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AbstractIn this paper, I analyse the intersection of settler colonialism, racial capitalism and border violence by examining Cabecitas Blancas a project run by the Yucatecan government to reunite families divided by the US-Mexican border. A unique program in Mexico, Cabecitas Blancas helps elders who have not seen their children living in the United States for at least 10 years, due to their children’s precarious immigration status, reunite for a short period of time. I have developed the term tramitología to show the way the settler colonial state monitors and restrict Indigenous mobility by designating who is “worthy” of government support. I demonstrate how the flow of mostly Maya elders via Cabecitas Blancas between borders is facilitated only because they become state commodities that sustain racial capitalism via tourism and multicultural policies. Ultimately, I argue that reform programs such as Cabecitas Blancas enable and (re)produce exploitation, settler colonialism and border violence. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews with government officials as well as YouTube videos and online news articles depicting different stages of the program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past century, Mexico has tightly managed its heritage resources to emphasise the achievements of Prehispanic civilisations which contribute to national patrimony. Public interest in these great civilisations has fuelled an impressive national archaeological programme that has resulted in cutting-edge research and sometimes helped elevate the status and visibility of living indigenous communities. However, nationalist narratives of the past tend to be somewhat monolithic, and in the case of Mexico, they have emphasised hierarchical, exploitative states with powerful, urban capitals. The social value of Aztec identity and icons has become so potent that even in places with unique archaeological signatures and their own exceptional histories, local heritages are often intertwined with the Aztec narratives. This paper analyses two modern monuments in the small central Mexican town of Xaltocan, reflecting on long-term and recent developments in the region that have influenced the perceived social and political values of narratives of the past and the identities connected to them. Based on these analyses and drawing on interview responses from current residents, I argue that the monuments are important testaments to the complex ways that locals conceptualise and strategically articulate their heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology & Society is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

International production networks in machinery industry have formed three large clusters, each of which is in East Asia, North America, and Europe. This paper investigates the recent evolvement of the connection between Factory Asia and Factory North America with highlighting the role of Latin American countries as a mediator. For this purpose, we utilized trade matrices and gravity equations to measure each country's level of commitment to each bilateral machinery trade after controlling the size of the economies, distance, and others. Our major findings are threefold: first, Mexico is the only Latin American country that plays a connecting role between two Factories. Second, in 2010–2019, the linkage of exports to Mexico from not only China but also other East Asian countries is strengthened particularly in machinery parts and components. Third, export linkage of China with Mexico is further intensified in 2019–2021 particularly in machinery parts and components due to the US-China confrontation, the USMCA, and other factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's relationship with Latin America countries experienced a process of significant expansion over the past two decades. Even though Latin America was not considered as part of the BRI when it was first established, China designed its economic strategy toward the region by emphasizing investment, financial and industrial capacity cooperation, besides trade. Afterwards, China invited Latin American countries to participate in the BRI at the China–Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) Ministerial Forum in Santiago in January 2018. Twenty-one Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries have signed up to the BRI. However, there are few LAC countries that have not done so, among them the region's largest economies such as Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, although Brazil is with full AIIB membership. This paper focuses on the specific economic relations between China and Mexico, as far as Mexico is the less involved LA country into the BRI, and Mexico's position toward China is more aligned with that of its North American partners than to the Latin American countries. This article analyzes the specific situation of Mexico, characterized by its deep integration and dependency on the US market and examines the current economic relations of China and Mexico, considering the impact of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement on the bilateral economic relations. The structure of bilateral trade between Mexico and China is also examined, using the Grubel-Lloyd Index (GLI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical reflection on the ways extractive industries manifest within and across place. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Mexico over 8 months in 2019–2020, this paper focuses on the experiences of residents living in a town adjacent to an underground silver mine in Valles Centrales, Oaxaca, Mexico. I argue that a focus on lived, sensory and long-term engagement between people and mining opens new avenues for geographers to consider 'what mining does'. Looking beyond the language of 'impacts', I build upon work on cultural geographies of presence and absence to put forward the notion of 'mining presence': mining's present and absent affects and materialities that interweave with residents' everyday lives, homes, bodies, and landscapes. In other words, I explore the qualities of mining that bring the San José mine into a neighbouring town and mediate spaces of daily life. In doing so, this paper contributes to the geographies of the extractive industries by showing that attention to life with mining requires a re-thinking of the spatiotemporal relations of extraction itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between bicycle travel and gender relations in changing social contexts? How can socio-cultural research contribute to a nuanced analysis of women and