Conflict In Mexico Research Articles

The correlates of childrearing marital conflict in Mexico according to urban women parenting preschoolers

ABSTRACT This cross-sectional study is based on the 2016 National Survey on the Dynamics of Relationships in Households in Mexico. It aims to identify the correlates of childrearing-related marital conflict in urban Mexico. The analysis sample consists of 7,544 heterosexual partnered women parenting preschoolers. Binomial logistic regression models were estimated to investigate factors associated with men’s and women’s annoyance regarding how their partners treat or educate their children, as perceived by women. The findings suggest that disputes over workload distribution, and possible power and control struggles underlie this type of conflict. Therefore, couples that enhance their communication skills, prioritize power-sharing within their relationship, and engage in an equitable division of childrearing and household responsibilities may benefit from a reduction in marital childrearing conflict.

Of Rivals and Enemies: Military–Police Relations in Internal Armed Conflict in Mexico and Colombia

While the dynamics of civil–military relations have traditionally been studied in a dyadic structure, internal deployment changes the relationship between armed agents and their civilian principals. While soldiers fight external wars alone, at home they fight alongside other centrally controlled armed agencies such as police and gendarmeries. This article studies the relationships between militaries, civilians, and centrally controlled police and gendarmeries, which I describe as “alternative security forces (ASFs)” in two democracies with high levels of internal armed conflict, Colombia and Mexico. Based on interview and archival data, I find that while militaries and ASFs will inevitably find themselves in rivalry, the “tone and tenor” of this rivalry matters for civilian governments. While an interservice rivalry allowed for ASF-military cooperation even in the face of competition in Colombia, a zero-sum rivalry in Mexico has hindered the development of law enforcement and perpetuated an unsuccessful over-reliance on the military.

Forced Disappearances, Indigenous Peoples and Socio-Environmental Conflict in Mexico

ABSTRACT Criminological research on forced disappearances is scarce despite the prevalence and seriousness of these phenomena and criminology’s growing interest in mass atrocities. By focusing on forced disappearances in Mexico, we argue that the exploitation of the natural resources of indigenous peoples through extractivism and other ecologically harmful enterprises, and these groups’ resistance to such exploitation, generates social conflict and the violent targeting of indigenous activists, resulting in increased disappearances. Consistent with this argument, we find that the proportion of the indigenous population is positively associated with the forced disappearance rate and the presence of conflicts stemming from extractive projects.

Can grassroots movements in water conflicts drive socio-technical transitions in water management systems?

Water conflicts open windows of opportunity for grassroots movements to transform water systems. However, academic fields studying social movements in socio-environmental conflicts are not well equipped to deal with complexity, non-linear dynamics, and emergent properties. Therefore, these fields rarely engage with long-term complex social processes and dynamics leading to systemic socio-technical changes. Researching water conflicts driven by grassroots movements, we ask whether and how the latter can influence a socio-technical transition of a water management regime. Through an emblematic water conflict in Mexico, we analyse the grassroots movement's trajectory since the conflict´s inception by following the dynamic process of developing agency. Our findings show that throughout the conflict, the grassroots movement accumulated and mobilized diverse capitals to initiate water management strategies and practices that catalysed change in the water management regime by stalling the implementation of large infrastructures. Eventually, this led to the inception of a sustainable and just transition.

Contramedidas en Cabo Pulmo: La ciencia y la judicialización de conflictos ambientales en México

AbstractThe judicialization of environmental conflicts in Mexico has generated a growing demand for legal evidence of environmental damages and risks to ecosystems and communities. When conflicts arise over large development projects, one opposition strategy consists of denouncing errors in a project's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) or procedural errors in its evaluation by federal authorities. Volunteer scientists collaborate with local communities and nonprofit organizations to diagnose technical errors in the EIS and develop “countermeasures” of risks that can be used to contest projects in court. This article analyzes a paradigmatic case of independent EIS review that occurred to oppose a tourism megadevelopment project adjoining the Cabo Pulmo National Marine Park in Baja California Sur. Confronted with the contraction of the political sphere in Mexico, this administrative tactic of political struggle appears as a viable alternative to directly challenging powerful elites. The Cabo Pulmo case highlights evolving relationships between science, environmental governance, and emergent forms of political mobilization in Latin America.

