Resumen

GAMINO MUNOZ, Rodolfo. The Present and its Absences. Metaphor and Christian Paideia of Infinity. Hist. graf [online]. 2025, n.65, pp.145-175.  Epub 04-Ago-2025. ISSN 1405-0927.  https://doi.org/10.48102/hyg.vi65.568.

The disappearance and forced disappearance of people in Mexico cannot be remotely understood today as an accident caused by the “autonomous” decision made by multiple legal and illegal forces regarding the fate of hundreds of thousands of people who are now untraceable. It was no longer perceived as a “phenomenon” or a simple “growing social, political or academic field.” Unquestionably, the disappearance and forced disappearance of people in our country is the symptom of a crisis that has worsened in recent decades, a crisis that has plunged us into the most flagrant and cynical violation of human rights. Disappearance and forced disappearance are a latent humanitarian crisis, a crisis that has left hundreds of thousands of families fractured and with unknowable absences.

The disappearance in Mexico has generated a wide repertoire of actions that neither in this country nor in any other planetary geography should exist. For example, a sector of the academy has focused on studying the phenomenon, historicizing it, knowing it and explaining it. From other branches of knowledge, psychosocial support routes have been proposed, the study of forensic anthropology and physics, legal analysis, legal formulations, search protocols in life and search techniques in death have been promoted. It has exponentially increased the knowledge and techniques that focus on the analysis and recognition of skeletal remains.

Governmentally and institutionally, laws, policies, official and autonomous institutions have been formulated that are committed to localization, the acquisition of technology for tracking, as well as the training of search groups in the countryside and the city. Other versions have been presented in public policy regarding disappearances and, occasionally, in the Investigation Commission to clarify, create truths and achieve compensation. Although, the lack of budget, sometimes simulation, other times inefficiency and inexperience have made these initiatives and considerable official “efforts” insufficient.

Autonomously, non-governmental organizations, groups, both religious and civil, have grouped together to psychologically and legally accompany some cases and urged the press to provide coverage and follow-up as far as possible. After that, the groups that search for their loved ones are left alone in their pilgrimage, they walk in orphanhood and in the most complete institutional-political and social oblivion. This humanitarian crisis is a latency in the present, a present - as already noted - plagued by disappearances and absences.

Beyond the academic and scientific explanations, the legal classifications, technological advances, psychosocial support, developments in forensic science and technique, there are some questions that we have not asked ourselves, for example, what have been some of the supports that the disappearance of people contains in itself and that makes it, in some way, something “resistable” for the people who indirectly suffer from it, namely family members. How is it that the disappearance of a person comes to be understood - sometimes unconsciously and other times consciously - from a religious perspective, how is it that the absence can be sustained, what content does it have that undernourished the horror it entails. What has been the historical and present role of spiritual and religious entities in the face of the disappearance of people, both in the symbolic and axiological sphere.

This paper aims to approach the role that metaphors and Christian paideia play in the disappearance of people in Mexico and, thus, exhibit a hypothetical historical, philosophical and theological response that has generated meaning to this atrocious and present nonsense.

Palabras llave : Absence; Christianity; paideia; search; infinity.

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