“Searching, we found ourselves”: the search for the disappeared and the government of victimhood in contemporary Mexico

Since 2006, over 120,000 people have disappeared in the context of Mexico’s “war on drugs”, a militarised counternarcotics strategy that has unleashed a spiral of deadly violence and gross human rights violations. The situation has pitched tens of thousands of families into a desperate search for their missing loved ones. Many relatives have mobilised into “search collectives” (colectivos de búsqueda), small organisations that carry out citizen searches for the missing and petition authorities to find them and guarantee truth and justice. This thesis investigates the bureaucratic, political and social life of the “victim” category through the vantage point of relatives of the disappeared, legally considered secondary victims of enforced disappearance. It documents the ways in which it is mobilised by the state to manage the claims and suffering of the relatives of the disappeared, and how, in turn, relatives inhabit and interact with it. Victimhood has the potential to help relatives make sense of their experiences and their new individual and social identities. The thesis argues, however, that the label is not neutral or objective but rather a highly contested —and historically contingent— category that is specifically and locally produced through everyday interactions. It also argues that searchers inhabit the victim identity in complicated and conflicted ways. They draw on it wittingly to advance certain claims and access resources, but are also critical of it, with some rejecting it outright. The thesis argues that the label both opens up and closes down ways of acting and being. For example, it shows that “victim” is an activist identity that can ignite collective action, foster solidarity, and contest dominant state narratives about violence. On the other hand, it demonstrates that the victim label is a bureaucratic category that disciplines the ways in which sufferers mobilise and make political claims. Moreover, it illustrates how the language of victimhood articulates expectations, hierarchies, and emotional scripts around how people affected by violence relate to victim support institutions and existing forms of redress.