19/07/2023
Introducing our first project - El Bosque de la Esperanza//The Forest of Hope🌳
El Bosque de la Esperanza is a collaborative long-term initiative that aims to improve access to the right to memory across Mexico by creating a self-constructing, immersive, and virtual memorial for victims of disappearances, using transdisciplinary approaches such as filmmaking.
Mexico is grappling with a humanitarian crisis, as over 110,000 people have gone missing or disappeared according to official registries. Alarmingly, the number of disappeared women and girls has tripled in just six years. Disappearance inflicts numerous layers of victimhood on families, who must endure constant uncertainty, legal limbo, and the absence of a body to mourn—factors that compound their grief and trauma.
In this context, governments often use memory and memorials as tools to accumulate political capital, rather than genuinely supporting reparation processes. Such incentives frequently increase the political and economic costs of constructing spaces of memory, hindering access to the right to memory and weakening solidarity ties between people affected by violence and the general population. This situation further invisibilizes and stigmatizes victims, making it essential to create a safe space for mourning and connecting struggles throughout the country.
Our project, El Bosque de la Esperanza, strives to offer families an inclusive and decentralized way to access and preserve the memory of their missing loved ones. Building on the Trees of Hope initiative, where families tie ribbons with pictures of their missing loved ones to trees, our project incorporates immersive technologies to create personalized and interactive memorial sites. This approach aims to rehumanize victims and fosters empathy among non-affected audiences, which is crucial in addressing the stigma that often intensifies the trauma and further erodes communities' social fabric for victims of enforced disappearances and their families.
