Using negative binomial models, I analyze the effects of repressive threats and procedural concessions on Zapatista protests from 1994 to 2003. Some of the results appear consistent with previous findings in the literature. Repressive threats had a negative initial effect and a positive delayed effect on protest activity and its simultaneous location across cities. However, procedural concessions had statistically insignificant negative initial and delayed effects on protests and their simultaneous location. Also contrary to the literature, when procedural concessions and repressive threats were combined, they had statistically insignificant positive initial and delayed effects on protest activity and its simultaneous location. Finally, democratization changes decreased Zapatista protests in the short and long term and helped to focus mobilization efforts on the remaining closed environments. Thus, democratization openings and an inconsistent use of repressive threats and procedural concessions did not strengthen the development of the movement; they contributed to the movement's relative weakness.

What happens to insurgent social movements that emerge during a democratic transition but fail to achieve their goals? How influential are they? Are they able to survive their initial mobilizing boom? Using the development of the Zapatista movement during Mexico’s democratic transition in the 1990s, this book seeks to answer these questions. The Zapatista movement is probably the best example of an influential and salient insurgent social movement emerging during a democratic transition that successfully mobilized sympathy and support for the indigenous agenda inside and outside of the country, yet failed to achieve its goals vis-à-vis the Mexican state. Why did such an influential movement fail to have its demands fully met? The answer is illustrated using a sliding door analogy to explain how the Zapatista movement developed within almost simultaneous openings and closings of political opportunities for its mobilization, success, and survival. Framing the relative achievements and failures of the movement within Mexico’s democratization is essential to understanding how social movements develop and survive and how responsive an electoral democracy can actually become. As such, this book offers a test of the quality of Mexico’s democracy and the resilience of the Zapatista movement, identifying the extent to which emerging political forces have incorporated dissident and previously excluded political actors into the new polity.

This study draws on the literature on political opportunity structures to investigate the effects of local and national factors on the Zapatista cycle of protest from 1994 to 2003. A cross-sectional, timeseries, negative binomial model for event counts is used to analyze the ebb and flow of Zapatista protests across the 111 municipios (municipalities) of Chiapas during this 10-year period. The results show that while all types of demands appear to have been significant triggers of protest activity, Zapatistas concentrated their protest events in larger and more closed localities that had a history of protest activity, stable elite alignments, and a larger military presence. Openings in the political system at the local and national levels lessened protest activity in the more democratic scenarios. These results suggest that the curvilinear relationship between the structure of political opportunities and protest mobilization posited to explain social movements in well-developed Western democracies does not explain the development of the protest cycle of a new social movement in an emerging electoral democracy.

For over 10,000 years, Andeans have resided at high altitude where the partial pressure of oxygen challenges human survival. Recent studies have provided evidence for positive selection acting in Andeans on the HIF2A (also known as EPAS1) locus, which encodes for a central transcription factor of the Hypoxia Inducible Factor pathway. However, the precise mechanism by which this allele might lead to altitude-adaptive phenotypes, if any, is unknown. By analyzing whole genome sequencing data from 46 high-coverage Peruvian Andean genomes, we confirm evidence for positive selection acting on HIF2A, and a unique pattern of variation surrounding the Andean specific SNV, rs570553380, which encodes for an H194R amino acid substitution in HIF-2α. Genotyping the Andean-associated SNV rs570553380 in a group of 299 Peruvian Andeans from Cerro de Pasco, Peru (4,338 m) reveals a positive association with increased fraction of exhaled nitric oxide, a marker of nitric oxide biosynthesis. In vitro assays show that the H194R mutation impairs binding of HIF-2α to its heterodimeric partner, ARNT. A knockin mouse model bearing the H194R mutation in the Hif2a gene displays decreased levels of hypoxia-induced pulmonary Endothelin-1 transcripts and protection against hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension. We conclude the Andean H194R HIF2A allele is a hypomorphic (partial loss of function) allele.

Using an innovative survey of protest participants and nonparticipants from five major street demonstrations in Mexico City in 2011 and 2012, this study tests the assumption that influences on protest participation vary across different types of events; namely, ritual demonstrations and reactive protests. The comparison is based on two assumptions: that these are two of the dominant forms of protest in contemporary Latin America, and that specifying the context for different types of social movement participation provides a better understanding of the individual mobilization process for groups seeking to defend their rights or gain new benefits. The comparative analyses reveal some crucial differences. Political interest and previous political experience are more influential in the decision to take part in reactive demonstrations. For ritual demonstrations, the decision to participate tends to be driven more by personal and organizational connections.