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PERFORMING CONSERVATISM
A Study of Emerging Political Mobilisations
in Latin America using “Social Media Drama”
Analysis

Raúl Castro-​Pérez

Introduction
Media scholars such as P. David Marshall argue that the 21st century is the time in which
we think and experience through the plurality of our publics rather than through a single
public sphere or a public life (Marshall, 2016; also, Drucker and Gumpert, 2015; Gutsche
and Hess, 2018). He suggests that, regardless of whether we define the public in reference to
public opinion and self-​serving interests (Lippmann, 1954) or to influencing political action
through the public sphere (Habermas, 1989), “most (if not all) iterations of ‘public’ have
contained this overriding communicative relationship of the individual to unity” (Marshall,
2016: 2). The emergence of strong citizen activism consisting of multiple discourses and
signs facilitated mainly by the cultures of connectivity and their current participatory
practices (Bennett and Segerberg, 2013; Van Dijck, 2013) is putting that plurality on dis-
play. The activity of the “digital publics” (Roberts, 2014), the “micro publics” (Marshall,
2015), or what danah boyd defines as the “networking publics” (2010) then makes necessary
an analytical turn towards understanding contemporary politics as a “plurality of publics”
that has been dominated by parallel, overlapping and usually competing “social worlds”
(Pink et al., 2016).
Current politics in European democracies—​ for example Spain, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, and the United Kingdom—​or in those of the Americas—​such as the United
States, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina—​is increasingly yielding useful case studies of
competing publics, all of them characterised by high levels of fragmentation (Bergsen, 2019;
also, Boulianne, Koc-​Michalska, and Bimber, 2020; Brinks, Levitsky, and Murillo, 2020) and
confronted with underlying moral division. Feinberg and Willer refer to this division as a
“moral empathy gap” that functions as a “technique for effective and persuasive communica-
tion across political divides” (Feinberg and Willer, 2019). Clearly recognisable is a rhetorical
game defined by opposed political positions—​liberal and conservative—​that are founded upon
the moral beliefs of each speech community. The empathy gap arises in the form of opposed

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sets of features that morally reframe the distinct discourses (Feinberg and Willer, 2019). These
features—​such as care/​harm, fairness/​cheating, loyalty/​betrayal, authority/​subversion, sanc-
tity/​degradation, liberty/​oppression—​are dichotomous categories that align along a wide ideo-
logical spectrum and reorder social discussion of topics such as schooling, the administration of
justice, the politics of reproduction (e.g., abortion), and even those related to identity politics
about sexuality and gender.
In this article, I apply an anthropological approach to the “moral empathy gap” among
emerging, mobilised political groups in Latin America who, since 2016, have been adopting
increasingly inflexible postures. I analyse conservative mobilisations that I consider representa-
tive of the trend of competing groups using moral rhetoric to confront one another. Inspired
by Ginsburg’s research on the abortion debate in an American community reported in Contested
Lives (1998 [1989]), I discuss the political discourses and practices of analogous competing pro-​
life factions in Lima and Bogota. I also show that these conservative groups share platforms
for communicative action with peers elsewhere in Latin America and organise sets of fluid
and highly collaborative public assemblies and ceremonies in a participatory manner. I study
these discourses and practices as a “social system” or “field” rather than as “loosely integrated
processes” (Turner, 1986), following a method of research that Turner (1986) called “social
drama analysis”, where “social drama” denotes “a device for describing and analysing episodes
that manifest social conflict” (Turner, 1974: 78). A “social drama”, then, is a concept referring
to dramatic, performative acts that are indicative of what a given community believes to be fac-
tual reality in crisis and which must be displayed—​in a performed-​for-​an-​audience manner—​as
an irreparable schism between competing parties in the search for social recognition and legit-
imation of the crisis (Turner, 1986).
The “social drama” concept will inform my approach to the pro-​life public assemblies and
ceremonies in Peru and Colombia in the same way it served Turner’s analysis of power hand-
over in the African Ndembu society (Turner, 1986) and Myerhoff in her analysis of “invisi-
bility” among very old Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in California (Myerhoff, 1986).
But, in addition, I will present a modification to the social drama concept that I call the “social
media drama”, in reference to the kind of mediatisation (the term is defined by Couldry and
Hepp, 2013) that participants and wider audiences experience when attending public assem-
blies and ceremonies through the social media. In that regard, a “social drama” is explicitly
designed and produced to livestream on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites and
be subsequently re-​experienced through uploaded and released videos. To validate this con-
ceptual adjustment, using interviews and direct observation I analyse both the comments that
participants share during an event—​written on walls and in threads—​and the subsequent dis-
course they engage in about the experience. The purpose of this adjustment is to understand
more comprehensively the sense of participation experienced by the contributors to these
movements as they at once constitute the congregation at public gatherings and use social
media to share the principal messages.
To the extent that my approach is ethnographic and that we need to understand the public
acts of conservative mobilisation in their social, historical, and political context, I, like Turner
(1986), bring to bear Singer’s concept of “cultural performance” (1972). This idea denotes
concrete and observable units of analysis, such as “plays, concerts and lectures … but also
prayers, ritual readings and recitations, rites and ceremonies, festivals, and all those things we
usually classify under religion and ritual …” (Singer, 1972: 71). Turner conceives of “cul-
tural performances” as spectacles that emerge from processual “social dramas” and become
recognised narrative genres for participants and audiences alike. Turner differentiates “social
drama” as the “raw” material for the “cultural performances”, claiming that “what began as an

