ArticlePDF Available

Resonant Frames, but Failed Alliances. The Upward Scale Shift of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity

Authors:
Johan Gordillo-García at Independent Researcher
Johan Gordillo-García
  • Independent Researcher
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

How did a local protest motivated by the murder of a poet's son grow into a national social movement? In this article, I examine the role of framing in the upward scale shift of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), a contentious actor that brought together victims of the Mexican war on crime, activists, and organizations to protest against violence. Following recent work on frame analysis, I analyze the different and contrasting reasons that led several groups from across the country to align with the MPJD's frames and nd them as resonant. In addition, I discuss why, despite the existence of common goals, ideological incompatibilities caused multiple MPJD allies to withdraw their participation in the alliance shortly after the latter's initial actions.
Content uploaded by Johan Gordillo-García
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Johan Gordillo-García on Nov 15, 2022
Content may be subject to copyright.
Contention, Volume 10, Issue 2, Winter 2022, 56–82 © The Author(s)
doi:10.3167/cont.2022.100204 • ISSN 2572-7184 (Print) • ISSN 2330-1392 (Online)
Resonant Frames, but Failed Alliances
The Upward Scale Shift of the Movement for Peace with
Justice and Dignity
Johan Gordillo-García
Abstract: How did a local protest motivated by the murder of a
poet’s son grow into a national social movement? In this article, I
examine the role of framing in the upward scale shift of the Move-
ment for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD), a contentious
actor that brought together victims of the Mexican war on crime,
activists, and organizations to protest against violence. Following
recent work on frame analysis, I analyze the different and contrast-
ing reasons that led several groups from across the country to align
with the MPJD’s frames and nd them as resonant. In addition, I
discuss why, despite the existence of common goals, ideological
incompatibilities caused multiple MPJD allies to withdraw their
participation in the alliance shortly after the latter’s initial actions.
Keywords: alliances, framing, Mexico, resonance, scale shift,
victims
Upon taking ofce as president of Mexico in December 2006, and amid
broad accusations of electoral fraud, Felipe Calderón declared a “war”
against organized crime. After the government deployed the military in
several regions of the country to combat drug cartels, the results were
ruinous. More than 121,600 people were murdered (INEGI 2022) and
around 28,200 were disappeared (CNB 2022) during Calderón’s govern-
ment. However, Calderón constantly minimized the relevance of the
crisis, arguing that these atrocities were committed among criminals and
that innocent victims were collateral damage. Some groups of activists
organized protests to denounce the effects of the state’s militarization,
... La característica principal de la caravana fue la participación de familiares de víctimas que compartían sus testimonios en público, muchos por primera vez (Gordillo- García, 2023c;Suaste, 2017). En Juárez, sin embargo, hubo rompimientos con muchas organizaciones que exigían como demanda fundamental el retorno inmediato de las fuerzas armadas a los cuarteles y rechazaban cualquier posibilidad de dialogar con representantes gubernamentales (Gordillo- García, 2022a;Romero, 2016;Suaste, 2017). Poco después de terminar la caravana, el mpjd tuvo un encuentro público con el presidente, en el que un grupo de familiares de víctimas exigió detener la guerra y garantizar procesos de justicia (Monsiváis . ...
... Hicimos la revisión con el listado de revistas incluidas en octubre de 2023 en el área de ciencias sociales; 6 es decir, consideramos textos que fueron publicados hasta ese momento. 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). ...
El Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad en las revistas mexicanas
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2024
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
View
... Ante un gobierno cuya usual postura era la negación y la criminalización de las víctimas, el mpjd reunió y entrelazó a actores colectivos e individuales de todo el país para enfrentar la estrategia federal de seguridad y el discurso oficial en torno a la violencia. Lejos de ser homogéneos, estos actores tuvieron importantes disputas en cuanto a las tácticas y los marcos que las movilizaciones debían impulsar (Suaste, 2017;Romero, 2016;Gordillo-García, 2022), pero esto no impidió que el mpjd expandiera su campo de acción al ámbito nacional mediante movilizaciones en las regiones norte, centro y sur del país, cuestión que llevó al gobierno de Calderón a establecer un diálogo -que ha sido muy criticado por las y los participantes (Gordillo-García, 2015)-y al Poder Legislativo a aprobar una ley para proteger los derechos de las víctimas. Los procesos que derivaron en la promulgación de la Ley General de Víctimas en 2013 han sido analizados en investigaciones previas (Gordillo-García, 2020), mientras que la ineficaz implementación ha sido criticada en otros espacios (Gordillo-García y Sicilia, 2020). ...
Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad: Consecuencias culturales
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2023
  • Rev Mexic Soc
Tras dos años de constantes movilizaciones para oponerse a la violencia ocasionada por la “guerra” contra el crimen en México, el Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad (MPJD) redujo la frecuencia y la intensidad de sus acciones y, por lo tanto, su relevancia pública se diluyó. No obstante, mediante mecanismos de difusión relacional, el MPJD impactó en la organización de nuevos grupos liderados por familiares de personas desaparecidas, así como en sus repertorios contenciosos, con lo que se formó una comunidad de movimiento social contra la violencia de la guerra en el país. Este artículo analiza cómo ocurrió ese proceso.
View
Event Coalitions after the Event: Legacies of Mega-Event Activism
Article
  • Jun 2024
This article introduces a conceptual framework for understanding the lasting benefits of coalition participation for SMOs. Based on ethnographic research into protest linked to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, it traces how individual movement organizations were able to benefit from participation in an event coalition. Lasting benefits, or legacies, of coalition participation included organizational changes, enhanced mobilization potential, and achieving political objectives. However, these were not distributed evenly among the organizations studied, with some more able than others to effectively benefit from coalition participation than others, based on three factors: organizational structure, decision-making processes, and movement mission. This empirically grounded framework provides new avenues for the study of coalitions and how individual movement organizations are affected by coalition participation.
View
Compound players and emotional arenas: The self-identification of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity in Mexico
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
After the Mexican ex-president Felipe Calderón declared a 'war' against criminal organisations , the number of murders and people reported as disappeared increased steadily in the country. However, the authorities constantly ensured that these crimes occurred exclusively among criminals. This narrative was fractured when, after the murder of his son in 2011, the poet Javier Sicilia started leading the protests of activists, relatives of victims and social organisations from virtually all of Mexico. After some mobilisations, they adopted the name Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD). Following a 'players and arenas' understanding of social movements, I analyse the formation of the MPJD as a self-identified compound player. First, I explore the structural and agency elements in the participants' backgrounds. Then, I discuss how the emotional content of the interactions in public demonstrations influenced their relationships developing a sense of community that fostered their identification as part of the MPJD. Overall, this study advances a micro-level perspective to understand the dynamics of collective action.
View
Social movements and political-emotional communities: an approach from the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity in Mexico
Article
Full-text available
  • Feb 2025
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.
View
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.