‘That was their idea, to exterminate us’: Mixteco politics and desire reshaping the sites of the Nochixtlán Massacre of 2016

This article centers Indigenous cultural geographies by highlighting the politics of usos y costumbres (Indigenous governance) as the binding force for the placed-based solidarity that emerged in the wake of the Nochixtlán Massacre of 2016 in Oaxaca. This organized spatial solidarity rooted in Mixteco politics transformed the site of a state-sanctioned massacre to a liberatory place. Through salient narratives of impacted teachers and Mixteco community members at the forefront of the assault, as well as photographic imagery of the remnants of the massacre enacted by the Mexican Federal Preventive Police (FPP), I demonstrate the transformations of place from a ‘geography of terror’ to a liberatory site informed by Indigenous desire. Specifically, a place where Mixtecos and Sección 22 teachers facilitated a spatialized solidarity through usos y costumbres to establish organized blockades and tactics of territorial defense. Mixtecos and Sección 22 now evoke sites of the Nochixtlán Massacre as places of liberation, where they overcame the FPP. This article extends discussions in Indigenous geographies and feminist theories of engagement of place, by specifically bringing into frame the placed-based solidarity through coalitional support between Sección 22 teacher syndicate and Indigenous Mixtecos. Through the temporal moments of abolishment of FPP from the landscape and the memorials and murals left across Nochixtlán, Mixtecos bring forth a transformation of place that center Indigenous livingness and desires for just futures.