DigitalMemories

Museo Casa de la Memoria Indómita, Mexico City (Mexico)

Collective memory in the digital age The disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers college in Mexico prompted protests and put the human rights situation in the country into sharper focus. Over 40,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since 2006, yet it was the Ayotzinapa case that caught public attention, now Silvana Mandolessi is investigating the role of digital media in shaping collective memory of the case.

The disappearance of

43 Mexican students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers college in September 2014 attracted a lot of attention across the world, and their fate is still unclear. While violence is not uncommon in Mexico’s ongoing war on drugs, the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students struck a particular chord, both nationally and internationally. “It triggered a lot of protest around Mexico for several months, with people denouncing the situation. It also became a global event – people became increasingly aware of the situation of disappearances in Mexico. There have been more than 40,000 disappearances since 2006, but this was the first case that went global,” says Silvana Mandolessi, an Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Studies at KU Leuven in Belgium. As the Principal Investigator of the DigitalMemories project, Professor Mandolessi is investigating the role of digital media in shaping how this case has been perceived and remembered.

“One part of the project focuses on this case. We’re investigating the situation of disappearances in Mexico,” she explains.

Disappearances in Mexico Over the last ten years or so disappearances in Mexico have been committed not only by the State but also by organised crime This is distinct from the image of enforced disappearances, a crime which is traditionally thought of as being committed by the state, for example by the military dictatorship

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Footprints of Memory/Huellas de la memoria Collective Project / International Campaign Against Enforced Disappearance.

which ruled Argentina between 1976-83.

“So, situations where organised criminal groups are the perpetrators cannot be defined as enforced disappearances, but rather as disappearances,” outlines Professor Mandolessi. Researchers in the project are aiming to analyze the meaning of the involvement of organised crime and the state in these disappearances; the overall picture is very complex, as there are many cases in which local police collude with criminal organisations. “It’s very difficult because there is a deeply embedded culture of impunity in Mexico. There are also very different kinds of perpetrators and victims,” continues Professor Mandolessi. “For example, some migrants to the US have disappeared and people don’t know what happened, and there are also more conventional political disappearances committed by the state. We try to look at the situation from a legal, sociopolitical and historical perspective.”

in the public eye and putting the human rights situation in Mexico into sharper focus, something which Professor Mandolessi and her colleagues are now investigating. “We are interested in how digital activism works in this case, in order to understand in which way digital media and memory function today,” she explains. The project’s work centres on investigating how collective memory of an event – in this case the human rights violations committed against the Ayotzinapa students – has been affected by the growth of digital media. “We’re looking at the way in which people disseminate messages and participate in campaigns. Specific phrases are associated with digital activism and political representation in the digital age, which differ from those used in collective campaigns in the past,” says Professor Mandolessi. “This affects the way we remember the event itself.”

There have been more than 40,000 disappearances in Mexico since 2006, and while many earlier cases faded from the collective memory relatively quickly,

This is further complicated in the Ayotzinapa case by the fact that the fate of the students is still unclear, even with all the tools of modern technology at our disposal. While in the digital age we are often overloaded with information on all manner of topics, there is still a gap in our understanding of what happens in disappearance cases, raising some important questions. “How does the omission of information affect the representations that are created around the case?” asks Professor Mandolessi.”

The war on drugs itself officially began in 2006, when the Mexican military was deployed to fight drug trafficking organisations and engage in public security functions. These are long-standing problems however, and human rights organisations have since documented the involvement of State forces in enforced disappearances. “One of the slogans that became prominent in the protest was - ‘it was the state’. One part of our research regarding the legal perspective is; to what extent is the state responsible for crimes committed by organised crime?” asks Professor Mandolessi. “There are some cases where the state is directly responsible, because it was a perpetrator and it was involved in the disappearances. But what happens in cases where disappearances are committed by agents of organised crime?”

The Ayotzinapa case holds particular interest in this respect, as it was one of the first to attract global attention. Digital media played an important role in keeping the case

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the Ayotzinapa case remains extremely prominent, with online activism and images of the disappeared helping to keep it in the public consciousness. There are certain differences here with how earlier disappearance cases were represented and remembered. “The way in which people engage, the images that

terms of how victims are represented. “There is a lot of protest art and art installations about the 43 students. For example there is a facial recognition test, where a camera tests to what extent your face matches those of the students,” outlines Professor Mandolessi.

