“You’re Not Frida:”: Policing Authenticity by Deputizing the Specter

In this chapter I discuss how the Disney-Pixar movie Coco deputizes ghosts, both figuratively, by creating (supposedly) authentic Latinx narratives, but also explicitly, in raising a ghostly police force to patrol movement in the afterlife. I also introduce the idea specters of/for unruly Latinidades to evoke more complex and complicated hauntings in education by using Coco as a starting point. In closing, I aim to leave education scholars and practitioners to consider “how, why, and by whom ghosts are conjured… when is the specter repressive, productive, and/or purposively crafted?” (Varga and Monreal Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 20:80–97, 2021, p. 95).