From a Negligent to a ‘Narco-State’: Why Protests Tactics in Anti-Crime Mobilizations in Mexico Radicalized

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Tactics & Repertoires: Invention, Legitimization, Radicalization

Abstract

This paper compares non-violent social movements and violent riots in Mexico that resulted from criminal insecurity. While consistent with Einwohner’s and Maher’s theory of how threat levels may prompt collective protest responses, I show that threat severity is not exclusively a quantitative measure of thresholds or the pace of change. I demonstrate that the perception of intended harm and the type of assailant, but also the type of victim, affect whether and how protestors respond. Organized criminal actors, for example, generate fear and prompt various exit behaviors, including silent by-standing. In contrast, the collusion of state officials with narcos to harm citizens betrays the public’s trust, and all the more so when the victims are construed as ‘unacceptable victims’. The foregoing suggests that the morally shocking behavior of state actors, in particular, not only worsen the state’s legitimacy deficits, but amplify threat and, therefore, the odds of violent protest.

Author

• Dolores Trevizo, Occidental College