The women of Mexico and the neoliberal revolution

The position and condition of women during the crisis is more visible and more amenable to investigation. In this paper, we study the changing ideology of gender construction, and the objective correlates of women's work outside the home in order to see the structure of discrimination against women, understood in a cultural context

Social support mobilization and deterioration after Mexico's 1999 flood: Effects of context, gender, and time

Samples of adults representative of Teziutlán, Puebla, and Villahermosa, Tobasco, were interviewed 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after the devastating 1999 flood and mudslides. The interview contained multiple measures of social support that had been normed for Mexico. Comparisons between sample data and population norms suggested minimal mobilization of received support and substantial deterioration of perceived support and social embeddedness. Social support was lowest in Teziutlán, which had experienced mass casualties and displacement, and among women and persons of lower educational attainment. Disparities according to gender, context, and education grew larger as time passed. The results provide compelling evidence that the international health community must be mindful of social as well as psychological functioning when disasters strike the developing world

Progressive Contextualization: Thinking about Extreme Events

This essay reviews the following works:Side Effects: Mexican Governance under NAFTA’s Labor and Environmental Agreements. By Mark Aspinwall. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 209. $24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780804782302.Toxic Injustice: A Transnational History of Exposure and Struggle. By Susanna Rankin Bohme. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 343.$29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780520278998.Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction. By Gastón R. Gordillo. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Pp. xi + 315. $26.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822356196.Unearthing Conflict: Corporate Mining, Activism, and Expertise in Peru. By Fabiana Li. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. vii + 265.$24.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822358312.Engineering Mountain Landscapes: An Anthropology of Social Investment. Edited by Laura L. Scheiber and María Nieves Zedeño. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 201. $45.00 paper. ISBN: 9781607814337

Postdisaster PTSD over four waves of a panel study of Mexico's 1999 flood

Samples of adults representative of Tezuitlán, Puebla and Villahermosa, Tobasco (combined N = 561), were interviewed 6, 12, 18, and 24 months after the devastating 1999 floods and mudslides in Mexico. Current DSM-IV PTSD and major depressive disorder (MDD) were assessed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. At Wave 1, PTSD was highly prevalent (24% combined), especially in Tezuitlán (46%), which had experienced mass casualties and displacement. Both linear and quadratic effects of time emerged, as PTSD symptoms initially declined but subsequently stabilized. Differences between cities lessened as time passed. Comorbidity between PTSD and MDD was substantial. The findings demonstrate that the international health community needs to be prepared for epidemics of PTSD when disasters strike developing areas of the world

Social organization of suffering and justice-seeking in a tragic day care fire disaster

In 2009 a fire destroyed a day care center in Mexico, killing 49 children and leaving 100 others with serious injuries. This chapter explores how suffering and the search for justice and closure have produced a social movement of interconnected subgroups of parents and caretakers. These new social groups collaborate and at times compete due to their myriad definitions and concepts of justice. In various combinations, parents and caretakers in four self-defined groups seek justice through legal consequences for day care owners plus regulators and politicians: seeing that it never happens again; demanding compensation; assuring that their surviving children are healthy and taken care of; and expressing their loss or anger. How their suffering translates into these objectives must be understood in a context in which the new Mexican multi-party system is figuring out how to handle major problems like this so that citizens feel closure. The single party system always had answers for such problems—send the perpetrators to another state or off to an ambassadorial post. While it appears that the social movement approach has seen some success in the case of the 2009 fire and in other applications, it also holds limitations in that it reminds individuals of their suffering and grief and may limit progress in constructing a new well-being

Recovering Impunity: A Tale of Two Disasters and Governance in Northwest Mexico

In the state of Sonora, the 2009 Hermosillo ABC Day Care Center fire and the 2014 Cananea copper mine spill highlighted how deregulation and divestiture of state services by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) served the interests of a few elites, who maintained rule through mechanisms of impunity: in other words, through actions undertaken without concern about the law or repercussions. Although impunity produces a seemingly incoherent set of policy and politics, results from dozens of semi-structured interviews by our team also suggest that exercising power through impunity is part of the culture of governance in Mexico, relying on global ties, but not necessarily requiring any specific individual or party leadership

Alcohol use and misuse in urban Mexican men and women: An epidemiologic perspective

Consumption patterns and misuse of alcohol were examined in adults sampled from three cities in Mexico (n = 1933). The sample was divided into groups of persons who abstained from alcohol, drank but endorsed no misuse, or drank and endorsed at least some misuse of alcohol. Half of the entire sample was categorized as drinkers (12 or more drinks in lifetime). Mexican men drank more per occasion and reported more problems with alcohol rather than did Mexican women. Low socioeconomic resources, not being married, and female gender were related to whether Mexicans abstained from alcohol rather than drank without misuse. Lifetime posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression increased the likelihood of misusing alcohol versus drinking without misuse, as did greater amount of drinks consumed per occasion and male gender. Younger age and not being married were also related to misuse, although this was true mostly for women. The number of traumatic experiences in childhood and lower socioeconomic resources also predicted misuse, although mostly for men. Specific traumatic experiences and their relationship to alcohol use and misuse were also examined

Critical aspects of social networks in a resettlement setting

Each year, more than 30 million people worldwide are displaced by disaster, development, and conflict. The sheer magnitude of displacement points to a need for wider application of social science theories and methodologies to the special problems posed by these crises. We are convinced that social network analysis of the structure and development of social relations can help to identify variables and patterns essential to maintaining or fostering social (re)articulation in resettlement. The research model we propose applies advances in network methodology to emerging theory on structural gaps in networks in the context of forced displacement and resettlement

Early physical health consequences of disaster exposure and acute disaster-related PTSD

A sample of adults (N=666) was interviewed 6 months after the devastating 1999 floods and mudslides in Mexico. Comparisons between sample data and population norms pointed to significant postdisaster elevations in physical health symptoms across a variety of domains. With age, gender, and predisaster mental health and living conditions controlled, severity of exposure was related to higher physical symptoms. The effects of severity of exposure dropped out of the equations when postdisaster posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were taken into account. The effects of acute PTSD on health symptoms were largely, but not completely, accounted for by concurrent depressed affect, with criterion symptoms reflecting intrusion and arousal most likely to show a specific effect. Although previous research examined stressors from the distant past, here the role of PTSD as a mediator of the trauma-health relation was demonstrated with recent disaster exposure and acute PTSD, in a very different population

Violence and PTSD in Mexico: Gender and regional differences

Objective: We examined the lifetime prevalence of violence in Mexico and how different characteristics of the violent event effect the probability of meeting criteria for lifetime post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Method: We interviewed a probability sample of 2,509 adults from 4 cities in Mexico (Oaxaca, Guadalajara, Hermosillo, Mérida) using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI).Results: Lifetime prevalence of violence was 34%. Men reported more single-experience, recurrent, physical, adolescent, adulthood, and stranger violence; women more sexual, childhood, family, and intimate partner violence. Prevalence was generally higher in Guadalajara, though the impact was greater in Oaxaca compared to other cities. Of those exposed, 11.5% met DSM-IV criteria for PTSD. Probabilities were highest after sexual and intimate partner violence, higher for women than men, and higher in Oaxaca than other cities.Conclusions: It is important to consider the characteristics and the context of violence in order to develop effective prevention and intervention programs to reduce the exposure to and impact of violence