“These kinds of objects are mixed up in an

The disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students triggered a lot of protest around Mexico for several months, with people denouncing the situation. It also became a global event – people became increasingly aware of the situation of disappearances in Mexico. are used and the way in which the discourses are constructed are very different,” says Professor Mandolessi. For example, while the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo also used images of their missing sons and daughters to protest about disappearances during Argentina’s dictatorship, the onset of the digital age has opened up new possibilities in

intersection of our digital paradigms.”

This particular example also serves to bring home any personal similarities and make people feel more closely connected to the students themselves. Digital activism, for example through online campaigns or petitions, also deepens engagement and enables the personalisation of demands, even among

43 / Francisco Mata Rosas – Felipe Victoriano. The picture from the book “43” can be accessed at this link: http://www.casadelibrosabiertos.uam.mx/contenido/contenido/Libroelectronico/flip/43/

www.euresearcher.com

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DIGITALMEMORIES We are all Ayotzinapa: The role of Digital Media in the Shaping of Transnational Memories on Disappearance

Project Objectives

The main objective of the project is to provide a theoretical model for analyzing digital memory. The model will contribute to answering to the question of how new media forge new instruments for fighting against violations of human rights and will contribute to understanding the dynamics of networked social movements in the digital age.

Project Funding

Funded under: H2020-EU.1.1.

• Overall budget: € 1 444 125 ERC ‘Starting Grant’ Programme: Horizon 2020 / Call: ERC-2015-STG / ERC project number: 677955 / From 01.07.2016 to 30.06.2021 / Based at: KU Leuven (Belgium)

Contact Details

Project Coordinator, Silvana Mandolessi Assistant Professor Cultural Studies Department of Literary Theory and Cultural Studies Blijde-Inkomststraat 21-3311 (3000) Leuven - Belgium T: +32 16 32 48 32 E: silvana.mandolessi@kuleuven.be W: http://digitalmemories.be W: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/ rcn/204436/factsheet/en Silvana Mandolessi

Archivo Provincial de la Memoria, Córdoba (Argentina).

people and communities far removed from the actual case. “This is expressed in sentences like ‘we are all Ayotzinapa’ for example, a paradigmatic slogan to show solidarity in global connective movements. I want to understand whether this is useful or effective with respect to today’s concerns. I’m also interested in how this affects whether an event is remembered by someone in a country far away from Mexico,” says Professor Mandolessi.

Forensic Architecture

Silvana Mandolessi is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at the KU Leuven. She is the co-editor of El pasado inasequible (Eudeba 2018) and the special issue Transnational Memory in the Hispanic World (European Review 2014) and numerous articles on Latin American collective memory, literature and culture.

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These objects and representations are central to the collective memory of the case, and also to building a clearer picture of what actually happened to the students. The work of Forensic Architecture, a research agency based in London, is of great interest in this respect. “What Forensic Architecture do is combine digital techniques to construct evidence around these cases, to reconstruct the scene,” outlines Professor Mandolessi. The agency has reconstructed the abduction of the students in an interactive platform, by which different explanations and theories around the event can be assessed; this could eventually be used as evidence in a trial, while Professor Mandolessi says it is also important in terms of public memory. “It contributes to keeping the case alive,” she points out. “Forensic architecture have organised all this information in a new platform in which we can explore what happened, looking at different moments, different factors, and different versions of events.”

The focus of the project for the moment however is on developing a theoretical model to analyse the digital objects that help shape transnational memories on disappearances. Another area of interest is in reflecting theoretically on how collective memory has changed under the impact of digital media. “Many people today speak about connected memory instead of collective memory,” says Professor Mandolessi. Communities can come together to campaign about human rights violations without necessarily needing to be in close geographical proximity, or share a common history, which is an important consideration in Professor Mandolessi’s research. “The way in which we define a collective or community is essential to understanding what happens with collective memory in today’s connected age,” she says.

Ilustradores con Ayotzinapa, Collective project. (http://ilustradoresconayotzinapa.tumblr.com)

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