cycling without relying on universalizing translations? Drawing from intersectional feminist ethnography and decolonial theory, this paper complicates certain generalizations about the relationship between women and bicycling. Through a reconstructive approach to Mexican history, it examines the bicycle's changing roles and meanings as well as the ways that women confront gender stereotypes on and off of the bicycle. This paper aims to resituate diverse women's experiences in local cycling histories and current planning agendas. It posits the need for greater attention to the complex social processes that enable and restrict bicycle travel, engendering multiple and at times conflicting meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates public debt sustainability in all 32 subnational Mexican states from 1993 to 2016. Using dynamic panel data methods, we find several interesting results. First, although subnational public debt in Mexican states, in general, is still sustainable, in some states, fiscal stances have been compromised in recent years. Second, using different political indicators, we notice that these factors do not affect public debt accumulation. Third, when taking subsample characteristics into account, we observe that smaller, more open, and less dynamic states have more compromised fiscal stances, particularly following the recent global financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically investigates the leadership implications of adopting the European Smart Specialisation Strategies (S3) in a non-European context. A multiple case study compares the Latin American regions of Medellín, Colombia, and San Luis Potosí, Mexico. A variety of data collection procedures are used, including in-depth interviews with 33 relevant actors from the triple helix that participated in the S3 design. The paper contributes to the literature by identifying the leadership capabilities that lead to effective S3 in intermediate metropolitan regions, as well as the factors that foster and hinder those leadership capabilities. This paper argues that the leadership roles for S3 include a systemic perspective among a wide range of stakeholders, but also an evolutionary perspective to manage novelty and break path dependencies. Second, it argues that the degree of centralization and institutional context affect regional leadership. Finally, four leadership capabilities are suggested based on both systemic and evolutionary perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on equestrian sports, including horseracing, has been developed in contexts in the Global North. This has led to a narrow perspective of what horseracing is and means in different historical and sociocultural contexts. This paper extends this reach through considering informal horseracing events in Mexico. Based on understanding gender as a 'doing' rather than a 'being', and as an integral part of all social practices and identities, the races are examined as leisure events that function as sites through which masculinities are performed and (re)produced. Drawing on an ethnographic study, the horseracing events are identified as spaces in which male-male interactions provide opportunity for men to perform culturally hegemonic norms of masculinity, against a backdrop of shifting economic and social practices that are affecting wider gender relations in Mexico. Although women also have a presence in horseracing, they play a marginal role within the events which celebrate and foreground male homosociality. Masculinities are performed and validated predominantly through male-male interactions and expressions of male dominance over the horses. This paper thus illustrates the importance of gender to understanding different leisure practices and the significance of social and cultural context to examining leisure generally and equestrian sports specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most important centre of diversity and endemism of columnar cacti in Mexico is the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Valley (Puebla-Oaxaca states). The aims of this paper are (1) to provide a detailed description of the recent pollen morphology of 19 registered species that are found in this valley and (2) to develop a synoptic table to differentiate groups of species. This synoptic table is based on morphological features of pollen grains and the density of structural and sculptural elements observed using light and scanning electron microscopy. All analysed pollen grains were stenopalynous: isopolar monads, large, tricolpate with perforate tectate exine (sexine-nexine ratio 1:1), columellate structure with pattern of columellae distribution and spinulose sculpture. The spinules were always wider than they were tall. Although the 19 species of columnar cacti analysed in this study show highly similar types of pollen grains, we were able to characterise each of them with combined microscopy techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars in the field of development have recently begun to highlight the demise of neoliberal hegemony. Still, testimonies of emerging economies that are struggling to move on from embedded neoliberal strategies and institutions have also surfaced across the globe. By analysing the recent conflict that the Mexican state experienced when trying to revert market-oriented reforms in its energy sector, this paper aims to contribute to the literature on neoliberal resilience and the literature on Polanyian dynamics beyond the Global North. Accordingly, through a Polanyian perspective, the paper highlights how a recent constitutional lock-in of competition policies have thus far stifled intended protective countermovements by the Mexican state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to present the relevant results of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study conducted on printed matter under a sheet-fed offset printing process by a company located in northwestern Mexico. Different scenarios were simulated in order to support decisions related to the improvement of environmental performance along the production processes. The study design was based on the European Platform on Life Cycle Assessment (EPLCA), which is in line with the ISO 14040 and 14044:2006 standards on LCA. The scope of the study was cradle-to-gate, with emphasis on the production of printed matter. The method chosen for the impact assessment was Impact 2002+ with a combined midpoint–damage approach. The results of the study showed that the major contributors to adverse effects were, primarily electricity consumption followed by paper consumption during the printing operation, as well