Justice, Recognition, and Solidarity in Fragile Societies: The Case of Female Civil Society Groups of Victims of Extrajudicial Executions in Colombia and Mexico

In this paper, I would like to present the experience of two female civil society groups of victims
of extrajudicial executions of Colombia and Mexico from a communicative and sociopolitical
perspective. Specifically, I will focus on the experience of The Mothers of Soacha
(Soacha City, Colombia) and The Ayotzinapa Movement (Guerrero City, Mexico). I will
explain how these two female civil society groups of victims have been addressing expressive
and communicative dimensions of collective action to claim for justice, recognition, and
solidarity in the public sphere. A key objective is to understand what kinds of citizen and
humanitarian spaces these socio-communicative and collective actions can access within
the contexts of crime, a lack of security and impunity, and how these actions have been
affecting a claim for human rights and justice in these two countries. The aim of this paper
is to understand how socio-communicative and collective actions developed by female victims’
groups can affect dimensions of social recognition, trust in justice, and operationalization
of solidarity in contexts of high levels of violence and crime. The conclusions presented in
this paper are based on results of a narrative analysis of 28 interviews conducted with
different members of these two civil society groups between September 2015 and
July 2017.