Mothering in plural, reflections on the political at 10 years since the forced disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Guerrero, Mexico

This article provides reflections on the political implications of what the author describes as “mothering in plural” as part of the struggles for justice in the case of the 43 teachers' college students from Ayotzinapa, victims of forced disappearance the night of September 26th, 2014, in the town of Iguala, Guerrrero in Mexico. Based on an embodied ethnography since 2015, the article traces the racialized and gendered implications of state violence and impunity in the case of Ayotzinapa so as to identify how state‐sanctioned racialized violence impacts the mothers of the disappeared as well as their extended families. It then goes on to critically engage with the political implications of “mothering in plural”, not only to circumvent dominant narratives based on the social disposability of the families and communities where the 43 students originate, but to expand terrains of justice in their restorative and transformative potential. The article contributes to critical kinship studies by seeking to understand how the pluralizing of motherhood and its transformation into a verb, rather than a noun, opens conversations on political social relations that extend beyond acts of solidarity and empathy in contexts of extreme violence.