Dispossesion, Materiality, and Affects: The Experience of Forced Displacement among Triqui Women

Abstract

In recent years, due to the escalating violence in Mexico, academics and human rights organizations have documented many cases of forced internal displacement, arguing the necessary legal recognition and assistance for displaced people. In this article, I summarize these developments, highlighting the contribution that ethnographic perspective provides in the understanding of the traumatic experience of forced displacement. Based on an ethnographic research with displaced Triqui women displaced from San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, in 2010, I argue that the documentation of these constructions of social, spatial and material orders, allows us to understand the complexity of forced mobility and therefore the senses that hold the searching for justice and security.