Forever Undefeated. Travesti Memory and Necropolitics in El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia

Abstract

This article examines the life history and murders of Nawar Jiménez and Dania Polo, two trans women, in El Carmen de Bolívar, Colombia, to understand the structural conditions that shaped the differential production of life and death in rural contexts. Based on a situated and embodied ethnographic approach—including fieldwork, interviews, and local memory-building processes—it analyzes the forms of violence, exclusion, and moral regulation that frame their lives. The article shows that these deaths are not isolated events but expressions of a necropolitical order that produces disposable lives, while also highlighting everyday practices of travesti re-existence that sustain life through care, affect, and presence. It proposes mourning as a political practice that, although it does not disrupt the structures that enable these deaths, allows memory to persist and challenges social erasure.