Islands of power. Democratic legitimacy, autonomous organisms, and their conflict in Mexico

In connection with the democratic transition in Mexico, several autonomous organisms were created by constitutional amendment, in significant public policy areas. However, these same organisms came under increasing criticism over the past years, as technocratic and illegitimate, in the country’s national media. Institutional confrontation followed. We discuss this conflict employing our own theoretical proposal on sources of bureaucratic legitimacy. Furthermore, based on key informant interviews, we examine the understanding of senior officials who serve at autonomous organisms about their role in Mexican democracy, and how this understanding informs and orients their work toward strengthening the legitimacy of their own institutions.

Cardenas, Lombardo Toledano and the PCM: the Comintern and Conflicts in Mexico in 1930s

The article examines the interaction and conflicts between the Government of Mexico (represented by President L. Cardenas), the Communist Party, business and social groups and various factions of the labor movement. The analysis is carried out in the context of the influence of the Communist International on its Mexican section. The author shows the evolution of Moscow’s and the Communist Party’s perception of the events in Mexico and demonstrates the role of the Third International and the Profintern in changing the tactics of the Communists, demonstrates a number of consequences of the implementation of the new line.

Two sides of the same coin: increasing material extraction rates and social environmental conflicts in Mexico

This article seeks to explain the multiplication of social environmental conflicts in Mexico as a consequence of expanding and intensifying extractive activities. It examines how the Mexican state has provided private and foreign capital greater access to the country’s natural resources in the transition from state-led import-substituting industrialization to export-oriented market-led development. This, it argues, has led to accelerating material extraction rates in the context of rising global demand for primary commodities; while the negative environmental and social impacts have in turn led to a growing number of conflicts involving the inhabitants of directly affected rural communities, who organize to resist. Based on standardized procedures for material flow analysis, it presents the results of an investigation into the domestic extraction rates of minerals, metal ores, biomass, and fossil fuels from Mexico, between 1990 and 2018. It finds that domestic extraction rates increased significantly during this period, with the exception of fossil fuels, which peaked in 2006, declining thereafter due to the exhaustion of the country’s most important oil reserves. The evolution of domestic extraction rates is juxtaposed with the emergence of related social environmental conflicts by drawing on multiple databases of conflicts around extractive activities in Mexico.

NEW RECORDS OF HUMAN-CROCODILE INTERACTIONS IN MEXICO FROM 2018 THROUGH THE FIRST HALF OF 2021

The growing human population and its associated economic activities have increased human-wildlife interactions. Herein, we provide new records of human-crocodile (HC) interactions in Mexico from 2018 through the first half of 2021. Fifty-one cases were recorded in this study; 2018 had the highest number of cases (n = 19), and 2021 (the first half) had the lowest number of cases. The states of Tamaulipas and Quintana Roo on the Gulf of Mexico represented 40% of the cases, while Oaxaca and Nayarit on the Mexican Pacific coast represented 22% of the cases. Male victims (n = 32) were more commonly associated with human-crocodile interactions than females (n = 10). Forty-four cases were non-fatal and only seven were fatal. As far as we know, our records of HC interactions increase the number of conflicts in Mexico to 250 cases.

Socioecological conflicts in Mexico: Trends and gaps in the regional analysis

Global economic growth and the problems generated by climate change will cause an increase in the occurrence and violence of socioecological conflicts in the coming decades. To understand these trends, it is important to determine the current state of the conflicts. In Mexico efforts have been made to analyze socioecological conflicts at the regional level. However, it is important to know the conceptual approach under which this has been addressed and what variables that reflect the complexity of its socio-ecological context have been considered. The objective of this article is to review the trends and information gaps in the regional analysis of socioecological conflicts in Mexico, using a systematic review of documentary information sources and geovisualizers. As a result, only 30.6% of the information sources feature a defined conceptual approach. The conflicts are characterized by the drivers and social or environmental impacts in all studies. On the other hand, information gaps include the elucidation of management alternatives (41.7%) and future scenarios (22.2%), the description (25%) and analysis of the implied ecosystem services (13.9%), a gender approach (16.7%), an analysis of the normative frame (8.3%), and the exogenous conditions associated with environmental patterns (38.9%) such as the influence of climate change. We argue that a regional analysis of conflicts using a socioecological approach integrating environmental and social components could allow a comparative analysis. It could also provide an understanding of the contextual variables and underlying causes of conflicts. This information is necessary for socioecological conflict management towards peaceful resolutions.

