Biographies of activists in social movement in Chiapas, Mexico

Social movements as emancipatory movements, the struggle against legal oppression, social discrimination and economic disadvantage have a long tradition in Latin America. Actually, the mobilisation of people in social movements occurs along a wide spectrum of motivations; gender, ethnic and religious membership becomes a relevant aspect of orientation in current social movements. This presentation will focus on Chiapas as a place where a high level of inequality is evident in the dynamics of the social space. Furthermore the social dynamics are influenced by the economic and political forces acting from outside.

On the bases of an empirical study biographies of activists in social movements will be the focus. Strategies to deal with social inequality and discrimination will be analysed on the basis of the activists narratives. Social actors for instance occupy and acquire cultural-political spaces which give them opportunities to break open the power of definition coming from the established mainstream in order to pressurise political decision makers. Increasingly ethnicised discourses appear as a political resource whereby ethnicity is constructed different. On one side, the ethnic focus is used as a symbol of discrimination from which a larger group of persons is affected in order to enable alliances between different groups in terms of social change. On the other hand it functions as a marker of differing cultural practices in order to strengthen social habits such as a strong collective orientation in contrast to processes of individualisation. This study focuses in particular on strategies which possibly lead to regional social change and on learning processes which are imbedded in social movement activities. The analysis additionally highlights some of the problems and conflicts which appear when communities or groups are divided by memberships in different social movements. How to deal with these conflicts inside the communities also initiates learning processes.