Shaylih Muehlmann, 2024, Call the Mothers: Searching for Mexico’s Disappeared in the War on Drugs, Oakland, California: University of California Press, 264 pp., ISBN 9780520314573

Abstract

This compelling multi-sited ethnography begins with author’s account of meeting Leticia in Mexico City, whose young daughter, Ivonne, had been missing for two years. After undertaking a two-year long search with minimal assistance from state authorities, Leticia finally found her daughter buried in a communal grave. By recounting this encounter, the author captures the heart-wrenching paradox of a mother's sense of relief at finding her child dead - a devastating end to the limbo of not knowing. In five chapters, this book traces how the process of searching for disappeared family members transformed the lives of Leticia and other Mexican mothers who conducted marches, built support networks, acquired investigative skills, searched through morgues and deserts, and exposed the corruption and complicity of state officials in human rights abuses in Mexico. The core contribution of this work is a critical examination of maternal activism that unpacks its interaction with dominant gender norms, state indifference, and organized crime.