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This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the practice of disappearances in Mexico, from the period of the so-called ‘dirty war’ to the current crisis of disappearances associated with the country’s ‘war on drugs’, during which more than 80,000 people have disappeared. The volume brings together contributions by distinguished scholars from Mexico, Argentina and Europe, who focus their chapters on four broad axes of enquiry. In Part I, chapters examine the phenomenon of disappearances in its historical and present-day forms, and the struggles for memory around the disappeared in Mexico with reference to Argentina. Part II addresses the political dimensions of disappearances, focusing on the specificities that this practice acquires in the context of the counterinsurgency struggle of the 1970s and the so-called ‘war on drugs’. The third section situates the issue within the framework of human rights law by examining the conceptual and legal aspects of disappearances. The final chapters explore the social movement of the relatives of the disappeared, showing how their search for disappeared loved ones involves bodily and affective experiences as well as knowledge production. The volume thus aims to further our understanding of the crisis of disappearances in Mexico without, however, losing sight of the historic origins of the phenomenon.

"This volume bridges two different research fields and the current debates within them. On the one hand, the transitional justice literature has been shaken by powerful calls to make the doctrine and practice of justice more transformative. On the other hand, collective memory studies now tend to look more closely at meaningful silences to make sense of what nations leave out when they remember their pasts. The book extends the scope of this heuristic approach to the different mechanisms that come under the umbrella of transitional justice, including legal prosecution, truth-seeking and reparations, alongside memorialisation. The 15 chapters included in the volume, written by expert scholars from diverse disciplinary and societal backgrounds, explore a range of practices intended to deal with the past, and how making the invisible visible again can make transitional justice - or indeed, any societal engagement with the past - more transformative. Seeking to combine contextual depth and comparative width, the book features two key case analyses - South Africa and Sri Lanka - alongside discussions of multiple cases, including such emblematic sites as Rwanda and Argentina, but also sites better known for resisting than for embracing international norms of transitional justice, such as Turkey or Côte d’Ivoire. The different contributions, grouped in themed sections, progressively explore the issues, actors and resources that are typically forgotten when societies celebrate their pasts rather than mourning their losses and, in doing so, open new possibilities to build more inclusive processes for addressing the present consequences of past injustice. "

Why has Argentina suffered so much political and economic instability? How could Argentina, once one of the wealthiest countries in the world, failed to meet its potential over decades? What lessons can we take from Argentina's successes and failures? Argentina’s economy is - irresistibly - fascinating. Argentina's economic history - its crises and its triumphs cannot be explained in purely economic terms. Argentina's economic history can only be explained in the context of conflicts of interest, of politics, war and peace, boom and bust. Argentina's economic history is also intertwined with ideological struggles over the ideal society and the on-going struggle of ideas. The book comprises two distinct components: an economic history of Argentina from the Spanish colonial period to 1990, followed by a narrative by Domingo Cavallo on the last 25 years of reform and counter reform. Domingo Cavallo has been at the centre of Argentina's economic and political debates for 40 years. He was one of the longest serving cabinet members since the return of democracy in 1983. He is uniquely qualified to help the reader make the connection between historical and current events through all these prisms. His daughter, Sonia Cavallo Runde, is an economist specialized on public policy that currently teaches the politics of development policy. The two Cavallos offer academics and students of economics and finance a long form case study. This book also seeks to offer researchers and policymakers around the world with relevant lessons and insights to similar problems from the Argentine experience.