Collective memory as Indigenous spatial resistance: Witnessing after the Massacre of Nochixtlán

Keywords: Mixtec, Mexico, Spatial Resistance, Indigenous Geographies
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 45

Abstract

On June 19, 2016 a violent conflict erupted in the Mixteca Alta region of Oaxaca, Mexico in which the Mexican Federal Preventive Police (FPP) attacked teachers of the Sección 22 union, Mixtec community members, and Mixtec peoples in the Nochixtlán District. This conflict, now regarded as the Nochixtlán Massacre of 2016, occurred within a hyper militarized and racialized landscape which the FPP had occupied for decades. During the Nochixtlán conflict Mixtec community members expelled the FPP, and as I argue in this paper, they also engaged in another form of spatial resistance that renegotiated their former militarized landscapes. Witnesses of the massacre transmitted social memory through technologies of memory production, such as imagery, oral testimony, and monuments. By using ethnographic interviews, photography of murals depicting the massacre, and archival documents, I demonstrate how communities engage in spatial resistance through collective memory that shapes and acts upon the geographies of the Mixteca Alta. I conclude that community- driven power to renegotiate militarized territories and assert agency over remaking landscapes exemplifies Mixteca Alta geographies not as static and subjugated but rather as emancipatory. Through memory production, members engage in making spaces of resistance that provide new possibilities for Mixtec dignity after the Massacre of Nochixtlán.