Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the Centaur 9780804781589, 0804781583

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Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico

Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico The Other Half of the Centaur

Edited by Wil G. Pansters

;

stanford university press stanford, california

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2012 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Violence, coercion, and state-making in twentieth-century Mexico : the other half of the centaur / edited by Wil G. Pansters. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-8158-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Mexico—Politics and government—20th century. 2. Violence—Political aspects—Mexico—History—20th century. I. Pansters, W. G. (Wil G.), editor of compilation. F1234.V865 2012 972.08'2—dc23 2011052267 Typeset by Westchester Book Group in 10/12 Sabon

For my lovely daughter Ifigenia, whose mere presence is disarming

Table of Contents

List of Figures

ix

List of Tables

xi

Preface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

xiii

xvii

About the Contributors

xix

part I: Introduction 1. Zones of State-Making: Violence, Coercion, and Hegemony in Twentieth-Century Mexico 3 Wil G. Pansters part ii: Coercive Pillars of State-Making: Borders, Policing, and Army 2. States, Borders, and Violence: Lessons from the U.S.-Mexican Experience David A. Shirk

43

3. Policing and Regime Transition: From Postauthoritarianism to Populism to Neoliberalism Diane E. Davis 4. Who Killed Crispín Aguilar? Violence and Order in the Postrevolutionary Countryside 91 Paul Gillingham

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Contents

part iii: In the Gray Zone: Drugs, Violence, Globalization, and the State 5. Narco-Violence and the State in Modern Mexico Alan Knight

115

6. States of Violence: State-Crime Relations in Mexico Mónica Serrano

135

7. Policing New Illegalities: Piracy, Raids, and Madrinas José Carlos G. Aguiar

159

part iv: State-Making and Violence in Society: Corporatism, Clientelism, and Indigenous Communities 8. The Rise of Gangsterism and Charrismo: Labor Violence and the Postrevolutionary Mexican State Marcos Aguila and Jeffrey Bortz 9. Political Practice, Everyday Political Violence, and Electoral Processes During the Neoliberal Period in Mexico Kathy Powell

185

212

10. Violence and Reconstitution in Mexican Indigenous Communities 233 John Gledhill part v: Comparative Conclusions 11. New Violence, Insecurity, and the State: Comparative Reflections on Latin America and Mexico Kees Koonings Notes

279

Index

363

255

Figures

1.1 Hegemonic and Coercive Zones of State-Making

28

1.2 The Shifting Focus in Scholarship on Mexican State-Making (Twentieth Century) 31 2.1 Drug-Related Killings in Mexico, 2000–2010

61

2.2 Extraditions Between Mexico and the United States, 1996–2009 63 4.1 Three-Year Moving Averages of Homicide Rates per 100,000 Population, Selected Mexican States, and Colombian Departments, 1948–1960 97 4.2 Successful Prosecutions per Annum, Guerrero and Veracruz, 1930–1953 107 4.3 Reported Homicides per 100,000 Population, 1940–2000 108 7.1 Exchanges Between Police and Piracy Sellers

177

Tables

1.1 Typology of Violence: Motivation, Modalities, Manifestations, and Relationship to the State 20 2.1 Typology of Border Relationships from State Formation to Greater Regional Integration 47 2.2 Major Mexican Drug Cartels

60

4.1 Homicide Rates in Selected Mexican and Colombian Municipios, 1949–1953 98 7.1 Police Action Against Piracy in Mexico, 2000–2006

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Preface and Acknowledgments

When the first ideas and initiatives for this volume were taking shape, its core subject—violence, coercion, and state-making in postrevolutionary Mexico—was slowly moving toward a more prominent position in debates, both public and scholarly. However, none of the participants at the workshop in the sunbathed center of Utrecht in June 2007 could have anticipated the spiral of violence, militarization, human rights abuses, and fear that would soon engulf Mexico. Clearly, the symptoms of a deepening security crisis were already there: in an unprecedented decision taken only a few days after our event, President Felipe Calderón purged 284 federal police commanders, including those of all thirty-one states and the Federal District. But even given such changes, anyone who had predicted then that around 15,000 people would be killed in the mayhem of drug-related violence in the year 2010 alone—a daily average of more than 40!— would not have been regarded as credible. Although the escalation of violence in Mexico in the 2000s in and of itself constitutes a strong cause for scholarly reflection, it was not the only one. This volume also arose out of a critical reading of much of the recent work that has examined Mexico’s major social and political developments in the wake of the neoliberal takeover and the intensification of political competition in the mid-1980s: the fraudulent 1988 presidential elections, the “spectacular” Salinas presidency, the annus horribilis of 1994 with NAFTA, the zapatista rebellion, the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and the infamous “errors of December,” the disintegration of the PRI-government pact during the wavering presidency of Zedillo, and, finally, the spectacular rise to power of Vicente Fox and Mexico’s subsequent political-electoral reconfiguration that led to the showdown between the left and the right in the 2006 presidential elections. Most of this work was, and still is, profoundly shaped by the political and scholarly discourses of transition and democratization. However, just as elsewhere in Latin America, it became gradually and disturbingly

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Preface and Acknowledgments

clear that the institutional reforms of democratization and transition coexisted with violent conflicts and deepening insecurity. Paradoxical sociopolitical realities, as well as contrasting scholarly accounts of those realities, began to raise new questions and problems of interpretation. What were the key features of posttransitional violence and insecurity? What are the connections between the different “floors” of Mexico’s and Latin America’s social and political structures? What consequences does all this have for our understanding of democracy and the rule of law in the region? It is perhaps no surprise that coming to terms with these issues has recently generated such a concept as “violent democracies,” one that would have sounded utterly oxymoronic just a few years ago. It appears that the “uncommon democracy” of one-party rule has given way to the “uncommon democracy” of violence. The third and final rationale for this book was that in the case of Mexico, interpretative obstacles for coming to terms with the recent wave of criminal and political violence, as well as with the contradictory features of the transition, appear to be rooted in broader understandings of the role of violence and coercion, as opposed to nonviolence or hegemony in postrevolutionary (particularly post-1940) state-making. Hence, this book also deals with a critical reexamination of the interpretative perspective on postrevolutionary state-making and power, often identified as “Mexican exceptionalism,” which unwittingly underestimated the meanings and functions of violence and coercion. In sum, understanding Mexico’s current security crisis calls for critically engaging the simultaneity of multiparty (electoral) democracy, violence, and the multiplication of armed actors, and recasting influential interpretations of postrevolutionary state-making. Unsurprisingly then, this book is the fruit of a collaborative effort among historians, anthropologists, and political scientists from Mexico, the United States, and Europe. If organizing an international workshop is one thing, managing the follow-up is quite another. During the latter phase of the project, I sometimes felt as though I was becoming far too well acquainted with the labors of Sisyphus. As I tried to roll the proverbial stone toward publication deadlines, participants found themselves overtaken by other, equally important, obligations; some to such a degree that despite their active involvement during workshop deliberations in Utrecht, and later at a panel at the 2007 Latin American Studies Association conference, they had to withdraw altogether. I especially appreciate the input of Celia Toro and Marcelo Bergman in this respect. But others would come on board later. A special word of appreciation goes to those contributors who provided me with ideas and excellent advice about the project as a whole: Alan, Diane, Kees, and Paul. Many thanks to you all.

Preface and Acknowledgments

xv

Of course, many others provided help as well. During the preparations for the initial workshop at Utrecht University, an extremely efficient honors student, Vera Borsboom, saw to it that everything went well logistically and socially. Kootje Willemse, the longtime administrator of the Department of Cultural Anthropology, deserves special mention. She was, and is, a great help in resolving all sorts of practical issues (she always knows whom to call!), finding the resources to finance my wish list of international colleagues and, above all, with her bonhomie that keeps everyone’s spirits up. My colleagues at the national research school in development studies, especially Lolita van Toledo, were supportive in synchronizing the Mexico workshop and their annual summer school. I also wish to express my gratitude to Henk van Rinsum, the senior university policy-maker who strives to articulate the voice of the intellectual within our increasingly managerial- and finance-driven university (non scholae sed vitae discimus!), and who is also my snooker buddy, because of his support for, and interest in, my research endeavors. Finally, I thank my editor at Stanford, Norris Pope, for his encouraging and professional style, as well as editorial assistant Sarah Crane Newman. In the recta final, Andrée Mulder’s assistance in preparing the final manuscript has been invaluable. WIL PANSTERS, UTRECHT/CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MARCH 2011

Abbreviations

AFI APPO BCN BOPE CGT CNC CNF CNPP CONAGO CROM CTM CUT DDR DEA DF DFS DGIPS ELN EPR EZLN FARC FEG FFCC FLOC-CGT FRG

Agencia Federal de Investigación Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca Bloque Cacique Nutibara Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais Confederación General de Trabajadores Confederación Nacional Campesina Comité Nacional Ferrocarrilero Confederación Nacional de Pequeños Propietarios Conferencia Nacional de Gobernadores Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana Confederación de Trabajadores de México Central Única de Trabajadores Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Drug Enforcement Agency Distrito Federal Dirección Federal de Seguridad Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales Ejército de Liberación Nacional Ejército Popular Revolucionario Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia Federación de Estudiantes de Guadalajara Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México Federación Local de Obreros y Campesinos– Confederación General de Trabajadores Frente Republicano Guatemalteco

xviii FSA GAFES GC IIPA ILO IMF INCD NAFTA NRA OCSS PAN PCC PFP PGR PNC PRD PRI SIEDO SPP STFRM TRIPS TUCOM UCEZ WIPO WTO

Abbreviations

Federación Sindicalista de Atlixco Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales Gran Comisión (Pro-Aumento de Salarios) International Intellectual Property Alliance International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund Instituto Nacional para el Combate a las Drogas North American Free Trade Agreement National Rifle Association Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur Partido Acción Nacional Primeiro Comando da Capital Policia Federal Preventiva Procuraduría General de la República Policia Nacional Civil Partido de la Revolución Democrática Partido Revolucionario Institucional Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada Security and Prosperity Partnership Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo Unión de Comuneros “Emiliano Zapata” World Intellectual Property Organization World Trade Organization

About the Contributors

José Carlos G. Aguiar is assistant professor at the Department of Cultures and Languages of Latin America at Leiden University. He is primarily interested in illegal commodities, liminal spaces, and policing in Latin America. He combines the ethnography of illegalities with sociological theory. His dissertation, entitled “Dirty CDs: Piracy, Globalisation and the Emergence of New Illegalities in the San Juan de Dios Market,” analyzed the rise of commodity chains and transnational networks in the retail of illegal CDs and DVDs in the Mexican marketplace. He is also a member of the editorial board of Etnofoor. Marcos Aguila holds an academic position at UAM-Xochimilco, Mexico. He studied economics at UAM-Xochimilco and UNAM, and received a PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin (1997). He belongs to the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores since 1990. He has specialized in the study of labor and miners in Mexico during the decade of the 1930s. He has published several books, including Economía y trabajo en la minería mexicana: La emergencia de un nuevo pacto social entre la Gran Depresión y el Cardenismo (Mexico, 2004). He coauthored two textbooks, Vivir la Historia II and III (Mexico, 1998 and 2000). He also coedited Personajes, ideas, voluntades: Políticos e intelectuales mexicanos en los años treinta (Mexico, 2011). With Jeffrey Bortz, he published “Making a Living: A History of Real Wage Studies During XXth Century Mexico,” in Latin American Research Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 2006. Jeffrey Bortz teaches history at Appalachian State University. He is the author of numerous books and scholarly articles on Mexican labor affairs. His most recent book is Revolution Within the Revolution: Cotton Textile Workers and the Mexican Labor Regime, 1910–1923 (Stanford, 2008).

xx

About the Contributors

Diane E. Davis is Head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has published widely on problems of urban power and management. In 1994 she published Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. In recent years, she has done research about the police and other actors of violence in Latin America and elsewhere. She coedited “Violence, Coercion, and Rights in the Americas,” a special issue of Latin American Perspectives (2000), and Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge, 2003). She is also active in social theorizing in a more general way. She is editor of Political Power and Social Theory and published Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge, 2004). Paul Gillingham holds an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at the Penn Humanities Forum of the University of Pennsylvania. He has published widely on state formation and nationalism in Mexico. Recent articles and book chapters focus on village schoolteachers, popular protest, bullfighting, violence, military politics, and archaeological fraud in Latin America. He is the author of Cuauhtémoc’s Bones: Nationalism & Forgery in Mexico (Albuquerque, 2011) and the coeditor of Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1938–1968 (Durham, forthcoming.). His articles have appeared in Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and Past & Present. John Gledhill is Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology and Co-Director of the Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester, Co-Managing Editor of Critique of Anthropology, and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (2005–2009). His publications include Casi Nada: Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo (Albany, 1991), Neoliberalism, Transnationalization and Rural Poverty (Boulder, 1995), Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics (London, 2000), and Cultura y desafío en Ostula: Cuatro siglos de autonomía indígena en la Costa-Sierra Nahua de Michoacán (Zamora, 2004). Alan Knight studied at Oxford University and has taught at the University of Essex, the University of Texas at Austin, and Oxford University, where he holds the Chair of Latin American History and has been Director of the Latin American Centre. He is the author of The Mexican Revolution (2 vols.) (Cambridge, 1986) and the first two books in a planned

About the Contributors

xxi

trilogy, Mexico: From the Beginning to the Conquest and Mexico: The Colonial Era (both Cambridge, 2002). He has also written on U.S.Mexican relations, Mexican politics, and themes in broader Latin American history (revolutions, populism, democracy). He is currently working on the third volume of the trilogy (Mexico Since Independence) and a study of Mexico in the 1930s, provisionally entitled The Triumph of the Revolution? Kees Koonings is Professor of Brazilian Studies at the Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) in Amsterdam, and Associate Professor of Latin American Studies at Utrecht University. His research interests include urban and regional development, citizenship and social movements, conflict and violence, the military, and democratization, particularly in Brazil and Colombia. He has coedited a number of volumes in recent years, among them Armed Actors: Organised Violence and State Failure in Latin America (London, 2004) and Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence & Contested Spaces in Latin America (London, 2007). Wil G. Pansters is Professor of Latin American Studies and Director of the Mexican Studies Centre, both at the University of Groningen, and Associate Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. His research interests include regional and urban politics, caciquismo, political culture and democratization, violence and insecurity, and higher education in Latin America, especially Mexico. He has also been active in the wider field of development studies. He has published widely on these topics. Among his most recent publications are the coedited volumes Globalization and Development: Issues and Debates in Current Research (Dordrecht, 2004) and Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico (London, 2005). Kathy Powell is an anthropologist and lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Ireland Galway. Her research interests include the impact of neoliberalism upon social economy and political-cultural practices in rural Mexico, focusing on relations of power, clientelism, and political ideology. Her interests also include political identity and “informality” in Cuba. Among her most recent publications are “Mexican Campesinos, the Neoliberal State and Contesting Interpretations of Social Justice,” in Irish Journal of Anthropology vol. VII, no. 1, 2004 and “San Sebastián: The Social and Political Effects of Sugar Mill Closure in Mexico” in New Solutions, vol. 17, no. 1, 2007.

