Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología

Antipod. Rev. Antropol. Arqueol | eISSN 2011-4273 | ISSN 1900-5407

Deep Forensics for a More-than-Human Justice

No. 50 (2023-01-01)
  • María Torres
    Arizona State University, United States
  • Lindsay A. Smith
    Arizona State University, United States
https://doi.org/10.7440/antipoda50.2023.08

Abstract

Buscadora collectives in Mexico have developed unique and transformative forensic practices to search for their disappeared loved ones. We examine the work of three collectives, each working in distinct political, ecological, and historical contexts to better understand emergent forms of local citizen-led forensic practice. Attending to spaces, that exist alongside but exceed contemporary forensic practice, we critically reexamine the practice of forensics in the context of the humanitarian and forensic ‘crisis’ in Mexico. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with forensic scientists and buscadora collectives between 2015-2022, we develop three case studies that analyze the collectives’ work in three registers: the (inter)relational, the geo-logic, and the more-than-human. We argue for the emergence of a deep forensics based on collective practices that privilege fragile, multi-valent forms of knowledge production, attend to slow violence, and move beyond an exclusively human-centered episteme. These alternative practices have the potential to displace the crisis time of contemporary state-led forensics and better document the entangled contexts of ‘stratigraphic violence’ in contemporary Mexico allowing for an emergent more-than-human justice.

Keywords: Buscadoras, citizen science, deep forensics, geo-logics, morethan-human, stratigraphic violence

References

Andermann, Jens. 2020. “Memories of Extractivism: Slow Violence, Terror, and Matter.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29 (4): 537-554. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2020.1805589

Aranda, Salvador Maldonado. 2022. “‘Una tumba a donde llorar’: cuerpo, rituales y justicia en torno a la desaparición en México.” Dilemas: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 15: 431-454. https://doi.org/10.4322/dilemas.v15n2.45758

Armony, Ariel C. 2005. “Producing and Exporting State Terror: The Case of Argentina.” When States Kill: Latin America, the US, and Technologies of Terror, edited by CeciliaMenjívar and NéstorRodríguez, 305-334. https://doi.org/10.7560/706477-014

Brooks, Darío. 2022. “‘A Monterrey le llegó el día cero’: la grave crisis de falta de agua que vive la segunda ciudad más poblada de México.” BBC News Mundo, June 27. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-61917457

Carrión, Lydiette. 2018. La fosa de agua: desapariciones y feminicidios en el Río de Los Remedios. Mexico City: Debate.

Cordero, Natalia. 2019. “Mecanismo extraordinario de identificación forense, un camino para afrontar la crisis forense en México.” Animal Político, December 12. https://www.animalpolitico.com/res-publica/mecanismo-extraordinario-de-identificacion-forenseun-camino-para-afrontar-la-crisis-forense-en-mexico/

Cruz-Santiago, Arely. 2017. “Forensic Citizens: The Politics of Searching for Disappeared Persons in Mexico.” Doctoral Thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences and Health, Department of Geography, Durham University, Durham. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12315/

Davies, Thom. 2022. “Slow Violence and Toxic Geographies: ‘Out of Sight’ to Whom?” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 40 (2): 409-427. https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654419841063

Fieuw, Walter, MarcusFoth, and GlendaAmayo Caldwell. 2022. “Towards a Morethan-Human Approach to Smart and Sustainable Urban Development: Designing for Multispecies Justice.” Sustainability 14 (2): 948. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020948

García-Deister, Vivette and Lindsay A.Smith. 2020. “Migrant Flows and Necro-Sovereignty: The Itineraries of Bodies, Samples, and Data across the US-Mexico Borderlands.” BioSocieties 15 (3): 420-437. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-019-00166-4

García-Deister, Vivette and CarlosLopez-Beltrán. 2017. “ADN en un país de muertos. La genética forense como medio y remedio.” In Violencia y discurso, coordinated by MargaritaPalacios Sierra, 157-181. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).

García-Deister, Vivette and LindsaySmith. 2016. “Ensamblajes de la ciencia forense en América Latina.” In Aproximaciones a lo local y lo global: América Latina en la historia de la ciencia contemporánea, compiled by GiselaMateos and EdnaSuárez-Díaz, 269-300. Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Filosóficos, Políticos y Sociales Vicente Lombardo Toledano. https://www.centrolombardo.edu.mx/aproximaciones-a-lo-local-y-lo-global/

Gatti, Gabriel and DavidCasado-Neira. 2020. “Ecologies of Disappearance Today. Introduction.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29 (4): 501-505. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2021.1883571

Gatti, Gabriel, IgnacioIrazuzta, and MaríaMartínez. 2020. “Inverted Exception. Ideas for Thinking about the New Disappearances through Two Case Studies.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29 (4): 581-604. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2020.1839869

Guevara Muñoz, Laura Viviana. 2019. “Which Are the Worst Countries in Human Rights?” Latin American Post, January 23. https://latinamericanpost.com/25972-whichare-the-worst-countries-in-human-rights

Guglielmucci, Ana. 2020. “Necroscapes: The Political Life of Mutilated and Errant Bodies in the Rivers of Colombia.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 29 (4): 555-580. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2021.1885356

Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11cw25q

Hernández Castillo, Rosalva. 2019. “La antropología jurídica feminista y sus aportes al trabajo forense con familiares de desaparecidos: alianzas y colaboraciones con ‘Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte’.” Abya-Yala: Revista Sobre Acesso á Justiça e Direitos Nas Américas 3 (2): 94-119. https://doi.org/10.26512/abyayala.v3i2.23700

Isacson, Adam, AdrianaBeltrán, and MaureenMeyer. 2019. “There Is a Crisis at the U.S.-Mexico Border. But it’s Manageable.” WOLA (blog). April 4. https://www.wola.org/analysis/fix-us-mexico-border-humanitarian-crisis/

Martínez Mejía, Fátima Esther, and Mónica NataliaMartínez Mejía. 2022. “Los colectivos de víctimas y el acceso a la justicia en México.” Revista de Direito da Cidade 14 (1): 430-456. https://doi.org/10.12957/rdc.2022.64700

Mendoza, Breny. 2006. “Los fundamentos no democráticos de la democracia: un enunciado desde Latinoamérica pos occidental.” Revista Centroamericana de Ciencias Sociales (RCCS) 3 (2): 85-94. https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2658177

Meszaros Martin, Hannah. 2018. “‘Defoliating the World.’ Ecocide, Visual Evidence and ‘Earthly Memory’.” Third Text 32 (2-3): 230-253. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2018.1486526

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. CambridgeHarvard University Press.

Nkanga, Otobong. 2010. Fragilologist’s Predicament. Textile. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/series-fragilologist%E2%80%99spredicament

Olarte-Sierra, María Fernanda and TaniaPérez-Bustos. 2020. “Careful Speculations: Toward a Caring Science of Forensic Genetics in Colombia.” Feminist Studies 46 (1): 158-177. https://doi.org/10.1353/fem.2020.0003

Ortiz, Silvia. 2019. “Sobre La Búsqueda En PATROCINIO, Torreón Coahuila.” Presented at the En Presentación del proyecto Pedagogía Forense, EMAF, CDMX.

Pérez Rodríguez, Graciela. 2021. Extermination Sites in Tamaulipas from the Perspective of Citizen Action. Video. 69 min., October 14. Produced by Borderlands Technologies: Data, Practices, and Stories. School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCO24bNff0o

PérezRodríguez, Graciela, Sara López Cerón, and EvencioPérez Ruiz. 2020. “Protocolo estandarizado de búsqueda ciudadana en sitios de exterminio,” protocol presented at the Segundo Encuentro de Buscadoras/es México, March 7, Tlaxcala, Mexico. https://www.milynaliredcfc.org/protocolo-de-busqueda

Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2016. Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism. Durham; London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822373810

Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. 2017. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds. London: University of Minnesota Press.

Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2015. “Making Time for Soil: Technoscientific Futurity and the Pace of Care.” Social Studies of Science 45 (5): 691-716. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312715599851

Ramírez Uresti, Arlene. 2021. “Cambio climático y la migración que viene.” Forbes México, November 2. https://www.forbes.com.mx/red-forbes-cambio-climatico-y-la-migracionque-viene/

Robledo Silvestre, Carolina. 2019. “Peinar la historia a contrapelo: reflexiones en torno a la búsqueda y Exhumación de fosas comunes en México.” Encartes 2 (3): 13-42. https://doi.org/10.29340/en.v2n3.62

Roitman, Janet. 2013. Anti-Crisis. Durham; London: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822377436

Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2018. “Crisis Effects.” Cultural Anthropology 33 (4): 547-557. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca33.4.04

Segato, Rita Laura. [2006] 2013. La escritura en el cuerpo de las mujeres asesinadas en Ciudad Juárez: territorio, soberanía y crímenes de segundo Estado. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón. http://repositorio.ciem.ucr.ac.cr/jspui/handle/123456789/149

Smith, Lindsay A. 2017. “The Missing, the Martyred and the Disappeared: Global Networks, Technical Intensification and the End of Human Rights Genetics.” Social Studies of Science 47 (3): 398-416. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312716678489

Smith, Lindsay A. and VivetteGarcía-Deister. 2017. “Capturing Los Migrantes Desaparecidos: Crisis, Unknowability, and the Making of the Missing.” Perspectives on Science 25 (5): 680-697. https://doi.org/10.1162/POSC_a_00259

Torres-Martínez, María. 2020. “ADN Ciudadano: Autoorganización Forense y Tecnociencia Ciudadana En México.” Doctoral Thesis, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City. https://ru.dgb.unam.mx/handle/DGB_UNAM/TES01000805887

Tschakert, Petra. 2022. “More-than-Human Solidarity and Multispecies Justice in the Climate Crisis.” Environmental Politics 31 (2): 277-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2020.1853448

Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400873548

Villarreal Martínez, María Teresa. 2016. “Los colectivos de familiares de personas desaparecidas y la procuración de justicia.” Intersticios Sociales 11: 1-28. https://doi.org/10.55555/IS.11.94

Wagner, Sarah E. 2008. To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica’s Missing. Berkeley: University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520942622

Yusoff, Kathryn. 2018. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/9781452962054