Mourning and justice. Death, narrative and political mobilization in Mexico

Abstract

The paper describes and analyzes two cases, the massacre of the so-called Nicolatian martyrs, where students were assassinated by the military (Michoacan, 1949) and the one in Aguas Blancas (Guerrero 1995) where peasants were executed by police officers. By tracing hemerographical and archivistical sources, the paper locates martyrial narrative patterns in the ways in which victims were publicly portrayed. In doing so, the paper provides an account on how these narratives erupted in the public sphere to give rise to social mobilization and facilitated political change and commemorative events.