as consumption of ink to a small degree. As for the plate-making operation along with the generation of secondary products, the result was negative. This is essentially due to involvement of recyclable materials, thus contributing to the prevention of raw material extraction. The smallest impact was observed from processes involving cleaning products and LP gas. The main issues of concern stemming from the results are electricity consumption and printing – both activities dominate almost all the midpoint categories. Generation of secondary products also had a relative environmental impact along the supply chain. Cleaning agents and LP gas did not have a significant impact on the final results of the process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Language & Intercultural Communication is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Worldwide, it is widely recognized that violent conflicts constrain economic growth and development. Thus, it is necessary to research and analyse the main causes of violence and their relationship with development. This paper analyses how violence has affected economic development in the Mexican context during the 2000–2015 period. It takes into account that in the last decade, this country has had increased levels of violence, especially since the 'war on drugs' against drug trafficking was promulgated in 2006. This study uses different econometric models that apply the assessments of the panel unit root and cointegration tests and panel cointegration estimation. The results indicate that the tests used to validate the data allow the panel data cointegration relationships to be calculated. They demonstrate the existence of a long-run relationship between violence and economic development. Specifically, the results take into account that gross domestic product per capita and public investments have inverse relationships with the homicide rate, whereas poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and the Gini index have direct relationships with the homicide rate. Moreover, violence is strongly related to the deterrence variables. The findings of this study demonstrate that drug trafficking explains the increased violence in Mexico. Thus, it is important to develop and formulate adequate policies to control this situation, take measures to control violence starting with its root causes and promote social and economic development with a strategy to strengthen legal activities in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language teaching preparation programs in Mexico have been part of the modernity/coloniality legacy favoring so-called "modern" languages (e.g., English and French) over Indigenous languages. The alleged neoliberal benefits these languages bring and their connection to "modernized" individuals and cultures overshadows the learning of Indigenous languages, whose speakers struggle with the colonial difference, the discourse that transforms otherness into inferiority. Situated in Oaxaca, the most culturally and linguistically diverse state in Mexico, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of an ongoing, longitudinal, critical-ethnographic-action-research project that has documented the recent inclusion of the Indigenous language Diidxazá/Isthmus Zapotec as part of a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree program in language teaching. Adopting a decolonizing theoretical lens and using vignettes co-constructed from participatory classroom and extra-curricular activity observations, photographs, and video recordings, ethnographic field notes, and on-going dialogue in formal and informal debriefing sessions, this paper presents the story of Kiara, the first Diidxazá teacher in this BA program. Based on an iterative analysis of the data, this paper addresses three main themes: (a) Indigenous teachers challenging the coloniality of being; (b) (Indigenous) women repositioning themselves; and (c) reflective activism decolonizing language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographical and collaborative research conducted in the South Mexican region of The Lacandon Jungle, my paper explores how Indigenous peasant communities deal with the effects that various forms of mobility have on their social worlds. Combining decolonial work on Indigenous communality and transnational perspectives with a situational analysis approach, my research specifically focuses on collective processes of meaning-making in light of the increasing mobility among these communities' members. By analyzing how the people who stay collectively organize the community's social world, I position myself against approaches that reduce Indigenous movements to cultural policies, since such approaches overlook the relevance of anti-colonial resistance. My research shows that within the 'Indigenous communal governance systems', the departure of individual members plays a formative role for the entire community, shaping the resulting social relations and political practices. To ensure collective access to territory as a means of communal self-determination, a 'transnational continuum of communality' emerges between the communities of origin and their absent members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Top-down approaches often fail to involve, collaborate with, and consider social actors in the process of planning, design, and maintenance of public spaces (PDMPS). This research addresses how social participation is included in PDMPS in the Mexican case, by identifying the actors, the level of communication achieved, and their authority and power in the PDMPS process. The paper employs a case study approach, informed by semi-structured interviews. We use a democracy diagram to uncover the diversity of involved actors and how they are involved in the process. We show how government could provide support for social participation to implement participatory processes in PDMPS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does it mean to come together as a group of migrant women, to paint the face of a murdered woman, on the wall of a building in a town that was only temporarily her home? And, who does it have meaning for? In this paper, I interrogate this act as a participant in Las RestaurAmoras, the feminist collective responsible for painting murals of victims of feminicide in Quintana Roo, Mexico, in 2021. I argue that the physical and emotional conditions involved in painting the murals caused members of Las RestaurAmoras to forge a deeper connection with each other and the deceased women they painted. This emphasised sameness and belonging between migrant women, both living and deceased. As finished