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About the Contributors

Mónica Serrano is Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (New York), Professor of International Relations at El Colegio de México (Mexico City), and a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for International Studies, Oxford University. She has written extensively on international security and the international relations of Latin America, with particular reference to international institutions, security, transnational crime, and civil-military relations. She is the author and editor of numerous publications including The Human Rights Regime in the Americas: Theory and Reality (Tokyo, 2010), Regionalism and Governance in the Americas: Continental Drift (Basingstoke, 2005), and Transnational Organized Crime and International Security: Business as Usual? (Boulder, 2002). David A. Shirk is the Director of the Trans-Border Institute and Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of San Diego. He was a fellow at the UCSD Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies from 1998 to 1999 and 2001 to 2003, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in 2009–2010. He is currently the principal investigator for the Justice in Mexico project (www.justiceinmexico.org), a binational research initiative on criminal justice and the rule of law in Mexico. He conducts research on Mexican politics, U.S.Mexican relations, and law enforcement and security along the U.S.Mexican border. His recent publications include the coauthored book Contemporary Mexican Politics (Plymouth, 2009), Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico (San Diego; Notre Dame, 2007) and Mexico’s New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change (Boulder, 2005).

PART ONE

Introduction

chapter one

Zones of State-Making Violence, Coercion, and Hegemony in Twentieth-Century Mexico wil g. pansters You must understand, therefore, that there are two ways of fighting: by law and by force. . . . The ancient writers taught princes about this by an allegory . . . [of ] the centaur, so that he might train them his way. All the allegory means, in making the teacher half beast half man, is that a prince must know how to act according to the nature of both, and that he cannot survive otherwise. —Niccolò Machiavelli1

Today, as in the past, the fundamental reinterpretations of Mexican history must originate in a moment of frightful crisis. —Arthur Schmidt2

; violence in mexico: a first appraisal Acapulco, Guerrero, Wednesday, July 12, 2006. In the evening, the police discovered the dead bodies of two men wrapped in blankets in an abandoned van in the Costa Azul neighborhood of the mundane tourist center. One belonged to Eusebio Palacios Ortiz, the police chief of Acapulco and a former Navy officer, who had been abducted the previous day upon leaving a cinema with his family. The other was Marcelo García Nava, a Navy intelligence agent who worked for the DEA and was, presumably, engaged in undercover operations related to drug-trafficking.

4

Introduction

He too had been abducted the previous day, but from his own home. Both victims had been cruelly tortured and then killed.3 This incident occurred in the immediate aftermath of the controversial 2006 presidential elections. Monterrey, Nuevo León, July 24, 2006. In a press conference, Marcelo Garza y Garza, head of the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, the provincial branch of an agency equivalent to the American FBI, announced that the decapitated body of a seventeen-year-old boy had been found with his feet and hands tied. The victim’s head, wrapped in a plastic bag, was found nearby. The killers had left two messages on the body; one read, “These are the guys responsible for the killings in Nuevo Laredo and the plaza of Guadalajara on behalf of El Chapo’s people.”4 San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, September 5, 2006. The day Felipe Calderón was declared president-elect by the Federal Electoral Tribunal, Marcelo Garza y Garza was shot dead point-blank in a square surrounded by a church, a playground, a school, and a cultural center. He had left the cultural center, where he was with his daughter, to attend a phone call. He was unprotected. Shortly before, he had denounced that former officials from an elite police team were working as sicarios (hit men) for drug lords and repeatedly announced his intention to investigate police corporations for corruption and links with organized crime.5 Oaxaca, Oaxaca, October 27, 2006. In violent confrontations among sympathizers of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), the police, local state officials, and supporters of the local government, four people were killed. Two days later, the federal government ordered 4,500 Federal Preventive Police to end the protests and restore order. Over the following five days, more protesters died as a result of the use of lethal force by the police, and scores of arrests were made.6 Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, March 14, 2008. Around noon, a group of armed men approached peasant leader Armando Villareal Martha in front of his house and shot him in the head several times. Villareal had played an active role in peasant protests earlier that year in favor of a revision of NAFTA. He had also played a leading role in protests against rising electricity rates for agricultural producers.7 Petatlán, Guerrero, May 4, 2008. Around midnight, forty armed individuals dressed as members of the Federal Agency of Investigation attacked the house of Rogaciano Alva Álvarez, leader of a regional cattle ranchers union. The assailants allegedly put Alva against a wall and shot him dead from behind. In this incident, nine other people also perished. Alva Álvarez was a controversial figure, an old-style Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) cacique (local boss) and former mayor of Petatlán, purportedly linked

Zones of State-Making

5

to drug-trafficking and the assassination of the human rights activist Digna Ochoa in 2001.8 The list of violent killings related to criminal activities and social conflict is endless. In recent years, spectacular narco-killings have undoubtedly caught more attention than the victims of the social struggles that often underlie them. Drug-related killings in Mexico increased from around 900 in 2004 to almost 2,300 in 2007, more than doubled to reach a staggering figure of 5,000-plus in 2008, and surpassed the 7,500 mark in 2009.9 In 2010, the numbers went through the roof, totaling more than 12,500 deaths. In December 2010, a government source put the number of drugrelated killings during Calderón’s four years in office at more than 30,000.10 The strategies adopted by the Mexican state to confront the violence and corrupting power of organized crime, including the militarization of increasingly large parts of the country, have included repressing social movements. Once the military takes control of contentious, violent regions, it becomes difficult to distinguish between the force employed to combat organized crime and that directed at curtailing social protest and political conflict. Nowhere is this more evident than in the impoverished, conflictive state of Guerrero, though this is certainly no exception.11 The number of victims of social and political violence is qualitate qua more difficult to establish. In contrast to drug-trafficking, no one collects such data systematically. Nevertheless, there is a long list of notorious incidents, such as the massacres in Aguas Blancas (1995) and Acteal (1997), the repression in Atenco (2006) and Oaxaca (2006), the raid on strikers in Michoacán (2006), and the hundreds of atrocious crimes committed against women in Ciudad Juárez and elsewhere.12 Drug-trafficking is by no means the only cause of violence and insecurity in today’s Mexico. Social and political conflicts in Oaxaca (2006) led to political stalemate, repression, mass mobilization, provocations, and more violent repression, resulting in many deaths.13 Political violence in Oaxaca became a warning about the dangers of exacerbating the national postelectoral crisis that unfolded simultaneously.14 Developments in the summer of 2006 dramatically illustrate the contrast between violent political and social conflicts and pervasive criminal violence on the one hand and the nonviolent “ending” of the profound political crisis caused by the presidential elections on the other.15 How should we judge the perplexing coexistence of the violence of México bronco (untamed Mexico) and militarization, with the alleged resilience of civilian and institutional conflict-resolution, that is, bullets and ballots?16 This proliferation of distinct forms and meanings of violence in Mexico is no exception in the region, nor is their puzzling coexistence with,

6

Introduction

and connections to, formal democratic processes and institutions. Democratization in Latin America was not accompanied by diminishing violence and coercion, but rather their displacement, or even democratization and decentralization; where violence previously revolved around defending or challenging state power, recent decades have seen the emergence of a greater variety of social actors pursuing a wide range of objectives using coercive strategies and methods.17 The violent actors of postauthoritarian Latin America are not so much (or only) guerrillas and repressive armies, but gangs, criminal organizations, trigger-happy or corrupt police forces, paramilitaries, and privatized security agencies, including vigilantes. Recent comparative research has analyzed specific aspects of the broader field of violence, coercion, and insecurity in Latin America, such as urban violence, state violence, crime, policing, drug-trafficking, nationalistic violence, and state failure.18 All these pose serious threats to democratic legitimacy and the rule of law. In general, this work rarely mentions Mexico. Moreover, cross-national comparison crowds out the historical and systemic embedding of particular aspects (e.g., drugs or policing) of violence, insecurity, and state-making. In contrast, this volume examines the interconnections and historical roots of different dimensions, actors, and manifestations of violence, coercion, and insecurity in relation to broader processes of state-making in Mexico. Also, it places the comprehensive and in-depth case study of twentieth-century Mexico in the context of violence in Latin America as a whole (especially in Koonings’ concluding chapter). Interestingly, in debates about the transformation of state and counterstate violence associated with military regimes in South America and equally repressive oligarchic regimes in Central America, toward more decentralized forms of economic, social, and political violence, Mexico has long occupied a somewhat exceptional position. Is the country “normalizing” to a Latin American pattern?

violence, coercion, and state- making in mexico: the argument It is fair to assert that much scholarly work on Mexico has tended to focus on “ballots” but has had troubles accommodating the “bullets” in a  comprehensive interpretation. Political scientists tend to attribute the nonviolent end to the crisis of the 2006 presidential elections to the civicmindedness and political maturity of the Mexican citizenry, and to the stability and legitimacy of Mexico’s institutional and legal framework.19 This interpretation rests on the voluminous research on Mexico’s sociopolitical and political-economic transformations over the last twenty years.

Zones of State-Making

7

Research and countless conferences have led to the publication of a staggering number of books, edited volumes, and journal articles about the forces that have driven and shaped the dynamics of Mexican politics, state, and society since the early 1980s. The key concepts in this work are democratization and transition, operationalized in research on party development; shifting electoral behavior; political culture; the changing relationships among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches; the role of the media; institutional, legal, and public sector reform; the connections between market reform and political change; and the dismantling of the authoritarian, corporatist state.20 Upon looking at Mexico through the lens of this body of work, we see a country that is moving, haltingly, from authoritarian one-party rule to democratic pluralism; a country that is building democratic institutions, whose electorate is coming of age and leaving behind state and partisan tutelage; one that sticks to its institucionalidad while advancing toward democratic consolidation with yet another round of institutional and legal reforms.21 The general trend of this work has been “optimistic but . . .” Schedler’s study of Mexico’s political transition suggests that the defeat of the PRI in 2000 “marked the symbolic end of the democratic transition [and] signalled that democratic consolidation had been accomplished too.”22 Similarly, Levy and Bruhn, writing in 2006, recognized the persistence of antisystem threats (notably drug-trafficking) and the negative trade-offs of profound inequality, but nevertheless concluded on an optimistic note.23 The fact that the most severe political crisis of the last two decades (the 2006 presidential elections) did not lead to violence dovetails with the interpretations of the transformations of Mexican politics produced by this influential institutional perspective and supports its basic claims. Unsurprisingly, many of these publications pay scant attention to the challenges of violence (political or criminal), the militarization of public security, and repression of popular movements. A recent volume on the dynamics and prospects of Mexico’s democratic transition contains only one chapter about law enforcement and crime, and only from the perspective of institutional performance.24 Those studies, though they are important and not to be criticized for what they do not do, insist on an interpretation of the transformation of politics and the state that fails to appreciate the role of violence and coercion. I therefore agree with Raquel Sosa, who once ironically observed that although the authors of many of those works recognize the penetration of drug-trafficking networks into the highest circles of government, they do not fundamentally alter their belief that Mexico is a consolidating democracy.25 The first point that this volume intends to establish is that there has been a remarkable lack of theoretical and empirical work that critically

8

Introduction

engages the issues of violence, coercion, and insecurity in postrevolutionary state-making in Mexico with the capacity to propose innovative answers. Violence, coercion, insecurity, and impunity speak of realities that have long been hidden from systematic scholarly attention, as if they constituted aberrations or issues relevant only to the fringes of mainstream Mexico. Also, the book impugns the view that these contrasting realities are separate and disconnected, as if they pertained to two different worlds, one interesting to most of the social science community, the other perhaps to criminologists and journalists.26 Is it logical to regard the current security crisis as one in which the world of crime and violence is foreign and inimical to the institutions of the state and the political system? What does it mean when President Calderón portrays the state as endangered by violent nonstate adversaries and stresses the state’s responsibility to “reconquer territories” from narco-interests? Despite studies of political and electoral violence and publications on urban crime, policing, judicial reform, and security, what is needed is a fresh, systematic, comprehensive, and historical analysis of the significance and meanings of violence, coercion, and crime for state-formation, power, and politics in Mexico. After all—and this is the second focal point of this volume—the study of Mexican politics, power, and the state after circa 1985 has been dominated by an influential conceptual framework that privileges changing institutional and noncoercive forms and modalities, thereby (unintentionally) obscuring the harsh realities of a darker Mexico of bullets and blood, one that seems to exist (and to have existed) at a distance, albeit functional, from the institutional realities of ballots and legal battles. On a deeper level and from a long-term perspective, this framework builds on the broader theory of Mexican exceptionalism.27 Typically, scholars have stressed the incorporative and co-optational capacities of the state: “Since 1940, Mexico has had a pragmatic and moderate authoritarian regime . . . an inclusionary system, given to cooptation and incorporation rather than exclusion or annihilation; an institutional system, not a personalistic instrument; and a civilian-dominated government, not a military government.”28 The point is not to dispute Mexico’s peculiarity compared to the rest of Latin America, but to ask if the influential conceptual and methodological perspective of Mexican exceptionalism has not unintentionally contributed to underestimating or masking violence and coercion—the “dark side”—in state-making during much of the twentieth century, and their increasingly destabilizing effects on democratic development, the rule of law, and social integration. This book argues that the theory of Mexican exceptionalism has prevented the concerted, systematic study of violence and coercion, not only during the last two decades, when their visibility has grown notably, but throughout the postrevolutionary period.

Zones of State-Making

9

From a broader historical perspective, this comes as no surprise. Since Independence, major political and social transformations were accomplished only after prolonged periods of violent conflict and civil war. One need think only of the years preceding the Reforma in the second half of the nineteenth century, the devastating violence during the Mexican Revolution (1910–17), and the many armed uprisings in the ensuing decades. The subordinated incorporation of the armed forces into the ruling elite and party from the late 1930s onward gradually, though haltingly, began to change this, certainly when compared to the prominent role of the military in politics in the nineteenth century, that “marathon of violence,” and the (c)overt involvement of the armed forces elsewhere in Latin America during the twentieth century.29 Nevertheless, we should not overlook numerous “lost” rebellions, (unsuccessful) armed mobilizations, and varied forms and conjunctures of state repression, especially at the local level, since they pointedly question the institutional nature of conflict resolution.30 One can think of the repression of different labor, peasant, and popular movements and protests from the 1920s through the 1940s (Padilla’s important study of the Jaramillista peasant movement unequivocally argues that “state terror undergirded Mexico’s ‘perfect dictatorship’ ”), railroad workers in the 1950s, students in the 1960s, peasants again in the 1970s, and political opposition during the entire period.31 Undoubtedly, “long before 1968, [the Mexican state] was willing to make massive shows of force to curtail social activism.”32 The third key question raised here, therefore, concerns the dominant perspective on the nature of Mexico’s sociopolitical system and statemaking process during the period between circa 1938 and 1982, which includes the so-called golden years of PRI rule, allegedly based on a combination of economic growth, modest redistribution, mass clientelism, and institutional (i.e., nonviolent) conflict resolution. Recent historical work suggests that this perspective is flawed and incomplete, certainly for the period until 1952, and even beyond.33 How peaceful was the pax priísta and how long did it last? Could it be that just as much scholarly work on current Mexico misjudges the significance of violent social, political, and criminal conflict (recall Sosa’s irony), the overall interpretation of postrevolutionary state-making, nation-building, and sociopolitical development has also been misleading in its appreciation of the role of violence and coercion? The thrust of this book’s historical perspective is that the current interpretative disjunction of Mexico as a country that simultaneously moves toward democratic consolidation and rule of law and toward violence, coercion, insecurity, and militarization compels us to ask questions ex post facto about the history—the PRI-history—of the current situation and, more importantly, the dominant interpretations of that history.

