The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
APPO demonstration in Paseo de la Reforma, Mexico City,2006. Wkikicommons/Maurice Marcellin. Some rights reserved.Mexico
has a long uninterrupted history of social protest and mobilization. These
mobilizations have however failed to overlap and join forces with other forms
of struggle and protest; they have also failed to build up a large social and
political movement capable of initiating a veritable transformation of general awareness,
let alone of the legal and institutional framework that regulates — in an
authoritarian, uneven and inequitable way— the coexistence of the Mexican
people.
From
2000 to 2015, in Mexico’s so-called ‘post-transitional’ period, after the
National Action Party (pan) defeated
the formerly hegemonic Institutional Revolutionary Party (pri) that had ruled the country for over
70 years, robust social movements emerged, showing skill and inventiveness in
their strategies for mobilizing support in their fight for social causes. Despite
the groundswell of popular unrest and dissent, these movements locked in a
struggle with the de facto powers
have failed to move a State apparatus resistant
to any deepening in the country’s democratization towards the
acknowledgement and exercise of citizens’ political, social, economic,
cultural, sexual rights. On more than one occasion this has triggered social
protests.
Why does social
mobilization in Mexico happen?
Mexico’s
social mobilizations and protests over this period are attributable to various causes:
recognition for the cultural identity of the country’s indigenous population and
for their rights and autonomy; political-electoral problems; demonstrations against
the system; protests against violence or else to demand respect for the rights
of sexual diversity; the demands of dissatisfied students.
Social
movements in Mexico as around the world are increasingly showing themselves
adept at mobilizing resources and implementing various measures and types of
mobilization to openly question the powers that be, within a neoliberal
economic context where the divide between the haves and have-nots is growing
ever wider. This is creating highly unequal societies scarred by poverty and
extreme poverty affecting millions of human beings. Infant malnutrition, for
example, is blocking any prospect of a brighter future for societies suffering
from this terrible problem. Unemployment is spiralling due to the
implementation of inhumane neoliberal policies, and often-curable diseases are
allowed to kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of children, women,
indigenous people and the elderly.
At
the same time, the social movements born in Mexico at the dawn of the new millennium
question the establishment and operation of a political model based on a
liberal representative democracy that is revealing a growing failure and lack
of interest in resolving today’s social problems and demands (employment,
education, protection of human rights, diverse identities, the autonomy of
social groups within state contexts, environment, transparency, legality, the
fight against corruption and violence on several levels, including that of the emotions,
etc.). They are up against a representative democracy intricately linked to
neoliberal interests, a political model seeking to rule in a void, without a
broad base of popular support and generating a profound indifference toward
politics and democracy. The
democracy put in place not so long ago throughout most of Latin America is now
facing a major crisis.
The democracy put in place not so long ago
throughout most of Latin America is now facing a major crisis. Just as its
arrival was once heralded with great fanfare, wrapped up in promises that created
outsized expectations among large sectors of the region’s populations, it is
now greeted with skepticism at best, and more often with open mistrust and a rejection
of politicians, institutions and governments.
This
has created a sense of detachment, disenchantment and crippling indifference. Politicians
defending liberal democracies, self-styled representatives, are increasingly disengaged
from the challenges facing citizens while continuing their political activities
amid corruption, lies and deceit. This has led to the frustration of citizens and
an erosion of institutional and social trust.
The
solution is not to discard representative democracy, even though an increasing
sector of society is in favor of abandoning the field by refusing to
participate in institutional forums built around this democratic model. This
ignores the fact that such a move would be to squander the very significant and
hard-fought accomplishments of social struggle. The true problem lies
elsewhere, and relates to the deep crisis of representation in recent times within
contemporary societies. Therefore, we should consider the benefit of citizens
resuming a participative and deliberative role in the political realm, of
involving social actors in the public space, in citizens’ normative
appropriation of institutions, as Jürgen Habermas says, whereby they may
actively exercise their democratic rights, specifically in regard to
participation and communication. Charles Taylor, for his part, proposes not
always having to act as subjects but also as rulers, not always being below but
also on top; in other words, that at least for a period it is “us” who might be
in charge, instead of it always being “them.”
These
ideas do not run counter to representative democracy, but instead call for an
enriching improvement of it through participation. They avoid the false dichotomy
of representation versus participation.
However,
another important and particularly vexing aspect of representative democracies’
poor state of health relates to the distance between political parties and their
social basis. This is compounded by the disregard, not to say total
abandonment, of political parties’ traditional role as institutions able to
articulate social demands and interests and act as a bridge between civil
society and government; to serve as channels of communication or promoters of
social action, political formation and party political activism built on a
particular ideology and practice, on the construction and proposal of a
political project that differentiates them and that seeks to boost social and
political transformations.