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empirical social drama may continue both as an entertainment and a metasocial commentary
on the lives and times of the given community” (Turner, 1986: 39). In this chapter I show how
conservative cultural performances function both as a play or a story for participants and, sim-
ultaneously, as a pedagogical medium for large-​scale moral and political statements.
Media production of the protest and its recording and delivery in the form of self-​broadcast
videos shared on social media networks represents systematic use of media to publicise the
activity and accentuate its instructional purpose for wider audiences. This systematisation is
present in the experience of live streaming and the subsequent repeated viewing of videos on
sites like Facebook and Twitter, a form of ritualised viewing and reviewing of the cultural per-
formance enacted by the collective.
The final element for this study I borrow from Rabikowska (2015). My proposal is that
watching social videos as re-​experienced acts constitutes for the mobilised conservative activists
what she calls the “everyday of memories”. This term refers to how individuals in former com-
munist countries of Eastern Europe performed everyday personal memorial practices enjoyed
through the era’s art and literature as acts with the power to resist the new capitalist social order.
I will equate the concept with the re-​experiencing through shared videos.
My research strategy relied on four qualitative methods. First, I interviewed activists who
produced, shared, and re-​watched the cultural performances on social media. During these
interviews I played a selection of videos to elicit responses. Second, I observed research
participants re-​watching the online videos during remote interviews and then analysed their
responses. Third, for the Lima mobilisation I attended and undertook participant observa-
tion. Finally, for the Bogota mobilisations, I undertook digital ethnography by analysing the
Facebook account of one of the activists and then applying a qualitative research software
package (QDA Miner Lite) that allowed me to analyse comments as systematic data and iden-
tify keywords.

Morally Centred Social Movements: The State of Affairs

At the start of the 21st century, social scientists generally considered conservative political
mobilisations to be diverse in character and motivation (Blee and Creasap, 2010; Westermeyer,
2019). Blee and Creasap use the word conservative to denote “movements that support patrio­
tism, free enterprise capitalism, and/​or traditional moral order” and, in respect of the latter,
report that “some scholars underscore how they mirror religious fundamentalism in their
speeches: dualisms of good and evil, millennialism, and sharp boundaries between believers
and others” (Blee and Creasap, op.cit.: 270). For example, conservative traditionalism is found
in movements that consider sex education or teaching evolution in schools antithetical to the
Biblical narrative and seek to ban them. In the US and Europe, some traditionalist movements
also seek to limit access to abortion, pornography, gambling, or prostitution as “violations of
morality” (Blee and Creasap, op. cit: 272).
Morals usually condition these movements and shape their interactions with the State
(Karapin, 2007; McIvor, 2018). Moreover, their rhetoric in favour of individual citizen rights
aims to establish a “balance of obligations” between citizens and the State (McIvor, 2018: 8) and
demands respect from the State for the recognition of people’s right to live according to their
own moral traditional values. For example, conservative movements defend parental authority
and fight for choice in the schooling their children receive or promote deregulation of their
productive activities and private business (Blee and Creasap, op.cit.: 272). Such traditional cul-
tural values, along with opposition to State intervention in the economy and emphasis on
law and order, define their agenda, as they do for formal right-​wing formal parties in the US,