artefacts, I suggest that, as memorialisation, the murals challenge harmful discourse and practice that invisibilises migrant women's lives and the violence they experience. The murals are a reminder and a demand that femicidal violence must be dealt with urgently. I argue that connection among (migrant) women and emphasising the importance of the lives of (migrant) victims of feminicide are key elements in protection for women in places with high rates of gender-based violence and impunity, in this case, Quintana Roo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite an extensive literature on energy poverty, the prevalence of this problem in the indigenous populations is an underexplored area. Additionally, in Mexico and Latin America energy poverty is just an emerging research field. This paper contributes to mobilising the debate on energy poverty in indigenous populations, being the first to focus on ethnicity as a social determinant of energy poverty, and by providing elements to support progressive public policies targeting the most vulnerable populations. With a quantitative approach, an exploratory scope, and incorporating the ethnic approach as a multidisciplinary tool to diagnose and measure social inequalities, this paper analyses energy poverty in the Mexican indigenous population and measures the social inequities in energy experienced by these ethnic groups with respect to non-indigenous Mexican populations. Finding that the main efforts of the federal government have focused on electrification. However, the federative entities with the largest national proportion of the indigenous population, particularly Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero present a systematic pattern of social inequalities in all energy poverty dimensions, linked to the concentration of extreme multidimensional poverty. This is reflected in the high Energy Effort Rate, low availability of energy consumption goods and services, the exacerbated use of firewood or coal for cooking as a strategy of self-restraint to coping energy poverty, as well as a high housing precariousness, despite the high housing tenure rate. Concluding that in Mexico, due to historical Sate discrimination, ethnicity is a social determinant of energy poverty, and this could be accentuated in subgroups of the indigenous population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore the role of workers' remittances in supporting vigilante organisations in Mexico. Research on remittances posits both a positive and a negative effect on collective action from the reception of remittances. On one hand, remittances sent by relatives abroad provide extra resources for political action at home. On the other hand, the reception of remittances makes recipients less prone to protesting, through a reduction in grievances. As a result, remittances can be associated with both an increase and a decrease of collective political activity. In this paper, we claim that both effects can co-exist and that the predominance of one mechanism or the other depends on the degree of penetration of remittances at the municipal level. Using data on the existence of vigilante organisations, we find that in most remittance-receiving municipalities, through a resource effect, remittance inflows increase the probability of observing self-defense organisations, but this probability declines at high rates of remittance penetration at the local level. Nonetheless, we observe an activation effect in a majority of remittance receiving municipalities. The paper contributes both to our understanding of international social networks as determinants of civilian action and to the research agenda on how workers' remittances shape political behaviour in home countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a comparative assessment of the state of asylum in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay. It argues that an accelerated weakening of refugee protection, exacerbated during the pandemic, has taken place across the region. Faced with growing mixed flows, the region’s refugee framework has either been used as an ad hoc regularization mechanism or not been broadly used. Also, pandemic mitigation measures have further weakened access to asylum, through militarization and border closures, and a platitude of deterrence practices. These regressive practices may result in the undermining, abandonment and/or replacement of the region’s widely praised refugee governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores smallholder farmers' perceptions of and adaptations to water scarcity in an irrigated system in south-eastern Mexico. Data from 85 farmers in four communities were collected through semi-structured interviews. The results show that farmers' adaptations are stimulated by their perceptions of the causes and dynamics of water scarcity. Findings also reveal that differences in perceptions of, and adaptations to, water scarcity within communities are due to characteristics such as irrigation techniques, water intake location, productive systems and access to groundwater. This study recommends the implementation of policies based on local conditions to cope with water scarcity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the emotions experienced by two Mexican women as a consequence of street harassment episodes while practising adventure outdoor activities. Leisure and travel often place women in unfamiliar space and places increasing their perception of vulnerability, thus reducing their participation and enjoyment, and also affecting their physical patterns as well as their emotional responses. In order to analyse affectual embodiment and its impacts in the use of public adventure space through coping strategies I rely on Ahmed's interpretations of anger, while Jiménez-Esquina's 'ambivalent fluxes' and Hall's 'sentient and emotional body' contribute to explore the emotion as a 'continuum' of embodied practices that shed light on Wilson and Little's 'geography of women's travel fear'. The analysis indicates the relevance of emotions in the construction of inclusive adventure space in a context of violence and insecurity, as well as the role of socio-cultural influence on the 'vulnerable women' social construct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 economic crisis has had particularly negative effects on the youth labour market outcomes in Southern Europe. Thus, it is hardly surprising that many Southern European youngsters see migration as the only way to escape from under-employment and precariousness. In this context, the article studies the reasons for emigration to Mexico of a group of young graduates from