Prescribed Blame, Erased Pain: How the Microbiome Remembers Transnational Migratory Violence

Abstract

This thesis will explore the gut microbiome as a sociopolitical inscriptor of violence, a biological marker of vulnerability, and a site of collective resistance within Triqui migrant farmworkers from Oaxaca, Mexico. Extending on Seth Holmes’ ethnography titled Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies, critical biomedical and sociocultural anthropology, and synthesizing the different cyclical elements of their microbial implications, this paper argues for future research and knowledge production to contend with the microbiome as a biological mirror of systemic violence, dispossession, exploitation, and racialization. This research helps reveal the different structural drivers, such as institutionally coerced migration, racialized labor hierarchies, malnutrition, overt state violence, and chronic stress, and their involvement with the disease outcomes and physiological futures of marginalized communities. Each chapter will position the microbiome as a living archive of state terror, physical and psychological displacement, and moral blame within clinical settings. The stories of Abelino, Bernardo, and Crescencio will be centered around this microbial interaction and how trauma, injustice, and survival become lodged in gut microbial communities and interactions. Their stories will also help address the need for reformed ethics procedures and a relational and transnational care framework that addresses inequitable healthcare policy and microbial therapeutics. This thesis ultimately addresses the tension present between ethical microbial study, scientific knowledge production, and clinical practice, from key interlocutors whose suffering is biologically embedded in their system. Their microbiomes are archives of what institutions seek to erase. Within these archives is a call for justice.