Abstract

HUERTA, Fabiola de Lachica. Violated places. Assembling everyday spatial strategies and meanings in violent contexts. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2023, vol.46, n.2, pp.343-363.  Epub May 15, 2024. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v46n2/101572.

This article explores how places are modified after a violent event and how these changes are experienced in the everyday life of places where different forms of violence coexist. Based on 39 in-depth interviews with journalists and activists who responded to the Villas de Salvárcar massacre in Ciudad Juárez, México in 2010, I propose the concept of 'violated place' to analyze strategies and meanings that are assembled for those living in violent contexts. A violated place is a site where violent events emerge and subsequently work as representations through which people can relate even if they did not directly experience the event. I analyze violated places through three dimensions of meaning-making after a violent event: 1) boundary-making through the notion of inside and the relation to others before the massacre and how this contributes to perceptions of risk; 2) the house as a crime scene that challenges notions of empathy; and 3) the house as a memory of vulnerability, grief, and as a collective memory in the city. I argue that changes in the use and meanings of places allow us to see other dimensions of living in violent contexts where strategies to survive are not enough and require frequent redefinition. Studying violated places allows for a novel way of locating violent events in time and space. This approach is relevant to the violence studies literature because it considers space as a distinctive part of broader violent dynamics and sheds light on specific transformation of spaces through violence and after violent events. This approach contributes to other ways of looking at urban violence in Latin America by focusing on risk, danger, and violent events as social phenomena with unclear material and symbolic boundaries.

Keywords : Ciudad Juárez; house; event; space; violated place; violence.

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