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This article presents a new explanation of the widespread occurrence of cycles of protest in electoral autocracies – the most common type of authoritarian regime in the world today. Because multiparty elections in autocracies are partially free but unfair, opposition parties are compelled to compete for office while contesting the rules of competition. To fulfill this dual goal, opposition parties actively seek to recruit a wide variety of independent social movements who can provide votes and lead major mobilizations during election campaigns and in post-election rallies to denounce fraud. Because electoral participation can cause divisions within social movements, social activists joinsocio-electoral coalitionswhen opposition parties offer them financial and logistic resources and institutional protection to mobilize for their causes during non-election times. This quid pro quo explains how isolated protest events become aggregated into powerful cycles of mobilization and why protest is more intense during elections but persists beyond election cycles. When political liberalization leads to increasingly free and fair elections, the prospect of victory motivates opposition parties to discourage radical mobilization, bringing cycles of protest to an end. Drawing on an original database of indigenous protest in Mexico and on case studies, I provide quantitative and qualitative evidence of the causal impact of electoral incentives on the rise, development and decline of a powerful cycle of indigenous protest as Mexico transitioned from one-party to multi-party autocracy and into democracy. Beyond Mexico, I show that the introduction of multiparty elections in a wide variety of autocracies around the world gave rise to major cycles of protest and discuss why the relationship between the ballot and the street is a crucial factor for understanding the dynamics of stability and change of authoritarian regimes.

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This article suggests that a society's religious market structure can explain whether religion is "the opium of the people" or a major source of dissident secular mobilization. I present a simple model explaining why under monopolistic conditions, Catholic clergy in Latin America ignored the religious and social needs of poor rural indigenous parishioners but, when confronted by the expansion of U.S. mainline Protestantism, became major institutional promoters of rural indigenous causes. Catholic indigenous parishioners empowered by competition demanded the same benefits their Protestant neighbors were receiving: social services, ecclesiastic decentralization, and the practice of religion in their own language. Unable to decentralize ecclesiastic hierarchies, and facing a reputation deficit for having sided with rich and powerful elites for centuries, Catholic clergy stepped into the secular realm and became active promoters of indigenous movements and ethnic identities; they embraced the cause of the Indians as a member retention strategy and not in response to new doctrinal ideas emanating from Vatican II. Drawing on an original data set of indigenous mobilization in Mexico and on life histories and case studies, I provide quantitative and qualitative evidence of the causal effect of religious competition on the creation of the social bases for indigenous ethnic mobilization.

The cultural heritage of a society includes the properties and manifestations that contribute to its identity, that is why they deserve to be conserved. The buildings of the ex hacienda 'El Cristo' in Puebla are deteriorated due to its underestimation, therefore, the present paper seeks to contribute to its public appreciation, for the best conservation of this heritage. The history of these buildings, which currently host three public schools, began more than 270 years ago. It is an example of rural development around the city, it reflects the importance of rivers for Puebla and explains the configuration of the eastern area of the city, all around the ex hacienda. Thus the knowledge of its history would contribute to its appreciation by the residents of that area, recognition necessary to justify an adequate conservation project. ; El patrimonio cultural de una sociedad comprende los bienes y manifestaciones que contribuyen a nuestra identidad, por lo que merecen ser conservadas. En ese sentido, los inmuebles de la exhacienda de El Cristo en Puebla se encuentran deteriorados debido a su subestimación, por lo que la presente investigación histórica busca aportar a su valoración para la mejor conservación de este bien patrimonial. La historia de este inmueble que actualmente alberga tres escuelas públicas inició hace más de 270 años, es ejemplo del desarrollo rural alrededor de la ciudad, de la importancia para esta de sus ríos y explica la configuración del oriente de Puebla, desde el actual parque ecológico "Revolución mexicana" hasta la 25° Zona Militar y sus colonias aledañas. Por lo que la divulgación de su historia aportaría a su aprecio colectivo por parte de los habitantes de esa zona de la ciudad, aprecio necesario para priorizar un proyecto adecuado de conservación.

"In the most widely-accepted minimalist definition, democracy is conceived as a governance system in which citizens select their representatives through competitive elections and resolve their differences without bloodshed. While in recent decades scholars have shown that countries transitioning from authoritarian rule to democracy tend to experience major outbreaks of political violence, and that peace prevails only after democratic rules and practices have been fully engrained in society, the association of democratic mechanisms with different forms of violence continues to be mind-boggling. It continues to be analytically surprising and morally disheartening when newly established democratic mechanisms like voting and competitive elections become catalysts of collective violence. It is even more disconcerting when democratic mechanisms become triggers of violent conflict among "non-political" actors like organized criminal groups and drug cartels, which have long been considered quintessential examples of private illicit actors with no interest or meaningful connection with electoral politics. This book is the result of a long intellectual shared journey aimed at making sense of an uncommonly intense wave of large-scale criminal violence in Mexico that began six years after the end of one-party rule, when President Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) declared war on the country's drug cartels, triggering multiple state-cartel and inter-cartel violent conflicts across Mexican territory"--

AbstractThis article explains a surprising wave of lethal attacks by drug cartels against hundreds of local elected officials and party candidates in Mexico, 2007–2012. These attacks are puzzling because criminal organizations tend to prefer the secrecy of bribery over the publicity of political murder. Scholars suggest that war drives armed actors to attack state authorities in search of protection or rents. Using original data on high-profile attacks in Mexico, the authors show that war need arguments underexplain violence. Focusing on political opportunities, they suggest that cartels use attacks to establish criminal governance regimes and conquer local governments, populations and territories. The study presents quantitative and qualitative evidence showing that cartels took advantage of Mexico's political polarization and targeted subnational authorities who were unprotected by their federal partisan rivals. Cartels intensified attacks during subnational election cycles to capture incoming governments and targeted geographically adjacent municipalities to establish control over large territories. The findings reveal how cartels take cues from the political environment to develop their own de facto political domains through high-profile violence. These results question the widely shared assumption that organized criminal groups are apolitical actors.