Paper Short Abstract:

In normal cases, Mexico's Day of the Dead helps transforming grief into a cheerful feast. But the nation also has tens of thousands of disappeared: where do they belong? This presentation shows how the disappeared come with contentious necrotaboos, a new material culture, and their own rites.

Paper Abstract:

Based on field work with relatives of disappeared people in Mexico and social movements campaigning for their rights, I seek to show in this presentation that Mexico's cheerful and celebrated ritual festivity the Day of the Dead come with certain forms of exclusion and necrotaboos. In normal circumstances, the Day of the Dead is part of transforming grief into a cheerful feast, but this is different in cases of those who have not been burried properly. Their surviving family have ambiguous and conflicting attitudes to whether or not their missing should be included in the celebration or not, since the disappeared are often held to still be alive by their family members. This is especially so with well-known cases of disappeared people who might be included in the holiday's public and often politically spicy altars or poems by others. There is no Day of the Disappeared, after all, so where do they belong in Mexico's otherwise rich necro-sociality? As it turns out, a new material culture is being created at new subversive and often informal memorial sites outside of the Day of the Dead, often ritualized around the International Day of the Disappeared or other dates of importance. The disappeared demand their own rites, material culture, and places, devoteed only to them and their unique predicaments, and where their political afterlives can better thrive.