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Europe, and Oceania (Gidron and Ziblatt, 2019). Zealous activism by these actors competes
persistently with progressive global policies, with conservative movements and parties acting
and lobbying at world summits and international forums (Bob, 2012).
In Latin America, where they are driven by popular participation rather than the political
establishment, morality-​centred social movements and parties should be analysed in terms of
meaning creation rather than resources and organisation. Just as Westermeyer (2019) found in
his account of the Tea Party Movement in the US, in Latin America we find a massive mobi­
lisation of grassroots conservative social groups from diverse backgrounds acting in alliance
with political elites and with a sector of the media that makes their movement visible. In this
sense, conservative groups in both the US and Latin America are gaining followers by pro-
viding the “space for collective political identities to be developed [and] lived … [resulting
in] vibrant local spaces of cultural production and political activism” (Westermeyer, 2019: 11).
This process has led to conservative positions gaining considerable influence over public
debate in recent years. For Bolcatto and Souroujon (2020), it explains why the continent is
facing a sorpasso (takeover of political power) through which different right-​wing traditions
increasingly embody power.
Although their influence over the political landscape in the Americas is increasing, morality-​
centred mobilisations and parties face tension over how they are perceived in the public arena
(Ginsburg, 1998; Blee and Creasap, 2010). They have been battling, on the one hand, against
the authoritarian labelling they attract because of occasional sympathies with dictatorial regimes
(Loxton, 2016), and on the other, against the resonance of acts of violence coming from the
Far-​Right, the Alt-​Right, and other extreme positions (Ginsburg, 1998). Accordingly, conser-
vative movements have become very active in managing their image. To distance themselves
from violent positions, they use elaborate strategies, including conferences, recitals, activities in
parks, and family-​oriented cultural events. Moreover, they also run a very active self-​promotion
agenda drawing on their own set of hybrid media: information and opinion for the press,
radio, and television, and social media that pursues “a particular ideological bent … able to cir-
cumscribe media exposure easily and effectively to one consistent perspective” (Jamieson and
Cappella cited in Westermeyer, 2019: 8). They represent a network that controls its message
and seek to attract non-​political groups into politics (Blee and Creasap, 2010).
It is the proficiency for self-​management of their own media exposure by conservative social
movements that has led some to identify their condition of “autonomy”, particularly because of
the ways they strategically use the multimedia resources of the platforms. As Shroeder (2018:7)
explains: “the internet extends the mediation of politics, from above, such that political elites
can target and respond more directly to their publics, and from below, such that people or
citizens can engage in more diverse ways with politics”. Shroeder’s comparative analysis of
mobilisations in countries such as Sweden, the US, India, and China also underscores how
these new conservative forces can circumvent traditional gatekeepers and how their expert
handling of digital media sustains their autonomous practices (Shroeder, 2018).

A “Social Media Drama” Analysis for Conservative Mobilisation

I have compiled a set of observations about what I regard as a new and emerging political
contest: a morality-​centred mobilisation and public debate. It is distinguished by a robust cons­
tellation of traditionalist social movements with a cross-​cutting agenda centred on issues of
gender, education, social identity, public health, and the politics of reproduction. While this
process unfolds, an increase in cultural performances by the conservative mobilisations can be
seen, many of which are significantly influencing the terms of contemporary public debate;

