BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: After the approval of the reform to the General Law for Tobacco Control and its regulations in 2024, which, among other measures, prohibited the display of tobacco products, the tobacco industry through self-service stores filed around 2,000 amparos* to be able to display your products.
Faced with this situation, we in civil society decided to symbolically close a self-service store.
*Amparo is a constitutional remedy in Mexican law to protect fundamental rights but the tobacco industry use this to evade de law.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: Different civil society organizations dedicated to defending the right to health carried out a symbolic closing of an OXXO (a very common self-service store in Mexico). We called the press, we released a statement to the media to put the issue of amparos of tobaco industry at the political agenda.
After the street protest, we documented everything and made a video that was uploaded to social networks and helped us give greater visibility to our issue.
Salud Justa Mx we created a methodology to generate online-ofline actions: from the screens to the street and from the street to the screens:
1. Planning
2. Call to media
3. Street action
4. Document the action
5. Press release
6. Publication on networks
7. Guided in networks
8. Evaluation
RESULTS AND IMPACT: This action contributed to positioning the issue on the media agenda and in the population in general, in addition, a national media outlet made a video that was broadcast on its networks.
CONCLUSIONS: - Street actions are not isolated elements, planning is necessary to spread them.
- All street actions must be disseminated through networks since they are elements that help generate empathy.
- Many resources are not always needed to carry out actions in the field.
- Street actions are a tool to document the work of civil society.