Contesting Mexico’s Necropolitics: Necrogovernance and Subversive Necropower in Two Cases

• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975003
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Olof Ohlson
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20975003

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 236, Vol. 48 No. 1, January 2021, 245–259

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975003

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

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Contesting Mexico’s Necropolitics

Necrogovernance and Subversive Necropower in Two Cases

by

Olof Ohlson

Mexico’s contentious necropolitics see different stakeholders involved in political

struggles for control over the dead. The families of victims of state and corporate violence

protest state necrogovernance and corporate necropower, the power to dictate the circum-

stances of citizens’ and workers’ lives and deaths. Two case studies show how the state and

corporations deploy the criminal technique of disappearing bodies as a means of social

control and rendering workers expendable and sometimes killable. Social movements

counter this with a determined struggle to restore a sense of worth to the victims of vio-

lence through public mourning. Their repertoire of collective action has created a subver-

sive necropower that challenges both necrogovernance and corporate necropower.

La contenciosa necropolítica de México involucra a distintos grupos de interés que

participan en la contienda política por el control de los muertos. Las familias de las vícti-

mas de la violencia de Estado y corporativa protestan contra la necrogobernanza estatal y

la necropotencia corporativa, y du poder de dictaminar las circunstancias de vida y muerte

de los ciudadanos y trabajadores. Dos estudios de caso muestran cómo el Estado y las

corporaciones despliegan la técnica criminal de desaparecer los cuerpos como un medio de

control social que hace a los trabajadores prescindibles y a veces matables. Los movimien-

tos sociales responden con una lucha decidida por restaurar un sentido de valor para las

víctimas de la violencia a través del duelo público. Su repertorio de acción colectiva ha

creado una necropotencia subversiva que desafía tanto a la necrogobernanza como a la

necropotencia corporativa.

Keywords: Mexico, Necropolitics, Necropower, Disappearance, Activism

“We’ve come to this ninth commemoration to honor our dead. They all

belong to us, not to the companies or Grupo México or the government. They

are all ours. We honor our dead,” Doña Margarita, the mother of a miner who

died in an explosion in Pasta de Conchos, Coahuila, in 2006, proclaimed

(speech, Mexico City, February 19, 2015). A member of the Organización Familia

Pasta de Conchos (the Organization for the Pasta de Conchos Families—OFPC),

which is fighting for the right to bury members’ lost loved ones, she was speak-

ing before a small crowd of mourners performing an annual protest and

remembrance ceremony. Among them were members of the Padres y Madres

Olof Ohlson holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Edinburgh University. His dissertation,

“The Political Afterlives of Mexico’s Dead and Disappeared” (2020), explores how relatives of

victims of violence sustain their political afterlives to fight state-sponsored necrogovernance and

criminal violence.

975003LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20975003Latin American PerspectivesOhlson / Contesting Mexico’s Necropolitics

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