Luz María Sánchez

Mexico’s human rights crisis is marked by over 130,000 enforced disappearances and an estimated 98% rate of impunity. Those taken by so-called cartels, police, or the military are referred to as personas desaparecidas (disappeared persons), leaving their families in a legal and emotional limbo, without knowing their fate or whereabouts. With no state-led searches or reliable public records, relatives are left to investigate these losses on their own.

Launched in 2015, Luz María Sánchez’s transdisciplinary initiative, Vis.[un]necessary force registers and transmits the specialized knowledge of civilian search groups, helping to reclaim the families’ experiences. Working with the grassroots collective Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte in Sinaloa, the project equips searchers with geolocated, head-mounted cameras, capturing searches from the physical, felt perspective of the body. To protect participants’ safety in high-risk zones, an offline data structure securely stores  this audiovisual material in-house. These raw recordings form a collaborative archive which is shared in collective viewing sessions and in sound-based memory constructions.

By tracing the searchers’ physical routes and daily labor, Vis.[un]necessary force helps safeguard unedited evidence for future accountability, restores agency to silenced voices, and contributes to the urgent public demand in Mexico for truth, justice, and action on enforced disappearances.