Panorama de los conflictos nacionales en torno al agua en México. Aplicación de una propuesta metodológica para su identificación y caracterización

Water conflicts in Mexico are a phenomenon that is increasing. However, there are various theoretical, conceptual, information and public policy gaps that account for this. This is due in part to the almost null existence of systematic studies in this regard and statistics that provide aggregate information on this problem, as a way of action for its prevention and / or resolution. In this sense, this work presents a methodological proposal for the identification, quantification and characterization of conflicts around water in Mexico, focusing on conflicts of a sub national or internal nature. In addition, because the methodology was applied in the country, the results obtained are presented. Among these results, the identification and characterization of almost 90 conflicts over water throughout the country stands out.

Revisión del conflicto entre los humanos y las serpientes en México: origen, mitigación y perspectivas

Review of the human–snake conflict in Mexico: origin, mitigation and perspectives. The conflict between humans and snakes has existed since unmemorable times. Fear of and aversion towards these animals may have an evolutionary explanation and may be justified because venomous and deadly snakes cause thousands of deaths around the world each year. Furthermore, social perception, the media, myths, and even religion, increase and feed this fear, resulting in the intentional slaughter of snakes being a common practice in many places. As Mexico is a mega–diverse country with more species of snakes than any other country, it faces a particularly difficult situation with regard to snake bites. Here we revise this human–snake conflict from different perspectives in order to better understand it, to propose possible solutions to reduce it, and to contribute towards snake conservation.

Catholic Monroeism: U.S. Support for the Catholic Church During the Mexican Revolution, 1914–1929

In 1823, President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers, and in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt offered a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, claiming a role for the U.S. in policing Latin America. The term Catholic Monroeism describes the application of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary to support the Catholic Church in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. Facing anticlerical rhetoric and policies that restricted the Catholic Church's freedom in Mexico between 1914 and 1929, the U.S. government intervened on behalf of the Church. State Department records show the church-state conflict in Mexico was at the forefront of diplomatic discussions between the two countries. The U.S. government, in weighing intervention in Mexico, believed that the Church could promote harmony and order during a time of national upheaval and violence. Defending Catholicism in Mexico served as a vital component of American foreign policy and a matter of national self-interest for U.S. Catholics, whose previous attention to foreign relations focused on their European homelands.

ShantytownMexico:TheDemocraticOpening inCiudadNezahualcóyotl, 1969–1976

The article analyzes political conflict in Mexico through a powerful social movement that erupted in the massive shantytown of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl between 1969 and 1973. In the summer of 1969, after decades of abysmal living conditions, the residents of Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl (Neza) launched a payment strike to demand the federal government expropriate the land from private land developers, with the intent to gain urban infrastructure and formal property titles. The rebellion that plunged Ciudad Neza into a state of perpetual strife reflects a juncture in Mexican history when the urban shantytown emerged as a distinct and influential site for mass politics. This article historicizes Mexico's urban shantytown as a political space where the ruling party's entrenched clientelism contended with embryonic forms of local democracy. Revealing numerous contradictions, this case study is emblematic of how the urban periphery was a precursor to the vibrant yet incomplete democratization that would come to define national politics in Mexico and much of Latin America in the 1980s.

War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 by Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga

Reviewed by: War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880 by Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga Sonia Hernández War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier, 1830–1880. By Miguel Ángel González-Quiroga. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. 592. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) War and Peace on the Rio Grande Frontier is an eye-opening account of inter-ethnic and inter-racial conflict and collaboration among the residents and transients who comprised the borderlands population from the 1830s through the early years of the Porfirio Díaz regime. Mainly focusing on Euro Americans and Mexican-origin individuals during this period, González-Quiroga argues that collaboration as well as violent conflict among and between these people shaped the contours of this frontier region in deep and far-reaching ways. Building on a large body of primary documentation housed in both Mexican and U.S. repositories, González-Quiroga has produced a powerful narrative of a borderlands region shaped by commercial opportunities, competing social and cultural beliefs, and war and violence. It was not always a matter of Anglo vs. Mexican; what emerges from this careful attention to both collaboration and conflict is a borderlands region that often blurred or softened racial, ethnic, and class lines, albeit temporarily. Composed of the Mexican Northeast and the province that eventually became Texas, this region plays a preponderant role in War and Peace. González-Quiroga does a remarkable job in explaining the eventual emergence of Mexican nationalism intricately tied to the dynamic nature of the region, which was influenced by the ebb and flow of commerce. Commercial opportunities that emerged as a result of external and internal wars, including the U.S. Civil War and the Centralist/Federalist conflict in Mexico, led to the forging of strategic alliances or business partnerships that benefitted all parties. Equally important is the author's examination [End Page 485] of the factors that contributed to moments of what he calls "cooperative violence," which was influenced by factors shaping economic cooperation, further informing decisions by one group or individual to participate in violence, often against their own communities. This timely monograph is an excellent example of what U.S.–Mexican borderlands scholarship should look like. Too often historians on either side rely on sources or explanations that are state- or nation-bound. Further, the book is an example of a historical narrative that converses with historiographies on Mexico and the Mexican north, as well as Texas and U.S. historiography. It pays careful attention to the ways in which economic forces interacted with cultural and social factors. While a nuanced examination of the crucial role of inter-racial and inter-ethnic marriages in solidifying collaboration and its effect on Mexican American land tenure in Texas is missing, the book has the potential to peak scholars' interest in this area. It can also lead to future research on related topics, including women entrepreneurs and the often-neglected role of women in inciting or encouraging violence. Further, it can lead to work on the ways in which violence, whether incited by Anglos, Mexicans, or via cooperative violence, shaped women's lived experiences and, more importantly, how women negotiated and countered such violence. While War and Peace cautions historians to avoid general assumptions about who inflicted violence upon whom, it is difficult not to think about post-1880 historical developments, specifically concerning the treatment of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent in their very own communities. While there has always been anti-American sentiment in Mexico, depending on the historical period and region, the treatment of these U.S. citizens in Mexico pales in comparison to the treatment of Mexican Americans in places like Texas in the post-1880 period. For the most part, U.S. nationals in Mexico did not seek Mexican citizenship, whereas Mexicans in the United States, despite holding U.S. citizenship, had to struggle continuously to be included and treated as such. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, War and Peace forces us to reflect on moments of collaboration between cultures long pitted against one another. History offers us useful lessons, and there is no shortage of them in this book. One...

