Mothers with Social Media: In Search of Justice and Closure in Mexico

• In Event: Gender and Political Violence

Abstract

Various local communities throughout Mexico have experienced the pervasive influence of narco-violence and machismo under criminal governance, which has left an indelible, negative impact on numerous families. Facing threats from the prevalence of narco-violence and the lack of official security services, women in the state of Jalisco have initiated and participated in organizations to find their missing families and friends. The most recent case is a march in August 2023 by a group of women commemorating the International Day of Victims of Forced Disappearances. A poignant but evoking question arises: how do civilian women strategically navigate their non-violent social movements in response to the harrowing phenomenon of family disappearances in the context of narco-violence?

This paper analyzes civilian women’s strategic use of social media for their activism from the case of the “Madres Buscadoras (Searching Mothers)” in the metropolitan area of Jalisco, Mexico, in the 2020s. Referring to the theory of civilian women’s agency in armed conflicts, particularly under narco-violence, we argue that these civilian women strategically utilize social media platforms to secure their safety and promote their movements through trans-local networks. We conduct 20 semi-structured interviews with local activists and residents in an anonymous municipality of Jalisco as well as online research on social media, including Facebook and Twitter. Through qualitative analyses of these sources, we demonstrate that these women use social media to inform families and the public of real situations not covered by traditional media and to organize trans-local networks for mutual support. Specifically, the activists utilize social media as a database where the organization and families mutually share information collected by themselves; families share photographs and information about their missing relatives, while the organization publishes those about individuals found in their searches. They also share information published by governmental institutions such as Comision de Busqueda de Personas del Estado de Jalisco (Person Search Commission of the State of Jalisco). Their efforts extend to organizing search groups in perilous areas and raising public awareness through social media campaigns.

This research theoretically and empirically expands the literature on civilian women’s participation in non-violent social movements under narco-violence with a focus on their agency and multifaceted strategies. Previous studies examined the motivations and strategies of women’s activism for missing families in Latin America by focusing on womanhood and motherhood. However, there has been little attention to the utilization of social media in their networked movements. Filling the gaps in research, we examine women’s strategies to fight against narco-violence by examining their trans-local network through online social media. Our findings encapsulate the complex convergence of gender, activism, and the socio-political conditions shaped by narco-violence. Furthermore, this research brings new empirical findings from a distinct case outside of Mexico City by collecting original qualitative data from Jalisco that has been relatively less investigated.

Authors

• Minju Kwon, Chapman University

• Iara Gonzalez Ascencio, Chapman University