Confined towns, spontaneous autonomy? : Sanitary roadblocks in Yucatan during the COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

We show a qualitative analysis of the quarantine lines —barricades that prohibited access to localities— installed in rural populations of Yucatán, Mexico, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of the article is to study the relation between health crisis and autonomous local powers. We proposed that the health crisis, by promoting the emergence of territories where the governance of the nation-state was temporarily suspended, triggered the immediate emergence of powers that, based on their ability to isolate the population, operated with great autonomy in the local space. However, we argue that these powers were not solely the product of spontaneity, but rather of pre-existing socio-political arrangements and forms of domination, strengthened in the scenario of the pandemic crisis.