Solidarity Interrupted: Coffee, Cooperatives, and Certification Conflicts in Mexico and Nicaragua

Ethical commodity networks have been advanced as a means to promote cooperative development, engender more democratic forms of governance, promote environmental conservation, and redistribute a greater share of returns to farmers and workers. This essay draws upon long-term ethnographic research on the role of solidarity within two Mesoamerican coffee-producing cooperatives to understand the effects of certification regimes that undergird many ethical commodity networks today. The essay uses a labor-centric conception of solidarity to demonstrate that the pressures and demands created by certifications intended to generate more just outcomes can also strain existing solidarities that bind cooperatives together.

Human-wildlife conflicts in Mexico: Review of status and perspectives

Human wildlife conflicts (HWC) represent a global challenge for the conservation of species. We registered all the available scientific publications on this subject from 1983 to 2017, in order to analyze the HWC research performed in Mexico. Our results indicate that this subject has been scarcely studied, with less than half of the studies published in scientific journals. The reviewed documents focus on the description and quantification of damage by wildlife, with a total of 112 species mentioned including birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles that damage crops, livestock, poultry, and human health. Of these, nine species made up 41% of the total amount of species that were mentioned. We believe that adequate management and resolution of HWC requires the participation and training of groups of multidisciplinary scientists and technicians. Research in Mexico is scarce and recent and is mostly promoted by the conservation programs and strategies implemented by the federal government.

The new extractivism in Mexico: Rent redistribution and resistance to mining and petroleum activities

Abstract This article analyzes shifts in the political economic conditions of extractive activities in Mexico during the twentieth century until the present, with a focus on the current era and the first months of Lopez Obrador’s presidency. The center of attention is on the mining and petroleum sectors, not only because of their strategic importance for economic development, but also because of the large and growing number of eco-territorial conflicts that have emerged around projects in these two sectors across the country. The paper points to the ways in which Mexico’s laws and public policies have been reoriented in recent years to capture rent derived from mining and petroleum activities in order to finance social policies and infrastructure development, focusing spending on regions where extractive activities take place. In what ways does this policy reorientation reflect the “new extractivism” practiced differentially by progressive governments in South America since the first decade of the new millennium? What is “new” about these policies in the historical context of extractive and industrial development in Mexico? How do recently introduced programs to finance local development projects seek to resolve conflicts around extractive activities? Based on an extensive literature review combined with over ten years of ongoing field research on extractive industries and social environmental conflicts in Mexico, this article discusses how focalized rent-redistribution programs have been implemented alongside reforms to open the petroleum and mining sectors to private and foreign investment, in an effort to accelerate extraction rates. It finds that, while these programs seek to compensate directly affected populations and thereby garner their support for extractive projects, they do not address the most fundamental demand of most community-based resistance movements, which is to effectively exercise the right to decide whether or not to accept these projects.