10

Introduction

After all, recalling Schmidt’s quotation from the beginning of this chapter, “fundamental reinterpretations of Mexican history must originate in a moment of frightful crisis.”34 Today’s frightening security crisis pushes us to rethink long-term processes of state-making and the role of violence and coercion, to recast influential interpretations of the circa 1938–82 period, and then to come to terms with how Mexico’s current multiparty (electoral) democracy blends with violence and the multiplication of (privatized) armed actors. By looking at twentieth-century state-making in Mexico through the lens of different agents and forms of violence, coercion, and crime, the chapters in this volume are an attempt to open a fresh perspective, by mapping different actors and meanings of violence and coercion, and by examining the connections between the “enlightened” and “dark sides” of state-making, between apparently transparent formal institutions and obscure informal coercion and violence. After a brief appraisal of additional features of violence in contemporary Mexico, the remaining part of this chapter further explores the key concepts, arguments, and claims of this book. One section explores the boundaries of the concept of violence and develops a general typology. I illustrate my general points with examples from twentieth-century Mexico. One important caveat is in place from the start; within the scope of this volume the wide variety of forms and sources of violence and coercion is limited by two key variables: their collective nature and their relationship to state(-making). The next section briefly charts theorizing about violence, coercion, and state-making through a comparative approach to this process, war, and the monopolization of violence and taxation, as well as class and legitimacy. Next, I outline an analytical framework that proposes to look at state-making through what I call the zones of hegemony and coercion. I develop this framework further by returning to the issue of Mexican exceptionalism, using my framework as a device to critically assess the relative weight of violence/coercion and hegemony in scholarship on Mexican postrevolutionary state-making. This lays out a field for research on violence, coercion, and state-making in twentieth-century Mexico, to which this volume proposes to make a substantial contribution. The closing part of this chapter appraises the main arguments and findings of the chapters by placing them in a broader scholarly context.

violence in mexico: a second appraisal (statistics, sources, and policies) The spectacular rise of lethal, drug-related violence in recent years runs against longer-term historical tendencies. Statistical evidence shows that

Zones of State-Making

11

the basic trend in homicides in Mexico rose from around 12,000 per year in the early 1980s to around 16,000 in the early 1990s, an increase of almost 35 percent.35 After that, however, the number steadily declined, approaching 10,000 early in the new millennium and 8,500 in 2007, a decline from almost 20 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants to 8 in 2007.36 Hence, contrary to frequently made claims, lethal violence in Mexico is still well below the levels seen in Colombia in the early 1990s.37 However, after 2007, the number of homicides began to increase again, reaching and then surpassing the levels of the early 1990s with more than 12,500 narco-related killings in 2010 alone. Certain regions in the country experience the brunt of this violence: the homicide rate in Sinaloa increased from 28 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2007 to almost 44 in 2008, while Chihuahua experienced an increase from 18.5 in 2007 to 42 in 2008 and then almost 60 in 2009.38 In 2009, the business community of Ciudad Juárez claimed that the homicide rate stood at an astonishing 150 per 100,000 inhabitants.39 What has changed is the geography of violence. The significant rise in lethal violence in the early 1990s (and the subsequent decrease) largely occurred in the predominantly rural and indigenous regions of southern and central Mexico, where the root causes were the agrarian crisis combined with land conflicts, socioeconomic marginalization, alcoholism, religious divisions, and factional and family feuds, the latter of which have erroneously been called “cultural peculiarities.”40 In recent years, rising homicide rates are explained by developments in states in northern Mexico, especially in medium and large urban areas. The most notable exceptions to this are Guerrero and Michoacán. However, what appears to have changed most is the meaning-making related to violence. When homicide rates went up in the late 1980s, there was no comparable public outcry. Is the country inoculated against knowing about violence and coercion in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas because of the “cultural peculiarities” of their indigenous populations? After all, when rates went down, perceptions of violence, fear, and insecurity increasingly pointed in the opposite direction. To understand this paradox, Fernando Escalante points to the shifting social profile of homicide victims (rural to urban, indigenous to mestizo, southern to northern Mexico), the changing attitudes in the media and social sensibilities.41 In addition to social meanings of violence, the distinct semantics of recent violence and crime (decapitations, torture, narco-messages) helps us understand this paradox. The same can be said of the substantial geopolitical differences between a “war on drugs” on the doorstep of the United States and violent social, political, and ethnic conflicts deep inside rural Mexico. In other words, examining violence in contemporary Mexico goes far beyond its statistics

12

Introduction

to speak to social and ethnic hierarchies, politics, cultural meanings, international relations, and global security discourses. Apart from drug-related violence, a cursory appraisal of Mexico since the 1980s identifies several forms and sources of violence. First, the mid1980s saw a significant increase in political and electoral violence, leading up to the fraudulent 1988 elections and beyond. Salinas de Gortari’s presidency (1988–94) was marked by an explosion of (local) electoral conflicts that often ended violently. Occasionally, this produced flashbacks to the democracia pistoleril of the 1920s through 1950s that returned with a vengeance in Guerrero and Michoacán in the 1990s. One study speaks of “state violence” and more than 600 political assassinations between 1988 and 2000.42 The persecution of members of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) is proof of the painful transition from presidential authoritarianism to more competitive electoral politics, especially in provincial arenas. In 1994, violence also reached the heights of the national political system with the assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio of the PRI and other high-level politicians.43 Second, there has been a rise in ethnic violence since the 1990s, a development that began with the 1994 Chiapas uprising but that cannot be reduced to it.44 Third, the long-term history of economic downturns and the onset of neoliberal reforms since the 1980s created the conditions for a surge in urban crime and violence (armed robberies, car theft, assaults, kidnappings, lynchings) in the mid-1990s. This was even more remarkable since, compared to major cities in Brazil and Argentina, urban Mexico had been relatively peaceful until the 1990s, allegedly due to the PRI’s dominance over the country’s political and social system.45 Urban violence and crime exacerbated feelings of a deepening crisis of security and the judicial system, and strengthened popular discontent with law enforcement, especially because of the perceived incompetence (or unwillingness) of the authorities to resolve corruption and white-collar crime.46 Aside from disquieting developments in Mexico City, the depressing situation in several cities along the U.S.-Mexican border comes to mind, a product of the destructive interconnections between drug-trafficking, (illegal) migration, and fragile social structures (see also Shirk’s Chapter 2).47 Fourth, there is the broad area of domestic violence, a theme long ignored by authorities and the scholarly community, but one generally perceived to be a breeding ground for other forms of violence.48 Whereas citizens worry about increasing levels of violence and insecurity, official statistics on especially nonlethal crime and violence in Mexico are generally considered untrustworthy and believed to be well below real levels.49 This is partly explained by inconsistencies among different government institutions, imprecise and changing categorizations, and the lack of disaggregation. Most importantly, however, unreliable statistics

Zones of State-Making

13

result from the fact that they are based only on crimes actually reported to the police or the prosecutor’s office. “Real” crime rates can be estimated only when unreported crimes are taken into consideration.50 Victimization surveys consistently show that almost three out of every four victims do not report a crime. In the case of kidnapping, a conservative estimate is that four out of ten cases go unreported.51 The massive size of the “dark” (unreported) number of delinquencies can be attributed entirely to a key aspect of Mexico’s (in)security regime: the (perceived) ineffectiveness of the country’s institutions responsible for preventing and investigating crimes and processing them judicially.52 The flip side of the crisis of violence and insecurity is impunity and the crisis of the justice system. The deepening problems of violence and insecurity are substantiated by a string of policy initiatives designed to strengthen the capacity and effectiveness of Mexican law enforcement agencies. In 1995, the Zedillo government created the National Public Security System, which allocated resources to state-level public security programs and sought to integrate federal, state, and local levels of government to create better instruments to sanction police corruption and criminal infiltration in such agencies. In 1999, a new federal police force was established, the Federal Preventative Police, “with a decidedly militarised character.”53 Moreover, Zedillo reformed the country’s criminal justice system and involved the army in the struggle against organized crime. None of these efforts were “notably effective.”54 In 2000, the Ministry of Public Security was created and took charge of the Preventative Police and of the National Public Security System. In 2001, Fox’s administration eliminated the notoriously corrupt judicial police and founded the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI), hoping to increase the effectiveness and professionalism of criminal investigation. In the face of the escalation of violence and insecurity, Fox reorganized the security apparatus again in 2005 and created the federal security cabinet, after a major justice and police reform project presented in 2004 was not ratified.55 Finally, in late 2008, President Calderón managed to push through Congress a new Public Security System law that aims to establish a system of controls involving all police forces, the attorneys general, and penal systems. The Federal Preventative Police would be replaced by the Federal Police.56 What is most significant in this recent round of reforms and reorganizations is the ever-more-pronounced role of the president and the military in managing Mexico’s law enforcement system.57 Budgetary allocations to different law enforcement agencies have substantially increased over the last ten years.58 All these reforms and policy initiatives are a response to the mounting problems of violence and public insecurity, but they are also, and perhaps more importantly, informed by a profound shift toward viewing these phenomena, especially drug-trafficking, as issues of national security. This conceptual shift

14

Introduction

has its roots in the 1990s but fully materialized after 2000, and even more after 2006, when the role of the Mexican military in combating crime, violence, and insecurity increased dramatically. Militarization is now a key feature of Mexico’s security landscape.59 The shift toward a national security framework in Mexico finds its corollary in the international context with the establishment of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) signed by the United States, Canada, and Mexico in 2005. Developed in the context of the post-9/11 war on terror and conceived beyond the reach of congressional oversight and mechanisms of accountability, the SPP articulates plans to remove the remaining barriers to the flow of capital and production, assure access to key natural resources (oil), and create a trinational security plan.60 The aim is to develop and implement “a comprehensive North American strategy to combat transnational threats to the three nations.”61 The SPP was also the framework in which, in 2007, the Mérida Initiative was conceived, which envisages the transfer of resources from the United States to Mexico in the form of military and intelligence equipment and training programs for Mexican law enforcement officials involved in the struggle against drug-trafficking. Despite these efforts, in 2008 the U.S. military stated that the sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels on the government could, in a worst-case scenario, lead to a “sudden and rapid collapse” of the Mexican state, which would represent a homeland security problem of immense proportions to the United States.62 In sum, the mounting significance of violence and insecurity in Mexico (both quantitatively and qualitatively, deeply affecting both citizens and the state) has spawned a string of state policies that seek to address the situation (through institutional reform, militarization, and increased spending), and which, in turn, have affected international relations, especially the bilateral agenda between the United States and Mexico. Does all this entail the end of Mexico’s alleged exceptional position of stability, civilianism, and institutionalism in the Latin American context? Has not the country, instead, become the embodiment of a “violent democracy,” with its peculiar combination of (limited) electoral democracy, deep socioeconomic inequalities, and escalating violence and insecurity?63 I will return to these questions later.

violence and insecurity: conceptual reflections Violence is generically defined as the intentional use of force that causes harm or injury to others in order to impose one’s will. There are thus

Zones of State-Making

15

three constitutive elements of violence: intentionality; the infliction of physical injury, sometimes leading to death or psychological harm; and the pursuit of ends beneficial to the perpetrator. These three key elements invariably involve the exercise of some form of power. Put differently, violence as a social relation is a form and manifestation of power.64 A generic definition of violence encompasses a broad variety of forms and sources, and thus begs for refinement, classification, and operationalization. Some considerably stretched the meaning of violence and introduced a distinction between personal and structural forms, that is, violence built into uneven economic resources and power structures.65 Others have used ethical criteria and built typologies based on normative rules that distinguish justifiable from unjustifiable forms.66 Unfortunately, moral yardsticks seem too elusive to be applied productively in the sociology, anthropology, and history of violence, which are what interest us here.67 Instead, an empirically grounded operationalization of violence derives from the basic motivations that drive acts of violence in order to gain or maintain power and/or control over people or resources. I identify three basic motivations behind (collective) violence: political-institutional, economic, and social.68 The boundaries between the categories are blurry, but the distinction is nevertheless useful.69 After all, a small-town cacique who orders his pistolero (gunman) to assassinate a rival politician is clearly motivated by the wish to retain (formal) political control, while the drug dealer who kills a police officer seems driven primarily by economic gain. The first (compounded) category of violence is driven by the will to obtain or maintain political and institutional power and resources. Four varieties can be distinguished: first, the violence that directly originates from state institutions or agents. In most cases, these institutions form part of the repressive branch of the state, such as the police, army, security services, or judiciary. State violence is often not recognized as such since its perpetrators stand upon the legitimacy of their acts and emphasize the need to maintain law and order.70 Latin American states are infamous for human rights violations committed by their security forces. Torture and extrajudicial killings have been widespread problems denounced time and again by (inter)national human rights organizations.71 Although Mexico is often contrasted to South and Central American countries with their characteristic draconian state repression, it has its own long history of state violence: military actions against rebellious strongmen in the 1920s and 1930s and against electoral opposition in the 1940s and military and secret police repression of labor movements during the 1940s and 1950s, students in the 1960s, and rural rebellions during the entire period.72 More recently, military-type police raids in Mexico City have occurred, in which

16

Introduction

large squads went into popular neighborhoods and searched houses and individuals for drugs, weapons, and stolen goods, in ways that upset both authorities and citizens.73 Second, there is the violence that originates indirectly from state institutions insofar as they tolerate and encourage nonstate agents and institutions to “create, justify, excuse, explain, or enforce hierarchies of difference and relations of inequality,” which can lead to violent expulsions, massacres, and ethnic cleansing.74 The overwhelming majority of the murders of hundreds of left-wing social and political activists in the 1990s in Mexico by pistoleros and local caciques were never resolved, indicating the covert complicity or leniency of law enforcement agencies.75 Mexico’s long history of guardias blancas (private security forces) and, more recently, paramilitary operations in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guerrero, operating in the shadows of an indulgent state, also fall into this category.76 A third variety of political violence involves conflicts between nonstate social and political forces over access to state power and other resources (land, water, forests). This encompasses the anonymous but numerous political assassinations that occur at the level of village and provincial factional and social disputes, but also the much-publicized assassinations of nationally known politicians and strongmen. The latter were common during the 1920s and 1930s, and reappeared in the 1990s. The former occurred widely and throughout the twentieth century. Examples include the many killings that Don Fortino Santiago from Juquila, Oaxaca, recounted to the anthropologist James Greenberg, the agrarian violence in the Huasteca during the 1970s and 1980s, and electoral violence.77 Finally, political violence includes heated contestations by nonstate actors. The state is often perceived as the (hidden) force behind local and regional political or economic elites and cacicazgos (boss rule) that elicit violent resistance and opposition by subordinate groups. Moreover, the state is a policy-making machine that produces crucial decisions on economic and financial matters, trade, land distribution, and infrastructure, but also education, health, and pensions; in short, the distribution of key resources. In this capacity, representatives of the state or its various agencies can become “objects of contention,” who are driven out of localities, injured, or killed. In the 1930s, the project of socialist education frequently provoked violent reactions from local communities and elites, often with fatal consequences.78 During the 1960s and 1970s, several rural guerrilla movements confronted state institutions and powerful local economic interest groups.79 In the 1970s, various urban guerrilla movements emerged in major cities like Monterrey and Guadalajara.80 In the case of Guadala-

