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Begin New Search Topic Social Movement Political Geography North America

1. How Mexican Feminists Became Enemies of the State

Author:
Dawn Marie Paley, Alicia Hopkins, and Lirba Cano
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Abstract:
It is no exaggeration to say that the power of feminism, which is felt in marches on March 8 (International Women’s Day), November 25 (International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), and other dates, has made it one of the most important movements in Latin America. Women in Mexico are organizing and joining forces against all of the violences we face, from homes to the streets, from schools to hospitals and other institutions, as well as in our workplaces and in mixed spaces. Beyond naming and protecting others from the aggressions of violent men, our unity and presence in the streets give us tools to break the patriarchal pact that is so present in daily life and politics. Feminists and women participate in broad and diverse struggles: against racism, for memory, by searching for the disappeared, in defense of water and territory, for labor rights and justice, for the right to free, safe, and legal abortion, in support of migrants, for the legalization of marijuana, against violence, and for peace.
Topic:
Social Movement, Gender Based Violence, Feminism, Repression, and Transphobia
Political Geography:
Latin America, North America, and Mexico

2. Farmer Movement Oversight of Mexican Government Agricultural Programs

Author:
Jonathan Fox and Carlos García Jiménez
Publication Date:
11-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Accountability Research Center (ARC), American University
Abstract:
In Mexico’s state of Guerrero, a broad-based, collaborative social accountability campaign led by a network of agrarian community leaders contributed to improving a large-scale free fertilizer program, targeted at smallholders. In 2019, the newly-elected federal government took over a state government subsidy program that had been synonymous with clientelism and corruption, promising to clean it up and include access to organic fertilizer. When the program’s historic deficiencies persisted during its first year of transition to federal management, farmers responded with widespread, confrontational protest. To address this chaotic situation, veteran activists and community leaders from across the state transformed protest into proposals, launching a participatory, statewide monitoring and advocacy campaign with the Guerrero Network of Ejido and Communal Commissioners. The campaign advocated for the validation of program beneficiary rosters in community assemblies, based on federal agrarian law, also using the official public information request system. It helped to ensure the distribution of fertilizer to smallholder farmers, reduced diversion of fertilizer for corrupt or electoral purposes, and promoted more inclusion of women and indigenous smallholders. Despite these achievements, the Network’s proposals for transparency, peasant participation, accountability, and agroecological transition were rejected by the government officials responsible for the fertilizer program. In response, the campaign coordinators shifted their focus to other government agricultural programs and coordinated with agrarian leaders in other states to launch their own advocacy platforms. This organizing process led to the second Agrarian Convention of Guerrero, which included participation of agrarian leaders from a dozen other states, followed by regional meetings and state conventions in half of the country’s states. On April 10, 2023, five thousand agrarian leaders gathered in Mexico City for the First National Agrarista Convention. Reflections on this experience include: The focus of the farmer oversight campaign on immediately felt needs generated social energy and inspired a new organizing strategy. The state-wide mobilization to promote better fertilizer delivery was grounded in revitalized civic life in historic local participatory governance institutions that were created following the Mexican Revolution. Elected leaders of these ejidos and agrarian communities gave the campaign both scale and legitimacy. Though mainly driven by grassroots organizing, the farmer oversight campaign also used technical open government tools. The campaign combined the monitoring of agricultural programs and local problem-solving with social mobilization, scaling up advocacy for greater recognition of peasant movement oversight to the national level.
Topic:
Agriculture, Government, Social Movement, Farming, and Community Organizing
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

3. Protesting Against Crime and Insecurity: High-Risk Activism in Mexico's Drug War

Author:
Sandra J. Ley Gutiérrez
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
When do protests against crime and insecurity take place, regardless of the risks that such mobilization may entail? This paper argues that while violence provides an initial motivation for participating in protests, social networks play a fundamental role in incentivizing citizen mobilization against insecurity. Socialization within networks helps generate solidarity and empathy among participants, while at the same time transforming emotions associated with living in a violent context into potential for action. Also, through networks, individuals share information about opportunities for collective action and change their perceptions about the effectiveness and risks of such activism. These distinct mechanisms are valuable for the activation of protest against crime across levels of violence. Supporting evidence is derived from an original dataset on protest events in reaction to violence in Mexico between 2006 and 2012. Additionally, I rely on qualitative in-depth interviews and participant observation to illustrate the role of networks in protest against crime across several Mexican states. This paper contributes to the growing literature on criminal violence and political participation.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Crime, Social Movement, Protests, Violence, Social Networks, and Activism
Political Geography:
Latin America, North America, and Mexico

4. Nonviolent Movements and Material Resources in Northwest Mexico

Author:
Chris Allan and A. Scott DuPree
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC)
Abstract:
Nonviolent resistance movements operate with few resources and nearly no money. Yet these movements thrive and often succeed. The little external funding for civil society that is available rarely reaches the grassroots groups that are the backbone of these movements. How do they get the material resources they need? This study highlights strategies that are being used effectively by nonviolent movements to mobilize the resources they need to galvanize participation in movement actions and influence both the public and policymakers. Based on the experience of three campaigns in Northwest Mexico over two decades, the research finds that material resources are often mobilized internally in a decentralized way, driven by effective strategic planning and actions. We discuss the strategic choices nonviolent movements make to mobilize resources and how they direct them as situations change, and how outside supporters can provide resources in a constructive way.
Topic:
Civil Society, Social Movement, Resistance, and Nonviolence
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

