Digital community, hypervisibility, and the Central American caravans and Haitian diaspora in Mexico

Digital Activism in the Mexican Nations analyzes Mexico's rich history of digital activism, among the most vibrant in the Hispanic world. Tracing activism in the Greater Mexican Nations from the Zapatistas through #MeToo to DREAMers, David Dalton reveals how Indigenous, feminist, and migrant communities use digital tools to claim a space at the table-- and what their strategies can teach us about activism more broadly.

In his talk, Dalton asks: how can hashtags change anything? Comparing the #CaravanaMigrante label, which mobilized solidarity but provoked nationalist backlash, with Radio Haitiano en Tijuana, a radio and Facebook platform that built ties between Haitian migrants and local residents, he explores how digital movements can reach beyond their own communities to build lasting change. Such transformation depends less on cathartic outrage than on building broader alliances capable of influencing state policy.

David S. Dalton is a Professor of Spanish, and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research explores race, technology, and resistance in Mexican and Chicanx culture, from science and the body in postrevolutionary Mexico to cyborg dystopias and digital social movements. His books include Mestizo Modernity (2018), Robo Sacer (2023), and the co-edited volume Imagining Latinidad (2023), on Latin American migrants' digital diasporas.