Keywords

All around the world civil resistance has been a key way for ordinary people to struggle against different forms of violence (direct, structural and cultural). People have used it to bring about the collapse of dictatorships, as in the Philippines, or to seek independence from colonial power, as in India. In asymmetric conflicts, where opponents not only have the means but are also ready to exert violence against civilians, the latter have used civil resistance to leverage power to defend their rights. This is particularly so in Latin America, where nonviolent struggles are increasingly taking place against powerfulFootnote 1 actors in contexts of violent conflict. This is the case in Nicaragua, where peasants have opposed the construction of an interoceanic canal (McCall and Taylor in this volume); in Peru, where indigenous people have rejected the negative effects of mining on their communities (Wilson in this volume); as well as in Colombia, where civilians have challenged the rules imposed by armed groups and the violence exercised against ordinary people (Hernández and Roa, Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume). The variety of cases included in this book reveals the richness of Latin American experiences of civil resistance in challenging contexts, as well as their successes and limitations. Yet, the overall message is one of optimism: despite their limited material capacities, civilians from these different countries, from Mexico to Bolivia through Colombia and Venezuela, have made a difference through the use of civil resistance.

In this book, we define civil resistance as the use of nonviolent, unconventional means to struggle against opponents who have a superior power, understood in terms of material capabilities. This definition draws on the work of Kurt Schock, who considers civil resistance as “the sustained use of methods of nonviolent action by civilians engaged in asymmetric conflicts with opponents not averse to using violence to defend their interests” with nonviolent action referring to “non-routine political acts that do not involve violence or the threat of violence” (Schock 2013: 277). It is also in line with the definition put forward by Erica Chenoweth and Kathleen Cunningham in the special issue on civil resistance that they edited in the Journal of Peace Research, as “the application of unarmed civilian power using nonviolent methods such as protests, strikes, boycotts and demonstrations, without using or threatening physical harm against the opponent” (Chenoweth and Cunningham 2013: 271). Additionally, we follow the mainstream literature on civil resistance and use “nonviolent resistance” and “civil resistance” interchangeably.

We define conflict as the real or perceived opposition of interests between two or more actors, referred to as “conflict parties”. A violent conflict is one in which one or more parties have engaged in acts of direct violence, that is, in acts aimed at inflicting pain to the person(s) or group(s) at which they are directed.Footnote 2 Direct violence includes physical as well as psychological violence (Galtung 1969). This said, violent conflict often finds its roots in structural and cultural violence (Galtung 1990). As Vicenç Fisas (2004: 119) argues, violent conflicts generally refer to “grave situations of high tension and social or political polarization, with hostilities between political, ethnic or religious groups, or between these and the state, which alter the ordinary functioning of state institutions and produce significant levels of destruction, fear, deaths or forced displacement”.

This book covers a variety of situations of violent conflict, including ones in which opponents have used direct violence such as beatings to curb protests, detentions, forceful eviction of resisters, intimidation including through death threats and even the actual murder of activists as in the case of Berta Cáceres in Honduras (Maher in this volume) or as in Peru (Wilson in this volume). It also encompasses situations of armed conflict, in which warring parties do not hesitate to use armed violence against civilians who disobey their orders. We define armed conflict on the basis of the definition put forward by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, that is, a situation of conflict, which involves the use of state military forces and has resulted in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year.Footnote 3 Yet, we recognize that there can be a fine line between situations of simple violent conflict and those of armed conflict, and that not everyone agrees on the threshold required for a situation to be called an “armed conflict”. This can lead to different situations—for instance the one that opposes the Mexican government to drug cartels—being described as an armed conflict or not.

Arguably, many civil resistance campaigns take place in contexts of violent conflict. So, why focus on such contexts? We believe that such a focus is important because of the challenges raised by opponents’ use of direct violence and the need to better understand how grievance groups can best confront violent repression and achieve their goals through nonviolent means of struggle in such contexts. This said, we acknowledge the significant challenges raised by other forms of violence as well and the interrelationship between direct, structural and cultural violence.

The booming literature on civil resistance over the past decade reflects a growing awareness that nonviolent resistance is usually more effective than violent resistance even in such challenging contexts, as demonstrated in the large-N study conducted by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan. In this study, the authors compared more than 300 nonviolent and violent campaigns against authoritarian regimes, colonial powers or foreign occupiers between 1900 and 2006 and found that nonviolent campaigns were nearly twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011: 7). One key reason for this is that nonviolent campaigns usually involve a higher level of participation compared to their violent counterparts, which set higher barriers for participation owing to potential risks. Further, when ordinary people take up arms, they compete on an unequal footing with their opponents, who possess superior material capacities and are often equipped with better armament. By contrast, civil resistance enables ordinary people to fight from a higher ground and to undermine some of the pillars of power of their opponents thereby shifting power around (Sharp 1973, 2010).