Italy and Spain. The paper is based on 42 in-depth semi-structured interviews with young graduates, aged 29 years old or less on their arrival in Mexico. The article first explores the relevance of the economic crisis as the main reason behind the migration of this group. It is revealed that the interviewed graduates had a precarious labour incorporation back in their countries of origin, and migration appeared as a means to further their careers. Second, the paper analyses the interviewees' labour incorporation in Mexico; in many cases this coincides with an extended university-work transition, since many of them had not secured full-time permanent jobs before their arrival in Mexico. Finally, the paper explores the interviewees' future plans. These depend not only on their work experiences in Mexico but also on their degree of social and cultural integration in the host country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond job creation, informal economic activities have received little recognition for their contribution to economic systems. However, in recent years, new research trends have suggested that enterprises in the informal sector have productivity potential that can be encouraged through technological innovation. Nevertheless, the majority of these studies come from Asian and African countries, relegating Latin America's contributions to a marginal proportion. Through a qualitative analysis, this paper makes a pioneering contribution to the topic from a Mexican perspective, corroborating the presence of different types of innovations in the informal plastic industry and sizing its reach and social diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Studies (Routledge) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Substance use and depressive psychiatric symptoms have been associated with migration and mobility. The Mexico-Guatemala border is a key transit point for internal, regional, and international migration flows. However, there is limited knowledge of the role of substance use, migration, and mobility on mental health among migrants at this border. Our paper explores the association of migration and mobility patterns with possible major depressive symptoms among migrants at this key geographic region. We recruited 392 substance-using migrants using modified time-location sampling. Crude and adjusted logistic regression models were developed. We found that 12% of the sample had possible major depressive symptoms. After adjusting for relevant covariates, including gender, income, and perceived homelessness, we found that recent rural-urban and short-term migrants had higher odds of possible major depressive symptoms, whereas international migrants had lower odds. Findings of this paper suggest that although migrants experience hardship and uncertainty, they may respond with complex and nuanced forms of coping and planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Critical Political Economy (CPE) to explore energy transitions in Mexico. It analyzes struggles over competing energy visions from a decolonial, spatial and post-development perspective. The article frames energy transformations as more than a move away from fossil fuels: They encompass a radical overhaul of universalized Eurocentric capitalist modernity that call the state's role as both facilitator and driver of the energy transition into question. I examine two low-carbon infrastructure projects in the state of Yucatan, Mexico to build on Bridge and Gailing's notion of new energy spaces as the sites, scales and spatialities through which broader questions of political economy and contemporary struggles are being worked out. CPE of the energy transition must ensure that low-carbon infrastructures are not deployed as new forms of extraction, but rather as the material basis of pluriversal transitions informed by affected communities and their territorial struggles. Both studies on the political economy of energy transitions and territorial struggles can benefit from an open dialogue about how socioecological transformations are imagined, designed and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market-oriented urban development has reconfigured social life in Mexican metropolises in recent decades. The Atlixcáyotl-Lomas de Angelópolis corridor in Puebla illustrates how neoliberal policies stimulate the commodification of urban space, as the current physical, economic, and social arrangements in this corridor result from a state-led planning strategy that has mainly benefited private actors. The extended urban corridor—approximately eight miles long—in the southwest area of the metropolis was enabled by an ambitious regional plan in the 1990s that created a new crucial centrality known as Angelópolis developed over a land reserve of approximately 1,000 ha of expropriated agrarian social land (ejidos). The paper explores the role and impact of urban policies supposedly created for “public interest” to encourage the provision of affordable housing, green areas, public infrastructure, and social facilities, which, in contrast, have fostered elite residential horizontal and private developments, financial capital investments, and private facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine whether opposition parties, particularly the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), can promote transition in the electoral authoritarian regime in Russia. We use the example of the National Action Party's (PAN) evolution as an "official opposition" party in Mexico and discuss how its campaign strategy and party identity evolved. Using a framework derived from the political marketing literature on party branding and rebranding, we argue that the PAN successfully rebranded itself via the electoral opportunities afforded by structure of Mexican federalism, which ultimately led to the democratic transition in 1999. We then address the possibility of a similar evolution occurring in Russia, by examining how the CPRF altered its national campaign message between 2015–2018. Finally, we speculate whether local opposition victories will spark the kind of transition in Russia that occurred in other electoral authoritarian regimes, such as Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research about Community-Based Rural Tourism (CBRT) shows that participation of local stakeholders is a key factor in the pursuit of sustainability and supports the idea of using collaborative methods like Participatory Action Research (PAR) with local initiatives to address management and planning issues. This paper describes a case study in which tourism sustainability indicators (SIs) for a CBRT initiative were