Abstract
This introductory chapter presents a general overview of the edited volume. It defines key concepts, such as “civil resistance” and “violent conflict”, and explains the relevance of studying civil resistance in contexts of violent conflict in Latin America. It argues that nonviolent resistance has become a key way for grievance groups to develop and wield power to defend their rights and achieve social change. These groups have engaged in nonviolent resistance to achieve different objectives, including fighting against authoritarianism, armed violence, and the possible destruction of their natural resources, culture or ancestral territory. They have also faced different opponents and used different strategies and methods to achieve their objectives. This chapter also briefly talks about the contributors’ research methodology and ends with a brief description of each chapter to guide readers through the book.
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- 1.
Here “powerful” refers to power in its traditional sense. This said, we share the view of other civil resistance scholars who reject the narrow definition of power as domination and consider other forms of power, including “power within”, “power with” and “power to” (e.g. Speck 2014). Such a conceptualization of power is key to understanding how ordinary citizens have been able to collapse actors with significant material capabilities through civil resistance (e.g. Sharp 1990).
- 2.
Note that some authors (e.g. Ackerman and Kruegler 1994; Chenoweth and Stephan 2011) define a situation in which opponents use violence against nonviolent resisters as one of “nonviolent conflict”. We differ with these authors for two main reasons. First, according to other authors, especially from peace and conflict studies, the term “violent conflict” refers to conflicts that involve the use of direct violence, even if one-sided. Second, the use of direct violence, even if one-sided, makes it more challenging for grievance groups to achieve their objectives than if all sides would refrain from employing direct violence. For instance, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan (2011) found that violent repression decreased the chance of success of resistance movements by 35%. This said, we believe that it is crucial to distinguish situations of violent conflict in which grievance groups use direct violence (violent resistance) from those in which these groups only use nonviolent means (nonviolent resistance). As we will discuss a little below, scholars, such as Chenoweth and Stephan, indeed found that the latter type of struggle had much better odds of success than the former.
- 3.
See the definitions used by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at: http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/definitions/ (last visited on 12 October 2018).
- 4.
It is worthy to note, though, the publication of a special issue of the Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies on civil resistance in Latin America in 2018. See https://www.marlasjournal.com/15/volume/2/issue/1/ (last visited on 28 August 2018).
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Mouly, C., Hernández Delgado, E. (2019). Introduction: Civil Resistance in Contexts of Violent Conflict in Latin America—Leveraging Power to Defend One’s Rights. In: Mouly, C., Hernández Delgado, E. (eds) Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05033-7_1
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