Disturbing Memory: Yaquis. Historia de una guerra popular y de un genocidio en México (2013), by Paco Ignacio Taibo II

Abstract

From the second half of the 19th century to the early 20th century, the Yaquis suffered a systematic campaign of oppression by the mexican State to displace them and expropriate their lands. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, in Yaquis (2013), does not hesitate to describe this campaign as genocide through a historical narrative in which he reconstructs the systematic process of dispossession and extermination promoted by state and federal authorities under the Porfiriato's discourse of progress and modernization. Yaquis' historical narrative, by exposing this little-known atrocity, distorted and minimized for decades, forms a disturbing memory and a call for historical justice (Portelli). Under these coordinates, this article will analyze Yaquis within the framework of so-called genocide literature as a means for the creation and reflection around the so-called disturbing memory and the reconfiguration of collective memory.