Search Results

The first chapter underscores the counter-archival work carried out by the Vicaría de la Solidaridad in the composition of the photographic archive of the detained-disappeared. The chapter also considers the different transformations, displacements, and disseminations endured by the portraits of the detained-disappeared. It considers the critical work of Walter Benjamin, Diana Taylor, and Ann Stoler. The analysis contemplates both the composition of the photographic archive of the portraits and the archive’s dissemination in the public space. I consider the Vicaría’s publications Solidaridad (a biweekly newsletter), Separata Solidaridad (a special issue that focused on particular matters also considered in Solidaridad), and the seven-volume book series ¿Dónde están? (1978–1979). I suggest that the visual representation of the crime of forced disappearances, which took shape with the public display of the portraits, was consolidated in these Vicaría publications, above all in ¿Dónde están? I also study artistic photographic practices devised to display and disseminate these photographic portraits in the public space. The chapter begins and ends with a consideration of Hernán Parada’s action “Obrabierta A” (1974–present), in particular one of its iterations in which the artist uses a photocopied mask of his brother, Alejandro Parada, detained and disappeared since July 1974.

This chapter establishes a holistic approach to understanding disappearances in post-transition countries. It considers the historical repertoires of disappearance that emerge during periods of authoritarian rule and armed conflict. It further argues that four logics behind disappearances in those situations continue into the post-transition. These include the clandestine logic, or hiding crimes against humanity from domestic and international scrutiny. Those disappearances also tend to involve marginalised populations; a ‘disposable people’ logic creates framing devices that transform citizens into those without rights or visibility. A political-economy logic emerges with cheap and exploitable workers, who are disappeared when their labour utility is exhausted; those with economic and political power commit these atrocities with impunity. The logic of ambiguous loss becomes a form of social control. Grieving processes are blocked when relatives lack certainty that the person is gone. They further lack the necessary evidence of death and wrongdoing to pursue redress. These four logics together, the project contends, explain why disappearances previously studied only in authoritarian or armed conflict contexts prevail also in the post-transition.

Lulú Herrera tells her story of the search for her disappeared husband, eight-year-old son, and two brothers-in-law. In the process, Herrera discovered others searching for the disappeared and with them she became a founding member of the organisation Forces United for Our Disappeared in Coahuila, Mexico. She realised how invisible these disappearances are even when the numbers are so high. Indeed, they were unknown to her before her own life was transformed by disappearance. She was forced to become a different person to be able to carry out the search. A search that continues for her family members and those of others in Coahuila.

The visual image is a powerful tool for mobilisation. This chapter identifies four key aspects behind its potency, each illustrated with contemporary and historical examples. First, the ‘medium is the message’ asserts that the photograph itself undermines the logic of the disappeared as ‘disposable peoples’. To be photographed is to be important, worth recording. The photo creates an emotional bond as the observer looks into the eyes of the missing person, a deep feeling, a sense of knowing. Second, ‘seeing is believing’: the visual image of the disappeared and disappearances validate, inform, confirm, and produce an inventory of disappearance. It thus challenges denial of the phenomenon. Third, the ‘disruption and emptiness’ of disappearance are marked by visual images. Chairs without students, bicycles without riders, silhouettes, photographs of family members who did not return home, appear in public spaces shocking out of complacency the false sense of safety disappearance happens to others – a kind of distancing that blames the victims for their own disappearance. Fourth, the visual image is a ‘weapon of the weak’, easy and inexpensive to reproduce and distribute widely -- locally and internationally -- to urge societies to see, to care, to help. The powerful tool of visual image is thus available to even the most marginalised in society to promote solidarity among victims and within broader, including international, communities. Through this tool, a deep personal story of loss is told that is shown to be not an isolated event, but a broader phenomenon. Visual image has the potential to correct misunderstanding of disappearances and to mobilise behind the demand for ‘never again’.

In this chapter, Volga de Pina analyses the principal characteristics of the search mechanism created in Mexico with the adoption of the 2017 General Law of Forced Disappearance of Persons, Disappearance committed by Private Parties, and the National System of Search for Persons. The 2017 General Law was the result of a long lobbying process by networks of relatives of disappeared persons, Mexican non-governmental organisations, experts, and international agencies, that participated directly in defining its contents. The model that emerged separates the search from criminal investigation and places emphasis on locating disappeared persons, the main priority of the relatives. With this mechanism, the state’s obligations related to search are widened. To accomplish that goal, new definitions of disappeared and missing persons, a National Search Commission and local commissions in thirty-two states in the country, and specific tools and coordination systems were developed. The design emerged directly out of relatives’ experiences in searching for their family members. The observations that de Pina makes about the process is based on her participation in the discussion of the General Law and her experiences as a member of the Council of Citizens who advised and supervised the mechanism.

John Thelwall and William Godwin are the two highest-profile examples of ‘usual’ and ‘unusual’ suspects from the 1790s. Their lives clearly reveal the phenomenon of bifurcated biography characteristic of persons active in the pamphlet wars of the time, moving from fame to obscurity. Both were involved in the Treason Trials of 1794 and the effects of the Gagging Acts of 1795. They are analogues to the modern political phenomenon of ‘disappeared’ persons. Thelwall retreated from political writing and speaking, seeking relief in poetry, travel writing, and elocutionary lessons. Godwin was the preferred target for ‘hegemonic’ attacks on free-thinking enthusiasm for cultural reformation in Britain; he sought refuge in anonymous publication for nearly fifteen years after the turn of the century. His defense of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life backfired, destroying her reputation for over a century. His attempt to answer Malthus’s Essay on Population—which was originally motivated against Godwin’s perfectibilian theories—was similarly unsuccessful.

This chapter analyzes the role of charismatic and expert voice in articulating the message of human rights campaigns. Both collective and individual voice are considered. The chapter profiles the heroic presence of Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Argentina's Mothers of the Disappeared. It discusses Doctors Without Borders, Amartya Sen, and Paul Farmer as witnesses and experts. These leaders are contrasted with insufficient use of voice in American campaigns against the death penalty.

With the fall of the dictatorship at the end of 1983, Argentines embarked on a three-decade search for answers and justice. All the same, the aftermath of military rule in Argentina did not wipe the slate clean on human rights for the new government of President Raúl Alfonsín. Elected on his reputation as a human rights lawyer, Alfonsín faced immediate intransigence from military officers determined to maintain their failed illusion of a dictatorship in defence of human rights. There was a rapid and extensive creation of human rights agencies. The new bureaucracy was designed to erase the legacies of military rule while creating a culture of human rights that celebrated the victory over dictatorship-era abuses. Argentines were hopeful of swift justice and punishment for newly ousted military leaders. It came, but only in part. In conjunction with shifts in domestic policy, the Alfonsín administration quickly set about making Argentina an international leader on human rights, establishing mandates and deadlines for results that were impossibly optimistic. Faced with a barrage of foreign pressures to make the disappeared appear, the new government’s record was mixed.

This chapter explores a set of visual representations deployed by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP),the now iconic women-led organization that draws attention to the enforced disappearances of Muslim men, judged “anti-nationals” en masse by the Indian state. The APDP members utilize a performative repertoire in their public protests, such as recognizable iconography—“branding” the organization into the public eye through the use of badges, headscarves, and banners; and the insistence that “This is Not a Performance (tamasha)!” The chapter looks at some graphic and cinematic practices that have accreted around the APDP's protests, placing this range of countervisual practices against the scopic regime of the Indian state.