Las violencias burocráticas en la búsqueda de personas en canales de aguas negras

Etnografía en colaboración con el Colectivo Uniendo Esperanzas

Bibliographic Data

ID17818692
AuthorsAndrea De La Serna Alegre (0009-0009-5359-9401, corresponding author)
Year2026
Issue63
Pages147-171
Publication date2026-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntípoda Revista de Antropología y Arqueología (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2011-4273 • E-ISSN: 1900-5407
PublisherUniversidad de los Andes (PUBLISHER • VE)
DOI10.7440/antipoda63.2026.07
OpenAlexW7160287685
LanguageES
References cited20

This article is based on ethnographic scenes from searches for missing persons in wastewater canals in the Mexico City metropolitan area between 2021 and 2025. It examines how the canal becomes a space shaped by multiple forms of violence. The central analytical category is bureaucratic violence, understood as a set of practices and interactions that negatively affect families and are reproduced in a vernacular way—through routine procedures and everyday exchanges. The analysis centers on how the bureaucracies of search and disappearance, when operating in these waste channels, intensify already existing harms. The research relies on collaborative ethnographic work with the Colectivo Uniendo Esperanzas in the State of Mexico, an organization of families searching for their disappeared rela-tives. In this context, ethnography is treated not simply as a method, but as a way of co-producing knowledge and developing theory alongside collaborators. Building on this collaboration, the article takes up the idea of connected violences with differentiated impacts to examine the range of bureaucratic harms present in drainage canals and how they intersect with other forms of violence, including historical ones. The findings point to a convergence of different modalities of violence—symbolic, direct, and structural—interwoven with pre-existing historical grievances and with the tragedy of disappearance itself. The article’s main contribution lies in characterizing the everyday workings of contemporary bureaucracies of search and disappearance, while also offering collaboratively produced theoretical insights into the forms of violence these systems enact

Bureaucracy · Ethnography · Everyday life · Metropolitan area · Modalities · Persona · Space (punctuation) · Tragedy (event) · Work (physics) · Conflict, Peace, and Violence in Colombia · Extractivism and Socioeconomic Issues · Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics

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