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17

jara, Aguayo calculated the murders and disappearance of more than 125 government agents, radical students, and others between 1970 and 1980.81 During the 1990s, armed ethnic movements in southern Mexico opposed the logic of state-making itself as they fought for inclusion, recognition, land, and social justice. In the context of neoliberal economic and social reforms, with their profound effects of social exclusion, impoverishment, social disintegration, and recurring economic crises, the state has confronted fallout in the form of social conflict, political polarization, and manifestations of violence. Again, all these forms of armed or violent resistance encounter multiple forms of repression in the hands of (c)overt state agents (which returns us to the first form of political violence), which has led some to speak of the “criminalization of social conflict.”82 Many social activists are imprisoned, often without just cause. Some suggest that there are currently over 400 political prisoners in Mexico.83 The second general category of violence is fundamentally driven by the desire for economic rewards. There are large differences of scale and organizational sophistication within this category, but generally speaking we are dealing with crime, whether in the form of armed robberies of minibuses in Mexico City, burglaries, car theft, or violent muggings of cabdrivers. Much of this “traditional” (petty) crime-related violence is concentrated in large urban areas, like the delinquency related to contraband and pirated products.84 At the other end of the spectrum are the professional assassinations related to drug-trafficking, actions that require coordination among drivers, gunmen, and others, communication technologies, and stateof-the-art weaponry. The thousands of narco-related executions of recent years are in this category, but other emerging forms of organized crime related to prostitution and trafficking in people and organs must be included. Kidnapping is another branch of crime that requires considerable levels of organizational sophistication and resources.85 In 2008, Mexico was considered the riskiest country on the continent in terms of kidnapping, and Mexico City the most dangerous Latin American capital.86 The third general category refers to motivations for violent behavior that serve the (re)production of (traditional) social power relations, most importantly in connection with gender identities, ethnicity, age, and social status. As such, they are associated with notions of control, domination, and revenge. Although violent incidents against ethnic groups are deeply political and linked to land disputes, they almost invariably contain racist dimensions as well, thereby mobilizing deep-seated cultural and racial hierarchies.87 With regard to gender violence, an analytical distinction can be made between manifestations of violence at the social or communal level (public sphere) and that occurring at the micro-social

18

Introduction

level of the family (private sphere).88 The latter is identified as domestic violence, which usually includes a combination of gender and sexual violence and child abuse. In the public sphere, such as the workplace, gender and sexual violence are widespread phenomena in Mexico, a country with one of the highest rates of rape in the world.89 The most publicized case is that of feminicide in Ciudad Juárez, but the phenomenon is more widely spread.90 Reports show that between 1999 and 2005 more than 6,000 women and girls were killed in Mexico.91 The effects of recurring forms of violence are expressed in fear and insecurity.92 Whereas fear has been defined as the “institutional, cultural and psychological repercussions of violence,” insecurity is a much more fuzzy concept, since it is related to different semantic fields.93 First, it is related to failing citizenship regimes, in which the rights of citizens to live free from fear and violence are insufficiently guaranteed. Citizens are rights-bearers insofar as they are members of nation-states and subjects of (inter)national legal regimes. Hence, (in)security is an issue that relates to state capacities or, more strongly, “its provision [is] a definitional feature of the state.”94 The discussion of (citizen) security is connected to issues of legitimacy, the rule of law, trust, and state-making in general. Second, the notion of insecurity is often situated at the level of citizens’ perceptions of the threats of violence and crime, based on (in)direct experiences and information. These perceptions form the heart of socalled victimization studies, which constitute powerful indicators of the social meanings of violence and crime. Moreover, the perception of insecurity is explained less by perceived levels of delinquency than by the perceived absence of protection against potential forms of crime and violence.95 In other words, the way in which people construct their sense of (in)security is more a function of the perceived inefficacy of the police and the justice system than of the risk of becoming a victim of crime.96 The perception of insecurity is also highly relevant politically because it affects people’s sense of well-being and has tremendous political mobilization potential.97 In this context, the concept of punitive populism, in the form of mano dura (zero tolerance) policies, expresses the political potential of insecurity.98 Finally, the notion of insecurity is connected to broader debates about human and livelihood security. As such, it has acquired meanings associated with poverty, exclusion, vulnerability, and threats to people’s livelihoods. One of the most violent manifestations of feelings of insecurity, fear, and anger that feed on failing citizenship regimes, the dysfunctional rule of law, and socioeconomic vulnerability is lynching. Across Latin America, the number of lynchings has increased substantially in recent years, a trend connected to social fragmentation and dislocations resulting

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19

from neoliberal adjustment programs on the one hand and impunity, corruption, and collusion between the state and organized crime on the other. Moreover, local communities confront drug-trafficking, gangs, and other forms of crime. Through lynchings, these embattled communities “struggle to regain control over not just crime, but decision making authority in issues vital to their day-to-day lives.”99 In the case of Mexico, with more than 250 lynchings between 1993 and 2001, it has been suggested that communities resort to such actions as a substitute for the state and to occupy the moral and legal spaces the state has abandoned.100 Table 1.1 summarizes the main categorizations and characteristics of violence identified in this section.

violence, coercion, insecurity, and state- making This volume explicitly situates violence, coercion, and insecurity within the historical processes of state-making and the evolution of state power. Contributions from historical sociology on state-formation have examined these connections diachronically, focusing specifically on the processes and forces behind the monopolization of violence and taxation. Political scientists have studied the relationships among the state, violence, coercion, and class (power), including the issue of legitimacy. Questions of class and legitimacy also appear in research on state-society relations in general and, more specifically, the ways popular groups and nonstate elites engage in state-making. To a great extent, this body of scholarship goes back to Weber’s work on the state, bureaucracy, and legitimacy. His emphasis on the “intimate relation” between the state and violence is particularly important: “the modern state is a compulsory association which organizes domination” and it does so because it has been successful “in seeking to monopolize the legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination within a territory.”101 In a normative sense, the state is the only source of the “legitimate” use of violence. Historical sociologists have written prominent works on the emergence of modern nation-states, the historical construction of state rule, and the role of violence and coercion. Elias’s theory of state-formation studies how open competition, conflict, and violence in late feudal society gave way to durable monopolies in the spheres of rule, violence, and taxation that became the core of modern state organization.102 More recently, Tilly’s important longitudinal study examined the different pathways of European state-formation in terms of the historical evolution and organization of the means of coercion and preparation for war.103

Table 1.1

• Political/electoral violence and conflict • Police and military abuse, HR violations • Violent protest, riots

Conflict over political/ state power

• • • • • • • •

Low level of organization

High level of organization

Drug-related violence Kidnapping Organized gang violence Organized crime (nondrugs)

Armed robberies, theft Homicide, injuries Small gang violence Violent conflict over scarce resources (land, water, space)

• Parastate violence

Parastate violence

Economic gain

• Overt state violence and repression

State violence

Politicalinstitutional power

Violent challenges

Modalities

Category of Violence/Motivation

• Intranarco executions, torture • Armed clashes between narcos and security forces • Extortion, coercion, and violence in human trafficking (children, prostitution, organs)

• Car theft, mugging • Narcomenudeo • Territorial gang disputes

• Political assassinations • Guerrillas, counterinsurgency • Extrajudicial killings • Paramilitary activities • Police raids • Caciquismo

Manifestations (perpetrators, victims)

Mediated involvement of state institutions: inefficient, fragile, or corrupt security agencies. Impunity and low levels of trust in public institutions. Class justice. Complicity networks between organized crime and state institutions. State’s “dark side.” Clientelistic distribution of public goods, failing service provision

Direct relationship to state: State as perpetrator State as object of violence among nonstate actors or against the state itself. Covert involvement of state Prominence of repressive core of the state. Legitimacy, monopoly on violence

Relationship to the State

Typology of Violence: Motivation, Modalities, Manifestations, and Relationship to the State

Social and interpersonal domination

• Ethnic (identity) violence • Spontaneous riots, violent protests • Gender and sexual violence • Feminicide

• Domestic and intrafamily violence • Gender violence • Sexual violence

Communal, social

Interpersonal

• Child abuse • Physical and psychological male-female abuse, rape • Alcohol, fights

• Racist attacks against indigenous communities/ peoples • Rape • Lynching • Vandalism, hooliganism • Vigilantism

Mediated or distant involvement of state institutions. Ineffective or corrupt law enforcement agencies. Dominant cultural meanings and ideologies (and the role of the state therein).

22

Introduction

State structures are in essence a “by-product” of the attempts of rulers to acquire the means of war and extract resources from subject populations. In this logic the state appears like a “protection racket”—as organized crime—that offers society guarantees and safety against domestic and foreign threats.104 In the dialectic of warmaking-resources-statemaking, coercive means remain crucial for essential state activities.105 Different histories of state-formation are explained by specific class and property relations (“capital”), and by continuous interaction with adjacent states and their rulers. The historical sociology of Europe provides interesting clues to the major determinants, players, and dilemmas of the constitutive relationship among violence, coercion, and state-making, while also drawing attention to the connections among state, class, and legitimacy. When applied to the specific case that concerns us, this raises pertinent and promising questions. How can state attempts to monopolize taxation and violence in nineteenth-century Mexico be evaluated? How do changing elite coalitions affect the utilization of coercion and state violence? Since the revolution effectively destroyed a previous social and political order, and initiated postrevolutionary processes of state-making and nationbuilding, a number of questions arise. How and when did the postrevolutionary (federal) state manage to gain control of violent entrepreneurs? Recent developments in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America force us to ask whether states have lost the monopoly on violence to other armed actors—criminal, political, or both—thereby giving rise to “governance voids.”106 How must the violent conflict between the Mexican military and drug cartels be interpreted in this respect? In the context of neoliberal restructuring and globalization, have the diminished redistributive and productive capacities of the Mexican state (after 1982) enhanced coercive strategies to maintain social order? But there are also problems. Most importantly, Latin American states were not positively constituted through warfare, as they fought different wars in societal contexts characterized by extraordinary social, racial, and geographical barriers.107 Mexico’s specific geopolitical position eliminated any possibility of a regional arms race, thus invalidating the bellicist theory of state-making.108 Also, the effective centralization of control over the means of violence proved unfeasible for Latin American central states throughout the nineteenth and often far into the twentieth century, due to a colonial heritage of weak territorial cohesion and fragmented sovereignty, and the particular nature of militarism during the wars of independence, which lacked a clear political or state-making project. During the nineteenth century, the weight of regionalism, divisions within the elite, and caudillismo assured that military leaders and elites “did not

Zones of State-Making

23

conquer territory in order to make a state, but had to impose an order over a fractious set of local interests.”109 Gaps in the coercive capacity of Latin American states persist even today, feeding on deep regionalisms and divisions within states and societies.110 It has therefore rightly been argued that “for the case of Latin America the gap between enunciated theory [of the modern Weberian nation-state] and observable practice would seem to be unsustainably wide.”111 Tilly’s coercion-capital model for understanding the connections among state-formation, coercion, and class is reminiscent of Marxian understandings of the state. In its simplest form, Marxism reduced the state to a coercive instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie, a view echoed in Cockcroft’s claim that “for decades the most important weapon in the Mexican bourgeoisie’s political arsenal has been the authoritarian-technocratic state.”112 Marxist theorizing gradually moved from class reductionism and economic determinism toward the contingency of the political and the autonomy of the state, largely under the influence of Gramsci’s innovative work.113 In this vein, Hamilton’s study of President Cárdenas’ reforms in the 1930s looked at the state as a set of civil and coercive institutions, historically situated in specific economic, political, and international conditions that may enhance or limit state autonomy.114 This approach was further elaborated in Knight’s analysis of the changing relationships between the Mexican state and the dominant classes and, hence, the shifting nature of state autonomy. In his view, state-formation in twentiethcentury Mexico followed a circular motion from a Porfirian “agent state,” through revolutionary disintegration and statist reform (i.e., operating autonomously from dominant classes), toward an apparently strong state that broadly served the dominant class, and ending with a much weaker, neoliberal agent state that represented multinational capital.115 Just as with state and class, the association between state monopoly of  violence and legitimacy has been the subject of intense debates. For Weber, the distinction between violence and force was crucial: the state is a relation of domination supported by legitimate violence, hence called force. To speak of force or violence depends on the legitimacy or political acceptability of the actors and/or actions involved. However, others dispute the view that the legitimate use of violence pertains only to the state. The distinction between violence and force is not determined by any absolute “source of legitimacy, but by the actual ascription of (il)legitimacy by specific members of a community.”116 In other words, the point is how state authority is judged by distinct social actors and political forces. However, empirically “plotting the trajectory of a state’s legitimacy is notoriously difficult.”117 Yet another interpretation effectively does away with the analytical and normative distinction between force and violence by

24

Introduction

questioning the usefulness of differentiating state and nonstate violence. In a recent study of violence and state-formation in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Central America, historian Robert Holden introduces the concepts of “public violence” and “field of the state.” In addition to the state, properly speaking, this “field” includes a range of nonstate, violent actors. “Public violence” thus questions separating “the violence committed by states from that of revolutionaries, by army factions from that of guerrilla groups,” because these “distinctions can obscure their common character and purpose—and the common source.”118 As I will show, such notions as “public violence” and “field of the state” easily connect to concepts developed in other recent works. Theorizing the connections among state-making, violence, class, and legitimacy is part of broader discussions of state-society relations. After all, the (il)legitimacy of state force (or violence) is rooted in, and conditioned by, the political, moral, and cultural relationships among dominant (state) elites and subordinated social groups. In recent years, this has been the subject of novel research on state-making in postrevolutionary Mexico. Known as New Cultural History or, alternatively, neo-Gramscian scholarship, which grew out of a critique of revisionist interpretations of (post) revolutionary state-making, it pays great attention to popular agency and nonviolent negotiations of rule among subaltern groups and state elites (see below).119 Similarly, the notion of public violence expresses the deep articulation of state and societal actors in the sphere of violence and coercion. Three forms of public violence can be distinguished.120 Institutional violence emanates from the coercive state itself (army, police, security forces), including the violence employed by formal allies of the regime in power. Counterinstitutional violence, in contrast, originates in groups attempting to seize control (of part of) the state—Tilly’s state-seeking violence—either from within the state (a military coup) or from outside, as in the case of guerrilla insurgencies or class-based violence. Parainstitutional violence comes from groups or organizations loosely connected to formal state organs, but nevertheless run (il)legally by private interests. Mexican pistoleros working for local caciques come to mind, as do Colombian paramilitary forces and Central American death squads, which became “informal instruments of state terror.”121 The concept of parainstitutional violence is similar to notions like the “dark side” of the state (Gledhill), brown areas of the state (O’Donnell), gray zones of state power (Auyero), and even twilight institutions (Lund).122 The gray zone is an area “where the deeds and networks of violent entrepreneurs, political actors and law enforcement officials secretly meet and mesh,” that is, where the boundaries between state and nonstate, violent and nonviolent actors become blurred.123 What goes on here deeply

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affects people’s daily lives, the workings of criminal organizations, political parties, and state-making in general. The notion of the gray zone not only points to particular social networks and practices; it also is an analytical lens that “draws our attention toward a murky area where normative boundaries dissolve” and enables us to “integrate ‘extraordinary’ collective violence into the study of ‘normal’ politics.”124 Analytically, the notions of gray zone and parainstitutional violence expose the role of violence and coercion in the contact zone between state and nonstate actors, and their role in state-making. Historically, it is important to ask under what conditions such zones (can) emerge and eventually expand or narrow, and which actors call the shots. According to Holden, the main source of public violence in Central America is patrimonial institutions and clientelistic politics. Personalistic power is tantamount to the deployment of violence (and impunity), because it carves out discretionary spaces that permit the evasion and/or selective application of the law.125 In other words, violence is “a characteristic disposition of patrimonialism,” an argument that Kathy Powell further elaborates in Chapter 9 in this volume.126 Even so, the expediency of Holden’s interpretation of Central American state-formation for the case of Mexico is ambiguous. On the one hand, anyone familiar with Mexican politics and society will readily acknowledge that state, partisan, and corporatist institutions are governed by informal camarillas (political groups), patrimonial practices and personal loyalties. The widespread and enduring persistence of caciquismo in twentieth-century Mexico paradigmatically bears out the importance of parainstitutional forms of social and political control, violence, and impunity.127 Patrimonialism, clientelism, and caciquismo have profound bearings on the nature of Mexican state-making. On the other hand, Holden’s claims that Central American states cannot “non-violently induce compliance,” or achieve lasting legitimacy, and that “the army may have been with the state but was never of it” hardly apply to Mexico since the incorporation of the army into the powerful state-party ruling coalition.128 Similarly, while Central American states may have lacked the resources to command obedience nonviolently and, therefore, depended on inducing collaboration through inherently violent exchange mechanisms, the Mexican state commanded infinitely more resources to buy off its corporatist pillars and clientelistic obligations toward army generals, private economic interests, and politicians. All the same, these caveats should not prevent us from examining coercion and (public) violence there.

