Abstract

SALAZAR BARRON, Sergio. Becoming Searchers in Extermination Sites. The Case of the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora’s Digital Transmissions (2020-2021). Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol. [online]. 2023, n.50, pp.143-171.  Epub Feb 23, 2023. ISSN 1900-5407.  https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda50.2023.07.

The article analyzes the geopolitics of becoming a digital searcher using the transmissions produced by the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora collective from the crematoriums and clandestine graves identified between December 23, 2020 and July 9, 2021 in the valley of Guaymas in the south of the state of Sonora, Mexico. The study is intended to highlight that the Madres’ search is immersed in a process of de-territorialized governmental necropolitical victimization, which drives them to go into the analyzed area. The work is based on the digital observation of the collective’s social network transmissions and on an interview with the leader during the protest that took place outside the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) on October 11, 2021, three months after the murder of Aranza Ramos Gurrola. The paper’s contribution lies in reconstructing the geography of the transmissions broadcast at the indicated place and time. It is argued that such transmissions are a way of sustaining low-resolution digital searching. For the Madres, becoming searchers is a task that involves maintaining a mobile digital infrastructure to translate the barbarism they encounter into a citizen forensis. The article shows that the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora’s pursuit of becoming digital searchers is immersed in a governmental necropolitics that does not produce citizens but victims.

Keywords : Extermination sites; forced disappearance; necropolitics; public sphere; searching mothers.

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