Mémoire et résistances

• Published in: Cahiers d'études romanes (Aix-en-Provence) Vol. 41; pp. 159 - 179
• Main Author: Pilar Calveiro Garrido
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Université d'Aix-Marseille 01-12-2020
• Subjects: Collective Memory; Indigenous Communities; Neoliberalism; Transmission
• ISSN: 0180-684X; 2271-1465
• DOI: 10.4000/etudesromanes.10995

This text proposes that the neoliberal governmentality gives rise to different violences used to unleash fears and direct them as a technology of population control. In front of these violence and the fears that accompany them, resistance arises resorting to social memory of previous shared experiences. In Mexico, the local cases and particularly indigenous communities’ experiences are really interesting in this sense. This article analyzes the cases of Municipio Autónomo de Cherán K’eri, in Michoacán, and Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias, which could neutralize the policies of fear and successfully stop legal and illegal violences within their territories. Both did so by recovering the memory of ancient struggles to reproduce and transform them simultaneously. They resorted to experiences of the past, recovered and reformulated their uses and costumes to give novel and efficient responses to the urgencies of the present. It is in this sense that they are living and resistant memories.