"Why Did You Send Them Away?": Moral Suffering and Maternal Activism Among Mothers of Disappeared Migrants

Abstract: This article draws upon ethnographic research conducted between 2017 and 2018 with the Caravan of Central American Mothers of Disappeared Migrants to explore the politicization of motherhood in necropolitical migratory contexts. The Caravan of Mothers exists within a long history of maternal activism in Latin America and the mobilization of the image of the grieving mother to protest violence, injustice, and disappearance. Drawing upon the testimonies of participants of the Caravan of Mothers, this article considers how motherhood is not only politicized within the Caravan, but that the politicization of motherhood has roots in the intertwined power relations of patriarchal gender norms, neoliberal austerity, and the necropolitical management of migration. In the absence of conditions of livability within their home communities, mothers are met with stigma and blame when their children disappear along increasingly militarized borders. The Caravan of Mothers operates as a site for the development of communities of care and solidarity, as well as a space for the emergence of dissident political subjectivities where maternal care is intimately tied to activism on behalf of disappeared migrants.