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"Abrazos, no balazos" is a Spanish-language anti-war slogan, commonly translated in English-language media as "Hugs, not bullets" [1] or "Hugs, not slugs" (though "balazo" is more literally "gunshot"), [2] and often compared to the English "Make love, not war".
The slogan was initially associated with the Chicano counterculture of the 1960s, and figured prominently in the Mexican-American anti-war movement, as a slogan in opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. [3] [4]
It later became more broadly used throughout Mexican and Mexican-American culture. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 65th President of Mexico, used the slogan to describe his security policy during the campaign season of the 2012 Mexican general election. [5] The general idea being that he would seek to reduce the escalating violence of the drug cartels, as well as "moralize" police forces widely seen as brutal and corrupt within the context of the Mexican drug war. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] However, this policy has remained controversial as the homicide rate reached record levels during AMLO´s presidency. [11] By late 2024, time in which Claudia Sheinbaum began her presidency, the policy of "hugs, not bullets" was seen widely as abandoned as the new government has been perceived as once again taking a more aggressive stance against drug violence. [1]
The city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas implemented a policy based on the slogan in an attempt to reduce violent crime. [12]
It continues to be a feature of informal street art. Photographer Lupe Flores documented its use as graffiti on the Mexico–United States border wall, protesting the wall and the militarization of border communities. [2]
Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican descent. In 2022, Mexican Americans comprised 11.2% of the US population and 58.9% of all Hispanic and Latino Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican Americans were born in the United States. Mexicans born outside the US make up 53% of the total population of foreign-born Hispanic Americans and 25% of the total foreign-born population. Chicano is a term used by some to describe the unique identity held by Mexican-Americans. The United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world, behind only Mexico.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, also known by his initials AMLO, is a Mexican politician who served as the 65th president of Mexico from 2018 to 2024. He previously served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005.
Chicano rap is a subgenre of hip hop that embodies aspects of the Mexican American or Chicano culture.
Mexican American history, or the history of American residents of Mexican descent, largely begins after the annexation of Northern Mexico in 1848, when the nearly 80,000 Mexican citizens of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico became U.S. citizens. Large-scale migration increased the U.S.' Mexican population during the 1910s, as refugees fled the economic devastation and violence of Mexico's high-casualty revolution and civil war. Until the mid-20th century, most Mexican Americans lived within a few hundred miles of the border, although some resettled along rail lines from the Southwest into the Midwest.
Citizens' Movement is a center-left political party in Mexico. It was founded in 1999 under the name Convergence for Democracy, which was then shortened to Convergence in 2002 and changed to Citizens' Movement in 2011.
Human rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.
There is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
Mexico and the United States have a complex history, with war in the 1840s and the subsequent American acquisition of more than 50% of former Mexican territory, including Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico. Pressure from Washington forced the French invaders out in the 1860s. The Mexican Revolution of the 1910s saw many refugees flee North, and limited American invasions. Other tensions resulted from seizure of American mining and oil interests. The two nations share a maritime and land border. Several treaties have been concluded between the two nations bilaterally, such as the Gadsden Purchase, and multilaterally, such as the 2019 United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, replacing the 1994 NAFTA. Both are members of various international organizations, including the Organization of American States and the United Nations.
The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) is an ongoing protest movement that began on 28 March 2011 in response to the Mexican Drug War, government and corporate corruption, regressive economic policies, and growing economic inequality and poverty. The protests were called by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia in response to the death of his son in Cuernavaca. The protesters have called for an end to the Drug War, the legalization of drugs, and the removal of then-President of Mexico Felipe Calderón. Protests have occurred in over 40 Mexican cities, including an estimated 50,000 in Cuernavaca and 20,000 in Mexico City.
Raúl Régulo Quirino Garza, a Mexican journalist for the La Última Palabra and an employee of the Social Development Ministry in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, was murdered in Cadereyta Jiménez. Quirino was the first Mexican journalist killed in 2012. In 2011, ten Mexican journalists were killed, according to the International Press Institute and nine by the count of the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).
Corruption in Mexico has permeated several segments of society – political, economic, and social – and has greatly affected the country's legitimacy, transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Many of these dimensions have evolved as a product of Mexico's legacy of elite, oligarchic consolidation of power and authoritarian rule.
The National Regeneration Movement, commonly referred to by its syllabic abbreviation Morena, is a major left-wing populist political party in Mexico. As of 2023, it is the largest political party in Mexico by number of members; it has been the ruling party since 2018, and it won a second term in the 2024 general election.
Herman Baca is a Chicano activist best known for grassroots community organizing in National City, California. Mentored by labor activists Bert Corona and Soledad Alatorre, Baca focused on political empowerment, grassroots organizing, police brutality, immigration, and a number of other issues during his involvement with the Mexican American Political Association, La Raza Unida Political Party, CASA Justicia, and the Committee on Chicano Rights. He was a key figure that advocated for undocumented immigrants as a part of the "Chicano/Mexicano" community during the Chicano Civil Rights Movement since the 1960s. As part of the Chicano Movement, Baca advocated for self-determination and defending human rights through organizing protests, administering electoral registration campaigns, community-based fund raising through tardeadas, and legal defense and social service workshops. Baca is currently based in San Diego, California in San Diego County.
Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo is a Mexican politician, scientist, and academic who is serving as the 66th president of Mexico since 1 October 2024, the first woman to hold the office. She previously served as Head of Government of Mexico City from 2018 to 2023.
The Fourth Transformation is Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's 2018 campaign promise to do away with privileged abuses that had plagued the country in decades past. López Obrador defined the first three transformations as the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821), the Reform War (1858–1861) and the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917).
Catarino Erasmo Garza was a Mexican journalist, folk hero and revolutionary. He published Spanish language newspapers in the United States, founded mutual aid societies, and is perhaps best known for the unsuccessful Garza Revolution near the Texas Mexican border. Garza was born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas and moved to Brownsville in 1877. After his revolution's failure in Texas, Garza fled to Costa Rica, where he became a police captain. He ended up joining a group of Colombian democracy advocates in their struggle against state proponents. He was killed in Panama in an attack on a military barracks in 1895 at the age of 35.
On 22 January 2021, 19 corpses were found at Camargo Municipality, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
Porfirionism or Porfirismo is an authoritarian and personalistic political ideology rooted and developed during the dictatorship of Mexican general Porfirio Díaz in which it ushered a period of right-wing and far-right politics to Mexico. Porifirionism is characterized by its Conservatism, Militarism and Nationalism. Under Díaz, the country experienced a long-lasting peace called "Pax Porfiriana" often due to its militarization of the rurales and elimination of political opponents which helped achieve foreign investments into the country, rapid industrialization, militarization, and modernization of social culture adopting the phrase "Order and Progress" to achieve these ideals at all costs.
The political history of North America in the 2020s covers political events on the continent, other than elections, from 2020 onwards.