This volume is the first to cover a broad range of civil resistance campaigns that have taken place in contexts of violent conflict in Latin America. Only a limited number of studies have focused on nonviolent struggles in the region, despite its wealth of experiences (Martin 2015: 40–41). These include the works of Philip McManus and Gerald W. Schlabach (2004); that of Patricia Parkman (1990), who focuses on civic strikes; and a forthcoming book by the editors in Spanish, which will cover some Latin American experiences of civil resistance, although smaller in number in comparison with this volume and not only in situations of violent conflict (Hernández and Mouly forthcoming-b).Footnote 4 Additionally, some books in the social movement literature, such as Stahler-Sholk et al. (2008) or Alvarez et al. (1998), discuss cases of civil resistance in Latin America. Yet, they do not place emphasis on the use of strategic nonviolent action to leverage power and reach a movement’s objectives—a key feature of the civil resistance literature (Zunes et al. 2017).

Likewise, only few books examine various processes of nonviolent resistance in contexts of violent conflict but focus on cases in the context of the Colombian internal armed conflict (e.g. Hernández 2004, 2012; Hernández and Salazar 1999; Kaplan 2017b). By analysing experiences of civil resistance in eight Latin American countries in contexts of violent conflict that do not necessarily reach the threshold of armed conflict, this book therefore provides unique contributions to the field of civil resistance studies and significant insights into the exercise of nonviolent resistance in such contexts, which can inform and guide practitioners who are involved in, or support, such initiatives. In particular, it seeks to stimulate comparison between the different experiences of nonviolent resistance that have occurred in eight countries in the region and draw lessons learnt. In each case the authors look at the violent context in which civil resistance has taken place, how movements have coped with it, the methods that they have used, the outcomes, the factors that have influenced these, as well as the challenges faced. In what follows we look at some of the book’s most salient features.

Campaign Objectives

A first noteworthy feature of this book that distinguishes it from the mainstream literature on civil resistance is the diversity of objectives sought by the various nonviolent campaigns covered in its chapters. While much of the literature looks at nonviolent movements against authoritarian or colonial powers, which aim to bring about the collapse of a dictatorship or to seek independence from colonizers, more and more studies now contemplate nonviolent struggles to achieve other types of goals in different contexts. These include studies of campaigns against corruption (e.g. Beyerle 2014), environmental damage (e.g. Hernández and Mouly forthcoming-a), the deprivation of land (Schock 2012, 2015) or armed actors’ abuses in the context of armed conflict (e.g. Hallward et al. 2017; Hernández 2004; Kaplan 2017b). The chapters in this volume follow this trend and encompass a broad range of civil resistance campaigns with diverse objectives.

For instance, several of the resistance campaigns examined in this book have sought to prevent the implementation of megaprojects that undermine the life of local communities. These include the indigenous struggles against the building of an aqueduct and a dam in Mexico (Hernández in this volume), that of another indigenous group against a dam in Honduras (Maher in this volume), the ‘No al Canal’ campaign in Nicaragua (McCall and Taylor in this volume), the resistance campaigns undertaken by rural communities against mining in Peru (Wilson in this volume) and the indigenous marches against the building of a road across ancestral territory in Bolivia (Roncken in this volume). While these different campaigns shared the common goal of rejecting the imposition of megaprojects in local communities and all took place in contexts of violent conflict, their objectives were various, including the preservation of grievance groups’ natural resources, culture, ancestral territory and the defence of affected communities’ right to be consulted when discussing and planning such projects.

This collection also includes examples of campaigns conducted by civilians to reduce the level of violence perpetrated by armed actors in their territory in the context of armed conflict. This is the case of the campaigns that have taken place in Samaniego and the area of influence of the Peasant Worker Association of the Carare River (ATCC) in Colombia (Hernández and Roa, Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume). While curtailing violence has been one of the chief objectives of these campaigns, like in the previous examples, they have also sought to defend the communities’ right to have a say in matters that affect them, rejecting armed actors’ impositions. Additionally, in both localities, the civil resistance movements have endeavoured to reduce the structural violence at the root of the armed conflict, notably the poor socioeconomic conditions to which local populations have been subjected in comparison with the average in Colombia.

