Abstract
Through an ethnographic examination of the tension between the practice and politics of mobility, this article examines the movement of bodies as scientific objects and sociopolitical signposts for both sovereignty and identity. In particular, we explore the following paradox: living migrants are seen as dangerous bodies and political threats while dead bodies, specifically, the objects and data generated from their remains make multiple, socially valued migrations across the political space of the border. We argue that scientific objects flow because these objects, not the people, become the currency of necro-sovereignty, a nationalistic currency premised on death and exercised via appeals to human identification as a form of family reunification and the return of bodies-out-of-place to their ‘correct’ locations. Exploration of this paradox also shows that although individuation is the key goal of forensic science, collective identities, including race, class, gender, and nationality, become obligatory passage points in the path toward individuation.
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Notes
But see Francisco Cantú for a critique of the myriad dehumanizing metaphors that many border analyses reproduce, including for example, that “migrants engage Border Patrol “trackers” in a “cat-and-mouse game” with deadly consequences” (Cantú 2018, p. 109).
The initiative did not have a proper name. The official documents indicate only that it was a specific collaborative agreement, or “Convenio Específico de Colaboración.” We have used the acronym CEC to name the initiative for brevity and clarity.
This physical detachment from the Tamaulipas victims is also a political detachment, for the CEC initiative operated under the proviso that identifying UBCs was caring for them by restoring their identity, a practice of humanitarian genetics. But CEC’s purpose was to identify Mexican citizens who had died ‘of exposure’ in the desert, not mass murdered by drug lords. In contrast, most of the migrants murdered on Mexican soil in the Tamaulipas massacres were Central Americans. Setting in motion an identification initiative for these foreign victims required a complex set of negotiations involving the Mexican state (who opposed at first), the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), a score of NGOs, and regional governments (Smith and García-Deister 2017).
Yet the conditions in which Central American migrants are found on Mexican soil (dismembered by narcos), and UBCs are found in the United States (mutilated by hungry turkey vultures in the desert) are not dissimilar. By the same token, identification of both types of victims face comparable hurdles: states that expel their nationals usually do not keep proper records of them, and remains must be subjected to similar classificatory and forensic practices in order to obtain information useful for identification.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Wenner Gren Foundation Collaborative Research Grant. We extend our thanks to Mexico City’s INCIFO and Tribunal Superior de Justicia, and to the forensic scientists working on both sides of the border who discussed their work with us for the purpose of this research. We are also grateful for the insightful recommendations offered by anonymous referees.
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García-Deister, V., Smith, L.A. Migrant flows and necro-sovereignty: the itineraries of bodies, samples, and data across the US-Mexico borderlands. BioSocieties 15, 420–437 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-019-00166-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-019-00166-4