constructed through PAR with a group of women in rural Mexico. It reconstructs the steps and the process through which the indicators were established and implemented, and proposes a critical analysis of the assessment and its impacts on the group. The findings show that, provided that the SIs are adapted to the rural context, the co-construction of tourism SIs has led to assess the tourism activity using criteria adapted to the women's needs and vision. The PAR process encouraged collective action, horizontal dialogue and made more visible the inter-relations and power relations between the stakeholders, demonstrating the potential for collaboration and empowerment in a transdisciplinary perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends scholarship on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) through a case study in Saltillo, Mexico. The work is based on interviews (N:12) and survey work (N: 611) with women who have experienced GBV in spaces of public transport (busses) in this city. We extend existing work through an analysis of the role of the local state in GBV by exploring women's experiences of the systems in place to report and redress episodes of GBV in spaces of public transport. Building on existing conceptual work in feminist geography, we argue that systems for reporting gender-based violence in public transport can function as a mechanism of re-victimisation on the part of local authorities. Based on this analysis, we argue that the Mexican state is not only failing in its commitment to enable women to live lives free from violence but also acting as an agent of further violence [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher and headteacher assessments and professional development are deemed critical levers for improving quality education in an increasing number of countries and contexts. However, prioritising improvement is not always evident, given that sometimes those subjected to assessments are not effectively informed about their performance (e.g. from national teacher examinations) or how to improve their work via feedback. This paper explores the bridging role of feedback concerning teacher and headteacher assessments and continuing professional development in the Mexican context, where scarce research exists. This mixed-methods research contributes evaluation evidence of Mexico's 2013–2018 education reform, including high-stakes staff assessments and individual feedback reports. Survey data from 122 primary school teachers and headteachers and thirteen interviews with teachers, headteachers and policymakers indicate the feedback report made it difficult to distinguish between poor and proficient performance and identify strengths and weaknesses. Challenges regarding suitable continuing professional development following assessment feedback are put forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1970s, the Mexican government has been embroiled in an armed conflict with the drug cartels, and criminal organisations have engaged in violent confrontations with each other. Violence escalated in 2006 under the presidency of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, and since then killings have become spectacular and highly mediatised. An often-overlooked front of the cartel wars is the use of non-official networked media that generates and sustains popular narratives about cartel leaders. In this paper, we focus on the media assemblages that sustain the myths associated with the now captured 'El Chapo' Guzmán, perhaps the most celebrated narco in Mexican history. In particular, we focus on the phenomenon of the El Chapo memes as these have moved into a new phase via digital platforms such as Whatapps. We argue the El Chapo memes play an important role in popular communication revolving around narco culture, functioning as artefacts of and even opportunities for political contestation, as well as everyday humour and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a theoretical and practical comparison between the special education systems for the deaf in Finland and Mexico. The theoretical approach of research perspectives in Chou et al. (2014) and Hellsten (2020) supports this study. We focus on how?the gaps in special education that are present as early as elementary school increase the difficulties of integrating Mexican pupils with special educational needs (SEN) at university. We review the experience in education of deaf students in Finland and the feedback of deaf teachers and researchers.?The aim of the paper is to contribute to improved access to comprehensive and high-quality bilingual education for the deaf in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heteromeyenia is an important genus of freshwater sponges characterized mainly by the presence of microscleres acanthoxeas. So far, two species are known from Mexico; H. baileyi and H. latitenta. In this paper, we redescribed H. latitenta and described the new species Heteromeyenia riojai sp. nov. from a morphological and molecular perspective. The main morphological characteristic of H. latitenta is the foraminal aperture of the gemmule, which is a prolonged tube, from which flattened cirrous appendages extend laterally; a characteristic absent in H. riojai sp. nov., which bears a short and slightly elevated foramen. The new species is distinguished by having acanthoxeas with fusiform to knobbed tips, gemmuloscleres in a single category, which are radially embedded in the theca of the gemmule. Due to the similarity in the form, size of the spicules, and geographic distribution of H. riojai sp. nov., and H. baileyi sensu Rioja, we considered that the Rioja's records must be assigned to the new species. We also aim to establish the phylogenetic relationships of the genus through nuclear-ribosomal molecular markers ITS2. Tree topology showed the Heteromeyenia species clustered together in a robust clade and closer to Corvomeyenia sp. (family Metaniidae) than to other Spongillidae genera. Our results support the previous molecular hypothesis, which strongly suggests the polyphyly of Spongillidae, even more in genera as Heteromeyenia and Trochospongilla, which displayed a large genetic distance with the other members of Spongillida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructions of women in the Global South, as poor and rural, portray them as most vulnerable and passive to the effects of environmental degradation. This conception has been informing institutional responses to environmental change that incorporate a gender component. It is in this context that climate change interventions increasingly target women in the Global South, so it is important to