As for the Roofless Workers’ Movement in Brazil (Ramírez-Orozco in this volume), the objectives of its civil resistance campaign stand as unique in comparison with other campaigns covered in this volume. They mainly consist of defending the right of urban poor to a decent living in the face of pressures by powerful private sector groups and their allies that want to make the most of urban space in terms of profit. But they also include a struggle for dignity and justice since the right to housing is enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution and many members of the movement believe that they are entitled to legal recognition of the property on which they live. Exploring diverse forms of civil resistance, such as these, and their different objectives is important because they respond to a variety of challenges that affect many parts of the world today.

Campaign Opponents

A second interesting feature of this book, linked to the diversity of case studies, is that, unlike most of the civil resistance literature which focuses on struggles against the state, it covers campaigns targeted at different types of actors. These include the state, but also the private sector (both national and foreign companies), as well as violent non-state actors, such as guerrilla groups, paramilitaries or private security companies.

In Peru, for example, indigenous and rural communities have fought against mining companies, which have hired public relations and private security companies to curb opposition to mining projects. Local civil resistance movements have therefore been faced with a particular type of opponents and have had to respond in particular ways to the challenges raised by these opponents, in a context marked by repression and criminalizing media (Wilson in this volume). The analysis of such responses provides new insights into the processes of learning in the practice of civil resistance and of struggling in the arena of public discourse, broadening scholars’ and practitioners’ perspectives.

Likewise, the cases of civil resistance against violent non-state actors, such as guerrillas and paramilitaries and state armed forces in Colombia offer useful insights into how different opponents elicit different resistance strategies from local communities and how different strategies can be more or less effective in relation to different target groups. In the Colombian context, for instance, noncooperation with the payment of taxes or the provision of coca leaves has been more costly for insurgent groups than the state armed forces, given the former’s dependence on such resources to sustain themselves (Mouly et al. 2016).

Meanwhile, the Yaqui campaign against the “Independence” aqueduct in Mexico has targeted both state and private sector actors. Interestingly, it illustrates how the blockade of a highway can inflict severe costs on private sector companies that depend on this road to transport and commercialize goods and, in so doing, can press their opponents to come to the negotiating table. This said, the case also revealed that such a strategy may simultaneously bear costs on ordinary people and should therefore be used only to a certain extent (Hernández in this volume).

Further, this volume shows that the separation between resisters and opponents is fluid. While most literature on civil resistance has focused on defection from the opponent side as a result of nonviolent actions, in the Bolivian case, the opposite happened. The civil resistance movement got divided after the indigenous marches of 2011 and 2012 against the building of a road across ancestral territory, with many non-indigenous members deciding to switch sides because they felt that the building of the road would contribute to local development (Roncken in this volume).

Civil Resistance Strategies and Methods

A third feature worth mentioning is the broad spectrum of civil resistance strategies and methods covered in this book. Strategies include unilateral, pacted and oblique forms of noncooperation, in which the first type refers to an overt form of noncooperation that has not been negotiated with opponents, whereas the second one refers to an overt form of noncooperation that has been negotiated with opponents and the last one to a covert form of noncooperation (Masullo 2017). Meanwhile, methods go all the way from the more visible types of protest, such as marches or road blockades, to the subtler everyday forms of noncooperation, such as refusing to serve company employees in restaurants (Wilson in this volume) or implementing participatory budget planning (Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume).

The cases analysed in this book show that each strategy and method can be important in its own way. For instance, more overt unilateral forms of noncooperation can remind opponents of previous commitments, while pacted ones can generate some buy-in from opponents, and oblique ones can allow people to reject certain practices while avoiding costly confrontation (Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume).

The case of Venezuela also points at new forms of civil resistance, including networked activism through social media and mobile applications. Interestingly, new means of communication can help civil resistance movements circumvent controls imposed by their opponents on the flow of information and successfully counter propaganda campaigns that aim to delegitimize their nonviolent struggle. Yet, the use of networked activism can lead to uncoordinated actions by leaderless crowds and make it difficult for people to maintain nonviolent discipline, which can have negative consequences on their prospects of success (Puyosa in this volume).

Most cases, especially those of Nicaragua and Peru, illustrate that processes of civil resistance, to some extent, take place at the discursive level. This is why rhetorical traps—only recently explored in the field—can be a useful strategy to exert leverage on opponents (Kaplan 2017a; Mouly et al. 2016). The ‘No al Canal’ movement in Nicaragua is a case in point of the potential for success of this strategy, with the movement using the rhetoric of founders of the Sandinista movement to publicly expound contradictions in the discourse of the Sandinista government, as the main promoter of the canal (McCall and Taylor in this volume).

