Abstract
De Marinis focuses on social research in contexts immersed in terror and human rights violations, the testimonial traces created between victims’ testimonies and researchers, and the way emotions circulate through victims’ testimonies and public denunciations. De Marinis reflects on the notion of political-affective communities based on a research with displaced indigenous Triqui people in Oaxaca, Mexico. She highlights the affections provoked by terror and the way in which emotions were enacted through performative acts to claim their humanity and dignity in spaces where they have been historically excluded. Through creating new narratives based on their own traditional knowledge and memories, Triqui women and men broadened traditional word-centered testimonies by including silence and culturally diverse meanings of emotions, affects, and justice.
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Notes
- 1.
The Triqui region is located in the northeast area of the state of Oaxaca, in the Mixtec region . Its three divisions are the Upper Triqui, centered in Chicahuaxtla, Middle Triqui, centered in Itunyoso, and the Lower Triqui, centered in San Juan Copala. The Lower Triqui has a population of around 13,000 people living in more than 30 communities.
- 2.
The building of autonomous municipalities began in Chiapas with the armed uprising and repossession of territory launched by an indigenous movement that in 1994 coalesced into the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) . These self-defined autonomous municipalities are part of the demands of indigenous people to the right to organize following ways of governing and imparting justice decided by the people. For this reason, the autonomy movement does not recognize the official municipalities whose political and governmental administration is controlled by the state.
- 3.
With a team of researchers and students from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco campus, we gave a short course on autonomy to the bilingual primary schoolteachers in San Juan Copala. We also lent support to the “Voice that Breaks the Silence ” community radio station, together with the CACTUS civil organization, led by Beatriz Cariño, who was murdered in San Juan Copala in April 2010.
- 4.
Following the advent of the MULT in the early 1980s, a number of outside actors, including activists, lawyers, and others, undertook solidarity activities in the region. Many activists, coming from left-leaning movements and organizations of victims of state repression, sympathized with the budding autonomy movement in 2006.
- 5.
The ethnographical work occurred in two spaces. In the beginning, it focused on the voices and political acts of the women at the sit-in in the city of Oaxaca held by displaced families. I worked there continuously from August to December 2010 and sporadically during the first seven months of 2011. In 2010, I also undertook visits to displaced families in other communities in the region and then took up permanent residence in the communities from January to July 2011.
- 6.
Fifteen testimonies in audio-visual format were gathered at the sit-in in the city of Oaxaca and from people displaced to communities surronding Copala. Many transcribed testimonies figured in the case before the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (IAHRC) and were published in the book “A solas contra el enemigo” [Alone Against the Enemy] (2011). Marisa Villarreal and David Cilia, human rights activists, helped to gather testimonies. Meztli Yoalli Aguilera was in charge of post-production of the audio-visual material. These became important materials for purposes of denouncement and dissemination, to seek precautionary measures from the IAHRC , and for presentation to Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) . An example of the responses to the women’s demands before these bodies was the granting of precautionary measures by the IAHRC and subsequent follow-up. Similarly, the CNDH issued a statement with recommendations for pertinent government offices in May 2011. Available at http://www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/fuentes/documentos/Recomendaciones/2011/REC_2011_026.pdf. Last accessed: January 2017.
- 7.
Jimeno explores the notion of political-affective communities (2007) and emotional communities in several articles reviewed for this chapter (2011, 2015). I am particularly interested in showing the interweaving between the political dimensions and the affections; for this reason I use the notion of political-affective communities .
- 8.
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De Marinis, N. (2018). Political-Affective Intersections: Testimonial Traces Among Forcibly Displaced Indigenous People of Oaxaca, Mexico. In: Macleod, M., De Marinis, N. (eds) Resisting Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66317-3_7
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