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examples of which are the two Latin American cases I will approach in this study, both as cul-
tural performances assembled collaboratively on public spaces and shared as mediatised cere-
monies on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In addition to the work of Turner (1974, 1986), my concept of morality-​centred cultural
performances as “social media dramas” draws on other developments that refer to the crossroads
where art and political processes in highly mediatised social environments meet, such as Postill’s
concept of “Internet drama” (Postill, 2011). Postill applied the “social drama” device to analyse
citizen conflict in Subang Jaya, Malaysia. Here, mediatised cultural performance in the form
of a residential group’s photo-​protest published in Chinese-​language media caused friction
not only between the residents and the municipal council, but also between the residents
themselves. Postill (2011: 89) used the term “Internet drama” to stress the increasing Internet
mediatisation of the performance. In common with Postill’s work, my study of Latin American
conservative mobilisations regards their performances as the confluence of distinct collectives
participating in networked online spaces for political expression. However, my study notes
something additional: the groups in Latin America are aware of both the broad reach they
achieve through social media and the pedagogical power that entails. For this reason, when
they conceive and produce a performance for a given event, they do so with its long-​term sys-
tematic use as an instructional resource in mind. By using the “social media drama” concept
as an analytical device to explore and explain conservative cultural performances, my approach
to the case studies in Peru and Colombia will primarily interrogate the participants’ capaci-
ties to collaboratively construct a particular cultural identity and political discourse expressed
through the display of a set of symbolic resources produced for mediatised public gatherings.
The participants themselves recognise that structuring these gatherings in that context is a pro-
cess of participatory design and interlocutory co-​creation. They simultaneously self-​perceive as
users and producers (Ingold, 2014). My approach will borrow from Shroeder (2018) by focussing
on the proficiency that participants must self-​manage their social media resources and exposure,
and on the transformative consequences the mediatisation of performances have, particularly
when participants experience those performances as forms suitable for social media interactions
(Couldry, 2008).
Regarding the latter, the research explores the forms of “ritualisation” that the social media
interactions under analysis acquire (Bell, 2009). Evidence comes, on the one hand, from the
way participants experience and share “direct events” through streaming on social media,
and, on one other, from the way the participants practice their “everyday of memories” in
personal routine acts in which they re-​experience events online. Hence, I draw on Catherine
Bell’s “ritualisation” concept to interpret participants’ “strategic way of acting”, seeking to
differentiate their mobilisation from others that lack a systematic rationality (Bell, 2009). Also
consistent with Bell’s approach, I explore how the ritualised way of acting evident in Latin
America’s conservative performances represents a disruptive political position and stresses a
“moral empathy gap” with other positions aiming to warn about an alleged long-​term moral
crisis in society.
My principal aim is to lend support to Bell’s insights about how ritualised, everyday, personal
social media interactions lead to social cohesion and control of the participant’s sense of reality—​
and at the same time, to a ‘social pedagogy’ (Bell, 2009: 176)—​through extensive use of sym-
bolic forms in public exposure. That is why an approach to conservative mobilisations from a
“social media drama” analytical perspective must recognise the instructional power of a cultural
performance: as a “public display of symbols” (Peterson, 2003: 18), or “sets of assumptions
about the way things are and should be” (Bell, 2009: 176). My proposal, therefore, is to grasp
the educative ability of the conservative symbolic forms to “model ideal relations and structure

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of values” (Bell, 2009: 175), in their helping “to define as authoritative certain ways of seeing
society” (ibid.) A processual, analytic scheme like the “social media drama” also allows to us
understand these sets of ritualised actions as a comprehensive social system.

Performing Conservatism in Latin America

I present in this section my two cases studies of ceremony ritualisation experienced in the form
of social media interactions: a pro-​life performance in Lima, Peru; a similar event in Bogota,
Colombia. I consider each to be a cultural performance apt for analysis using the concept of
“social media drama”.

Performing Conservatism and Co-​Creation in Lima

The first social media drama was a ritualised action that closed the Marcha por la vida (Pro-​Life
march [my translation]) in 2018, a massive rally that replicates similar events in major capitals
around the world. Since the first such annual gathering in Lima, in 2008, participation levels
have steadily grown, and the most recent event attracted a crowd measured in the hundreds of
thousands. It mobilised various conservative groups claiming a moral and political case for the
“right-​to-​life” of the “unborn”. These activists conceive the right-​to-​life to include the life of
a foetus; they do not address the mother’s right-​to-​life in the event of pregnancy complications
and nor do they consider health factors related to poverty. They are driven by an implacable
opposition to the legalisation of abortion and assisted death (euthanasia), to the ideologia de
genero (gender ideology) at school and to any practices that threaten what their publicity refers
to as diseño original de la familia (the original design of the family [my translation]).
My particular focus is the ritualised action known as un minuto de silencio (the minute of
silence [my translation]) in memory of the unborn, a performance previously documented in
similar contemporary demonstrations like one observed in the United Kingdom (Lowe, 2016).
Customised to be suitable for the local context, the performance included a particular sequence
filled with meaningful elements and represented the climax of an hours’-​long event that began
with a caravan moving east to west across the entire city and ended with a massive Christian
concert on the city’s oceanfront. At the end of the musical performance, the then Archbishop
of Lima and a dozen conservative parliamentarians, activists and other religious leaders took
to the stage to call for an act of contemplation—​the minute of silence—​while the scene of a
little boy in a hospital bed played on a giant screen. The child, Alfie Evans, suffered a terminal
illness and had been at the centre of a dispute between his parents, who had fought to take him
from the United Kingdom to Italy for further treatment, and the British government, which
had obtained a court order to turn off his life support. A lone trumpet performance of “Il
Silenzio” (the melody of “Taps”, traditionally played at military funerals) resounded across the
area. Cameras on mobile telephones filmed the ritualised performance, and some participants
on social media shared the sorrowful moment in real-​time with a wider audience.
“Alfie is a symbol”, according to Fernando, one of the hundreds of volunteers who worked
in the organising group and an important source for my research. He is also the founder of
the Viva Vida Perú collective (Long Live Life Peru: [my translation]), an enthusiastic group
mobilised in support of the family as “the fundamental unit of society and the State” (my trans-
lation of the objective stated on its Facebook account). Since its creation in 2016 the group
has grown to 13,000 members. It provides a space for debate about current affairs considered
to affect pro-​life causes. Fernando explained to me that Alfie’s drama had become an impasse
reported in global media, the embodiment of an irreducible moral dispute that became political