Further, a key point made in this book is how experiential learning can enable civil resistance movements to improve their strategies and come up with more effective tactics. In Bolivia, for example, following the ninth indigenous march for the protection of ancestral indigenous territory and the protection of natural resources in 2012, the civil resistance movement decided to shift from tactics of concentration to tactics of dispersion to regain strength and consolidate the movement (Roncken in this volume). In a similar fashion, in Peru anti-mining groups have learnt how to respond to the repressive tactics of their private sector opponents (Wilson in this volume). More generally, various cases presented in this volume reveal how members of civil resistance movements opted for nonviolence for pragmatic and strategic reasons, either after trying to use violent means and realizing the costs or simply by coming to the understanding that given the asymmetric power relations with their opponents they had more chance to succeed by using nonviolent means of struggle.

Notes on Methodology

All but one of the chapters in this volume are based on field research in the localities under study. Yet, the methodologies used by the authors vary. Some have studied their cases for many years and have drawn upon years of academic and activist work in the field. They have used participant observation, participatory action research, as well as interviews with relevant actors and primary documentary sources to collect data (e.g. Maher and Hernández in this volume). One author conducted comparative ethnographies though extensive fieldwork, including participant observation and hundreds of interviews (Wilson in this volume). Others had the chance to participate for a shorter time as accompaniers in the civil resistance campaign under study (e.g. Roncken in this volume). Meanwhile, various authors undertook less extensive periods of fieldwork, during which they conducted multiple interviews with relevant actors, and/or used other techniques of data collection (e.g. Puyosa; Ramírez-Orozco; Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume). Importantly, all the authors were able to build relationships with the main actors involved in the processes of civil resistance under study, which increased their understanding of these processes.

In addition to the analysis of data from interviews and field notes, our contributors analysed a broad variety of documents to sustain their arguments, including through archival research (Wilson and Masullo, Mouly and Garrido in this volume). These documents included media reports, online communications, documents produced by those involved in civil resistance campaigns (e.g. meeting notes, communiqués), reports from nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations, government documents, as well as secondary literature when available. Further, some authors resorted to discourse analysis in order to unravel the practice of rhetorical traps as a civil resistance strategy to denounce contradictions between the opponents’ statements and their actual behaviour thereby putting pressure on them to abide by the norms they profess (McCall and Taylor in this volume).

Book Structure

The book is organized around a series of case studies of experiences of civil resistance in contexts of violent conflict in Latin America, from Mexico to Bolivia, going through Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil and Peru. Chapter 2 by Esperanza Hernández Delgado examines the processes of nonviolent resistance of two indigenous groups in northwestern Mexico, the Yaqui and the Guarijio. These two groups have used civil resistance against the state and private companies to defend their territory, the natural resources that are part of that territory and their culture: while the Yaqui have fought against the “Independence” aqueduct, the Guarijio have targeted their struggle against the “Pilares” dam. The chapter analyses the influence of these indigenous peoples’ characteristics on their process of civil resistance and draws important lessons from these cases and the civil resistance literature about the necessary conditions for nonviolent resistance to achieve better results. It also shows the usefulness of combining methods of civil resistance with others, including judicial actions and negotiation and of striking alliances with like-minded groups.

Chapter 3 by Mónica Maher looks at indigenous civil resistance against megaprojects in Honduras, where the environmental activist Berta Cáceres was murdered in March 2016. It examines the nonviolent struggle of the Lenca community, to which Cáceres belonged, against the building of a hydroelectric dam on a sacred indigenous river. The author argues that this conflict, while originating in one small indigenous village, is the tip of the iceberg of a much larger ideological split in Latin America generally, where struggles between indigenous peoples and the state abound over ancestral waters and land usage, and is a prime example of the power of civil resistance. Other chapters in this volume support this argument. She also highlights the power of spirituality as key to the successful outcomes of the Lenca’s nonviolent resistance campaigns.

Chapter 4 by Sarah McCall and Matthew Taylor draws our attention to the nonviolent resistance campaign against the construction of Nicaragua’s “Grand Canal” to link the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. Interestingly, it shows how protesters used the rhetoric of founders of the Sandinista movement in their struggle to prevent the implementation of the project, promoted by the government of Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. This strategy enabled them to expose the contradictions between the official discourse of national development and progress for the people, and the economic reality of Nicaragua, where projects such as the Grand Canal have led to increased inequality and corruption.

