vol. 10 núm. 2 (2022)

Social movements around the world have been catalysts of a series of struggles that have strengthened the democratic systems where they have erupted. This article develops the case of the Chilean feminist student movement, which, although formed as a university petition for the end of abuse and sexual harassment in educational institutions, was able to transcend the Chilean cultural sphere and from there go through a process of feminization of social movements and Chilean politics. Through the application of feminist methodologies and situated knowledge, it is concluded that we are facing a turn towards feminism in Chilean society, since it is no longer positioned as an addition to social movements or political parties, but as a constituent part of them.

Among citizens in general, and among the youth in particular, it is very common, and therefore worrying, to hear people say “I don’t care about politics”. As homo politicus, we can affirm that we do not believe in parties, in rulers, in currents, but politics is inherent to social life, and therefore impossible to separate from the social being of our days. As it could not be otherwise, in a society where a picture is worth a thousand words, the mass media conditioned these political currents, camouflaging the manipulation under the mirage of information. In the division of democratic powers, three were shown —the legislative, the executive and the judiciary—, but a fourth power surpasses them: the power of the press, the generator of opinion, which is capable of creating and destroying, of conceiving clay giants which it destroys when it suits it best. In this essay we will try to reflect on whether the media groups support the kindred political sides or whether they are an invention of the former.

On Friday, October 18, 2019, an unprecedented social uprising in the history of Chile began that mobilized a broad sector of society around a set of demands related to the transformation of the prevailing economic and political system. In this paper I describe the main events of this uprising, from its beginning until December 27th of the same year, from an autoethnographic perspective, considering my participation and experience in those events. The theoretical approach to this phenomenon is based on the notion of “uprising” proposed by Didi Huberman (2016, 2017) and taken up by Butler (2016), for whom a social uprising entails the setting in motion of bodies that reject a certain state of affairs and act together to overthrow it. The main results show, on the one hand, the importance of the appropriation of public space by the protesters, and, on the other hand, the extremely high levels of repression and human rights violations by some agents of the Chilean State.

October 18, 2019 marked a turning point in the multiple dimensions of social mobilization in Chile, among which. The material and symbolic relevance of the now called Plaza de la Dignidad stands out. This article examines the significance of the socio-spatial dynamics produced around said square, as well as the relationships between “insurgent interactions” and the production of spaces of resistance. From an ethnographic approach, through observation and direct participation in the mobilizations, I inquire into the multiple interactions that unfolded around this square in the context of mobilization. The argument is that the mobilization displays a specific sociability that reveals itself as a space of resistance, which is continuously produced and reproduced during the mobilization. The findings suggest that the interactive dimensions of reciprocity —collective defense—, solidarity —brigade members— and complementarity —all the lines of the “frontline—, as material and symbolic practices, produce spaces of resistance. The production of spaces of resistance challenges the dominant narratives of the neoliberal city.

Young people have been protagonists in the construction of peace in recent years, after being associated with imaginaries of delinquency, stigmatization and exclusion. This study is located in the city of Bogota and aims to demonstrate the importance of the collective actions of young people in peacebuilding in urban territories, which gives rise to new citizenships and particular ways of understanding youth from the institutional framework and youth initiatives. These actors deploy public actions in each locality, where the institutional presence is represented in the implementation of public policies. For the proposed analysis, the specific practices of youth organizations led by young people who drive peacebuilding in various localities of Bogotá through the Youth Houses are taken up. These places are points of encounter, dialogue and diversity between grassroots communities and institutions, where the perception of peace and its construction in their own territories are addressed, in accordance with their needs and priorities as a community. For the development of this proposal, several methodological tools were applied, such as documentary review, digital ethnography, semi-structured interviews and focus groups as possibilities to understand youth worlds.

From the categories of space, interface, limit and place, an analysis of interactions is carried out to identify the strategies and tactics that shaped the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement after the assassination of George Floyd in 2020. From this theoretical proposal, it is possible to identify, through a methodology of virtual ethnography and documentary work, the synergies between the organization in virtual and physical spaces through interfaces, from hashtags and protests in the streets, giving them symbolic weight to the places and breaking various limits with the aim of transgressing. With this movement, the dissatisfaction and anger of a certain part of the community for the use of police brutality, used mainly against the African American population, becomes evident. Thus, it is concluded that by putting into action the interfaces through the places, the spaces created in community re-emerge, questioning the established order and what drives the protest and the movement in general.

This article analyzes the different historical periods of social struggles in Colombia. In particular, the main concepts to analyze social protests in the country are characterized, historical cutoffs are presented and methodological elements are provided to deepen the study of social actors, recent conflicts and the paths of social action, understood differently from collective action. The work is based on the books Cultura e Identidad Obrera: Colombia 1910-1945 (1991), Idas y Venidas, Vueltas y Revueltas (1958-1990) and Cuando la Copa se Rebosa. Luchas Sociales en Colombia (1975-2015), individually and collectively authored by Mauricio Archila Neira, and part of a rigorous systematization made for the Center for Popular Research and Education (CINEP, by its Spanish initials), as well as a lecture (2018) given by the researcher to the Faculty of Sociology of the Universidad Santo Tomás, in which the historical expressions of social mobilization in Colombia in the period between 1919 and 2018 were analyzed. At the end, the historical journey is complemented with the approach of the popular demonstrations of the last two years, which demonstrate a high social mobilization and hint the formation of new citizenships.

When social experiences do not correspond to expectations, that is, when social regulation is far from the expected social emancipation, we discover that certain communities link their social struggles to the achievement of some subjectively usurped rights. To this end, they constitute multiple spaces in which problems are shared and thus begin to make visible their possible solutions. In this sense, we discern the way in which these spaces of socialization end up redefining themselves in spaces of collective action. With this in mind, in this article we present the result of a comparative ethnographic research of two social movements with obvious symbolic, political, cultural and social differences, but which converge in a common mainstay: the right to decent housing. These are, on the one hand, the squatting movement and, on the other, the anti-eviction struggle, materialized in the Platform of People Affected by Mortgages (PAH, by its Spanish initials). Both develop similar cultural practices in the different spaces of socialization through their respective struggles and spaces of collective action. After an analysis from the applied anthropology, it is concluded that these spaces, whether physical — social centers, bars, squares, etc. — or symbolic —demonstrations, rallies, parties, etc. — serve to reconfigure and reinforce personal and collective identities through the sharing of demanding practices and experiences.

This paper presents a critical review of the discourse emanating from the social movements during the Dirty War (1964-1982), in its relation with the neoliberal discourse in Mexico. Based on a post-structuralist approach tied to the discourse theory, the effects of the dispute over the values that sustained the Mexican state discourse since the revolution as a social order are analyzed. From a journey through economic models and their crises in the second half of the 20th century, it is proposed that the dissident discourse distorted the sense of revolutionary values, and that this was sutured by the neoliberal discourse.

Throughout the last decades, the feminist movement has been in charge of defending women’s rights in Mexican society, but their struggle is still far from over. An example of this are the protests that took place throughout Mexico by women representatives of said movement in the middle of 2020, even though the COVID-19 pandemic that affected and paralyzed activities around the world continued to be declared. This research aims to analyze the main causes and consequences of the protests and mobilizations of feminist groups during the year 2020 in Mexico, for which a qualitative study was designed, using documentary research as the main data collection technique. The two main causes of these demonstrations and their respective consequences were analyzed in detail, namely: to pressure the State to act against the constant crimes of violence against women, and for women to be granted free motherhood through the legalization of abortion.