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Figure 33.1  Portrait of the event “A Minute of Silence”: religious leaders and parliamentarians at the
closing ceremony of the Pro-​Life march, held in Lima on 5 May 2018
Source: © Carolina Paullo.

due to its broad public exposure. On 28 April 2018, following the court order that withdrew
his life support, Alfie passed away (BBC, 2018).
The centrality of Alfie’s images to the minute of silence ceremony came as a surprise for
those in attendance and had significant impact. “How touching, how great, how timely”,
tweeted Úrsula, a research participant and freelance journalist consultant, when commenting
on the video of the event she shared on her Twitter account. The social media drama was
experienced by all participants—​those physically present and those remotely viewing a streamed
performance—​all of whom were able to view captions (such as “Alfie Evans’ fight for life”)
on the giant screen and the branding of the original source of the video: the Pro-​Life Weekly
program (from the Catholic Church’s TV channel EWTN, aired worldwide via cable). All
participants also noted a banner from a pro-​life British activist support network—​popularly
dubbed “Alfie’s Army”—​which was credited on the images and had mobilised on the streets
and social media in support of Alfie’s parents. The purpose of Alfie’s Army transcends the case
that inspired it; on its official Facebook account the group defines its purpose as “to protect the
rights of parents to care for their own children”.
According to Úrsula, “There it is an action plan … to trample over the rights of the parent
… There are parents who will say: ‘let’s not have him suffer’ ... But there are others who say
no … who have religious faith”. For her, the problem is “that the State can say no … That is a
very dangerous precedent”. According to Fernando, the drama of Alfie represented an extreme
example of the State displaying its power and its authority over “public policy”, even where
such policy extends to an issue as sensitive as euthanasia. He explained, “we have to respect
life until right up to natural death and give [the person] all treatment necessary to reduce the
physical and emotional suffering”.
It is notable the way in which the participants make sense of their experience of the minute
of silence through the empowerment that each feels upon joining the Pro-​Life march and

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becoming part of the political statement its performance embodies and represents. The per-
formance communicates to different publics a latent social conflict and a deep moral schism that
a militant conservative collective feels compelled to bring to the attention of the institutional
establishment. When we view the act through the prism of “social media drama” analysis, we
can observe in it the four processual stages that Turner identifies for a social system’s complete
action set: an initial breach precipitated by a norm-​governed social ordinance; an evident crisis
widely discussed in public; redressive actions ranging from personal mediations to formal judi-
cial proceeding; and a social recognition of a deep, moral empathy gap between contesting
parties (Turner, 1986). In the words of research participant, Fernando:

All the parishes and organizations were like a massive boombox … There we were
defending a right, raising awareness about the political use of euthanasia by the State,
and about the suffering of people victimised by that use. That is what the case of little
Alfie is about.