evaluate their impact. This paper sets out to question why a gender agenda is being pushed alongside a climate agenda, what these projects look like in the communities and households where they are implemented, and the impacts of these projects on the lives of people that encounter them in Oaxaca, Mexico. Through reflexive storytelling, this paper aims to ground environmental governance around gender and climate change using feminist geography by calling attention to the everyday lives of people in Mexico involved in gender and climate change interventions. Using postcolonial insights and reflexive approaches, this paper highlights the agency of actors and fights against tendencies in climate and development work that homogenize gender, erasing the agency and autonomy of people outside of western spaces. Through reflexive research, I call attention to the ways that concepts operating in global contexts do not merely operate on 'third world women' but are imbricated in the performance of their every-day lives as they manage and negotiate global discourses around gender and climate change while transforming them so that they become meaningful to their every-day lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the circulation of the terms lesbiana and queer (cuir) in Mexico City. More particularly, I discuss how de ambiente and la diversidad sexual, which capture the spirit of queer politics, predominated in the 1990s and early 2000s, to be surpassed by lesbiana in the 2010s, in lesbian communities. While the circulation of lesbiana parallels, permeates, and impregnates cuir genealogies too, I suggest here that its continuity, and stronger resurgence in the 2010s, relates to acute attention to structural violence in the region, particularly in the face of feminicides. At such moment young activists "twist" lesbiana genealogies to give place to new terms such as lesboterrorism. I pay particular attention to lesboterrorismo, a new theoretical formulation young activists developed in the midst of militarization, gore capitalism, and graphic violence against women's bodies. This paper is informed by ethnographic fieldwork I have conducted since 2000, including participant observation, 40 qualitative interviews with women participating in lesbian spaces in Mexico City, and the review of newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article offers a sampling and critique of the history of education in North America, including Canada, the United States and Mexico. Being Black and Indigenous academics, respectively, the authors' scholarship centres on community relationships, considering activism around #BlackLivesMatter and Indigenous Peoples, especially with the news of thousands of unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools in Canada. Amidst increasing global calls for decolonisation, social justice and accountability, we ask: how should one consider the history of education in North America amidst social unrest, climate change, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, ongoing colonialisms, gender inequities, police violence against Black bodies and unmarked graves of Indigenous children? This paper traces histories of Indian Residential Schools, explores schooling structures and emerging settler states, and examines the growing focus on local histories to offer new directions in the history of education that challenge antiquated national narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the rich and detailed sex life stories of two self-identified cisgender gay men. Both recalled in retrospect their romantic and sexual experiences with their respective close in age first cousins during their adolescence. Both men described their experiences as voluntary and a positive influence on their emotional and sexual development as self-identified gay men. The men were born and raised in contrasting contexts: the first in a small town in Jalisco, the second in Mexico City. Both men participated in a larger study that gave life to experiences of incest as documented through storytelling, and the stories men shared speak for themselves. However, they also provide insightful reflections on cultures of family intimacy in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a recently published historical crime database that shows an unequivocal reduction of homicides in Mexico from the 1950s up until 2005, this paper aims to examine the effect of development policies on homicide reduction in 20th century Mexico. This research presents a panel regression of homicide rates in all 32 Mexican states from 1950 to 2005. Our research shows that the increase in schooling years in Mexico is correlated with the decline in homicide rates. This decline happened despite inverse pressure from social disorganisation caused by unequal economic growth and youth bulges during the period examined. Consequently, the paper shows that sustained development policies can be a pacifying mechanism in a country that has experienced accelerated urban growth and other structural problems associated with crime since the beginning of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While social determinants of health perspective might lead to the hypothesis that higher economic achievements should be associated with better mental health, the evidence for adults is mixed and inconclusive. Aim: We test the role of wealth as a predictor of depressive symptoms controlling for a number of socio-demographic covariates, with a specific interest in gender-specific patterns. Methods: Using a nationally representative survey from Mexico (N = 44,618), we carry out multivariate regression analysis where we jointly model linear and quadratic measures of wealth to detect non-linear relations between depression and wealth. Results: The paper reports clear evidence of an inverted-U relationship between depressive symptoms and wealth for females, whereas the relationship for males tends to be linear and decreasing with wealth as expected (though weak and significant only in the upper part of the wealth distribution). Our findings are robust to alternative empirical strategies and we discuss potential explanations for this novel finding. Conclusion: The paper confirms that the association between standards of living and depression is complex, due to the mediating role of socio-demographic characteristics and the existence of non-linearities not fully explored in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how family members support each other's entrepreneurial activities through sharing resources created at the business-level. Drawing on the concept of 'enterpriseness' the study examines the flows between a