A review of a photographic exhibition at the Martin Springer Institute, Northern Arizona University
By Pedro Gonzalez Corona
To think about a disappearance is to think about absence, an existential erasure. However, to listen to a person who has lost a loved one to a forced disappearance is to realize that the survivors of such a deep trauma are imprisoned in a world of suffering. The perpetrator of a disappearance is a tyrant who usurps the function of creation: Beyond the control over a body, and the time and way of death, this perpetrator attempts to eliminate a world by creating absolute control over the knowledge of the whereabouts of the disappeared person.

Disappearance, installation shot with Araceli Salcedo Jiménez
The result is a new, and re-signified, world of unbearable pain. As a professor and researcher interested in human rights, and forced disappearances, I have established contact with search groups, or colectivos since 2019. Speaking to a mother who lost her son I learned that what used to be a geographic point of luscious vegetation, “a place for life and agriculture,” as she described it, in the evergreen state of Veracruz, Mexico, is now a reminder of torture and death, the location of a clandestine mass grave where human remains were found. Mexico has now over five thousand of these mass graves dispersed through its territory.
Disappearances in Mexico
Since the declaration of a war on drugs in 2006, Mexico has suffered a dramatic increase in the number of disappearances recorded officially by the state: Over one hundred and ten thousand.
The war on drugs unleashed unprecedented violence in Mexico. Organized crime, law enforcement, the military, and even private citizens have become perpetrators in a massive wave of human rights violations: forced disappearance, one of the most atrocious is also one of the most frequent. Facing mockery, humiliation, the community’s disdain, and more importantly, the state’s inaction and corruption, regular citizens organize themselves into colectivos in order to start the search for their loved ones.
As codified in a recent Mexican law, a disappearance is a “crime . . . committed when a public servant or the individual who, with authorization, support, or agreement of a public servant, deprives a person of his or her liberty in any form, followed by the abstention or refusal to acknowledge such deprivation of liberty or to provide information related to the concerned person’s status, fate or whereabouts.”
As I continued independently researching the disappeared, I met Araceli Salcedo, president, and founder of the Colectivo Familia de Desaparecidos Orizaba-Cordoba (CFDOC) almost two years ago. Araceli lost her daughter Fernanda Rubi in 2012. After this, she founded one of the largest and most effective colectivos in Mexico. Members of colectivos fight to break the silence and invisibility promoted by the government and tacitly supported by society. Their personal stories show the realities of a disappearance: a non-presence, the impossibility of starting a grieving process, and the state’s denial.
Talking to over 10 persons searching for family members allowed me to stare into the darkness of the phenomenon of disappearance. It gave me an initial approach into the complexity of cases and circumstances inherent to a process of reproduction of violence. My objective was to analyze the mechanics of disappearances, to know how colectivos work, to identify the state’s responses, and more than anything, to be able to explore the personal and societal damage caused by overwhelming numbers of disappearances. Through this experience, I learned that Daniel GM, a designer and photographer who lost a cousin—or brother as he calls him—had taken a series of photographs portraying his fellow CFDOC surviving victims holding portraits of their disappeared loved ones. Daniel’s photographic collection originally included 40 pictures and it was titled Una madre nunca olvida (A Mother Never Forgets).

Araceli Salcedo Jiménez (Mother holding portrait) Fernanda Rubí Salcedo Jiménez (Disappeared daughter) Photographed by Daniel GM
The exhibition
With Salcedo’s comments in mind, and after realizing the extent of the disappeared in Mexico, I became a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Martin-Springer Institute (MSI) at Northern Arizona University. I presented the idea of a photographic exhibit to Dr. Björn Krondorfer, director of the MSI. He enthusiastically agreed and proposed that this could become a faculty led project in which a group of students could also participate.
During six months that extended over two semesters, we met weekly with the students to discuss scholarly materials on disappearances and to plan the curation of the exhibit. The result was a 19-picture exhibit to be displayed simultaneously at the Coconino Center for the Arts as well as the university. The exhibits also included text panels, drafted by students, explaining concepts and the historical context of the disappearance crisis. One of the panels depicts the collective’s work in the field.
Aesthetically pleasing, the photographs taken by Daniel GM at his studio, do more than reflecting rays of light in the thoughtful way intended by the photographer. They do more than send a message, a codification of a story that speaks of pain and injustice. As a statistical sample, the pictures show more women than men holding portraits, and that is also a reflection of the collective’s reality. Indeed, only a minority of men participate in the colectivo’s activities. Women, mostly mothers and wives, refuse to give up, so they search and struggle to the extent of becoming ostracized by family members and friends who deem them obsessed and idealistic. Responses to why men are absent include a wide variety that goes from men’s propensity to become targets of violence, their responsibility to be breadwinners, or their capacity to forget and/or move on. After all, one of the colectivo’s most used phrases is “a mother never forgets.”

Maritza García (Mother holding portrait) Axavil Osorio García (Disappeared son) Photograph by Daniel GM
Daniel GM photographed mothers, wives, fathers, and sisters holding a portrait of their disappeared loved one. These surviving relatives posing for the photographs were asked a couple of questions about their thoughts, and about being photographed for the exhibition. They sat on a stool against a simple black background. Some cried, some looked at the portrait in hopes of an answer for the thousandth time, others stared at the ceiling avoiding the lens, some clutched a flower or two against their chest. A sort of metapicture, every photograph attests that what is left by a disappeared person is treasured by their family, especially the image of a smile. The portraits they hold constitute evidence of their existence, and at the same time they signify the resistance to be erased and forgotten. Because being disappeared means a state of existence without confirmation of death or life, mothers and other family members speak of their disappeared in the present tense. They refuse to participate in the murder of a loved one by using the past tense. This can be noted in the strength of the grip while holding a portrait and the despair in the eyes waiting for a miracle and justice.
These photographs are a cry for help. The tyranny of the perpetrator ceases to exist for a few minutes when visitors establish a relationship with the person portrayed. If an image can be considered as an “allegory of being,” as Emmanuel Levinas argued when speaking of art works, then these photographs invite viewers to engage ethically with the survivor. The engagement with the dark world of the pictures—as a shadow of a different reality—separates the viewer from their personal world and a statement emerges: “Here I am for you.”
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Dr. Pedro Gonzalez Corona
Dr. Pedro Gonzalez Corona joined the Martin-Springer Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2023. A long-time human rights advocate, Dr. Gonzalez designed and taught workshops and training sessions for other advocates and the public as the Regional Campaign Coordinator at Amnesty International USA. His examination of the Holocaust and genocide during his M.A. program at Southern Methodist University led him to the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas, where he finished his Ph.D. in 2019. While at UTD, Dr. Gonzalez accepted positions as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Instruction and taught courses on the Holocaust, human rights, Latin American and Mexican History. His experience includes a fellowship with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP). An additional fellowship at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University led to the publication of a chapter for the book Remembering Mass Atrocities: Memory Struggles and Cultural Representations in the Global South (Palgrave, December 2023). Dr. Gonzalez’s research examines the Holocaust, human rights, genocide, and state sponsored violence in Latin America.