5. Racial Reckoning in the United States: Expanding and Innovating on the Global Transitional Justice Experience

Author:
Ashley Quarcoo and Medina Husaković
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The United States is in a profound moment of public reckoning with its history of racial injustice. In the time since George Floyd’s murder, national and local initiatives seeking truth, redress, and reform (TRR) for historical racial injustices have multiplied across the country. These efforts include national proposals for a truth, racial healing, and transformation commission and a reparations commission, as well as dozens of subnational initiatives on reparations, truth, and reform. Diverse in form, these efforts are united in their goal of seeking remedies for state-sanctioned racial violence and discrimination. This emergent TRR movement is drawing deeply from the field of transitional justice. Transitional justice is a global practice designed to help countries reconcile with a history of past human rights abuses. While it is traditionally used in countries transitioning from conflict and authoritarianism, U.S. stakeholders are adapting its tools—like truth commissions, reparations, and institutional reforms—as well as its lessons for local purposes. This working paper investigates the transitional justice approaches and lessons most relevant for the United States’ TRR community in the present moment through three case studies: Brazil, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. Together, these case studies surface a number of lessons, relevant for both practitioners and donors, on initiating and sustaining TRR initiatives appropriate for the U.S. context. The case study of Brazil reveals the importance of confronting the legacies of amnesty and the ways in which amnesty can license collective forgetting about the brutality and impacts of past harms. The study also demonstrates the tremendous contributions that subnational truth commissions make in generating rich, new findings that complicate a larger narrative, as well as in developing locally relevant recommendations. In failing to fully capitalize on subnational contributions, the case of Brazil also demonstrates the importance of coordinating subnational and national TRR efforts and in leveraging a national commission to integrate and amplify local findings. South Africa provides a powerful example of how a truth commission can be a vessel for reshaping public memory and national identity, using nationally televised public hearings, emotional victim testimony, and respected national leaders to engage the population. However, South Africa’s case also shows the limits of a process that focused predominantly on individual human rights violations and invested less in investigating both the structural factors that enabled those abuses and the socioeconomic dimensions of harm. With the proper mandate, resources, and protocols, institutional hearings can be a critical tool for truth commissions to engage in analysis of structural harms. Finally, the case study of Northern Ireland demonstrates the potential limits of truth telling and the importance of focusing on reforms that remedy the relationship between the state and the citizens that have been harmed by its actions and policies. Northern Ireland’s Independent Commission on Policing pioneered a new approach to policing based on community partnership, human rights, and accountability that has led to measurable change in public opinion toward the police. Further, Northern Ireland’s success in addressing socioeconomic drivers of conflict can be traced to its affirmative approach to mainstreaming the goal of economic equality into its governance systems. Together, these cases reveal important ways that the United States can learn from and innovate on the global practice of transitional justice as it seeks to capture the opportunity of this moment.
Topic:
Race, Social Movement, Transitional Justice, and Protests
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

6. Fact Sheet: Anti-Protest Legislation and Demonstration Activity in the US

Author:
Sam Jones and Roudabeh Kishi
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED)
Abstract:
Since the wave of demonstrations over the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020, state governments have proposed more than 90 “anti-protest” bills to restrict demonstration activity around the country (Al Jazeera, 22 April 2021). Republican lawmakers have introduced 81 bills in 34 states during the 2021 legislative session alone, more than double the number introduced in any other year, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (New York Times, 21 April 2021; International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, 22 April 2021). These bills have become law in states like Oklahoma and Florida, with new legislation increasing the penalties for “unlawful protesting” and “granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets” (New York Times, 21 April 2021). Although officials have cited instances of protest violence over the past year to justify this new legislative push — with Governor Ron DeSantis labelling Florida’s law “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country” (New York Times, 21 April 2021) — most of these states have experienced low levels of violent or destructive demonstration activity. ACLED data show that, on average, the states in which strict “anti-protest” laws have been proposed are home to the same rate of peaceful protests — 97% of all events — as states that have not pursued such legislation, meaning that violent demonstrations do not feature more prominently in the former than the latter. States like Florida and Oklahoma, which have promulgated some of the most restrictive new laws, have actually seen a lower proportion of demonstrations involving violent or destructive activity than most other states in the country.
Topic:
Social Movement, Protests, Legislation, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Racial Justice
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

