The Sonora Estuarine Biocultural Corridor (CBES) is made up of six coastal wetlands with mangrove forest, internationally certified as Ramsar Sites. Four are part of indigenous territories whose inhabitants have serious development lags and low water security. Five are alongside six irrigation districts of national relevance. The objective is to learn about the socio-environmental problems of the CBES, focused on the issue of water, as well as community proposals for solutions. Intercultural, mixed methodology approach. Prospecting visits were carried out in the six estuaries of the CBES, and 84 semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from all social sectors who know the problems of the CBES in three (out of six) estuaries associated with indigenous territories. The main problem is centered on the issue of water: they receive contaminated water from agroindustry, aquaculture, and the municipal service; the fresh water of the rivers is almost nil, rainfall has decreased while the heat increases, and marine and terrestrial biodiversity decreases. This affects the food and economic security of the local population and generates conflicts between the different productive activities. A multisectoral organization that integrates the six estuaries would improve community wellbeing and, in turn, climate resilience.

In 2009, a fire occurred in the ABC Day Care Center in Hermosillo, Mexico, that killed and injured many children who were in attendance that day. This study investigated the association between the posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) of socially connected parents and caregivers whose children were affected by the fire. Parents and caregivers of the children who were in attendance the day of the fire were interviewed 8-11 months and 20-23 months postfire. Linear network autocorrelation modeling was used to test for autocorrelations of the outcome variable count of PTSS within different configurations of the network of caregivers. No significant network effects appeared in models from the first interview period, but effects did appear in the second period, specifically in the three models in which network ties consisted of "receive informational support" (.220), "give and receive emotional support" (.167), and "give and receive both informational and emotional support" (.213). The findings suggest that in these three network configurations, as relationships grew in strength from the first interview to the second, the level of one's own PTSS was more comparable to the level of PTSS of one's social connections. Two theoretical mechanisms that may explain this result are homophily and social influence.

We used social network analysis (SNA) to identify the types of water-related conflicts between the users and members of the institutional arena of the Rio Mayo Irrigation District (RMID) within the ancestral territory of the Yoreme Mayo indigenous group in Sonora, northeastern Mexico. We combined ethnography with an analysis and visualization of bimodal networks that consisted of 118 users and their connections to the institutional arena’s 30 identified social actors who influence water management. Using a clustering algorithm, we identified four types of conflicts: (1) disputes between small- and large-scale farmers over (i) irrigation water and (ii) payments for water rights and land rental; (2) the struggle by large-scale farmers against the upper level of the water hierarchy, to obtain more water; (3) struggles by rural indigenous women against water providers, to conserve indigenous vernacular systems of managing water for domestic use; and (4) a “conflict” that turned out to be merely a structural remnant of the algorithm. We conclude that land- and water-grabbing in the RMID mainly affect indigenous small-scale farmers and that the combination of SNA and a clustering algorithm can identify the types of natural resource-related conflicts that might go undetected by other methodologies. However, SNA should in some cases be accompanied by a qualitative methodology.

(1) Background: In Mexico, 76% of water consumed is used for crop irrigation, and close to half of this is used in 86 irrigation districts for agroindustry throughout the nation. The present study combines a political ecology approach with social networks analysis to identify how water-use-related information networks are structured according to the ethnicity (indigenous and non-indigenous) of the users of the Rio Mayo Irrigation District 038 (RMID) and how these networks are influenced by users’ type of land tenure and land use. (2) Methods: The study involved three stages: identification of social actors that influence water management (SAIWM); application of 118 structured interviews with users of RMID; and ethnographic fieldwork. (3) Results: Thirty SAIWM were identified. Only 11.8% of RMID users interviewed were indigenous farmers and only 5% were indigenous holders of collective landholdings. The information network metrics indicate that indigenous users have less access to information than non-indigenous users. (4) Conclusions: Ethnicity as well as land tenure and land use influence the structure of information networks and determine whether RMID users work as land-holding farmers or as hired labor.

This paper deals with the “worst environmental mining disaster in the history of Mexico”. The 40,000 m3 of copper sulfate dumped into the río Sonora by a breach in a tailing dam at the Buenavista del Cobre, copper mine in Cananea, Sonora. The mine is owned by Grupo Mexico. The paper analyses the social grammar revealed by the event and the degree to which the social order conserves the statu quo under the new administration.