Today’s
political parties, including those on the left – in Mexico’s case, the Movement
of National Regeneration (Morena) and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (prd) – are electoralist and pragmatic,
with blurred ideological positions and flimsy discourses in terms of their proposed
programs. They are often part of the problem rather
than the solution, with links to drug trafficking, organized crime… absolutely
corrupt and all-corrupting.
They
are catch-all or cartel political parties that act under the aegis of state
institutions and wish to stake out their position simply in order to safeguard
their precious interests and multiple privileges. They are often part of the
problem rather than the solution, with links to drug trafficking, organized
crime; riddled with anti-democratic practices, they are absolutely corrupt and all-corrupting.
This combines to demobilize, whereas a political party should in fact have the
opposite effect of mobilising citizens as a political and social force and raising
their awareness.
Collective
action in modern societies today is the demand of social actors who feel
displaced by the deficient decision-making of remote ‘professional politicians’.
Nowadays many social mobilizations around the world (the Indignados or the 15-M anti-austerity movement in Spain, Occupy Wall Street, and #YoSoy132 in Mexico, to name just a few)
are the result of citizens eager to participate within the political sphere, to
monitor, rate and denounce the performance of decision-makers, becoming
directly involved in taking decisions if only to break from the vicious circle
that has long stifled the activities of the common citizen in terms of
representation. This is a democracy in which citizens must take the driving
seat. This is a democracy in which citizens must
take the driving seat.
Citizen
participation in public matters must be accepted as essential, not to replace
representative democracy, but to complement it, improve it, and help find solutions
for the enormous and complex problems afflicting societies around the world
today. Mexico needs a robust and participative citizenship, one capable of
influencing the development of the political community and society, for the
construction of the public good. Participation and representation are mutually
necessary to make our nascent democracy viable and to give it meaning.
What effects have social
movements had?
We should
recall that in Mexico, despite important mobilizations in recent years (ezln, appo,
mpjd, #YoSoy132, Ayotzinapa), most of the population does not mobilize
and organize itself: movements are in fact confined to relatively limited and
minority sectors. These have lacked the strength to enable the confluence of a
wider range of social and political organizations in order to assemble broad
alliances between diverse social sectors. Furthermore, for various reasons, none
of these activist sectors has lasted long, or at least long enough to make a
defining impact on the issues in question and in the transformation of society.
However,
some of these movements have succeeded in making a forceful and influential
presence felt. They have not resigned themselves to simply questioning the status
quo. On the contrary they have sought to translate their work, resources,
experience and imagination into concrete proposals for the construction of
alternative solutions to the various vicissitudes and issues affecting Mexican
society – despite the relative lack of ultimate success in achieving their
aims.
They
have opened up vital debates around the processes of solidarity both within
Mexico and abroad, attracting considerable sympathy and creating great
expectations. Nevertheless, they have also suffered major setbacks and made
serious slip-ups, disheartening activists and the population at large. The repression and criminalization of protest in Mexico
has grown at an alarming rate in recent years.
Sometimes
these problems have been caused by internal mistakes within the movements. In most cases they have resulted from an authoritarian
and abusive intervention by Mexico’s federal, state and local government
authorities. The repression and criminalization of protest in Mexico has grown
at an alarming rate in recent years.
The democratic and egalitarian hopes underpinning
these struggles have left in their wake political failures, broken dreams and unfulfilled
promises. Examples
include the emergence in 1994 of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (ezln), and in later years – particularly in 2001 – when this largely
indigenous collective mobilized itself to demand recognition for indigenous
rights and culture; in 2005, the broad-based popular protest when the head of
the Federal District government was threatened with impeachment. In 2006, the movement headed by Andrés Manuel López
Obrador during the post-electoral dispute over the recounting of votes from
every voting booth amid accusations of electoral fraud; also in 2006, the major
uprising of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (appo); the extensive and innovative
presence from 2011 to 2013 of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (mpjd); in 2012, the #Yosoy132 movement mainly comprised of students from both public
and private universities; and from 2014 to today the protests, marches,
demonstrations and numerous popular mobilizations led by the family members of
the 43 missing students from the teachers’ school “Escuela Normal Rural Raúl Isidro Burgos”, in Ayotzinapa.