Assessment of human–crocodile conflict in Mexico: patterns, trends and hotspots areas

An understanding of the factors, patterns of activities and seasonality per region that shape the response to the human–crocodile (HC) conflict in Mexico by humans is essential for prevention and mitigation of negative interactions. We compiled the publicly available data on incidents of crocodile attacks on the Gulf of Mexico and Mexican Pacific coast from January 2000 to the first days of January 2018. Of the recorded unprovoked crocodile attacks (n=149) on humans in Mexico, 102 cases correspond to the Mexican Pacific coast and 47 to the Gulf of Mexico. The age of victims involved in the majority of the attacks ranged from 19 to 40 years old. Three municipalities of high risk (hotspots areas) were Puerto Vallarta, Lázaro Cárdenas and Pinotepa Nacional in the Mexican Pacific coast, whereas, in the Gulf of Mexico, only Bénito Juárez was of high risk. To mitigate this conflict, it is necessary that local authorities in the municipalities (mainly in those of high risk) establish public-safety programs with the goal of raising awareness of the risk of crocodile attacks on the basis of information status and distribution of the crocodile population, linked to the extent of HC conflicts, as a first step for better management and risk mitigation.

Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young

Reviewed by: Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War by Julia G. Young Anne M. Martínez Mexican Exodus: Emigrants, Exiles, and Refugees of the Cristero War. By Julia G. Young. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2016. Pp. xii, 271. $82.00. ISBN 978-0-19-020500-3.) My nonagenarian father has vivid memories of going to a “bootleg” Catholic kindergarten in the early 1930s, trying to avoid soldiers in Pénjamo, Guanajuato on his way to the house of the week, where Catholic nuns offered elicit lessons on the faith to young Mexicans in the aftermath of the Cristero War. My American-born father, whose family fled to Chicago during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, grew up in his mother’s hometown in the Catholic heartland of Mexico. His story, like those recounted in Julia Young’s Mexico Exodus, reveals the transnational nature of Mexican communities, and the ways Catholicism permeated the journeys abroad and returns home for many Mexicans across multiple generations. Dr. Young writes that her primary argument is that the Cristero War had a much wider geographic impact than previously understood. Indeed, this is her [End Page 179] intervention in Mexican historiography. For American Catholic historians, “the transnational forms of popular activism and resistance that occurred within the Mexican emigrant diaspora” (13) are much more significant. The book describes countless failed attempts by Cristeros in exile in the United States to overthrow their government. These failures do not reduce the impact of Cristero exiles; rather they illustrate the abiding commitment to the Cristero cause despite the overwhelming odds when two governments and many of their own emigrant countrymen were against them. Chapter 1 details the long history of Church-State conflict in Mexico. Chapter 2 brings Cristero migrants—both lay and clerical—into focus, highlighting their journeys to cities across the U.S. Southwest and Midwest. Young centers the work among Cristeros in the United States to keep pressure on the Mexican government to repeal the Calles Law in the third chapter, creating tensions within local communities and building networks of Cristero exiles across the United States. In the fourth chapter, Young considers largely unsuccessful efforts to mobilize the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and lay communities in support of the Cristero resistance. Chapter 5 outlines the lasting influence of the Cristeros in the Catholic patriotism of Mexicans like my father in the decade following the 1929 settlement between Church and state. The final chapter features the lasting resonance of the Cristero era and its martyrs for Mexicans and Mexican Americans. In the epilogue, Young displays contemporary commemorations of the Cristero era by American Catholic groups and Mexican American Catholics. The strength of Mexican Exodus is the unearthing of countless stories of Mexicans in exile rallying around their faith and against their government from the United States. Though occasional glimpses of Catholic practice among early twentieth-century Mexican American communities have been captured in previous texts, they rarely mention Cristeros or political dissension around issues of religion. Young describes the tensions the Cristero War brought to these communities in vivid detail and shows that Cristeros in the United States did not just bide their time until they could return to Mexico, or settle in to established Mexican communities in the United States. They continued the fight for their faith within local communities and kept their focus—emotional, political, and financial—on removing the Calles regime from power. The book would benefit from a thorough copy edit. In addition to wording issues here and there, for example, Francis Kelley’s surname is misspelled twice in a paragraph in which it appears three times (48). These kinds of errors detract from the narrative and make the reader wonder what other oversights there might be. Mexican Exodus is a significant contribution to the growing historical literature on Mexican American Catholicism. Julia Young’s vital history illustrates the lived religion of Cristeros and their descendants in the United States. [End Page 180] Anne M. Martínez University of Groningen Copyright © 2019 The Catholic University of America Press