Indigenous unrest and the contentious politics of social assistance in Mexico

Abstract

Is social assistance being used to contain ethnic and racial unrest in developing countries? There is agrowing literature on social assistance policies in the Global South, but this literature largely focuseson economic and demographic factors, underestimating the importance of contentious politics. The caseof Mexico shows that social assistance programs are disproportionately directed to indigenous popula-tions, leading to diminished protest participation. Drawing on data from the 2010, 2012 and 2014 roundsof the Latin American Public Opinion Project, we apply multivariate regression analysis to examine thedeterminants of social assistance program participation in Mexico. Our study finds that after controllingfor income, household size, age, education, and employment status, indigenous ethnic identity is a keydeterminant in who benefits from social assistance in Mexico. Our results show that high ethnic disparityin social assistance is not only due to higher poverty rates among the indigenous population. Rather,indigenous people receive more social assistance mainly because of their ethnic identity. In addition, thisstudy demonstrates that indigenous people who benefit from social assistance programs are less likely tojoin anti-government protests. We argue that this ethnic targeting in social assistance is a result of thefact that indigenous unrest has become a political threat for Mexican governments since the 1990s.These results yield substantive support in arguing that the Mexican government uses social assistanceto contain indigenous unrest. The existing literature, which is dominated by structuralist explanations,needs to strongly consider the contentious political drivers of social assistance provision in the GlobalSouth for a full grasp of the phenomenon. Social assistance in Mexico is driven by social unrest and thissuggests that similar ethnic, racial, religious and contentious political factors should be examined in otherdeveloping countries to understand social assistance provisions.