By: Aída Hernández Castillo

The term “genocide of the poor” is a concept that don José Dolores Suazo, of the Committee of Disappeared Migrants from the Center of Honduras (Cofamicenh), has been proposing in various public spaces, expanding the use of the legal concept of genocide, in order to point out the direct or indirect responsibility of the states in the continuance of a policy of death that disappears, massacres and mutilates the bodies of poor people on the continent. Based on deep knowledge of migrant massacres, like the one in Cadereyta, Nuevo León, where they murdered his brother Mauricio Suazo on May 13, 2012, don José Dolores argues that it’s about a hate crime that seeks to totally or partially destroy an ethno-racial group: poor and racialized migrants.

Last June 11 in the discussion Lives in search: disappearance and struggles for justice”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3toVSgnJl4) the reflections of don José Dolores joined the voices of Diana Gómez, of Sons and Daughters for Memory and Against Impunity in Colombia; Angélica Rodríguez Monroy, of Returning to Casa Morelos; Vanesa Orieta, militant against State repression in Argentina, and Priscila Sette, an activist of the Cree people against the disappearance of indigenous women in Canada. From different geographic contexts, these men and women, who have suffered the torture that having a loved one disappeared implies, coincided in rejecting the legal classification that differentiates forced disappearance from the disappearance by individuals. It was argued that this dichotomy makes invisible the responsibilities that the States always have, either by omission or by direct participation in the disappearance of people. When there are contexts of State impunity and complicity, all disappearances are forced, participants argued. These are imbedded theorizations that emerge from their experiences and knowledge looking for their loved ones and demanding justice for all the disappeared.

The discussion began joining their voices in the demand for the appearance alive of the Yaqui leader Tomás Rojo, disappeared since last May 27 in the town of Vícam, Sonora. [1] Tomás, like hundreds of disappeared indigenous people on the continent, had led the struggle of his peoples in defense of the territory against construction of the Independence Aqueduct that would affect the reservoirs that supply the Yaqui peoples. We also remembered our compañera of Ciesas-Northeast, Gisela Mayela Álvarez, who disappeared 10 months ago in Monterrey, Nuevo León.

With the slogan “We want them alive,” these activists shared experiences and theorizations. Despite differences in national contexts, the testimonies presented have in common the use of forced disappearance as a crime against humanity that is mostly perpetrated against young, poor and racialized people, in contexts of state impunity, sometimes on the part of security forces or in complicity and acquiescence with the perpetrators. In Central America, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia, the use of forced disappearance against political activists during the “dirty wars” and internal armed conflicts, and the decades of impunity around them, created the cultural climate that made the continuity of this practice possible in times of so-called “democracies.”

The 5,000 Native American women who disappeared in Canada; the more than 200,000 migrants disappeared in Mexico; the 100,000 disappeared in Colombia, 87 of them in recent weeks, within the framework of the national strike in that country; Luciano Arruga and the hundreds of young people disappeared or murdered by Argentine police; the more than 80,000 disappeared in Mexico, including the 201 that still wait to be identified in the graves of Jojutla and Telecingo (https://www.jornada.com.mx/2020/ 08/09/opinion/015a1pol), have in common having been treated as lives that don’t matter, stigmatized and criminalized by a racist system in order to justify State impunity and society’s indifference. The voices of don Lolo, Angélica, Diana, Vanesa and Priscila, with the thousands of relatives of the disappeared in the Americas, remind us that as long as they don’t return to their homes alive, no country on this continent can be considered fully democratic.

[1] Tomás Rojo disappeared on May 27, 2021. A body was found several weeks later and recently identified as his.

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Originally Published in Spanish by La Jornada

Wednesday, June 18, 2021

https://www.jornada.com.mx/2021/06/16/opinion/016a2pol

Re-Published with English interpretation by the Chiapas Support Committee