Archiving from loss: Militarization of the territory and political economy of the intermittent disappearances of girls and adolescents

Abstract

In the midst of a growing militarization of the Mexican territory, old forms of violence intersect with totally unprecedented forms, such as the intermittent disappearance of girls and adolescents, which is a problem that is expanding in different areas of the country and that is inserted in a global reconfiguration of violence against women and feminized bodies (Federici, 2010; Gago, 2019). In this article, on the one hand, thanks to a documentary review of feminist archives, we describe the relationship between the growing militarization of the territory and the different types of femicide violence. On the other, through a qualitative investigation carried out between Mexico City and the state of Guerrero, we build useful feminist archives to document and address unprecedented forms of femicide violence - such as intermittent disappearances - linked to the creation of a political economy of disappearance based on the dispossession of the bodies of girls and adolescents for the accumulation of economic capital and the reinforcement of the status of hegemonic masculinities by criminal organizations or state agents.