26

Introduction

hegemony and the other half of the mexican centaur The foregoing analysis has rendered insights and concepts relevant to understanding state-making, violence, and coercion. I identified the driving forces behind the historical formation of state rule, the complex relationships among state, class, and violence, and the related issue of legitimacy, as well as the interfaces between state and society and the role of violence therein (gray zones). The historically shifting connections between state and class, power and authority, violence/coercion and consent (understood as a form of legitimacy), and state and society are effectively brought together in Gramsci’s writings on hegemony and the state. Undoubtedly, the concept of hegemony is constitutively connected to violence, coercion, and force; deals explicitly with the interfaces and negotiations between state elites and subordinated social groups, between state and nonstate actors (as such, it contains a critique of statecenteredness); and situates these questions in historically shifting class relations and projects. Moreover, the notion of hegemony avoids the violence/force debate in two ways: first, hegemony operates in an “expanded” conception of the (field of the) state, and second, effective hegemony deals precisely with the construction of consent to state coercion. Gramsci wrote that “hegemony protected by the armour of coercion” is the state.129 This straightforward formula establishes hegemony as part of an “integral” or expanded conceptualization of the state, which includes both political society (the state in the strict sense as the apparatus of coercion) and civil society (the domain of the organization of consent), “two moments in the articulation of the state field.”130 Elsewhere, however, hegemony is associated with consent organized by and through civil society in opposition to the state as the embodiment of coercive power, and on yet other occasions hegemony itself is suggested to encompass force or coercion.131 The fluid—or imprecise—nature of Gramsci’s political writings on the state and hegemony partly explains their intense scrutiny during the 1980s, and their subsequent and varied incorporation into social research, especially cultural studies, anthropology, and history, turning the author into “an intellectual cause célèbre and in some quarters a cult hero.”132 As the concept of hegemony became more widely used, its meaning shifted and broadened: for some it came to mean a “populist state’s ideological leadership of the masses” as opposed to manipulation and control, for others it was a useful concept “to explore relationships of power and the concrete ways in which these are lived,” and yet others gave it the more processual meaning of the construction of

Zones of State-Making

27

“a common material and meaningful framework for living through, talking about, and acting upon, social orders characterized by domination.”133 In any case, the Gramscian notion of hegemony is connected to statemaking, domination, subordination, and coercion and consent or, perhaps more accurately and in agreement with Roseberry, the processes and struggles that engender and surround them. Moreover, the concept avoids simple dualisms. Even if the analytical distinction between state or political society and civil society is accepted, their actual workings are best understood as “a knot of tangled power relations.”134 In this sense, and with respect to Mexico, Vaughan observed that “the hegemony achieved for a time by the Mexican state and the ruling party resulted from interactive processes involving multiple social groups and interweaving a multiplicity of discourses and interests.”135 Understood in this manner, hegemony refers to “interactive processes” among state, (civil) society actors and popular cultures, but in contrast to the similarly interfacial notion of the gray zone of violence and coercion, it concentrates on building consent or “ ‘a common moral and social project between rulers and ruled.”136 Also, coercion and consent are entangled or, as one scholar put it more philosophically, “consent must be analysed as the dialectical negation of coercion.”137 With these important caveats in mind and avoiding Gramscian scholasticism, it seems useful to analytically distinguish the zone of hegemony as that area in which the construction of consent through political and ideological leadership occurs from the zone of coercion and violence. I use the term zones because of its connotation of wider, not neatly delimitated, areas in which different actors and institutions (state and nonstate) engage each other, albeit with different outcomes (hegemony versus violence/coercion). The study of these zones focuses on distinct dimensions of state-making, and on particular social and institutional actors and processes. I employ the distinction between hegemonic and (openly) coercive zones of state-making as an analytical tool, but also as a heuristic device for ordering existing scholarly work on postrevolutionary state-making in Mexico. Put simply, the analysis of the zone of hegemony prioritizes processes of state-making and power relations through negotiation and incorporation, oriented toward establishing a common moral and social project between rulers and ruled, and consensus-based mechanisms, rules, networks, and ideologies of identification and consent. In the Latin American case, the degree in which corporatism, clientelism, parties, social policies, nationalism and cultural politics make possible chiefly noncoercive or nonviolent forms of domination and integration comes to mind. The focus is on organized social interest groups, political organizations, education, the church, and ideologies. In contrast, the zone of coercion pinpoints the use of force

28

Introduction

ZONE OF HEGEMONY Institutions Practices Actors Networks

STATE

SOCIETY

ZONE OF COERCION

Overt state violence and coercion

Gray zone of violence and coercion

Nonstate violence and coercion

figure 1.1 Hegemonic and Coercive Zones of State-Making

and violence in state-making and the exercise of control. Hence it highlights the strategies of social and institutional actors such as the army, the police, paramilitaries, and security apparatuses, but also of criminal organizations, guerrillas, violence-prone caciques, and their multiple forms of interaction. It should be emphasized, however, that this distinction is a matter of degree only: while educational projects may be crucial for social and cultural integration and the creation of a national-popular will, and should be situated primarily in the zone of hegemonic state-making, their implementation has generated its share of violence and coercion. Also, as Powell demonstrates in Chapter 9 in this volume, clientelism is deeply driven by coercion and violence. In the case of corporatist institutions, one can easily emphasize their role in institutional and nonviolent mediation and exchange, economic redistribution, and political incorporation, but, as Aguila and Bortz show, Mexico’s corporatist structure was both established and sustained through considerable portions of coercion and violence.138 Institutions, actors, and practices are thus best seen as operating simultaneously in the hegemonic and coercive zones of state-making (Figure 1.1). As I argued above, the bottom half of Figure 1.1 has received only modest scholarly attention. No comprehensive academic approach to violence and insecurity in Mexico has yet been established, unlike the cases of Colombia, Brazil, and Central America.139 Since the revolution placed Mexico on a sociopolitical path distinct from many Latin American countries that experienced horrific state-led violence and guerrilla warfare, the peculiarities and exceptionalism of twentieth-century Mexico appear to justify the limited systematic scholarly attention to violence, coercion, and insecurity.

Zones of State-Making

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This has also led to the elaboration of the influential perspective that stresses the essentially institutional and hegemonic nature of state-making and conflict resolution. The roots of the theory of Mexican exceptionalism can be traced back to what Schmidt called the Revolution-to-Evolution paradigm, a master narrative that positively evaluates Mexico’s economic growth, social justice, political stability, and nation-building since the 1940s. Even after 1968, when scholars “rejected the smooth gradualist visions of national development,” they subscribed to key assumptions of the Revolution-to-Evolution approach that concentrated on state power and the effectiveness of corporatism, both of which “marginalized society from any explanatory processes.”140 Moreover, that approach privileged the upper decision-making echelons of the political system and paid scant attention “to local or regional patterns and almost none to culture.”141 The Revolution-to-Evolution paradigm produced a state-centered interpretation of Mexico’s post-1940 history in which the federal state appeared as a colossus that cast a long, dark shadow over its citizens, economy, and culture. Mexico’s national state, like its counterparts elsewhere in Latin America, was “constituted as a unifying force by producing fantasies of collective integration into centralized political institutions.”142 Schmidt calls for broadening this homogenizing, top-down interpretation of recent Mexican history, which basically reduced it to a narrative of the federal state as the sole “independent” actor of postrevolutionary modernity that maintained relations with “subsidiary” actors and social groups such as business, political parties, peasants, unions, students, and the church. Building on Gramscian and Foucauldian notions of power, politics, and the state and on regional political and cultural historiographies of twentieth-century Mexico, he makes a plea for an alternative interpretation that accounts for “indeterminate, ambiguous outcomes instead of fitting any established ‘master narrative.’ ”143 This requires decentering previous scholarship on state-making and examining popular culture as a key factor in historical change. The critique of the state-centeredness of Mexican exceptionalism and its potential to revise influential interpretations of twentieth-century Mexican state-making connects well to our core concern here. However, in addition to the issues of denationalization and popular agency, this book reexamines another dimension of the “exceptionalism” and “Revolution-to-Evolution” paradigms, namely, their emphasis on institutional mediation, effective corporatism, and essentially nonviolent conflict resolution as decisive factors in (national) state-making and political change. This volume subscribes to the critique of Joseph and Nugent, Schmidt, and other social and cultural historians that breaks away from state-centeredness by privileging society, popular agency, cultural change,

30

Introduction

negotiation, and regional context.144 Furthermore, and crucially, it departs from “institution or hegemony-centeredness” (for lack of a better term) by developing an approach that comprehensively and historically explains violence, coercion, force, crime, and insecurity, and their significance for state-making in twentieth-century Mexico. It achieves this with original historical and ethnographic research and thematic coherence. In their analyses of violence, coercion, and insecurity in relation to distinct social actors or societal domains (drug-trafficking, unionism, indigenous peoples, peasants, urban crime, policing), all the chapters reflect on associations with state-making, power, and politics. In its entirety, this volume intends to contribute to a fresh, overarching narrative on violence, coercion, and insecurity in postrevolutionary Mexican state-making. When the distinction between zones of hegemony and coercion is combined with the critique of national state-centeredness, and when subnational domains are granted pride of place, a general overview of the development of scholarship on Mexican state-making and politics can be constructed. Graphically, combining these two dimensions creates a diagram with two axes that create four fields (Figure 1.2). First comes the dominant interpretation of Mexican exceptionalism concerning twentieth-century state-making in terms of a shift from Field I to Field(s) II (and III). This interpretation holds that after approximately 1938—the defeat of the last military rebellion—processes of statemaking and political control moved from the zone of violence and coercion (militarism, armed rebellion, and other violent mechanisms of power and control) to those of institutionalization, hegemonic political control, nonviolent conflict resolution, and the predominance of the national state. Second, attention has focused predominantly on the federal state. The work of political scientists and political sociologists on Mexico after 1940 has for decades concentrated on the national political arena.145 The enormous and growing academic output of political scientists on Mexico after 1988 strongly contributes to maintaining and even strengthening this perspective.146 While historians “regionalized” our understanding of the Mexican Revolution (until 1940), a similar effort is just starting to emerge for the 1940–80 period.147 Third, the more recent scholarly work of New Cultural History has done its share to reinforce work on Field II (and III), albeit from a critical perspective on (national) state-centeredness and with a strong emphasis on (popular) agency and culture. Research on the hegemonic workings of power in postrevolutionary Mexico has stressed the discursive and cultural dimensions of state-making and political control, as well as negotiations of popular groups with state projects.148 While the scholarly importance and quality of this work are undisputed, it has

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Zones of State-Making

Zone of hegemony Field II

Field III

Emphasis on hegemonic processes and institutions at national level

Emphasis on local/regional hegemonic processes and institutions

National state

Local domains

Field I

Field IV

Emphasis on violence, militarism, insurgency, repression at national level

Emphasis on local/regional violence, repression, militarism

Zone of coercion and violence

figure 1.2 The Shifting Focus in Scholarship on Mexican State-Making (Twentieth Century)

downplayed, by its very conceptual orientation, the more coercive and violent mechanisms in state-making, politics, and society, especially after 1938. While it correctly criticized the revisionist interpretation of the Mexican Revolution for relegating popular participation to a “subordinated, almost inconsequential role,” I argue that its own interpretative framework of (post)revolutionary state-making tends to undervalue violence and coercion.149 Taken together, the entrenched emphasis on nonviolent forms of conflict resolution and institutionalized mediation (a.k.a. pax priísta) reinforced by the predominant focus on the national level and recent interest in the hegemonic workings and cultural underpinnings of state power have produced abundant research on developments, processes, and actors in Field II and, to a lesser degree, Field III. Conversely, this has meant a relative neglect of research on coercion, violence, repression, and crime in the workings of Mexican state power and state-making (Fields I and IV). The deep connections and functional relations between state and society, central and local power domains, and between the different zones of

32

Introduction

state-making are often overlooked, as are their complex articulations. Concerning the latter, Knight has convincingly argued “that political historians and, a fortiori, political scientists, by focusing on the high politics of the nation-state, the federal government, national elites and formal politics . . . , have tended to overlook the hot, dense, and often dirty undergrowth of local politics.”150 Moreover, “the successful elimination of violence at the national level involved its displacement to the provinces” or, more emphatically, grassroots violence and repression complemented and facilitated “the more ostensibly peaceful conduct of national politics.”151 In other words, the institutionalization and relatively peaceful transmission of national power after 1940 was sustained, at least partly, by coercive and violent mechanisms of control and conflict resolution in local domains or deeply inside prima facie noncoercive institutions. It is thus urgent to study more profoundly the connections between what goes on in Fields II and IV. The ruling party persistently sanctioned “ ‘violence a gotitas,’ little-by-little, covertly, anonymously, provincially,” which “deterred opposition, shored up its national political monopoly,” proved functional for a stable and civilian reproduction of rule, and hence “avoided the need for dramatic draconian repression” characteristic of the dirty wars elsewhere in Latin America.152

violence, coercion, and state- making in twentieth- century mexico The chapters in this volume concentrate grosso modo on the bottom half of Figure 1.1, and on Fields I and IV of Figure 1.2. They all look at statemaking and politics in twentieth-century Mexico from the zone of coercion and violence, albeit from different spots along the state-society axis (Figure 1.1). In light of the framework developed above, these studies are organized in historically unorthodox but analytically meaningful terms. A number of contributions focus primarily on the “state” side of the axis, most importantly the quintessentially coercive institutions responsible for the (Weberian) monopolization of violence. The chapters by Davis and Gillingham examine the role of the police and army in postrevolutionary state-making, while that of Shirk examines the connections between violence and state-making in the sensitive outer shells of nation-states (border regions). Moving from the state side of the axis to the society end, we pass through the interfacial or gray zone. The chapters by Knight, Serrano and Aguiar concentrate on the origins and features of the actors and arrangements in these shadowy territories of state, society, and market. Situated at the society end of the axis, the final set of chapters (by Aguila and

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Bortz, Powell, and Gledhill) examines the role and function of violence and coercion in state-making, primarily from the viewpoint of nonstate actors, social institutions, and civil society, such as labor unions, indigenous communities, and a key informal political institution: clientelism. These distinctions are not set in stone, but serve as useful organizing devices. States “state,” and nowhere can practical languages of governance be heard more loudly, although not necessarily more effectively, than in the border regions of nation-states.153 Since key components of state-making (territorial control, monopolization of violence) are particularly necessary and more difficult to impose in border regions, violence is never far away, in the form of either conflicts with neighboring nation-states or intrastate conflicts between state and nonstate agents unwilling to surrender to an emerging central order. In this volume, David Shirk develops a framework for the changing dynamics among violence, state-making, borders, and the world system and examines how these played out historically in the U.S.-Mexican border region. In times of globalization and economic integration, the nature of border violence has changed substantially, due to the marked increase of transnational organized crime, the intensification of (illegal) migration, and the perverse effects of the socioeconomic and cultural transformation of border societies (violence against women). As major cities along the U.S.-Mexican border are now loci of the most vicious forms of violence, state responses on both sides have included policing, militarization, and the articulation of a transnational security agenda. From Matamoros-Brownsville to Tijuana-San Diego, the language of state-making is increasingly that of fences, arms, and securitization.154 The historical development of two core institutions of state coercion, the police and the army, and the complex relations between them are the subject of Chapter 3 by Diane Davis and Chapter 4 by Paul Gillingham. While the latter examines the shifting position of the army in provincial politics in the 1940s and 1950s, the former presents a longitudinal analysis of the meaning of Mexico City’s police forces in postrevolutionary state-making. An important finding is that the military maintained a strong influence on the police in the metropolitan area during most of the twentieth century. The significance of the police goes beyond its de facto coercive capacity, since from its inception during the armed phase of the revolution, policing was conceived as part of the project of statebuilding and political control. Furthermore—and this is Davis’s other core argument—the state’s dependence on the coercive functions of the police in political matters lies behind the latter’s freedom to incur in corruption and get away with it (impunity). Indeed, the police became a key

