AbstractThis article shows how vulnerable communities use Mexico's Day of the Dead for social justice activism. Activists sustain what I call the 'political afterlives' of their victims through street altars and dark humour. I analyse this as a 'necrosocial repertoire of contention'. The Day of the Dead can play an important role in human rights advocacy by insisting that the marginalised dead be honoured and cared for. However, disappeared people pose a challenge to Mexico's horizontal, or popular, ethics of commemoration and illustrate what I call 'necrotaboos', with new problems for the nation's inclusive spirit of commemorating the dead.
Mexico's contentious necropolitics see different stakeholders involved in political struggles for control over the dead. The families of victims of state and corporate violence protest state necrogovernance and corporate necropower, the power to dictate the circumstances of citizens' and workers' lives and deaths. Two case studies show how the state and corporations deploy the criminal technique of disappearing bodies as a means of social control and rendering workers expendable and sometimes killable. Social movements counter this with a determined struggle to restore a sense of worth to the victims of violence through public mourning. Their repertoire of collective action has created a subversive necropower that challenges both necrogovernance and corporate necropower. La contenciosa necropolítica de México involucra a distintos grupos de interés que participan en la contienda política por el control de los muertos. Las familias de las víctimas de la violencia de Estado y corporativa protestan contra la necrogobernanza estatal y la necropotencia corporativa, y du poder de dictaminar las circunstancias de vida y muerte de los ciudadanos y trabajadores. Dos estudios de caso muestran cómo el Estado y las corporaciones despliegan la técnica criminal de desaparecer los cuerpos como un medio de control social que hace a los trabajadores prescindibles y a veces matables. Los movimientos sociales responden con una lucha decidida por restaurar un sentido de valor para las víctimas de la violencia a través del duelo público. Su repertorio de acción colectiva ha creado una necropotencia subversiva que desafía tanto a la necrogobernanza como a la necropotencia corporativa.
Introduction: Political ethnography as a form of engagement -- Who owns the dead? -- The people say, the government obey -- Protest caravans -- Even if it's the last thing I'll do -- Mexico's rebellious dead -- The necrographies at Estela de Luz -- Conclusion: The rebellious subject.
