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“You have to do everything in your power so that this does not happen to anyone else”. Contention dynamics against the Mexican war on drugs and crime: a case study of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity
Abstract
In 2006, then Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared a ‘war’ against criminal organisations that were beginning to control some of the country’s territories. Consequently, the number of murders and disappearances of people began to increase steadily by tens of thousands. Far from acknowledging the errors of the strategy, the authorities constantly criminalised the victims and denied the tragic consequences of the use of the military against drug cartels. After the murder of his son on 28 March 2011, the poet Javier Sicilia started leading mobilisations in the state of Morelos to protest the violence. In just a few days, the actions expanded to virtually all regions of the country embracing relatives of victims, activists and organisations of very different backgrounds, forming the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD).
This thesis comprises an in-depth case study of the MPJD. After providing an overview of the context in which the mobilisations started and my research methods, I develop thematic chapters. In the first one, I analyse the recruitment dynamics of the MPJD. These pages contribute to the literature by advancing the understanding of how people without prior political experience or links to a mobilised group join and participate in protest. This, moreover, helps in refining rather than reifying the function of social networks. The second chapter explains the upward scale-shift process of mobilisation and the response given by the government through the analysis of coalition building, framing and counter-framing. The results of the analysis help to specify the conditions that facilitate not only the development of alliances, but also those that lead to their accelerated breakdown. Regarding framing, the work contributes to understanding which attributes facilitate resonance and alignment amongst audiences with contrasting characteristics. Furthermore, the discussion around counter-framing highlights how official responses influence the discursive processes of contentious actors, whose opportunities are not the same in ‘the streets’ and in official spaces. Next, the third chapter examines the type of social ties formed through the involvement in the contentious performances led by the relatives of victims of extreme violence. Bringing together the literature on social movements and a body of Latin American research on “emotional communities”, I argue that the MPJD fostered a political-emotional community in which the public narration of suffering made victims and non-victims coalesce to demand justice collectively. Overall, this chapter advances our understanding of the dynamics through which allies that are not directly aggrieved by extreme violence develop a sense of community with the victims. Likewise, it develops four empirical dimensions for the analysis of political-emotional communities: the role of testimonios (testimonial narratives), the ethics developed during contention, the fluctuations in participation, and the costs and risks involved in the mobilisations.
The last two chapters focus on the outcomes of the MPJD. The fourth one encompasses the political and cultural outcomes contributing to the literature in two ways: First, by discussing how achievements in the policy process can demobilise some groups but mobilise others; and second, by explaining how the spillover of a contentious actor can consolidate a social movement community in an emergent contentious field. Finally, the fifth chapter analyses the biographical consequences of participation in victim-led mobilisations. These pages provide an account of how the lives of the participants have been influenced due to their involvement in contention. This chapter advances the understanding of the interplay between social relations and cognitions that lead participants to modify their worldviews.
In an academic sense, this thesis introduces a series of thematic chapters that provide empirical evidence to refine several areas of the theory to better understand various processes related to social mobilisation. Regarding the importance that this thesis can have for the activists and the families of the victims, my work is, first, a systematisation of their campaigns and experiences; second, an acknowledgement of the transcendence of the actions that they have been carrying out sustainedly during a decade; and third, this research is a space for memory, so that their names and those of their relatives are not forgotten, so that the demand for justice does not end.
... Estamos conscientes de que nuestra selección excluye los artículos publicados en revistas internacionales especializadas en los estudios sobre los movimientos sociales (Gordillo- García, 2022aGarcía, , 2023dGarcía, , 2023c, en las revistas más relevantes de ciencia política en América Latina (Monsiváis y en revistas internacionales de varios subcampos de las ciencias sociales (Ameglio, 2016;Hincapié Jiménez y López Pacheco, 2016;Muehlmann, 2017;Naveau y Pleyers, 2012;Treré y Cargnelutti, 2014). 7 De igual forma, nuestra selección excluye Política y gobierno EL MOVIMIENTO POR LA PAZ CON JUSTICIA Y DIGNIDAD EN LAS REVISTAS MEXICANAS del análisis los capítulos de libros y libros (López Leyva, 2019;Reyna Ruiz, 2016;Suaste, 2017), las tesis nacionales e internacionales que discuten el mpjd (Elizalde, 2019;Galán Castro, 2015;García de Alba, 2013;Gordillo-García, 2015, 2022bLey, 2014;Palma López, 2022;Pérez Torres, 2012) y los textos publicados en otras revistas nacionales (Galán Castro, 2017). ...