34

Introduction

source of violence, coercion, and crime.155 This last feature of the metropolitan police pushes it firmly into the gray zone of coercive state-society interactions. Looking at provincial Veracruz and Guerrero, Gillingham argues that rural Mexico remained a profoundly violent place during the 1940s and much of the 1950s, hence casting doubt upon the received wisdom of post-cardenista pacification and stability. Much of that local violence involved pistoleros, rural defense forces, and, most importantly, the army, which was heavily involved in policing a disorderly countryside. It is only around the mid-1950s that tangible changes in the degree of violence can be discerned due to the consolidation of alternative sources of state violence and presence. Military zone commanders saw their bargaining power reduced, although in some parts of Mexico this was of short duration, as the military returned to the provinces in the 1960s and 1970s to hunt down guerrilla forces. The rise to prominence of urban politicians, more sensitive to public opinion and less inclined to openly employ hard-nosed pistoleros, also altered the nature of violence. Gillingham speaks of a process of decentralization, through which governors and presidents had less direct (visible) involvement in acts of state violence than their predecessors. In these new circumstances, violence and killings became less evident, more suspicious, less explicit, more covert, pushing the use of state violence to the fringes of provincial politics and into the gray zone of state-making. There is wider evidence of efforts by the state, around 1950, to diminish the visibility and increase the deniability of direct involvement by the army in state-led repression, and to farm out the dirty work to private or semiprivate militias or intelligence agencies.156 The informalization of state violence in rural Mexico in the early 1950s also applies to urban areas. Clandestine connections between influential figures in positions of formal power and authority in Mexico City and youth gangs (porros) emerged in the mid-1950s as part of a government strategy to clamp down on student activism. This involved the covert financing by state authorities of systematic acts of violence, provocation, and intimidation against protesting students as well and the imposition of corrupt leaders. The government preferred to operate in the gray zone of porrismo (an extralegal tool of control and mediation), until this “innovative mechanism of control” faltered; only then did it turn to openly repressive measures by sending in the army to occupy Mexico City’s technological university.157 But the covert politics of porrismo could backfire. In the 1970s, a federal security agency apparently meddled with the investigation into the assassination of Carlos Ramírez Ladewig, who had controlled the ganglike Federación de Estudiantes de Guadalajara (FEG) and the entire

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university since the early 1950s. When it became clear that internal conflicts were behind the killing, the secret service was ordered to “find more convenient culprits,” so as not to jeopardize the regime’s political alliance with the FEG.158 This preference for extralegal methods (involving nonstate pistoleros, porros, and provocateurs) to ward off possible threats to political stability was most likely motivated by the fact that recourse to legal tools of coercion, such as the controversial law of social dissolution (1941), was “tantamount to admission that the government is unable to control the perceived threat by any other means.”159 Suits against opposition leaders on spurious grounds become costly public events, subject to scrutiny. Similarly, extralegal methods differ from root-and-branch repression and state terror.160 The covert use of violence in the cellars of the state (both figuratively and literally, such as in the Campo Militar Número Uno) also fits the regime’s ongoing concern to live up, at least to some extent, to its official revolutionary discourse of nationalism, social justice, and civilianism.161 These findings signal the historical development and significance of the gray zone in postrevolutionary state-making and control in Mexico, especially after World War II. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 deal explicitly with the gray zone, where official law enforcement agencies and violent, illicit, and/or criminal entrepreneurs meet and mesh. Alan Knight (Chapter 5) examines the evolution of the “incestuous relationship” between drug-trafficking and the state during the twentieth century. Governors in the 1920s and 1930s, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) after 1950, and políticos, police, and army during the entire period provided protection to narco interests in return for payoffs. The state controlled the drug business at a time when earnings were still relatively modest and violence was under control.162 However, after 1980, the geometry of the narco gray zone began to change: a substantial increase in the demand for drugs in the United States fostered turf wars between rival cartels in Mexico, a process aggravated by the diminishing political capacity of the Mexican federal state.163 Since then, Mexican drug-trafficking organizations have grown so powerful and their turf wars so ferocious that the state’s monopoly on violence has been seriously compromised, giving rise to criminal enclaves and a spectacular rise in narco-related lethal violence—all this in a sociocultural environment in which the cartels and their leaders appear to enjoy a modicum of genuine popular support. What were the major expressions and consequences of the decomposition of the state-narco pact, nurtured in the womb of the PRI-state? What are the main effects of organized crime eating its way into an increasingly weakened state and engaging in open, violent internal battles

36

Introduction

and against erstwhile protective law enforcement agencies? The main objective of Mónica Serrano’s contribution in Chapter 6 is to analyze the causal connections between patterns and types of violence, the changing structure of illicit markets, regulatory mechanisms, and the involvement of the state in all these areas. The most significant developments of the last twenty years have been the cartel-led privatization of violence and state-led militarization of counterdrug operations. Since 2000, the contradictions, limitations, and risks of this approach have become increasingly clear in terms of their operational complexity, failure to contain violence, human rights abuses, and threats to the rule of law and the country’s fragile democratic institutions. Looking at Mexico through the eyes of Colombian experiences with counter-drug-trafficking policies is instructive. Arrangements between state and illegal actors in the gray zone are not confined to the highly profitable and extremely violent world of drugtrafficking. In Chapter 7, José Carlos Aguiar examines how the long history of informal street vending as a source of political and economic revenue for the state in exchange for the protection of illicit undertakings has ventured into new territories, intimately connected to global neoliberalism. New global regulatory frameworks have created new illegal economies, pushing states into punitive and repressive actions against piracy of digital information carriers. The Fox administration launched an aggressive “war against piracy” that materialized in an exponential increase in police raids against market and street vendors, violence, riots, and arbitrary behavior by law enforcement agencies. Firsthand ethnographic material on Guadalajara’s largest market, however, demonstrates how such actions often peter out in preexisting “hidden” arrangements between criminal networks and police forces that sell complicity, information, and security. The gray zone is where madrinas (middlemen) embody the interface between policing and illegality, where contradictory discourses regarding (il)legality and (il)legitimacy coexist and coalesce, and where the application of coercion and violence is negotiated. At the society end of the axis (Figure 1.1), corporatist organizations played key roles as institutional mechanisms of exchange, economic redistribution, and political incorporation, without necessarily developing vigorous and durable popular legitimacy.164 As a typical expression of organized civil society, corporatism provided a mass base to the postrevolutionary regime, and as such became a key component of postrevolutionary state-making.165 However, Mexican corporatism entails not only its institutional capacity for mediation and integration; it is also established and sustained by coercion and violence. Chapter 8 by Marcos Aguila and Jeffrey Bortz demonstrates how during two critical conjunctures

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the state employed violence, first indirectly, then directly, to impose a labor regime that allowed workers to defend social and workplace rights within a framework of union leadership that was compliant to the state. In the 1920s, when “murder was the preferred political tool,” and the state was still overtly violent but also weak, it backed the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) that engaged in illegal strikes, assaults, and murders of rival union members, who fought back in the same way. With the CROM’s victory, the state gained access to, and enjoyed the support of, “subordinated” labor. The limits of union power under those corporatist rules become clear with the struggles of the railroad union in the 1940s and 1950s. From a considerably stronger position and presiding over an impressive industrialization process, state elites applied legal and extralegal measures to subdue restless unions and impose a co-opted leadership (charrismo). When this failed, they resorted to blunt military repression. Since then, corporatist arrangements have become sources of power for union caciques, who rarely hesitate to use coercive and violent means to rig internal elections, maintain factional control, oust contending groups, and gain access to economic spoils.166 For a good part of the twentieth century, Mexico’s corporatist system was functional for institutional mediation among labor, capital, and the state, and hence for the construction of a modicum of popular legitimacy and consent, but it achieved this in part through arm-twisting, covert coercion, and, when necessary, straightforward state violence. Corporatism speaks of labor laws, arbitration, and redistribution, but also of charros, porros, and pistoleros; that is, it simultaneously makes its presence felt in the zones of hegemony and coercion. This ambivalence is part of the state itself, whose “Weberian monopoly [on violence] has been compromised by recurrent illegitimate violence,” either covert state violence or privatized nonstate violence.167 At the core of corporatism and caciquismo, and, by extension, the state itself, lie patrimonialism, clientelism, and personalism, the politicalcultural and social institutions that form the heart of Kathy Powell’s sophisticated analysis in Chapter 9. Multiple forms of violence and coercion are integral to the relations of power that underwrite clientelist political practices, which have become important political resources at the disposal of the neoliberal project in confronting political-electoral opposition. Clientelistic networks and personalistic loyalties are not only popular problem-solving strategies or conduits for sociopolitical incorporation and integration; they are also deeply rooted in, and constituted by, symbolic and physical violence. Whereas some delve into its wider sociopolitical ramifications (Holden), Powell concentrates on the intricacies of clientelism and its consequences for citizenship, the rule of law, and coercion.

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Introduction

If entitlements are conditional on membership in hierarchically structured clientelist networks, those excluded will understand the value of “being connected,” while powerful patrons automatically obtain a coercive lever. All this is closely related to corruption, since the politically well-connected can “sell” cutting through red tape and bureaucratic indifference and find their way around the law. Impunity is not only deeply embedded in clientelist politics; it invests the powerful with “coercive capital.” Since clientelism, patrimonialism, and caciquismo are such pervasive phenomena, critical for the “mighty engine of state patronage,” and thus for statemaking, the implications of Powell’s analysis of the coercive and violent foundation of clientelism are far-reaching.168 They expose the dark side of the Centaur in a key Latin American political and social institution. In indigenous communities, the violent and coercive potential of clientelism and personalism, either inside community political structures or in community relations with outside agencies, forms part of the violence entrenched in ethnic hierarchies. The complex interconnections among violence, indigenous communities, and state-making are the subject of John Gledhill’s Chapter 10. His longitudinal analysis does not limit itself to violence against these communities, or to the destructive consequences of histories of violence. Instead, it enables us to see how contemporary indigenous communities have either survived or reconstituted themselves in a historical environment shaped by multiple forms of external violence, sometimes symbolic, sometimes brutally physical, but usually both. Yet these are also social worlds whose internal forms of social control and external projections of unity and harmony struggle to contain diverse forms of internal conflict, which can explode at moments of accelerated structural change. Looking at different regional settings in Mexico, Chapter 10 explores the linkages between violence from without and from within, including violence along lines of age, gender, and religion, and the ways in which symbolic, legal, and political constructions of indigenousness articulate with shifting political-economic conditions and forms of state-making. Gledhill’s analysis also highlights the extent to which indigenous people can become the aggressors in conflicts, along with the way in which creative selforganization has enabled many communities to come to terms with their contradictions. In Chapter 11, the last chapter, Kees Koonings investigates how the case of Mexico fits into wider Latin American scenarios of (new) violence and what this means for Mexican exceptionalism. For that purpose he first examines the concept of new violence and the principal armed or violent actors involved in present-day Latin America, and then develops a typology of three (ideal-typical) scenarios of new violence. Drawing on the other chapters in this volume, he uses the typology to comparatively

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understand and appraise contemporary violence in Mexico. Koonings concludes that cartel-cum-state-violence in present-day Mexico constitutes a scenario of new violence that conforms to broader Latin American trends, but also goes beyond it in several ways, thereby giving rise to a new mode of Mexican exceptionality.

PART TWO

Coercive Pillars of State-Making: Borders, Policing, and Army

chapter two

States, Borders, and Violence Lessons from the U.S.-Mexican Experience david a. shirk

; Borders literally define the modern nation-state, delineating the territorial extent of its monopoly on the means of coercion and the boundaries of national identity. Yet, physically situated at the fringes of the state, borders also constitute a zone of ambiguity where a state’s identity and authority are frequently challenged. A state’s borderlands—the surrounding areas identified with a particular border—often blend national identities and economies. In times of war, intruders must penetrate territorial borders, the epidermal layer of the state, to attack its nucleus and core elements. Indeed, even in times of peace, borderlands frequently suffer from violence, insecurity, and lawlessness because the state’s coercive authority and control are constantly challenged and subverted by transnational forces. Understanding the forms and phases of violence associated with different “border regimes” requires a careful examination of the evolution of the state and of interstate relationships. The processes of early state formation and expansion are naturally associated with interstate violence and threats to state sovereignty. Emerging states seek, and eventually find, the limits of their territorial and coercive capacity through confrontations with other states. Yet, with their gradual consolidation, neighboring states often confront new and different forms of violence that are related to greater social, economic, political, and cultural integration. These forms of violence also significantly challenge the state’s coercive capacity, and tend to be particularly severe in neighboring states with major economic disparities. This chapter examines the theoretical dimensions of the state in relation to its borders, with a special focus on the U.S.-Mexican border. Of

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particular interest are the ways in which border violence illustrates the manifestations, development, and limits of state power. In recent years, in addition to violent criminal activity by drug cartels and transnational gangs, the U.S.-Mexican borderlands have exhibited specific forms of border violence that include street-level gang violence, robbery, violence and hate crimes against immigrants, and various forms of brutality against women. As I discuss below, U.S. and Mexican state responses to these phenomena frequently have been hamfisted, largely ineffectual, and sometimes contributory to the maladies affecting the border region. Hence, the key question facing both the United States and Mexico, and states in general, is how to respond to these transborder problems in ways that move beyond unilateral and primarily border-focused solutions. I argue that, in order to better manage contemporary border violence, neighboring countries must work to reduce the asymmetries between them by effectively leveraging and embracing the same processes of integration that seem to be undermining the state.

theorizing states, borders, and violence Scholars have long engaged in important debates about the nature of the state and its security functions. Notably, Max Weber’s classic discourse “Politics as a Vocation” described the state as the primary object of politics, and the organization that controls a “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”1 The Weberian model of the state tends to emphasize the manner in which its coercive functions maintain order in society. In a complementary conceptualization of the state, the Westphalian model emphasizes the state’s use of coercion as a means of maintaining power and sovereignty in the larger system of states.2 Together, these two conceptions present a vision of the state as Janus-faced, looking inward and outward, in which there is a critical relationship between states, their borders, and the use of violence.3 A state’s efforts to establish its domain and secure itself from unwanted intrusion—through the use or threat of violence to defend its borders—are clearly among its core functions, and critical to state power and sovereignty. Indeed, while a state’s sovereignty may be diminished without crossing its borders, its borders cannot be violated without challenging its monopoly on coercive force and, therefore, its sovereignty.4 Yet, despite the fundamental importance ascribed to borders as a component of state power, sovereignty, and security, studies of the state have long tended to neglect borders and borderlands.5 Meanwhile, although

