This networked social movements research project focuses on the creative tactical repertoires of Mexico’s Ayotzinapa movement. I analyze their practices through the transformative media organizing framework, and argue that creative tactics were essential in building utopia as an identity-building movement outcome.
I presented this research at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology. Publication forthcoming.
“In the three months that followed, fifty five protests took place in Mexico, and a Parametría poll showed that 98% of Mexicans knew about these protests (Meneses-Rocha and Castillo-Gonzalez, 2016). Apart from marches on the streets, Ayotzinapa advocacy took place on online social networks. A survey of the primary Twitter hashtags used to share information about the events and investigation of Ayotzinapa shows that, over the same three-month period, over 350,000 tweets included the hashtag “Ayotzinapa” (Abascal-Mena, 2015).
As a resident of Mexico City, one of the cities in the world that most hate street protests, I had to ask myself why. What is it about the Ayotzinapa movement that is bringing people out on the streets every week for two months? I followed my lived experience as an activist who participated and organized around every single of the weekly protests, and in many of the protests in Mexico City before and after the Ayotzinapa protests. These stood out to me because of the presence of creative types doing all sorts of activations — music school students playing funeral music, theatrical performances. In particular, the graphic work of several collectives, including Rexiste, the collective whose case I focused on for this research.
In a cause with no straightforward institutional solutions, different citizen initiatives focused on advocacy for identity-building. And, especifically, utopian identity-building.”