7. #MeToo and US Politics: Analyzing the Twitter Conversation

Author:
Vittoria Bernardini
Publication Date:
09-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
Institution:
Institute for Research and European Studies (IRES)
Abstract:
The #MeToo movement has had a profound cultural impact on US society, and notably on US party politics. While many studies have addressed the #MeToo-related controversy arising from the Brett Kavanaugh nomination to Supreme Court Justice in 2018, the relationship between #MeToo and US politics before this event has remained understudied. This article, therefore, addresses this gap by looking at the role of politics at the beginning of the #MeToo movement. Focusing on the first six months of online activity on Twitter (October 2017 – April 2018), over 2 million tweets with the #MeToo hashtag are analyzed to identify the main activity patterns across the dataset and to gain insight on user behavior and participation in the conversation. Results point to the weaponization of #MeToo in the political context from its inception. It is suggested that #MeToo reflects the polarized political climate in the US and that it can be conceptualized as part of the wider “culture wars” (Hunter 1991) that characterize the public debate.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Mass Media, Social Movement, Social Media, Sexual Violence, and Participation
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

8. Operation Condor, The War on Drugs, and Counterinsurgency in the Golden Triangle (1977-1983)

Author:
Adela Cedillo
Publication Date:
05-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In the late 1960s, the Mexican government launched a series of counternarcotics campaigns characterized by the militarization of drug production zones, particularly in the northwestern region—the so-called Golden Triangle, epicenter of both production and trafficking of marijuana and opium poppy since the 1930s. Operations Canador (1969–1975) and Trizo (1976) served as a laboratory for methods to curb drug production, ranging from harassment of drug growers to the aerial defoliation of illicit crops. Operation Condor (1977–1988) combined and enhanced these strategies, wreaking havoc on communities of alleged drug growers, but without entirely disrupting the drug industry. This paper explores the role of the US government in the militarization of Mexico’s anti-drug policy, underscoring how the ruling party (the Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI) took advantage of this shift to tackle domestic issues and reassert its hegemony. I argue that Operation Condor functioned as a counterinsurgency campaign oriented to thwart both social and armed movements, eliminate competitors in the narcotics market, and reorganize the drug industry to protect successful drug lords. Operation Condor also caused the decentralization of the drug industry from the northwest and created a new clientelistic pact between drug lords and national security agencies, such as the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), the Office of the Attorney General of Mexico–Federal Judicial Police (PGR-PJF), and the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), which benefited from drug proceeds. Finally, the de facto state of siege imposed in the Golden Triangle produced thousands of victims of harassment, torture, rape, murder, forced-disappearance, and displacement; massive human rights abuses that authorities either concealed or denied.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Human Rights, Governance, Social Movement, History, Borders, and Violence
Political Geography:
Latin America, North America, Mexico, and United States of America

9. Black Lives Matter Might Just Rescue American Democracy

Author:
Oona A. Hathaway and Daniel Markovits
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law School
Abstract:
The past weeks in the United States have produced two horrifying varieties of violence. First, and all too familiar, the police killings of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta follow a long and awful tradition of brutal state violence directed against Black Americans, beginning with chattel slavery and extending through the fugitive slave laws, lynchings, and right up to the present. The Black Lives Matter movement, which rose to prominence after earlier police killings of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, rightly emphasizes this terrible lineage and contends that achieving racial justice today requires coming to terms with the past. Second, and less familiar, we see an American president openly embracing tools of authoritarian rule. President Donald Trump has incited violence against peaceful protesters, threatening to use “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” against them and demanding that the authorities “dominate” citizens gathered to express their values. At the same time, the police have responded with documented instances of violence against members of the press seeking to cover the protests, while military units and military equipment have been deployed against peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. and threatened against protesters throughout the country. These two injustices — racism and authoritarianism — may seem merely to coincide, perhaps because of the person who happens now to occupy the White House. But they are, at least at this moment in American history, deeply intertwined. The writer Akilah Green observes (in a Tweet) that “Police are now brutalizing everyone just to maintain their ability to brutalize black people.” This is more than a Twitter slogan: it captures a deep and powerful social logic.
Topic:
Law Enforcement, Social Movement, Democracy, Protests, and Black Lives Matter (BLM)
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

10. ‘It Could Happen Here’: The US Election and the Threat of Violence

Author:
Simon Adams
Publication Date:
10-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
In June this year, for the first time in our history, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect published an “Atrocity Alert” for the United States. That alert was issued just nine days after an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, was choked to death by police in Minneapolis. Floyd’s death led to massive protests in more than 100 US cities and towns, and some rioting. As we wrote at the time: “While the murder of George Floyd in police custody does not constitute a mass atrocity crime, it has exposed deep divisions in US society. All law enforcement officials involved in the extrajudicial killing of civilians should be held legally accountable and punished to the full extent of the law. Crowd control measures deployed against peaceful protests must be consistent with international standards. The security forces must also strictly comply with the principles of necessity, proportionality, legality and precaution to help prevent any further deaths or serious injuries.” Now the United States faces an even greater challenge. The election on 3 November is expected to be one of the most divisive and dangerous in US history. Since March the United States has not only endured the largest COVID-19 death toll in the world, but also crushing unemployment levels and a disturbingly fractured political discourse. While the structural problems in US society – such as its history of racial violence and overly-militarized policing – pre-date the presidency of Donald Trump, he has exacerbated them. Trump’s attempt to cast doubt over the legitimacy of the impending election, combined with his unwillingness to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, poses a threat to American democracy. Many Americans believe that existential issues of race, identity and civil rights are also on the ballot.
Topic:
Race, Social Movement, Elections, Protests, Justice, and Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America