; Forensic sciences; Grass roots movement; Human remains; Human rights; Logic; Missing persons; Part V: Forensics, Care, and the Rights of the Dead; Political participation; Punishment; Reinforcement; Semiotics; Sex crimes; Social order; Violence
• ISSN: 0037-783X; 1944-768X; 1944-768X
• DOI: 10.1353/sor.2016.0038

This paper recovers a vignette of a type of citizenship formed around the duties of relatives of disappeared persons in Mexico. It focuses on the men, women, and children from Mexico and other countries who have disappeared and are possibly dead, waiting to be found in mortuaries and clandestine mass graves that are yet to be identified. Here the authors explore the civic engagement with forensic science as an aspect of an emergent thanato-citizenship. In their case study the relatives of those who are presumed dead are publicly managing corpses (of citizens and noncitizens alike) via the development of "forensic grassroots techniques" in order to make visible the fractures of a biopolitical logic "that makes live, and lets die" (Foucault 2007). Throughout the paper they show that unearthing practices (Ferrandiz 2013) are not a sign of desperation, as many critical voices claim, but a strategic stance against impunity, lack of punishment, or even the lack of investigation by the Mexican state.