Forced Disappearance as a Collective Cultural Trauma in the Ayotzinapa Movement

• Author: Tommaso Gravante
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20951773
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

87

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20951773

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 235, Vol. 47 No. 6, November 2020, 87–102

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20951773

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

Forced Disappearance as a Collective Cultural Trauma in

the Ayotzinapa Movement

by

Tommaso Gravante

The disappearance of 43 students of the teachers’ training college at Ayotzinapa in

2014 has inspired a broad social movement. Ethnographic work and interviews conducted

at several of the demonstrations to show solidarity with the parents of the students reveal

that their forced disappearance has been framed by participants as a collective cultural

trauma. The politicization of this trauma has led to a change in the relationship between

citizens and public institutions and produced a new social narrative.

La desaparición de 43 estudiantes de la escuela de formación de profesores en Ayotzinapa

en 2014 inspiró un amplio movimiento social. Trabajo etnográfico y entrevistas realizadas

durante varias de las manifestaciones para mostrar solidaridad con los padres de los estu-

diantes revelan que su desaparición forzada ha sido enmarcada por los participantes como

un trauma cultural colectivo. La politización de este trauma ha llevado a un cambio en la

relación entre los ciudadanos y las instituciones públicas y ha producido una nueva

na rrativa social.

Keywords: Victims’ movements, Cultural trauma, Forced disappearance, Emotions,

Violence

Forced disappearance has been used by various military dictatorships in

Latin America to instill terror in citizens and remove people believed to be

dangerous. In Mexico, although there has never been a military coup, there

have been serious violations (forced disappearance, torture, and other cruel,

inhumane, and degrading measures) by security institutions, paramilitary

groups, and criminal organizations since the student repression of 1968 and the

dirty war against the guerrillas (Cedillo and Herrera Calderón, 2012; Instituto

Belisario Domínguez, 2016; Open Society Foundations, 2016; CNDH, 2016;

GTDFI, 2015). Reports by the Ministry of Internal Security other organizations

have recorded more than 20,000 persons disappeared (CIDH, 2015; Open

Society Foundations, 2016; SEGOB, 2016).

Despite the fact that the frequency of forced disappearance in Mexico is sim-

ilar to that in countries that have undergone civil war and political violence

such as Syria and Pakistan (GTDFI, 2015), the response of Mexican civil society,

Tommaso Gravante is an associate researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarios

en Ciencias y Humanidades of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. His main research

topic is the role of emotions in protests. This article is based on the research that won the

International Sociological Association’s Seventh Worldwide Competition for Junior Sociologists

in 2018.

951773LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20951773LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESGravante / COLLECTIVE CULTURAL TRAUMA IN THE AYOTZINAPA MOVEMENT

research-article2020

88 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

in contrast to that in Guatemala, Argentina, and Chile, has been weak and inter-

mittent in the past decade. The recent National Survey of Organized Violence1

(Schedler, 2014) highlights this trend, showing that 89.4 percent of those inter-

viewed in 2013 had not taken part in any collective protest. In spite of the huge

marches organized by Javier Sicilia and his Movement for Justice with Peace

and Democracy in 2011 in solidarity with the victims of President Felipe

Calderón’s so-called War on Drugs (Azaola, 2012), 75 percent said that they had

no knowledge of the movement for the victims of disappearance.

On September 26, 2014, six deaths and the forced disappearance of 43 stu-

dents at the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Guerrero, one of the poorest states

in the country, produced a broad movement in solidarity with the families of

the victims the main focus of which was to present the missing students’ lives.

The response of Mexican society to the disappearance of the 43 students broke

the trend of inaction, resulting in a movement unprecedented for the country

(Sánchez and Reynoso, 2015; Concha, 2015). It has extensive participation by

citizens who are not attached to any consistently organized sector of social

movements or formal organizations. Data from the Laboratorio de Análisis de

Organizaciones e Movimientos Sociales of the Centro de Investigaciones en

Ciencias y Humanidades of the Universidad Autónoma de Mexico show that

after the incidents of September 2014 there was an increase in protest events,

with 47 percent (1,069 of 2,520) of the collective actions in all of 2014 taking

place after this date. Furthermore, there was an increase in protests in 2014 of

more than 120 percent compared with the annual average (1,979) for 2009–2013,

and participation by people who were not linked to a specific organization

almost doubled.

This raises the question what happened to generate such broad mobilization

throughout the country. To answer this question, we must first understand how

Mexican society framed the disappearance of the 43 students. My hypothesis is

that the Ayotzinapa events have produced a collective trauma. I will support

this hypothesis with Jeffrey Alexander’s (2002; 2004; 2016) proposal that a

social trauma is a result not of the event itself—in this case, the disappearance

of the 43 students—but of the cultural interpretation underlying collective pro-

cesses. Understanding how and why Mexican society constructed this cultural

trauma may help to explain why the forced disappearance of 43 students trig-

gered a huge wave of protest.

The article will be developed as follows: after a brief discussion of social

repression in Mexico and the escuelas normales rurales (rural teachers’ training

colleges), I will first analyze the way certain emotions make it possible to frame

the forced disappearance of the students as a collective cultural trauma.

Secondly, drawing on the literature on emotions and protest, I will examine the

politicization of the collective trauma that led to a change in the relationship

between citizens and public institutions. Finally, I will highlight the way the

spiral of signification that triggered the collective cultural trauma due to the

Ayotzinapa events has produced a new social narrative.

The analysis is based on a research design with two stages. The first is eth-

nographic work carried out over a year (September 2014–September 2015) on

demonstrations in Mexico City that enables us to understand the roles of indi-

vidual participants, organizations, and groups, how the different actors were