Resumen

ALQUISIRAS TERRONES, Luisa. «The Beast»: Violence and (Counter)Infrastructural Aesthetic in Representations of Irregular Migration in Mexico. Rev. pueblos front. digit. [online]. 2025, vol.20, e786.  Epub 28-Nov-2025. ISSN 1870-4115.  https://doi.org/10.22201/cimsur.18704115e.2025.v20.786.

This article examines the role of railway infrastructure in shaping the characterization of irregular migration experiences in Mexico. This experience is understood as a field of knowledge that interrogates the dynamics between diverse materialities -both human and non-human- as well as a medium through which structural violence is displaced, concealed, and transfigured within the records of individual and public memory. An ethnographic and archival methodology enables the reconstruction of key episodes in recent history, in which the train has played a central role in policies and actions related to irregular migration. The article discusses how journalistic reports of injuries or deaths reflect an aesthetics of mutilation that instrumentalizes horror as a deterrent strategy. In contrast, it proposes a counter-infrastructural aesthetics that renders the extreme experience of train travel livable and narratable, without denying its profound ambivalence.

Palabras llave : railway infrastructure; infrastructural violence; irregular migration; aesthetics.

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