During the 2023 gathering of the Movement of Our Disappeared in Mexico, as I led an activity, the families spontaneously chose to form a heart together. Holding hands, they chanted in unison:
“Why do we search for them?” “Because we love them.”
“Where are they? Where are they? Our children, where are they?”
To be disappeared is to go missing, often taken and potentially killed by government security forces or by armed organized crime groups. According to official records, more than 110,000 people are registered as disappeared in Mexico, 98 percent of them since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón’s administration started a war on organized crime, supported by the United States. As in many attempts around the world to use direct militarized violence to combat crime, the level of crime then only expanded, with devastating impacts on civilians.
In her book “Bootstrap Justice,” longtime Fellowship of Reconciliation member Janice K. Gallagher offers a heartfelt and carefully layered exploration of the situation of disappearances in Mexico and the efforts of relatives of the disappeared to shift impunity and achieve justice. The book emerged from ten years of research grounded in a long- term commitment to relationships.
Gallagher names her previous experience as an accompanier in Colombia (with FOR Peace Presence) as her fundamental guide to the ethical conduct of research with traumatized people. Gallagher intentionally centers the voices of those most affected by violence as she looks at how people in contexts of normalized human rights violations transform from citizens who claim their rights to citizens who experience their rights — and what justice might finally look like.
Gallagher highlights the stories of Juan Carlos, Nancy, and Lucia and Alfonso, all of whom experienced the disappearance of family members between 2008-2011. As is common among relatives of the disappeared in recent years in Mexico, none had been politically active prior to the disappearance of their loved ones, and each was compelled to action. All have become movement leaders.
Gallagher relays how each of their understandings of their own agency and relationship to the law shifted following the disappearance of their loved ones, and how their lives and thinking changed, both initially and over years of sustained activism. She weaves their stories together with analysis of the broader context of disappearances in Mexico, the development of collective mobilizing strategies nationally and in particular states in Mexico, and the impact of ten years of sustained mobilization in relation to disappearances.
Gallagher observes that the traumatic experience of the disappearance of a loved one entirely reconfigures values, relationships, and daily living. It also changes what individuals conceive of as imaginable and therefore doable, and typically compels people to action. Individual and collective engagement in action then leads to learning and developing strategic capacity to challenge impunity.
While the families have achieved significant legislative, institutional, and social movement capacity advances, the majority have yet to meet the urgent core need to find their loved ones. The conditions for long-term sustained action persist.
My two critiques of the book are, first, its occasional highly academic language (it did develop out of a doctoral thesis); and, second, the use of the concept “bootstrap” in the title. Although Gallagher sought to reflect the seemingly insurmountable task that families face in trying to create justice in a system designed to maintain impunity, I consider it dissonant to apply a concept so deeply embedded in U.S. mythologies of individual possibility which form part of the bedrock of racism and neoliberalism. Gallagher herself names the current understanding of bootstrapping as problematic, with an inherent “willful ignorance of the structural and institutional barriers to personal achievement.” While the reasons for mobilizing will always be very personal for relatives of the disappeared, as Gallagher states, “the most successful outcomes rely on a (metaphorical) village coming together.”
Nevertheless, I loved this book, overall, as it captures the anguish, love, hope, and continually expanding capacity and creativity of the relatives of the disappeared. It also compellingly describes the organizations and movements they have formed, as well as the complex and shifting dynamics they face. Gallagher invites us all to follow their lead to create a path to justice. I believe that the collectives of relatives of the disappeared are a prophetic voice, denouncing systems of violence and calling us to honor human life and dignity.