There are around 90,000+ missing persons in Mexico. Predominantly women-led, self-sustaining “colectivos” of “buscadoras” (searchers) have organized themselves, developing search methods and support systems as they became the principal agents searching for the disappeared. In collaboration with the colectivo Regresando a Casa Morelos and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Cuajimalpa, we formed the student-run Buscadoras Research Unit at Columbia in 2020. We recognized a need for coordination and collaboration between buscadoras, colectivos, and international researchers and journalists that is partially due to an abundance of disaggregated data and analysis of disappearance and search efforts. The Buscadoras Documentation Project responds to this with a bilingual, online toolkit to serve as a repository and portal that offers a productive and practical space for socializing information, inter-communication, critical analysis, and collective memory construction. By producing digital media projects with colectivos, and organizing and articulating data, this project will facilitate and inform dialogue between those unfamiliar, and those all too familiar with the reality of disappearance across borders.
No están solas: Bridging the search for the disappeared in Mexico2021-2022