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the larger dynamics of the global system are often implicit in their research, border experts tend to focus more narrowly on a specific context. As a result, their work is not well represented in the general scholarly discourse on states and transnationalism. Given the need for a more integrated approach, several scholars have worked to theorize the relationship and changing dynamics between borders, the state, and the world system. Two major lines of inquiry in border studies are of particular utility. First, the scholarly literature has developed various classifications and typologies for understanding border modalities, offering a useful framework for theorizing different “border regimes.” Second, another recent body of literature on borders has emphasized the paradoxical nature of border security arrangements in an era of liberalized trade and integrated political arrangements. Both provide useful theoretical frameworks that must be brought together to understand the nature of border violence, a manifestation of coercive force and use of power that is particular to a state’s territorial boundaries and may involve intrastate conflict, local or cross-border conflict among nonstate actors, and clashes between state and society. Typologizing Border Regimes Generally speaking, typologies of border relationships tend to focus mainly on the chronological periodization of events over time in specific border contexts. For example, historian David Lorey offers a temporal characterization of the development of the U.S.-Mexico border region, distinguishing between its early “frontier” period (1803–21), its “borderlands” period (1821–48), and its “border” period (1848–present).6 Lorey’s classification essentially corresponds to the development of the particular relations between Mexico and the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century.7 In another examination of the evolution of the U.S.-Mexico border context, Tony Payan offers an alternative periodization to develop a typology for how different border regimes evolve, using a different set of time periods based on the security challenges involved at each phase.8 As these examples illustrate, efforts at periodization tend to focus narrowly on a particular historical fact pattern in a given border context or thematic area. While useful for a particular context or theme, this approach does not lend itself to a generalizable theory of border relationships. Oscar Martinez provides useful guidance for moving in this direction.9 For Martinez, border relationships typically fit into one of four typologies reflecting progressively integrated modes of political interaction between conjoined states:

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1. Alienated borderlands: Borders that suffer from significant political and territorial conflicts between two or more neighboring states, which may still be in a process of nation-building and military expansionism. 2. Coexistent borderlands: Borders between neighboring states that generally recognize and respect each other’s sovereignty, and where cordial international relationships develop. 3. Interdependent borderlands: Borders between neighboring nation-states that recognize the mutual benefits to be gained through binational cooperation, and achieve significant openness in cross-border relations.10 4. Integrated borderlands: Borders between neighboring nation-states that have surrendered a significant degree of sovereignty in favor of gains from trade, economies of scale, and greater social, cultural, legal, and political assimilation. According to Martinez, progress through these four types of border regimes has been generally linear and progressive (especially in Europe and parts of the Americas), thanks to the historical transformation of the nation-state, changes in the nature of warfare (e.g., technology), and increased economic interdependence.11 However, Martinez also notes that, in places where state-formation remains inchoate or problematic, border relationships have been more hostile, especially in contemporary Africa, the Middle East, and some post-Soviet republics. His framework is therefore very useful for developing a “border regime” theory that fits nicely into the larger literature on international relations, and helps to envision borders as a prism to study the state’s changing nature, behavior, and relationships within the world system. For purposes of this discussion two key points must be emphasized: (1) the process of state-formation weighs heavily in determining the nature of relationships between neighboring states, and (2) border relations are thereafter shaped by the course of a state’s development and evolving relationships in the international system. First, it is necessary to consider the period of border relations that corresponds with the initial formation of one or more adjacent nation-states. Thus, adapting Martinez’s model, I include a “nascent” phase as the foundation of border relationships (see Table 2.1), identifying the point at which a state lays claim to (or is assigned) its territorial boundaries. This nascent phase is crucial because it is the point at which a state first tests the limits of its ability to secure a monopoly on coercive force in its defined territory. As a result, in this phase, there are often significant clashes between states—and between states and nonstate entities—that may challenge or fundamentally alter

table 2.1

Inchoate or emerging states based on topography and/or national affinity. Possible separation or emersion from imperialist arrangements.

Still forming, as nation-states establish sovereignty, forge individual national identities, and consolidate territorial control.

Frontiers poorly defined and therefore subject to either expansion or annexation.

Characteristics of the state

Nature of relationship between neighboring states

Border policy context

Nascent

Heavy militarization of nation-state borders and rigid controls over cross-border traffic and trade.

Serious political conflicts (nationalist, religious, cultural, ethnic, or ideological).

One or more political entities in the early stages of nation-state formation, or regime transformation.

Alienated

Reduced militarization of nation-state borders and greater interaction across borders, with significant controls remaining.

Recognition and respect of each other’s sovereignty; significant reduction of lingering tensions and antagonisms between states; development of cordial international relationships.

Consolidated nation-state with strong expression of nationalist identity and state sovereignty.

Coexistent

Significant areas of cooperation and openness in border controls, with possible tensions in areas of asymmetry.

Recognition of mutual benefits of relationship; ability to identify and realize significant areas of cooperation.

Well-established nation-state with significant potential gains from cooperation with other states.

Interdependent

Typology of Border Relationships from State Formation to Greater Regional Integration

(continued)

Fading or dissolution of previously existing border controls, and transference of “border” functions to external perimeter of integrated states.

Recognition of mutual benefits of surrendering sovereignty in favor of gains from trade, economies of scale, and greater social, political, and cultural assimilation.

Nation-state sovereignty and national identity superseded by higher-level political affiliations

Integrated

U.S.-Spain/Mexico borders (1789–1848)

Eritrea-Ethiopia border

Historical examples

Contemporary examples

source: Adapted from Martinez (1998).

Civil wars and wars of separation, which may result in violent conflict in both the interior and at the fringes of an emerging state; lack of state control in border zones, which contributes to “frontier” tensions and violence.

Modes of border violence

Nascent

Israel-Palestine border Iraq-Saudi Arabia border

U.S.-Mexico border (1848–76)

Full-scale war, intermittent violent conflict, and cross-border transgressions, especially in defining the territorial dimensions of the nation-state; “frontier” violence where state authority remains weak.

Alienated

Bolivia-Chile border

U.S.-Canada border

U.S.-Mexico border (1964–present)

Frameworks for collaboration on law enforcement and security help to reduce international conflict; in asymmetrical border contexts, transnational crime and violence as crossborder flows of goods, people and capital increase.

Mutual recognition of nation-state boundaries, despite lingering tensions or resentments. Significant reduction of border conflict and intervention. State capacity to establish internal order begins to reduce lawlessness and “frontier” violence at border. U.S.-Mexico border (1876–1964)

Interdependent

Coexistent

(continued)

table 2.1

European Union

United States (1789–present)

Preexisting tensions and violence (e.g., Basque separatist violence) absorbed within larger regional perimeter; “transnational” violence takes new dimensions (e.g. Islamic terrorism).

Integrated

States, Borders, and Violence

49

border relationships, including violent interstate conflict, wars of separation and irredentism, and other serious challenges to state capacity. Later, as states become more consolidated, their exercise of coercive force in borderlands is gradually reduced. Assuming that there is progress from mere coexistence toward greater interdependence and integration, this changes the nature of violence affecting borderlands. The second major point relevant to this discussion is that the direction and pace of progress toward (or away from) more integrated border relations depend upon the character and development of the nation-state. Naturally, disparities and differences that exist between neighboring states—with regard to power or national identity—tend to greatly influence the character of their binational and border relationships.12 Meanwhile, the evolution of the state—especially internal transformations of governance arrangements, or regimes, within the state—greatly affects its behavior in the international arena and with regard to neighboring states. Historically, such transformations have tended to occur over a relatively prolonged period of time. Yet major shifts in border modalities can occur relatively quickly, as in cases of rapid regime change within one or more bordering states that may fundamentally alter the probability of tensions or violence at the territorial fringes of a state.13 In terms of our inquiry into the relationships between states, borders, and violence, it follows that reduced conflict between neighboring states may contribute to a significant reduction of coercive force and corresponding violence by the state. However, this is not to say that higher levels of interdependence between neighboring states necessarily result in a reduction of violence. Rather, as suggested in Table 2.1, the nature and sources of violence change, in some cases as a direct result of the increasing openness, cooperation, and interdependence between states. The result is the evident paradox that globalization and regional integration have been accompanied by heightened border security and violence in many parts of the world. The Paradoxes of Globalized Border Regimes Scholarly works focused on the phenomenon of globalization offer useful insights into states, their borders, and violence. From the outset of the current wave of globalization, numerous studies and proclamations suggested that a new “borderless” world was emerging. Early scholarly explorations tended to emphasize, and largely embrace, the idea that the trend toward globalization offered new paradigms that would undermine—or make less relevant—the nation-state. Three aspects of globalization were considered key: capital mobility, economic liberalization, and technological

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progress. First, a host of regulatory changes in the 1970s and 1980s allowed unprecedented capital mobility and institutional investment, and substantially weakened states’ unilateral macro-economic controls (e.g., management of foreign exchange rates).14 Second, the restructuring and opening of domestic economies to international trade unleashed global market forces far more powerful than individual nation-states.15 Third, the proliferation of advanced technologies—computers, a wide range of software applications, the Internet, and wireless communications—and new business models allowed more productive and efficient operations (including faster communications and more effective supply-chain management) that extended well beyond the confines of the nation-state.16 This new reality offered unprecedented flexibility and opportunities to nonstate actors, and led Naisbitt (1994) to declare that “the bigger the world economy, the more powerful its smallest players.”17 In many ways, the early literature on globalization proved extraordinarily prescient. Globalization has indeed dramatically transformed the world economy, greatly enhanced and expanded innovation and productivity, and empowered nonstate actors in exciting new ways. However, many globalization boosters neglected the significant challenges presented by the new global reality, the resilience of the nation-state as an organizational model, and the manifestation of global tensions in the borderlands of the supposedly borderless world. Two problematic aspects of globalization are of particular relevance to this discussion. First, the same factors that have boosted legitimate economic activity have also benefited the “illicit economy.”18 Small, highly flexible, and loosely constructed global networks of criminals and terrorists can now share information, transfer and launder funds, and ensure “just in time” deliveries of contraband with astounding agility.19 Hence, in a “flatter,” “borderless” world, illicit nonstate actors can outmaneuver and even challenge states, using the same financial and physical infrastructure, technologies, and organizational models of globalization, as made painfully obvious by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.20 Some states have responded to the new “borderless” world, ironically, with stricter and more militarized territorial controls, even though such approaches are not necessarily effective in combating either transnational organized crime or terrorism. Indeed, well before 9/11, a number of scholars identified this contradiction, pointing out how global economic forces and political incentives have influenced state efforts to reduce illicit transnational flows of goods and people by militarizing border security and contributing to an inherently hostile environment—with imagery of barbed wire, fencing, and armed government patrols—that exacerbates violence in the borderlands (e.g., minor cross-border clashes

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between security forces, accidental deaths of migrants evading border controls, and excessive use of lethal force against borderland populations).21 According to Andreas (2001), heightened border security provides a highly visible indication that governments are “doing something” to address the challenges of globalization, even though these efforts are largely ineffective.22 A second set of contradictions of the new global reality relates to the processes of social and economic transformation experienced along with globalization. While the forces of globalization are thought to be great “levelers”—allowing all the players on the world stage to compete on more equal footing—globalization has been accompanied by increased economic inequality, both within and between states.23 The new global economy encourages free flows of goods and capital that can undermine domestic labor forces in uncompetitive sectors, but ironically discourages free flows of labor in order to protect domestic labor.24 Globalization facilitates the dissemination of culture and ideas—establishing a kind of common world identity based on multinational corporate branding, shared consumption patterns, and popular entertainment—provoking mixed reactions, cultural identity crises, and the “clash of civilizations.”25 Perhaps nowhere are such global paradoxes more apparent than in the borderlands of economically disparate and culturally dissimilar states. The transformative processes that accompany increased social and economic integration between two states can contribute to an increase in violent and socially destructive behavior in borderlands.26 Class and ethnic inequalities, inequitable workplace arrangements, changing gender and family dynamics, differing customs and norms of lawful conduct, cross-cultural animosities, and other points of friction tend to manifest themselves more deeply in the borderlands between two culturally different and economically unequal societies. This, in a context of heightened integration, contributes to greater social strife and violence in and across the borderlands, including attacks against immigrants; labor exploitation and human trafficking; forced prostitution, spousal abuse, and other violence against women; gang violence; and clashes with law enforcement. Certainly, these patterns may vary widely depending on local context. However, the point here is to emphasize the sometimes paradoxical and adverse effects of integrative processes in border regions. Perhaps no other land border relationship in the world so clearly reflects these processes, or the evolving nature of border violence, as that between the United States and Mexico. For this reason, the next section considers the transformation of border relations between these two countries from the period of early state formation to the present.

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violence and the state in the u.s.- mexican border context Since its early frontier days, the U.S.-Mexico border region has been viewed as a violent and lawless place. It was the setting for the clash of native and Western civilizations, conflicts between European imperialist powers, and the nineteenth-century remapping of North America in the quest for manifest destiny. Even today, after decades of prosperous growth and significant economic integration, the U.S.-Mexico border region conjures visions of smugglers, violent criminals, and fugitives from justice. In the sections below, I retrace the course of the border’s development according to the model of border relations outlined above, and with regard to the paradoxes presented by contemporary border security challenges. I argue that in order to explain contemporary problems of violence, we must consider the way that economic integration has affected the border region and develop transnational solutions to transnational problems. Nascent Violence in the U.S.-Spain/Mexico Frontier (1789–1848) Following from the earlier theoretical discussion, there are two major forms of violence characteristic of nascent border regions: violence resulting from a void of state control (e.g., raids by “barbarous” forces, banditry, and vigilante justice) and violence resulting from actions by states attempting to secure a monopoly on the means of coercion (such as wars for territorial expansion or defense). Indeed, early forms of violence in the U.S.-Mexican frontier were shaped by the process of building and consolidating the nation-state, as the construction and expansion of the state sought to establish its domain and bring order to “lawless” territories. The repression, expulsion, and elimination of indigenous populations in these territories (as well as retaliatory attacks by native peoples) provided a stark illustration of the Weberian expression of the state, and perhaps the most violent era in the history of the U.S.-Mexico frontier and contemporary border region. Native people violently resisted encroachment by the Spanish colonizers who began to enter the contemporary U.S.-Mexico border region in the sixteenth century, as well as subsequent efforts to settle the area by Mexican settlers after 1821 and the westward expansion of Anglos into the region beginning in the 1830s. While it is difficult to know the original population of the contemporary border region, by the 1840s an esti-

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mated 200,000 native people remained in the area.27 Throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century, U.S. and Mexican forces worked together to combat native resistance. This provided both nascent states important opportunities to train and develop large, experienced standing armies in the frontier region. The U.S. and Mexican militaries therefore developed as a significant expression of state power, both in asserting Weberian territorial control and in defending Westphalian sovereignty. Indeed, the two militaries would next direct these capacities to the violent interstate conflict that established the present-day U.S.-Mexican border. State Conflict, Alienation, and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Border (1848–1876) The strongest expression of Westphalian state-versus-state violence between the United States and Mexico was the clash over territorial control of the relatively untamed western regions of North America from 1845 to 1848. The origins of the U.S.-Mexican War (still known in Mexico as the War of North American Invasion) are found in Texas. At the invitation of the Mexican government, Anglo settlers began to occupy Mexico’s northern territories. As a small group, the Anglos posed little threat to Mexican interests, but by the 1830s, they outnumbered Mexicans five to one. Mexican suppression of Anglo calls for independence, and the violent suppression of an Anglo insurgency in 1835 led to the capture of the Mexican president Santa Anna, the negotiation of Texan independence in 1836, and eventually the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845.28 By May 1846, with tensions over the delineation of the newly established border, U.S. forces led by General Zachary Taylor entered disputed territory, provoking a hostile response from Mexican forces. Claiming that Mexico had invaded U.S. territory, U.S. President James Polk declared war on Mexico and the two armies battled over the location of their countries’ shared border. The United States steadily advanced into Mexican territory from the north and east, through the Gulf port of Veracruz. After a bloody battle that left a number of military and civilian casualties, U.S. forces made their way to Mexico City.29 In the end, after a war that cost nearly 14,000 U.S. soldiers’ and an unknown numbers of Mexican lives, Mexico was forced to surrender and accept the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ceded approximately one third of Mexico’s northern territory to the United States in exchange for $15 million in war indemnities.30 Furthermore, to the dismay of Mexicans and at the expense of Mexico, a nominal dispute over the border

