Mariel Garcia-Montes

Mariel García-Montes is a PhD candidate in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her sociotechnical research investigates the political configurations underlying today’s data technologies in the global majority world, and how they come into being through intention, resistance, and circumstance. Her dissertation focuses on the 20th and 21st century trajectories of surveillance technologies in Mexico.

Surveillance art in Mexico is rooted in the visual cultures of Cold War bureaucracy: typewriter files, black and white photographs, endless photocopies. Much of this visual legacy has become the primary source for Mexican 20th century historiography, as Mexico’s secret police files are housed in Mexico’s National Archive. To access them, researchers visit the Lecumberri Palace, Mexico’s 20th century panopticon prison, and one of the very places where dissident repression took place. If you want to see some of the files online, you can visit www.archivosdelarepresion.org.