This study estimated gender differences in the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom network structure (i.e., the unique associations across symptoms) using network analysis in a Latin American sample. Participants were 1,104 adults, taken from epidemiological studies of mental health following natural disasters and accidents in Mexico and Ecuador. Symptoms of DSM-IV PTSD were measured dichotomously with the Spanish version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. We estimated the PTSD symptom network of the full sample and in male and female subsamples as well as indices of centrality, the stability and accuracy of the modeled networks, and communities of nodes within each network. The male and female networks were compared statistically using the Network Comparison Test (NCT). Results indicated strength centrality was the only stable centrality measure, with correlation stability (CS) coefficients of .59, .28, and .44 for the full, male, and female networks, respectively. We found the most central symptoms, measured by strength centrality, were loss of interest and flashbacks for men; and concentration impairment, avoiding thoughts/feelings, and physiological reactivity for women. The NCT revealed that the global structure (M = 0.84), p = .704, and global strength (S = 5.04), p = .556, of the male and female networks did not differ significantly. Although some gender differences in the most central symptoms emerged, thus offering some evidence for gender differences pending replication in larger samples, on the whole, our results suggest that once PTSD develops, the way the symptoms are associated does not differ substantially between men and women.

This chapter describes the involvement of a group of anthropologists from universities in the United States with a federal development agency in Mexico--the Instituto Nacional para el Desarrollo de la Comunidad y de la Vivienda Popular (INDECO). During the Echeverria administration, INDECO was given the mission of helping alter the undesirable housing conditions suffered by many Mexicans because of rapid urban growth. The emphasis on experimentation and the use of social science theory to develop new and innovative projects meant that--unlike the situation often pertaining in the United States--the anthropologists never had to justify their discipline or "prove" they could contribute to project planning. The project marked a new phase in the relationship between the North American anthropologists and the National Institute for Community Development. The period of close on-site cooperation between the anthropologists and INDECO began when one of the anthropologists arrived in Oaxaca to begin a community study combining abstract with applied anthropology.

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 Gaston 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 Maria Nieves Zedeno. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 201. $45.00 paper. ISBN: 9781607814337.

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. El incendio de la Guardería ABC de la Cd. de Hermosillo, Sonora en 2009, y el derrame de la mina de cobre de Cananea, Sonora en 2014, exhibió la falta de regulación estatal, así como la ineficiencia en materia de servicios públicos durante las administraciones de los partidos políticos del Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) así como del Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), demostrando que finalmente están al servicio de los intereses de pequeñas élites que mantienen y gobiernan a través de mecanismos de impunidad. Aunque la impunidad sí produce un conjunto de programas y políticas incoherentes, los resultados de más de 100 entrevistas semi-estructuradas sugieren que, además, el ejercicio de poder mediante la impunidad es parte de una cultura de gobernanza en México, que requiere vínculos globales, pero no necesariamente requiere liderazgos específicos, ya sean individuales o de partido.

We examine social aspects of risk perception in seven sites among communities affected by a flood in Mexico (one site), as well by volcanic eruptions in Mexico (one site) and Ecuador (five sites). We conducted over 450 interviews with questions about the danger people feel at the time (after the disaster) about what happened in the past, their current concerns, and their expectations about the future. We explored how aspects of the context in which people live have an effect on the relationship between risk perception and social network factors. Levels of risk perception for past, present, and future aspects of a specific hazard were similar across these two countries and seven sites. However, specific network factors varied from site to site across the countries, thus there was little overlap between sites in the variables that predicted the past, present, or future aspects of risk perception in each site.

It is well established that roughly twice as many women as men after disasters experience posttraumatic stress, and that their mean levels of posttraumatic stress are slightly to moderately higher. Social support is often a buffer for these impacts, but not always. Social responsibilities can exacerbate postdisaster stress. To seek a better understanding of how facets of social support play out in women's and men's lives in the years following a disaster, we analyzed a cross-section of personal networks to get detailed information on the types of people in one's life, the types of support received, and the way these personal networks were structured. We found that these facets of networks rarely performed similarly for men's and women's mental health, and these differences may explain some of the variation in postdisaster-gendered mental health.

In this study, we explored the networks created after a day care fire in Hermosillo, Mexico, and examined the association of justice-seeking activities with posttraumatic stress and depression of parents and caretakers. We also looked at how political groups (created as the result of the traumatic event) were associated with symptoms of stress and depression. We interviewed people at eight and 20 months after the fire, and we report in this chapter on the data from the second wave. People with higher levels of posttraumatic stress indicators were more active in marches and public meetings, activities surrounding the fire's first anniversary, speaking to the press or to the crowd at an event, and were involved in a group membership related to the incident.

Forty-nine infants and toddlers were killed and 93 others were injured in the ABC Day Care Center fire disaster in Hermosillo, Mexico. This study describes the experiences of ten mental health professionals who researched the community-scale grief and provided clinical services to the parents and caregivers of the affected children. A concurrent triangulation mixed-methods approach was used to quantitatively measure and qualitatively understand the secondary traumatic stress (STS) of the responding professionals. Results indicated that experiences of STS decreased with time and debriefing, however, the responding professionals who were more directly connected to the trauma and those who worked with parents who lost their children displayed an enduring impact of STS. Coping strategies and gender expectations are considered in a discussion of debriefing in the specific cultural context of Northwestern Mexico.