Ejército, subjetividades y memoria colectiva en Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero

Abstract

In Ayutla de los Libres, Guerrero, the army’s role throughout history has been a key element in the construction of subjectivities and social memories. The war against drugs has strengthened the presence of the armed forces and their infiltration into the social fabric, leading in some communities to the formation of two factions, each with its own exercises of collective memory. Although these fractures have their origin in a government strategy to weaken local organization, certain social movements have learnt to use the fissures for their own purposes. In an exercise of selective memory, “us” and “them” are outlined within the community, which help strengthen the movements’ identities and their struggles. In this context of violence, references to the present and the immediate past substitute the allusions to the distant past, which now seems drowned in silence. The risk is that this exercise, which leads to two antagonistic subjectivities, ends up diluting the common elements, and blurring the possibility of imagining shared futures.