All of
these are clear examples of social unrest and mobilizations that nevertheless did
not accomplish their aims (with the exception of the mobilization to prevent
López Obrador’s impeachment). Mexico has a proud tradition of mobilization, yet
it has largely failed to ensure that demands are properly met or that the
country’s political, institutional and legal situations have been improved.
These
popular mobilizations have not led to a destabilization of the neoliberal
economic system that has held sway in Mexico since the 1980s, a system that has
wreaked so much damage by aggravating poverty and increasing inequality.
Neither have they constituted an inflection point to alter the hegemony of the seemingly
dysfunctional representative political model. These mobilizations have not introduced
changes of government and public policies, or had an impact on improving laws
and the proper running of institutions; furthermore, they have not made a
substantive impact on the construction of a fairer, more prosperous, equitable
society with lower levels of poverty, and where violence is no longer a major
part of people’s daily lives in almost every part of the country, a situation with
a negative impact on the social stability, peace of mind, and security of the
population and one which creates conflicts, fragmentations and social chaos. In
other words, they have not prevented deep and enormous damage being done to the
social fabric.
Questioning modernity
Many
participants in these movements have come from new generations of social
activists, and the presence of these new participants has been made possible
thanks to the permanence and perseverance of Mexico’s social movement. In
addition, we are currently at a watershed when many sectors of society are openly
questioning the traditional values of modernity, and the political and economic
structures that it has engendered or which have been updated and become more
deeply rooted in the past forty years.
Similarly, in
recent years, collective action has risen again, as the collective awakening of
one or more social groups (fragmented in Mexico) that have dared to question
the current regime and economic model, as well as the dominant political
culture. These activists have had the guts and imagination to demand rights,
freedoms and democracy, better conditions in which citizens can demand respect
for their increasing number and range of rights, the end to violence, poverty
and inequality. As
students, laborers, nurses, doctors and women did previously, today’s activists
in Mexico seek to contribute to the transformation of the Mexican political
system.
As students,
laborers, nurses, doctors and women did previously, today’s activists in Mexico
seek to contribute to the transformation of the Mexican political system. They seek
to open it up and bring about a “true democratization”, not only in terms of
representation but also in regard to citizen participation, deliberation and
involvement in major decision making processes. These historic mobilizations,
have sought to bring an end to authoritarianism, questioning as never before
the legitimacy of the political regime, fighting to democratize it and
establish citizens’ freedoms and rights that are absent and often merely
simulated or limited.
These
movements represent the first steps in the struggle to found a properly
democratic political system; they are the result of social groups, the young,
indigenous people, students, peasants, education workers, professionals, and
women who have all attempted to imagine a non-simulated Mexico, and who have
tried to reveal the authoritarian system hiding beneath the veil of democracy.
These mobilizations seek to construct a non-authoritarian system where there is
no repression or violence. At the same time, they are attempting to open up
democratic and far more horizontal channels of communication and dialogue
between rulers and those who are governed, and to broaden the spectrum of
citizen participation and deliberation that has so far been circumscribed.
These are movements that constitute an about-turn in political culture.
But it is
also true that most recent social movements in Mexico have been notably
reactive and defensive in relation to certain state actions or omissions. They
have started out vigorously and then lost steam quite rapidly. They grow,
attracting a wide range of followers, producing large mobilizations, gaining
visibility with regard to certain negative circumstances and situations, prompted
either by a public policy or program that the government wishes to impose
without any public consultation, an act of repression, authoritarianism or following
a disproportionate and abusive reaction from the police and army against a
sector of society. This may be triggered by the murder of one or more people, a
change in legislation, etc. But this is then followed by a counter flow, a
significant loss of momentum; the movements dissipate, most of the time without
achieving the objectives that motivated them in the first place.
Concluding remarks
Some
social movements in Mexico (such as the Zapatista movement or MPJD) have attempted to change
or improve not only the country’s laws and institutions, but also the moral
rules on which human relationships are grounded. These mobilizations maintain that
it is worth fighting for new values and that movements can produce social and
cultural shifts, to be reflected in new social and political institutions.
Some
of these movements have made small steps forward, but they have not achieved
this aim so far. Overall the Mexican state and its institutions have managed to
prevent structural change together with the transformations needed to deepen
and improve Mexico’s nascent democracy and its population’s quality of life.
Thanks
go to the Research Department of the Iberoamericana University in Mexico City
for providing the funds to translate this article from Spanish into English for
its publication in Open Movements.
How to cite:
Torres-Ruiz, R. (2016) Democracy and social movements in Mexico, Open Democracy / ISA RC-47: Open Movements, 1 December. https://opendemocracy.net/ren-torres-ruiz/democracy-and-social-movements-in-mexico