Emotion, cultural trauma and mobilization: The Mexican solidarity movement toward Ayotzinapa victims

Based on social movements studies literature on emotions and protest, in this article we analyse the mobilization process of people who participated in the march for the first anniversary of the disappearance of 43 students of the rural school of Ayotzinapa (September 26, 2015) in Mexico City. Firstly, we’ll show how empathy, linked to other emotions such as fear and anger, affect mobilization and the identification process among march participants and Ayotzinapa students and their relatives. Later, we’ll analyse how framing Ayotzinapa events as cultural trauma affects mobilization. Our research shows how the process of politicization of trauma on the one hand affects the march participation, and on the other reshapes socio-political bonds between State and citizens.