Dr. Pedro Corona Gonzalez, Visiting Assistant Professor, presented the second installment of the Ackerman Center's Annual Spring Lecture Series, “Memories of Social Engineering State-Sponsored Violence in Mexico and Argentina.”
Dr. Gonzalez identified four points that he wanted to clarify about social engineering and State-Sponsored violence. First, was that the conception of memory in the context of this discussion is based on an understanding held in the social unconscious about the figure of the disappeared. Dr. Gonzalez explained that the phenomenon of “the disappeared” is a characteristic feature of Latin American dictatorships, in which those deemed subversive by the regime are secretly murdered and the victims’ bodies are usually never recovered. With the elimination of the body, the victim has a status of "no presence," which essentially serves to erase the identity as well as the humanity of the person. Memory in this sense is a product that is inextricably linked to the process of social engineering.
Second, “social engineering” is part of a technology of power in which violence is utilized as a tool for creating, destroying, and reorganizing social relations. This tactic of waging war on civilians establishes a visible link between the oppressed and the oppressor that clearly defines the “otherness” of the other and influences how social groups construct their identity.
Third, Dr. Gonzalez introduced the notion of “the Endriago,” a conception coined by Mexican philosopher Sayak Valencia in her book Gore Capitalism (2018) that refers to governmental power structures that employ necroempowerment, the use of institutionalized violence to achieve status or power, and to maintain social control primarily through the threat of torture or death.
Dr. Gonzalez emphasized that the fourth point is understanding how these individual components culminate into epistemic violence. Thus, in the figure of the disappeared is not just the destruction of the body, but the added economic, political, and social value in which state-sponsored violence uses the body as a vehicle for communicating a larger message to the public about what awaits those who interfere with the power of the regime.
