Protest and intervention: A study of discourse,culture,and psychology in Oaxaca,Mexico

Abstract

This article presents three ethnographic case studies that demonstrate some of the ways that local participants in Oaxaca, Mexico put Marxist and other leftist discourses into practice as they seek to enact social and cultural change. Case study 1 presents a personal retrospective narrative of a local resident who as a university student became involved in battles against the state police following the 2006 teacher’s strike in Oaxaca. Case study 2 explores the presence of Marxist and other leftist references in Oaxacan street art. Case study 3 presents the experiences of a Catholic priest who puts Marxist thought into practice through his social justice work in rural pueblos. These case studies demonstrate how a discursive understanding of culture and psychology can help navigate the conceptual fields of culture and psychology. Each case study comes from ethnographic research conducted in Oaxaca, Mexico in July 2017.