The personification of institutions: civil sphere and human rights in the Ayotzinapa case

Abstract

The different performances carried out by the Mexican federal government and by the families of the disappeared students of Ayotzinapa along with the human rights NGO representing them in the dispute over the veracity of the official investigation of the case were analyzed. The objective was to find out what narratives and binary codes were activated by some social sectors to interpret and participate in this dispute, and to determine whether the human rights discourse mobilized by the NGO representatives had an influence on their construction and, consequently, on the aforementioned dispute. The research was based on the theoretical-methodological framework of the strong program of cultural sociology, particularly the civil sphere theory. The performances carried out by the actors, as well as the interpretations of them in the Mexican press, were reconstructed. Throughout eight press conferences, two press releases, and 222 opinion columns published in national newspapers it was analyzed how civil and anti civil motives, relations, and institutions were attributed to actors in contention. The results showed the mobilization of two competing narratives centered on the former president Enrique Peña Nieto and a personalist binary code, concluding that the human rights discourse had no influence on the construction of these narratives and binary code used in the dispute; that the personalists code and narratives exhibit a process of personification of institutions; and that although the public discussion was based on the contamination of the, a purity status was unanimously attributed to the grieving of the students’ families.