  We study the existence and stability properties of clusters of alternating
charge vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates. It is illustrated that such
states emerge from cascades of symmetry-breaking bifurcations that can be
analytically tracked near the linear limit of the system via weakly nonlinear
few-mode expansions. We present the resulting states that emerge near the first
few eigenvalues of the linear limit, and illustrate how the nature of the
bifurcations can be used to understand their stability. Rectilinear, polygonal
and diagonal vortex clusters are only some of the obtained states while mixed
states, consisting of dark solitons and vortex clusters, are identified as
well.