La movilización del Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD) en México es reconocida como un momento clave en la historia contemporánea del país. Analizamos cómo se ha estudiado el MPJD y qué sabemos sobre este movimiento social. Con base en una revisión de artículos publicados en las revistas de mayor prestigio en México, argumentamos, primero, que la mayoría de los estudios sobre el MPJD se caracteriza por un tratamiento no sistemático de la información que deriva en conclusiones que son más bien hipótesis de trabajo que requieren ponerse a prueba; segundo, que la producción académica sobre este movimiento social ha aportado reflexiones y análisis en torno a seis temas relevantes para los estudios sobre los movimientos sociales
How are social ties formed in the contentious campaigns led by relatives of victims of criminal and political violence? Drawing on the work of Latin American social anthropologists such as Myriam Jimeno, Morna Macleod and Natalia De Marinis, I argue that the contentious campaigns of a victim-led social movement provide the physical and symbolic spaces where the participants form a political-emotional community by sharing testimonios (testimonial narratives) and developing a victim-centered ethos. To substantiate my claim, I discuss the case of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad) in Mexico drawing on twelve in-depth interviews and a documentary review. This article opens a dialogue between the literature on political-emotional communities and the scholarship on social movements offering a new perspective to analyze the development of social ties. In other words, future research projects can make use of the introduced theoretical proposal to understand victim-led activism more in-depth. The approach of this article can be of interest, for example, for scholars dedicated to the study of contention by survivors of genocide, mobilizations against racial violence, and protests in contexts of armed conflict.
El gobierno de Felipe Calderón en México es reconocido por la crisis de violencia que desató la “guerra” contra el crimen organizado y por la sistemática criminalización de las víctimas. Encabezado por el poeta Javier Sicilia, padre de un joven asesinado, en 2011 comenzó a articularse el Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD), un actor colectivo de trascendencia nacional e internacional que enfrentó el discurso oficial para exigir detener la “guerra”. Mediante entrevistas a profundidad, este trabajo se enfoca en comprender las dinámicas de reclutamiento en el MPJD. Si bien la teoría destaca el papel de las redes en el reclutamiento al activismo, los hallazgos cuestionan su papel entre personas no politizadas.
El gobierno de Felipe Calderón en México es reconocido por la crisis de violencia que desató la “guerra” contra el crimen organizado y por la sistemática criminalización de las víctimas. Encabezado por el poeta Javier Sicilia, padre de un joven asesinado, en 2011 comenzó a articularse el Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD), un actor colectivo de trascendencia nacional e internacional que enfrentó el discurso oficial para exigir detener la “guerra”. Mediante entrevistas a profundidad, este trabajo se enfoca en comprender las dinámicas de reclutamiento en el MPJD. Si bien la teoría destaca el papel de las redes en el reclutamiento al activismo, los hallazgos cuestionan su papel entre personas no politizadas.
The Handbook presents a most updated and comprehensive exploration of social movement research. It not only maps, but also expands the field of social movement studies, taking stock of recent developments in cognate areas of studies, within and beyond sociology and political science. While structured around traditional social movement concepts, each section combines the mapping of the state of the art with attempts to broaden our knowledge of social movements beyond classic theoretical agendas, and to identify the contribution that social movement studies can give to other fields of knowledge. The Handbook starts by presenting some of the main core theoretical perspectives in the field. A section exploring some of the major social transformations that have recently affected social movements is then followed by one devoted to the analysis of micro dynamics of collective action. At the meso-level, movements’ cultures, organizational models, and repertoires of action are covered. Finally, the last sections address the political and non-political opportunities for social movements’ development, as well as at social movements’ effects on their environment.
