Florecer Aquí y Allá: Migrant scenarios of deportee and returnee activism
摘要
This article examines Florecer Aquí y Allá (Flourish Here and There), a day-long event organized by returnees and deportees in Mexico City in 2019. By using a mandala as a key visual and metaphorical element, sharing collective testimonios as a chorus, and using spoken word to illustrate their struggles, participants offered a critique of their experiences at the hands of two nation-states, Mexico and the United States. I argue that the performances at Florecer were constructed at the intersection of undocumentedness and displacement, or what I call “migrant scenarios.” For deportees and returnees, undocumentedness is an episteme and subjectivity that cannot be shed at a border but becomes common ground on which to assert their critiques, make their claims, and build collective action on behalf of themselves and others. I posit that through a collective grito (scream), deportees and returnees in Florecer Aquí y Allá engaged in a world-making event that rehearses their liberation.