Preservation or conservation? Two frameworks on the right to truth in the mexican drug war

Abstract

In this article, I suggest two frameworks to acknowledge the past in Mexico during the War on Drugs (2006-). When President Calderon Hinojosa (2006-2012) and his successor Pena Nieto (2012-2018) militarized public security forces, the perpetuation of violence became the latest symptom of state practices undermining accountability. By using media and the national archives, the state has operated within a framework of conservation. It performed indirect censorship by spending millions of dollars on government publicity, fostering a media dependence on state income, and it also fulfilled a normative to protect personal data from historical documents and their access. If the archive exists at the core of memory institutions, such as museums or national archives, it is disseminated through conservation practices that have two functions: to uphold the truth, and to play a role in nurturing identity within the national project. Therefore, conservation occurs when curating and protecting the archive and, indirectly, the state itself. I then address another framework that has been influenced by the international discourse on human rights. The use of alternative digital journalism in Mexico concerning news reports on collectives that search for their disappeared present these stories as a form of open archive. By granting spaces for remembering, the distribution of memory comes to exist within social media, news portals, and other non-formal means of circulation such as film festivals or international award competitions. As a result, the mediation achieved travels as a form of civic preservation, occurring outside memory institutions.