Scars of Displacement: Body, Territory, and Community in the Haitian Diaspora in Mexico City

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the body-territories of the Haitian people who made up the diaspora settled in Plaza Giordano Bruno, in the Colonia Juárez neighborhood of Mexico City, between 2022 and 2024, and the ways in which they symbolically appropriate space. The theoretical approach links communication with critical, cultural, and feminist geography, drawing on the notions of body-territory, territoriality, geographies of absences, and epistemic justice. The methodology was qualitative and participatory, grounded in the horizontal production of knowledge: observation of the encampment and conversations with six people, integrated into a life cartography that combines personal accounts, maps of migration routes, and photographs. Among the results, it stands out that displacement, violence, memory, and community are inscribed on bodies as scars, and that the encampment functioned as a cultural territory of resistance until its eviction in June 2024.