Schieffelin states that performances are compelling because “they somehow formulate or ‘make
sense’ of particular, often problematic, cultural situations and then reframe, transform, or inten-
sify this ‘sense’, leading to a new orientation of the participants to the situation” (Schieffelin,
1985: 707). This process becomes clear in the minute of silence through the participative con-
struction of its dramatic action set by an engaged community. Voluntary activists, authorities,
media networks, social media followers, and a supporters’ ‘army’—​from inside the country
and beyond—​are all acting together and feeding meaningful resources into the action set. The
contributions are often organised into themes. Research participant Fernando, for example,
organised groups of disabled children, who participated through dance and theatre. “They are
a demonstration that life must go on under any circumstances”, he commented. Others, like
Úrsula, fed the social media experience of the performance by live retweeting and sharing of
video excerpts. Still more contributed by adding comments (for example, “it is not enough to
be believers, you have to be credible”, “This is a tribute to Alfie from Peru”); tagging media
broadcasters, such as the BBC; and using hashtags such as (my translations in parentheses)
#marchaporlavida (#pro-​ life march), #unidosporlavida (# unitedforlife) or #graciasmama
(#thanksmum). Prior to the event, Alfie had become a major talking point across various
publics, including in the press and on blogs, social media threads, and walls. Father Mario
Arroyo, for example, states that the fight over the fate of Alfie’s was based on the broader
struggle by some members of civil society, including well-​known members, to ensure the right
of parents to decide their children’s future (Arroyo, 2018).
In a symbolic game, the performance of the minute of silence restores that sense of
authority—​particularly parental—​for the participants and at the same time pays homage
to someone considered a hero offered in sacrifice. As the subjects of this research testify,
the performance establishes for the network community a ritualised commemoration cere-
mony of someone who “lost a battle” in a moral fight with the State. The act “collectively
bonds” its participants to a connected community in the same social world each time its
participants again watch the video, creating a sense of reestablishment of the moral order
between them.

Performing Conservatism in Bogota’s Autonomous Media

The second cultural performance under analysis took place in Bogota on 5 September 2020
in the form of a live event called the Plantón por la vida (Pro-​Life Sit-​In [my translation]).

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Figure 33.2  Young people participating at the concert of Lima’s Pro-​Life march on 5 May 2018
Source: © Carolina Paullo.

Bringing together various pro-​life groups from around Colombia, the objective was to oppose
demands for the decriminalisation of abortion put forth by the feminist organisation Causa Justa
(Just Cause [my translation]). By staging it in front of the Constitutional Court of Colombia in
the heart of the capital’s historic centre, the event attracted considerable attention and gained
significant news media coverage. Local channel City TV transmitted live from the site and a
reporter interviewed a spokesperson for the collective, who claimed that the attendees were
tired “of the discourses of death and violence” and “tired of others [presuming to] speak on our
behalf ”, in reference to the way in which feminist collectives claim to represent all women in
Colombia. “Empowered women have no need to murder their children”, she declared bluntly
to the camera (City TV, 2020).
According to the television reports and the organiser’s own Facebook broadcast, more than
200 activists participated in teams that had been organised through their own networks. One
volunteer, an anonymous informant for my research, explained to me via Messenger that the
mobilisation involved “different groups or pro-​life communities, from different parts and cities,
united for the same cause, fighting for the same purpose and interest”, with volunteers pro-
viding details of “the specific day, time and place” using all available means, including “on the
radio, through newspapers, and handing out flyers”. The resulting web of networks led to broad
participation, with a notable preponderance of young people evident in the principal video
recording of the event that the organisers uploaded to Facebook for subsequent viewing and
reviewing. The video record also provides information about who led the event, its organisers,
the volunteers, and those responsible for its communication, mainly journalists managing the
Facebook live performance. The latter are social media teams acting in what Gerbaudo (2017)
refers to as the movement’s digital vanguard: mediums who convey an autonomous position to
the public and question mediation by the mainstream press.
The event streaming was assembled on the Facebook account of one of the principal
organisers: the Unidos por la Vida (United for Life [my translation]) collective. The video of
the event streaming is still available on this social network, a cultural performance planned and