Chapter 5 by Iria Puyosa adopts an innovative approach to civil resistance by focusing on networked activism and the occupation of public spaces in the nonviolent struggle against an increasingly authoritarian regime in Venezuela. Interestingly, the author examines the interaction between the use of social media and mobile apps by civil resistance activists, on one hand, and the control of information flows by the government, on the other hand, and shows how the balance between these two forces can foster or hinder resisters’ capacities to organize a united opposition movement with a high level of participation that can provoke defections in the government camp. She argues that without the permanent occupation of public space by the civil resistance movement it became increasingly difficult for leaderless crowds to maintain nonviolent discipline and prevent violent actions by radical flanks.

Chapter 6 by Juan Masullo, Cécile Mouly and María Belén Garrido analyses the use of three different types of civilian noncooperation with armed actors—unilateral, pacted and oblique—in the Colombian municipality of Samaniego. Importantly, it looks at how the combination of civil resistance and dialogue enabled civilians to achieve consequential goals despite the military superiority of their opponents. This includes the removal of landmines and the release of hostages. In particular, it shows how pacted noncooperation, which has been the main form of civilian noncooperation in Samaniego, allowed civilians to get a buy-in from armed actors and facilitated the establishment and compliance of agreements between the parties. The case study also illustrates that oblique noncooperation, by operating on the shadow of armed groups’ confrontation, can be useful in more sensitive contexts where open, direct opposition to armed actors seems too risky or hard to organize. As for unilateral forms of civil resistance, while more confrontational in nature, they can be of particular use to remind armed actors of their commitments and pave the way for dialogue, enhancing the leverage of civilians.

Chapter 7 by Esperanza Hernández Delgado and Claudia Patricia Roa Mendoza discusses the experience of nonviolent resistance of the ATCC in Colombia, which began in the late 1980s and made this farmers’ organization worthy of the Right Livelihood Award in 1990. The authors study this experience of civil resistance against armed violence in the context of war and focus on the relationship between this type of resistance and peacebuilding based on this case and the relevant literature. They argue that this successful experience shows the complementarity between civil resistance and peacebuilding.

Chapter 8 by Mario Ramírez-Orozco examines the case of the nonviolent movement for the right to housing in urban areas in Brazil. It shows how such a movement arose from peasants displaced by rural violence, who decided to settle in the suburbs of big and middle-range cities in Brazil and got organized as the Roofless Workers’ Movement to defend their right to housing. Interestingly, these peasants drew on their past experience in the struggle for access to land in rural areas and embraced nonviolent direct action to achieve their goals. Further, owing to the magnitude of the issues at stake, they built a large coalition including formal and informal workers, temporary harvesters and unemployed to defend people’s right to a decent living.

In Chap. 9, Michael Wilson Becerril looks at how civil resistance movements against mining companies in Peru responded to violent repression, learning how to maintain nonviolent discipline. On the basis of ethnographic evidence from two case studies, the author explains how activists reflected upon their opponents’ use of frames of “violence” and “terrorism” to delegitimize, violently repress and demobilize their nonviolent struggle for the protection of their territory, and henceforth decided to adhere strictly to nonviolent tactics and frames, innovating and implementing specific tactics to ensure nonviolent discipline. While the literature has emphasized the importance of nonviolent discipline for the success of civil resistance campaigns, few scholars have sought to understand the learning processes that take place within such movements in the face of violent tactics and rhetoric by their opponents and how such learning influences future strategic and tactical choices.

In a similar vein, Chap. 10 by Theo Roncken draws our attention to the learning process that occurred within the civil resistance movement against the building of a road through the Isiboro Sécure national park and indigenous territory (TIPNIS by its acronym in Spanish) in Bolivia, and led to a change in tactics. Interestingly, the author argues that these learning practices could eventually lead to a shift in the power relations between indigenous protesters and the road promoters, including the Bolivian central government. Such a shift may not prevent the building of a road through the TIPNIS, but could set the stage for the prevention of similar projects to be implemented without adequate consultation of local communities.

Finally, in the concluding chapter, we draw on all the case studies to identify key findings in relation to civil resistance in contexts of violent conflict, lessons learnt and avenues for future research. All in all, we hope that this book enables our readers to learn from the manifold experiences of civil resistance covered in this volume to understand the factors that have facilitated or hampered them, the way in which people have sustained their nonviolent campaigns, as well as the strategies and tactics that they have used effectively both to cope with direct violence and to achieve their objectives.