“We pay with our life and our body:” Gendered and intimate geopolitics of vias Pa'l Norte

Abstract

Focusing on life history narratives produced with Central American women on the move in southern Mexico and engaging an intimate geopolitics lens, this article presents differential gendered, classed, and embodied experiences embedded in the vias (routes) Pa'l Norte. The expression Pa'l Norte, commonly used by those traversing migratory routes in Mexico, is not limited to ‘towards the north’ in a literal or geographical sense. Based on ethnographic and participatory research, the article illustrates how Pa'l Norte is both a tangible and imagined destination that encompasses diverse relational intimacies, including safety, hope, love, fear, and trauma. Assuming a geopolitically produced gender exclusion in crossing borders, it explores how changes in infrastructure and migration policies since 2020, including the halt of la Bestia, a transpacific cargo train frequently used by migrants, along with transnational migration governance aimed at preventing northbound movement, have influenced people's (dis) ability move in southern Mexico, perpetuating historical exclusions and violence, including the erosion of women's bodily autonomy. By gendering the concept of viapolitics and providing an intimate reading of it, the article unpacks how women's intimate experiences of moving slowly and paying with their bodies, and sometimes their lives, in southern Mexico today relate to other women's experiences in different places and times.