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developed from the start as a social media video that participants could later re-​experience.
The 14 minutes of footage also portray an interactive play with a life of its own, designed and
assembled as part of the groups’ overall strategy to widely disseminate their position by its viral
delivery. The carefully prepared script is one in which, through a “social media drama” analysis,
we can identify the classic four stage action set: a breach born out of the abortion decrimin-
alisation proposal; a crisis regarding its possible social and legal acceptance; several redressive
actions by mobilised pro-​life collectives; and finally, a public statement of a social schism at
which activists promise don’t rest until you have overcome it. It begins with a young female
volunteer who initiates the performance by reciting a sort of normative framing: “the protec-
tion of the rights of the child and of the unborn [in accordance with] binding international
agreements signed by Colombia”. An adult male then calls for resistance to the decriminalisa-
tion of abortion. The audience erupts by chanting déjalo latir (let it [the heart] beat [my trans-
lation]) as a collective response. Next, a young mother offers her testimony on abortion and
her process of awakening: “My child is the living proof that a pregnant woman in crisis does
needs support not an abortion.” She is followed by a male participant-​researcher who intervenes
by complaining about the absence of reliable government data: “We have no information, no
one is responsible for abortion in this country.” Finally, a young female reporter appears to sum
up and provide unity to the story, ending the sequence with the words: “this struggle is just
beginning”.
To explain the rationale for the use of an interactive device like that, my anonymous
informant claimed that participants to the mobilisation were motivated by scorn for the way
the mainstream media reports on the issue. She commented: “There is perhaps censorship by
the media, the news programs, etc., because when there are protests in favour of abortion,
they report it extensively ... but when there are pro-​life demonstrations it does not happen
like that.” As evidence for her claim, she pointed to an earlier sit-​in that had filled Bogota’s
Plaza Bolívar but had only been reported at its conclusion when most people had left: “They
did not show the reality … Luckily there were many people belonging to the movement
and participants to the sit-​in who took photos and videos of the moment and what really
happened.”
Production and materialisation of devices like the Plantón por la vida video, are mediatised
cultural performances designed to be repeatedly viewed by users through social media. Their
production and materialisation are important for the Colombian conservative movement
because they are resources to employ in what Bell refers to as “social pedagogy” (2009). The
ritualised practices I discovered, in which conservative mobilisation participants re-​experienced
public ceremonies by re-​watching videos on social media, are filled with instructional meaning
for individuals themselves and educational guidance for other audiences. By eliciting responses
to the Plantón por la vida video and through my QDA Miner Lite analysis of the video
comments, I identified several words in habitual use by the engaged online community as of 31
December 2020. They fell into three morally charged categories: [my translation: the Spanish
words bracketed] (i) The right-​to-​life [derecho a la vida], (ii) nation [nación], and (iii) reli-
gion [religión]. Habitual words like these determine morally centred political commitments
that instruct the participants: in a core motto—​the right-​to-​life; in a vision of the intended
scope and target for its efforts—​the nation; and in a powerful ideological glue that binds the
assembly—​religiosity.
The testimonies of my informants speak to the way in which revisiting the events on social
media normalise their sense of duty. Through an interview by teleconference, I spoke to
Francisco, a middle-​aged businessman and politician, about the Plantón por la vida experience.
“It was a reminder”, he pondered, in reference to abortion:

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Let me explain. When I see something that I consider correct, I file it away in my
mind. When the Plantón por la vida video again appeared, I clicked on it because
I recognised in it a political campaign struggling against people who want to make
acceptable something that is immoral and currently illegal”, he said, in reference to
abortion.

For Francisco, when people who hold different points of view but share the same values and
principles re-​experience instructional events, it becomes possible to align different publics
behind a common cause. “You cannot go against the law of gravity”, he says. He considers
that the mobilised have a role to play in warning society about the perils upsetting its moral
equilibrium.

Concluding Remarks
I have argued that the emergence of a robust morality-​centred mobilisation and public debate
in Latin America, particularly in Peru and Colombia, responds to the call by a constellation of
conservative social movements in that region to resist public policies that affect their pro-​life
principles and values. These conservative movements react against legal abortion under any
circumstances, against medically assisted death, and against actions by the State that affect and
eventually remove parents’ rights over schooling and the formation of their children’s personal
identity. Their rhetoric in defence of traditional values, parental control, and citizen rights able
to counterbalance state power activates a cross-​cutting agenda that inspires each member of
the movement to engage with the construction of an autonomous body of political demands.
These aspects are evident in the mobilisation and practices of pro-​life activists in Peru and
Colombia. The “social media drama” is a useful conceptual device to analyse the cultural
performances played out by these individuals. The Plantón por la vida and Un minute de
silencio deliver categorical evidence for the emergence of renewed and defiant narratives over
disputed moral issues and represent personal acts of cultural resistance against progressive social
reforms.
Performing conservativism in Latin America is, on balance, both a project of social peda-
gogy in progress and a transformative experience for its participants, thanks to the recurrence
with which they re-​experience their social media dramas as everyday vivid memories. The
participants insist on the educational commitment they have in the fight for the mainstream
morals they feel called to defend. “It is not much, but it is good as a beginning”, reflected my
informant, Fernando. This claim expresses the potential that many of them feel exists to trans-
form not only people’s stories but also the main social narratives of their societies.

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