family and the business and how it influences the impacts of the businesses on the family (enterpriseness). We capture the enterpriseness by focusing on entrepreneurial families where more than one member is an owner-entrepreneur. Through in-depth interviews with entrepreneurial families in Mexico, we show how different forms of capital resources emerging from multiple businesses flow back into the family and contribute to enterpriseness. The entrepreneurial family enables access to human, social and financial capital resources that are easily mobilized and combined by other members for their multiple firms, showing a subsequent effect to the business-level. Consequently, enterpriseness influences entrepreneurial behaviours which have a variety of consequences for the entrepreneurial family and their businesses. The paper concludes with a number of contributions to theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the findings of research aimed at examining the life stories of teachers who have experienced migration moves between Mexico and the U.S. and are currently engaged in English Language Teaching in Mexico. Drawing from a larger research project into the transnationals' learning trajectories in two Mexican states, the study presents three life stories to illuminate three broad transnationalism patterns leading to the achievement of different levels of investment in social, educational and professional practices. The paper uses a theoretical framework based on the interrelationship between transitions, identity, and agency to analyse how participants' interpretations of transnational experiences facilitate or hinder their engagement in social, educational and professional activities. Main findings support Casinader's (2017) perspective of transnationalism as a 'dynamic instability' showing that transnationalism is achieved differently by each of the participants. Participants' stories revealed that this has profound implications for their levels of investment since their subjective interpretations of life experiences played an important role in their levels of social, cultural and professional involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had social and clinical effects over the healthcare system. Globally, over 314.019.135 confirmed cases and 5.507.370 deaths have been recorded at 12 January 2022, based on the Dashboard updated by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The continuous rise in the number of asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and symptomatic patients has developed efficient and accessible models for prediction using Open Source Libraries and Cloud Services. This paper proposes different machine-learning algorithms to analyse the COVID-19 OpenData Resources from Mexico and Brazil, which represent the two major populations, economics and affected by disease countries in Latin America. This model uses only the COVID-19 patient's geographical, social conditions, economics conditions, clinical risk factors, symptom reports, and demographic data to predict recovery and death. The model of Mexico has an accuracy of 93% and the perceived mean of recall and the precision (F1 Score) of 0.79 on the dataset used. On the other hand, the model of Brazil has an accuracy of 69% and F1 score of 0.75 on the dataset studied. The result considers data from patients under the age of 0 and 120 years. The contribution of the work is the application of Big Data technologies and Machine Learning algorithms using Open Resource Libraries and Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the vision to improve the clinical diagnosis, even infectious disease with mathematical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of empirical research in Latin America reveals a correlation between skin colour and disadvantages in income, health, education, and employment. The impact of skin colour in the political sphere, however, remains severely understudied. Is there any evidence to suggest racialised political underrepresentation in Latin America? To analyse the status of ethno-racial representation in Mexico, this paper uses the Classification Algorithm for Skin Colour (CASCo) to collect skin colour data of the (3,000) members of the last six legislatures of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. The findings suggest that, while legislatures tend to be relatively diverse, positions of legislative leadership are unproportionally restricted to legislators with light skin colour. This article not only provides much-needed empirical data on the political impact of skin colour in Latin America, but it reveals the sociocultural complexities of the political underrepresentation of racialised groups in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate whether fertility and newborn health changed during the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico. We use national administrative data and an event-study design to examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on fertility and newborn health characteristics. Our findings suggest that Mexico's fertility declined temporarily as measured by conceptions that likely occurred during the stay-at-home order. Initially, the general fertility rate fell by 11–12 per cent but quickly rebounded and returned close to its original levels by the end of 2021. Newborn health also deteriorated during the pandemic. Instances of low birthweight and prematurity substantially increased, with both remaining elevated over the entire pandemic period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global South has been largely excluded from equestrian sport and leisure debates. In particular, the equestrian experiences of children in developing countries have remained silent since most of the studies on equestrian sport and leisure have focused on the experiences of adults in the Global North. Despite the fact that equestrian sport and leisure are part of children's practices in countries of the Global South, very little is known about the benefits of equestrian sport and leisure in early childhood education in developing countries. This research explores the contribution of equestrian sport and leisure to children's informal learning. From an ethnographic approach to children's equestrian practice in Mexico, the study reveals that equestrian sport and leisure contribute to developing socialization, teamwork, discipline, and interspecies communication skills in children. This paper contributes to incorporating countries from the Global South into the global debates on equestrian sport in general, and on children in sport and leisure in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]