In this project, a Multilocal audiovisual ethnography has been developed along the migration route from Central America to the United States. Women who walk to move within a migratory project, but also women who walk the route to locate the disappeared. And it is that one of the main traces of violence carried by the bodies of women in movement is disappearance: the one they experienced, the one they fear to live or the one they are living.
This multilocal ethnography has led us to visit and develop research processes in three countries mainly (Honduras, Mexico and the United States), as well as in two more as part of the journey (El Salvador and Guatemala). In these territories, the Researcher has sought to facilitate the narration of the geographical and bodily landscape of women in transit, to generate a broad choral narrative that offered a cartography of the route.
For this, 19 biographical narrative support workshops were held in the construction of creative stories (63 women and 4 men participated); 11 thematic dialogical workshops as a dialogical reflective space (56 women and 13 men participated); and 73 interviews with key informants, many of them also supported by methodological proposals that generate creative narratives (50 women and 23 men participated).
In parallel, the video camera occupied a central place in the construction of the narrative about the route. Audiovisual ethnography was developed along the route, being present in everyday contexts and in the development of the Project. Thus, we collected the visual story in reception and accommodation spaces, in spaces for the generation of narratives, in transit spaces or, among others, in search spaces for missing relatives. The places that the Researcher visited and inhabited were those that women in transit or key informants pointed out to us as key. In some of these spaces, seminars were held in which the Researcher was able to show the comparison that was being made between the migratory route of Central America and that of West Africa that goes to Europe. All this analyzed from the traces that traffic leaves on the bodies of women.
In the workshops, 32 visual narratives, 6 audiovisual narratives and 1 sculptural narrative have been generated. We call this set of stories, all of them linked through the methodological proposal, the Creative Narrative Cartography of the route. This is the direct discursive choral result of women. Part of it has already been shared in various forums such as Conferences, Congresses, etc. In the month of October of this year there will be an artistic installation in collaboration with the University of Cádiz and the Ibero-American Theater Festival of Cádiz. This narrative material will also be worked on throughout the year with women on the Spanish border with North Africa, thus extending the dialogue between border territories.
One of the key results of this project is the audiovisual narratives. Let us remember that an investigation of a visual ethnographic nature was developed. Thus, the Researcher has generated a series of five short documentaries that collect, with a practical case, the search for disappeared persons in the Mexican context. Throughout 2023, a second audiovisual result will be finalized that will collect the different forms of violence and resistance developed by the participants in this project. Currently, all the material is collected and analyzed. The script is under review and editing will begin later.
Dissemination of the material and knowledge has taken various forms so far: 3 international congresses; 5 seminars; 1 radio show; 1 TV show; and 2 academic publications, among others.
