Disposable lives, shared resistances: Animals, deserts, and old ages confronting capital

Abstract

This article analyzes, from a decolonial, ecofeminist, and intersectional perspective, how neoliberal capitalism produces disposable lives in nonhuman animals, older persons, and deserts in northern Mexico. Based on fieldwork (2015–2025), in-depth interviews, and ethnographic notes, it reveals the structural violence and commodification that reduce them to resources or “goods,” denying their right to exist with dignity. Yet collective resistances also emerge, reaffirming interdependence and care as political practices of transformation and liberation. Recognizing animals, old ages, and territories as rights-bearing subjects challenges imposed hierarchies of life and opens possibilities to imagine futures where justice is grounded in an ethics of care across species and in affective connection with nature. Thus, this text seeks to be both announcement and denunciation: to unsettle indifference, to summon commitment, and to envision a world where no life is disposable.