The Cuerpo-Territorio of Displacement: A Decolonial Feminist Geopolitics of Re-Existencia

ABSTRACT

In this article we examine the root causes and consequences of forced displacement in Guerrero, Mexico. Drawing upon Latin American and Caribbean decolonial feminist thought, we use ‘cuerpo-territorio’ (body-territory) as a lens for understanding multiscalar violence in the region. This centres the experiences of women and children, key figures both in the (re)production of embodied, communal, and territorial ties and in the phenomenon of forced displacement. Their testimonials complicate understandings of internal migration in Mexico and asylum-seeking in the US, disrupting typical re/victimising narratives while acknowledging the interconnected, intimate-global violences these women and youth often face. In connection with ‘cuerpo-territorio’, we incorporate the decolonial concept of ‘re-existencia’ (re-existence) to show how those suffering displacement actively transform possibilities for being-in-the-world. In conversation with feminist geographic work on oppositional resistance, resilience, and re-working, we explain ‘re-existencia’ as solidarity practices that move beyond mere survival. Instead, these practices draw on longstanding indigenous ways of being to infuse new life into territories dispossessed through violence. This article aims to deepen dialogue with feminist geographic literatures outside of the Anglo-centric canon, and calls for greater attention to Latin American and Caribbean decolonial epistemologies in analyses of displacement in the Americas.

Acknowledgment

This article is based on an ongoing binational study “Geographies of Displacement: Mexican Migrant/Refugee Children and Youth in the Mexico-United States Borderlands,” funded by grants from the ConTex Collaborative Research Program (a joint initiative of The University of Texas System and Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology [Conacyt]) and from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Program (HEGS) (Award #1951772). We also are grateful for support provided by the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS) and the College of Liberal Arts (COLA) at the University of Texas at Austin; and the Observatorio de Investigación con las Infancias (ODIIN) at the Colegio de Sonora (Colson). Niño-Vega acknowledges Conacyt grant #568498, “Dinámicas de Producción y Reproducción de las Violencias: Experiencias de Vida de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes en Sonora” that supported her participation in this study. Torres wishes to the thank the Fulbright US Scholar COMEXUS García Robles program, and host institution at the Departamento de Investigaciones Educativa at el Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (CINVESTAV) in Mexico City, for making this binational research collaboration possible. This research would not have been possible without the generous collaboration of Casa de la Misericordia y de Todas las Naciones. Thanks are due to Alexandra Lamiña and Mahboob Safaei Mehr for preparing the map for this article. Paula de la Cruz-Fernández and her bilingual edita.us team provided crucial translating and editing assistance throughout the development of this manuscript. We appreciate the important contributions to fieldwork by post-doctoral researchers Amy Thompson and Emilio Alberto López Reyes, and research assistants Jorge Choy, Alma Reynoso Gómez, Jonathan Eduardo Verdugo Doumerc, and Paulina Rojas. Finally, we benefitted greatly from the generous support and insightful feedback of guest editors Banu Görkariksel and Sunčana Laketa, as well as from the other contributing authors in this special issue.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms in order to protect the identity of our informants.

2. The data available at the national level confirms this trend at the local level: according to the Etellekt Report on Political Violence in Mexico (2018), the total number of homicides committed during the 2021 electoral campaign was 89 murders of politicians, compared to 118 in 2018 (Etellekt, 2018, 2021).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1951772]