The right to information to counteract epistemic injustices: documentary collection M68 of the Mexico’s AGN

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper was to analyse the issues surrounding recent declarations of opening of some documentary collections related to human rights violations and crimes against humanity in Mexico (M68 and CISEN), sheltered by Mexico’s General Archive of the Nation (AGN, by its Spanish acronym). The paper focuses on two modalities of epistemic injustices: testimonial injustices and hermeneutical injustices. These terms are contextualized within the nature and the construction of social reality through archival collections, and are identified by the types of injustice involved with the historical processing of these collections. One dimension of the right to information (according to the Mexican rule of law), refers to the prerogative to have access to public records and documents, which is supported by the constitutional right to access plural and timely information. This work presents a social engagement with a group of human rights documents that are a relatively new, potentially unfamiliar, and understudied phenomenon to an archival audience. These documentary collections are important, since they contain information gathered by the authorities of the period known as ‘Dirty War’, but also testimonies of victims, families, and national and international journalists who lived the facts.