The house that bleeds

“A people without memory is condemned to repeat their mistakes.” Guerrero is one of the Mexican States that have been most affected by organized crime; It is the second poorest and most violent state in the country. The condition of social and economic marginalization of Guerrero is becoming more evident. The crisis of the rule of law is increasingly alarming and forced disappearances are only one of the symptoms that prove it. In 2013, three of my brothers-in-law died. (They used to live in Iguala, the place from where the Ayotzinapa students disappeared). One of them was killed; the other two disappeared.) After these events I began documenting my family, and the families of other missing people, in order to capture in photographs the psychological and emotional breakdown caused by the loss of family members, especially for parents, children, and siblings. I am working with the concepts of pain, emptiness, absence, and forgetting. I’m seeking social and cultural clues that can allow me to create a personal account of the issues that families face when dealing with an unexpected death. Through the testimony and this particular issue, I want to show the relationship of intimate space to personal life experience, which is reflected in the social experience. I am thus trying to depict the situation which many families in this region face, which they live through daily, and which is one of the causes of the unraveling of Mexico's social fabric.