Mexico: the aesthetic challenge of forced disappearance

Abstract

This essay is a reflection on the aesthetic of forced disappearance based on the case in Mexico in October 2014 in which 43 young students from Ayotzinapa, in the state of Guerrero, disappeared. We analyse the photographic support of this shocking event and relate it to the function of the image in other cases of serious crimes against humanity, establishing a genealogy of the aesthetic of disappearance. We present fifteen declarations on the aesthetic of disappearance which enable us to debate on old and new forms of organised violence, particularly in the Latin American context.