The Maternal Contract: A Subaltern Response to Extreme Violence in the Americas (Studies in Subaltern Latina/o Politics)

In the Americas, organized state violence takes many forms--from forced disappearance and feminicide to extralegal killings, mass incarceration, and illegal detention.In response, mothers' organizations and collectives emerged in the 1970s to advocate for their disappeared, imprisoned, and murdered relatives.These organizations fight long and challenging battles for state and corporate accountability, demanding the creation of truth commissions, national memory archives, memory sites, and victim-oriented legislation.By implementing alternative caretaking mechanisms on behalf of survivors and victims, mothers' organizations have become powerful actors against organized state violence, structural inequalities, and political abandonment.In The Maternal Contract, Elva F. Orozco Mendoza traces the mobilization of mothers' organizations against organized state violence in the Americas.Drawing on the insights and work of four mothers' organizations--Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, Las Madres