This chapter discusses the emotional components of the collective action in Gdansk, Poland in August 1980. Every record of August 1980 at Gdansk, where the Solidarity movement was founded, is packed with incidents of human emotionality. Fear, courage, anger, laughter, nervous breakdowns, pride, and solidarity appear at peak intensity during those seventeen days. The narrative is punctuated by displays of feeling, including tears, cheering, booing, whistling, open-air Masses, public readings of workers' poetry, presentations of flowers. From the organized flood of feeling, which focused on the Lenin shipyard between Thursday the 14th and Sunday the 31st of August, was born the fastest-growing trade-union movement in world history. Within three months of its recognition, Solidarity recruited ten million members and inspired parallel movements among students, peasants, shoppers in queues, prisoners in jails, and even philatelists.
This chapter examines the role of emotions in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and in the East German civil rights or civic movement of the late 1980s. In the process, it hopes to uncover causal mechanisms that may matter for a wide range of social movements. More specifically, it examines the management of fear in these two “high-risk” movements, drawing upon the “emotion management” perspective of Arlie Hochschild (1983). Hochschild's key idea is that in their ongoing social interactions people more or less self-consciously “induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others”.
This chapter proposes that moral outrage was a logical emotional response to information about human rights abuses and atrocities in Central America. Structural factors were central in determining who had access to credible sources of information that formed the basis of this moral outrage. Yet this information did not lead to the same emotional reaction by all U.S. citizens. One's values and identity shape the way the information is perceived and the degree of importance placed upon responding to the situation. Therefore, emotional reactions must be seen as the result of an interactive process of information, culture, organizational and relational ties, and identity.
This chapter describes the author's fieldwork among volunteers in the two largest charitable organizations dedicated to feeding the poor in Sacramento, California. At Loaves & Fishes, a Catholic Worker charity, the staff and “routine volunteers” (mostly middle class and predominantly white) strove to treat the poor with more compassion and love, while at The Salvation Army, kitchen staff and the “drafted volunteers” (mostly working class and male, many of color, and many formerly homeless) labored alike to be more responsible toward others. The felt politics of caring at Loaves & Fishes and The Salvation Army spanned three mutually constitutive horizons: the moral selving of individuals, the emotion cultures of the organizations, and the local politics of charity and social change. The analysis here focuses on the latter two in order to turn our attention most directly to social movement politics.
The collapse of postwar political arrangements in Eastern, and to some extent Western, Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia in the past decade has re-mapped geopolitical space and challenged social science to find new ways to conceptualize cultural and social transformation. The fall of long-established regimes coupled with vast shifts in migration flows have catapulted political identity, with its concomitant issues of nationalism, ethnicity, and citizenship, to the forefront of social scientific research. Macrosociological interest in political identity tends to focus principally upon the legal institution of citizenship, the problem of immigration, and juridical issues of membership and group rights. This chapter recasts citizenship as a cultural as well as legal mode of political incorporation and underscores the symbolic and emotional practices that nation-states marshal to mobilize affection for the polity. Wedding emotion and citizenship expands the concept of membership to include the felt experience of national belonging.
Social movement researchers who are interested in examining the emotional elements of movement issues cannot be expected to be expert both in social movements and in emotions theory. The modern segmentation of scientific fields generally inhibits such types of dual competence. This chapter provides a brief grounding in what is termed a structural approach to emotions, which is particularly suited to a multiplicity of emotion-related questions that social movement researchers and theorists are likely to confront. A structural approach to emotions examines social structural conditions to explain why specific emotions are either prevalent or likely to arise as the structural conditions either change or continue as before. The structural approach to emotions presents a broad foundation of empirically supported grounds for examining many questions about social movement structure and dynamics.
The question of testimonio – testimonial narrative – intertwines the “desire for objectivity” and “the desire for solidarity” in its very situation of production, circulation, and reception. The concern with the question of subaltern agency and authority in testimonio depends, rather, on the suspicion that intellectuals and writing practices are themselves complicit in maintaining relations of domination and subalternity. Because it does not require or establish a hierarchy of narrative authority, testimonio is a fundamentally democratic and egalitarian narrative form. It implies that any life so narrated can have symbolic and cognitive value. The concern about the connection between testimonio and identity politics that Stoll evinces is predicated on the fact that multicultural rights claims carry with them what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has called a “presumption of equal worth”.