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ultimately established the United States as the larger and more powerful of the two countries.31 Coexistence on the U.S.-Mexico Border (1876–1964) Ties between Mexico and the United States improved dramatically after 1876. In part, the relationship benefited from the fading of animosities over the U.S.-Mexican War. Yet also important was the rise to power of General Porfirio Díaz, who was viewed by U.S. officials as a tremendous ally because of his efforts to secure domestic order—including efforts to subdue the indigenous people of Mexico’s northern frontier— and promote economic growth through expanded trade with the United States and other Western powers. As documented in U.S. author John K. Turner’s 1908 book Barbarous Mexico, Díaz did not hesitate to use the military, rural police, secret police (acordadas), and even death squads to assert the state’s power to impose order.32 Dissidents and other rebellious or uncooperative elements in the border region became the unenviable targets of state-sponsored repression.33 Díaz was particularly unmerciful in his repression of a Yaqui rebellion (1876–10) in the northeastern state of Sonora; thousands of captives were deported to their enslavement and rapid demise in Yucatán and Quintana Roo.34 With the benefit of newfound stability, Díaz could implement his plan to modernize Mexico. The United States played a particularly important role in this regard, accounting for a majority of foreign investment from 1876 to 1910 and buying the lion’s share of Mexican exports. A dramatic increase in capital modernized most sectors of the Mexican economy, but especially those most targeted by foreigners: infrastructure, mining, and commercialized agriculture. Thanks to these developments, Mexico’s economy boomed and became significantly more integrated into the overall world economy, with exports expanded to nearly ten times their value from the start of the Porfiriato (and imports increased by nearly six times their value).35 While the Porfirian growth model enabled Mexico to be viewed as a better partner for the United States, the internal inequalities it produced eventually led to the breakdown of the Porfirian state. A major social revolution erupted in northern Mexico in 1910, as the border provided a haven and launching point for antiPorfirian forces, and spread throughout the country over most of the next decade. From 1910 to 1917, the revolution mobilized hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children, resulting in at least 1.5 million deaths (more than one in ten Mexicans), two brief U.S. invasions (in Chihuahua and Veracruz), the elimination of entire towns and hundreds of schools,

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and the devastation of the Mexican economy. Over the course of several decades, the consolidation of a new regime was made possible through the eventual formation of a single, dominant political party that pulled together a heterogeneous coalition—the “revolutionary family”—of farmers, workers, military leaders, and professionals.36 The reconstruction of the Mexican state brought significant tensions with the United States, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s when Mexican leaders experimented with revolutionary ideologies that threatened U.S. economic interests. However, from the 1940s onward, Mexico’s closer alignment to the United States on economic, political, and security matters was facilitated initially by Mexico’s formal alignment with the United States during World War II and its less formalized support for the U.S. agenda during the Cold War. To be sure, Mexico sought to maintain a relative degree of independence from the United States on certain positions related to regional political and security issues (e.g., the Bay of Pigs and the election of Salvador Allende). Yet, in most respects, the relationship was cooperative and illustrative of the progress made between the two neighboring countries toward a status of friendly coexistence. At the border, both countries identified areas of bilateral collaboration on important fronts that laid a foundation for future cooperation. One notable collaborative effort was the Bracero Program, in which the U.S. and Mexican governments established a Mexican guest-worker program that provided special visas for manual laborers from 1942 to 1964. Despite its serious flaws, the Bracero Program provided an option for free flows of labor across the border to accommodate the demand for labor in U.S. agriculture and industry. The termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 was accompanied by a major shift in U.S. immigration policy, and new efforts to promote industrial development in the border region. Soon after, the U.S. Congress approved the Family Reunification Act, which radically changed the criteria for immigration to the United States by emphasizing family connections as a basis for residency and citizenship. Without special provisions to accommodate Mexican laborers, tens of thousands of Braceros began the exodus back to Mexico via the border. Meanwhile, in preparation for their return, Mexico’s government initiated the Border Industrialization Program (BIP), which created special production zones along the northern Mexican border for the assembly of imported parts for manufactured goods in plants known as maquiladoras. The special form of “in-bond” manufacturing enticed producers by allowing duty-free import of unassembled parts, and taxing only the value added by relatively inexpensive Mexican labor. Together, these two major changes set the stage for an era

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of restricted integration, where relatively free flows of goods and capital have been contrasted by significant restrictions on cross-border labor flows. In this context, the nature of violence in the U.S.-Mexican border region has changed dramatically, as U.S. and Mexican authorities have grappled with the social consequences of industrialization and other challenges of increased integration. Integration on the U.S.-Mexico Border (1964–present) In terms of violence at the border, the era of U.S.-Mexico integration has been accompanied by two identifiable trends. On the one hand, localized patterns of violent crime and institutionalized violence have accompanied the industrialization and integration of the border region since the 1960s. On the other hand, since the 1980s, intense violence related to transnational crime—especially drug-trafficking—has accompanied Mexico’s opening to the global economy and especially its integration with the United States. State responses in both countries to these trends have frequently resulted in the ineffectual and even illegitimate exercise of the state’s coercive force, often exacerbating the problem of violence in the border region and occasionally contributing to avoidable intrastate tensions. In other words, as forecasted by the literature on globalization, the new era of integration presents special challenges that undermine states’ ability to exercise their core functions. However, as I discuss later, the course toward more effective state control in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands can be found in increased cross-border collaboration to address the challenges of integration. First, it is important to consider the way that the border region’s industrialization and increased regional integration after 1964 have contributed to new patterns of violence in society. Journalistic portrayals of border violence regularly feature the worst aspects of such violence: U.S. tourists robbed by Mexican police and bandits, street gang violence on either side of the border, young women sexually assaulted on spring break vacations, hate crimes committed against migrants and Latinos, and the like. Also prominent in the popular consciousness of border life are the mysterious “femicides”—killings of hundreds of women—in Ciudad Juárez in recent years. Underlying these various forms of violent crime are numerous changes that have radically transformed both sides of the border in recent decades. Rapid postwar industrialization fueled the economic expansion, population growth, and urbanization of Northern Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. The transformation of gender roles in workplaces and households in Mexico and the United States has altered family structures and approaches

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to child care. Long-standing patterns of migration to both U.S. and Mexican border cities grew more intense over the 1990s, bringing greater numbers of itinerant people and foreign-language speakers to both sides of the border. While none of these trends are unique to the border region, the confluence of these major changes is perhaps particular to the border region, and has broad social implications that likely factor in various ways into the patterns of border violence in recent decades. However, there is considerable ambiguity about how significantly and in what ways these major social changes relate to patterns of criminality and violence in the border region. Despite popular impressions and much scholarly debate on the topic, there is no clear correlation between immigration and crime (and some studies suggest that immigrants have lower-than-average rates of crime).37 Also, U.S. border communities themselves generally boast relatively low rates of crime, with some important exceptions (like auto theft).38 One clear challenge for U.S.-Mexican border communities is that the region is characterized by enormous inequalities, across and on both sides of the border. Wage and wealth differentials are gaping across the border. Also, as Anderson and Gerber note, while northern Mexican border states have lower rates of poverty and inequality in relation to the national average in Mexico, “poverty is a fact of life on both sides of the border . . . and income inequality along the border [has been] worsening over time.”39 These trends are problematic because inequality and violence are likely responsible at least in part for patterns of criminality and violence in border communities. The economic challenges faced by border communities may have other implications in terms of the resources available to public officials that provide law enforcement and security. U.S. cities and counties on the border often have budgets several times the size of comparable local administrative units (municipios) in Mexico. Moreover, law enforcement and security forces in Mexico often lack the resources and the capacity to adequately address violent crime; the result is not only a high degree of criminal impunity but also pervasive corruption in law enforcement. While the United States is not exempt from these problems, the difference is that Mexican police officers who attempt to enforce the law are much more likely to end up dead. A second major trend in border violence in the era of U.S.-Mexican integration is related to the expansion of the illicit global economy for drugs, weapons, people, and other contraband. As elsewhere in Latin America, in the 1970s and 1980s, Mexico experienced serious economic difficulties, as a result of shortsighted domestic policies (e.g., deficit spending, mismanaged deregulation, and severe currency devaluations) and international trends (e.g., fluctuating interest rates, speculative foreign

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capital investment, and expanded trade flows).40 Amid heightened unemployment and uncertainty, the global economy extended its invisible hand to a diversified network of illicit entrepreneurs and producers, and innovators. Mexico’s expanding informal sector—by some estimates accounting for 40 percent of all employment and economic activity— included the proliferation of street vendors, pirate taxis, and a burgeoning market for “secondhand” goods stolen from local sources (e.g., auto parts and electronics).41 Yet the most lucrative opportunities were found in drug-trafficking. Increases in U.S. consumption of certain illicit psychotropic substances (especially cocaine) in the 1970s and tougher counterdrug efforts in Colombia and the Gulf of Mexico shifted production and trafficking routes to Mexico in the 1980s. While Mexico had been a longtime source of marijuana, opium, and synthetic drugs for the U.S. market, its rise as a transit point for cocaine created lucrative new employment opportunities for a multitude of pilots, drivers, and logistics experts; lookouts (halcones), enforcers, and professional hit men; accountants and financial experts; and top-level cartel executives in the drug trade. Today, there are perhaps 450,000 people in Mexico who rely in some significant way on drugtrafficking as a source of income, and official estimates suggest that drugtrafficking activities now account for 2 to 3 percent of Mexico’s more than $1 trillion GDP.42 Because of its critical importance as a transit point into the United States, many of these networks and activities have been concentrated in the border region. In the early twentieth century, Mexico had been an important but low-level supplier of drugs to the United States, notably for products like marijuana and opium that were homegrown in places like the “Golden Triangle” where the northern states of Durango, Chihuahua, and Sinaloa meet. In the 1970s, increased consumption of cocaine led to the rise of powerful drug cartels in Colombia. During the heyday of the Colombian cartels, most Andean product was moved into the United States via the Gulf of Mexico to Miami. In the 1980s, smugglers with roots in Sinaloa or elsewhere in Northern Mexico took advantage of long-established smuggling routes from Mexico into the United States to forge alliances with Colombian drug traffickers. By the 1990s, with Colombia’s cartels in decline, Mexican drug traffickers emerged as the main suppliers of the multibillion-dollar U.S. drug market. The shift to Mexico as a major drug supplier for the United States was made possible and accelerated by the larger process of economic integration between the two countries. The same physical, financial, and technological infrastructure that created opportunities for legitimate businesses in the 1980s and 1990s also benefited transnational organized crime net-

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works reaching from Mexico into the United States, and undermined interdiction efforts.43 Hence, critics who proclaimed that economic integration would lead to a “NAFTA train” of drugs and illegal immigration into the United States appear to have been right.44 The border thus became the conduit for both legal and illegal flows, with organized crime— particularly drug-trafficking—constituting a major cause of violence in the region. Early on, violence was not nearly as severe as it became in the late 1990s and into the 2000s. Initially, Mexican drug traffickers enjoyed tremendously profitable operations, an enormous degree of impunity, and minimal competition among illicit firms, thanks in part to highly centralized and often corrupt governance by Mexico’s long-ruling party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Frequently, Mexican traffickers obtained “commissions” (or “plazas”) to control specific territories and distribution routes, often with the support of corrupt government officials at very high levels (who were paid substantial bribes). Such arrangements established unwritten rules for an unregulated industry, helping avert conflict and allowing business to flourish. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, a number of factors contributed to greater competition and violence among Mexico’s drugtrafficking organizations. Greater political decentralization and democratic competition disrupted established power structures and bargains, contributing to new frictions and clashes among traffickers. Meanwhile, the drug-trafficking industry faced newfound pressures due to volatility in U.S. drug consumption (shrinking demand), increased border interdiction (greater costs for traffickers), fluctuating drug prices (lower profits), growing domestic demand in Mexico (new markets), and more substantial efforts to crack down on organized crime (government intervention). The first major schisms among Mexican drug-trafficking organizations started in the early 1990s, as four main groups emerged as the country’s predominant wholesale traffickers of drugs, with bases in the major transit and production zones of northern Mexico: Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, Sinaloa, and the Gulf of Mexico (see Table 2.2). These four main drug-trafficking organizations—commonly called “cartels”—rose to prominence after the 1989 arrest of Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, then Mexico’s most notorious drug trafficker.45 These cartels vied against each other with growing intensity in the late 1990s and early 2000s for the reasons noted above. In particular, encroachment by the Sinaloa cartel into the territories of its rivals—and conflicts with some of its former allies—contributed to enormous nationwide increases in violence, with especially concentrated effects along the border.

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Coercive Pillars of State-Making table 2.2 Major Mexican Drug Cartels

Name

Leaders and Top Lieutenants

Description

Tijuana cartel / Arellano Felix Organization (AFO)

• Benjamin Arellano Felix (arrested in 2002) • Ramon Arellano Felix (killed in 2002) • F. Eduardo Arellano Felix F. Javier Arellano Felix (arrested in 2006) • Enedina Arellano Felix

Controls marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and synthetic drugs smuggling in Tijuana; responsible for hundreds of killings (including prosecutors and police).

Juárez cartel

• Vicente Carrillo Fuentes • Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza Moreno • Ricardo Garcia Urquiza (arrested in 2005)

One of Mexico’s most powerful organizations; pioneered air smuggling routes into the United States; became fractionalized after the death of its leader, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

Gulf cartel

• Osiel Cárdenas Guillén (extradited in 2007) • Antonio “Tony” Esquiel Cárdenas Guillén • Jorge “El Coss” Eduardo Costilla

Became consolidated in the 1980s, but suffered schisms in the 1990s; under Osiel Cárdenas, recruited highly trained military defectors known as “Los Zetas.”

Sinaloa cartel

• Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman Loera • Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada Garcia • Ignacio “El Nacho” Coronel Villarreal (killed in 2010) • Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza Moreno

Began in the 1970s, and gradually challenged the Gulf and Tijuana cartels in the late 1990s; has pulled together a coalition known as the “Federation” or “Golden Triangle Alliance.”

Initially, this violence primarily targeted members of Mexican drugtrafficking organizations, and appeared to obey a certain code of conduct. Generally speaking, traffickers targeted each other and, to a lesser extent, their families. In 1989, one trafficker’s wife was killed and her decapitated head was reportedly delivered to him in a box.46 On a September night in Baja California in 1998, a family of eighteen—including women and children—was lined up and executed.47 Such examples seemed extreme in the 1990s, but now pale in comparison to the brutal violence that followed in the 2000s, with hundreds of decapitations, tens of thousands

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States, Borders, and Violence 18,000

15,273

16,000 14,000 12,000 9,614

10,000 8,000

6,837

6,000 4,000

1,776 2,221 2,000 1,080 1,230 1,290 1,304 -

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2,826

2007

2008

2009

2010

figure 2.1 Drug-Related Killings in Mexico, 2000–2010 source: Viridiana Ríos and David Shirk, Drug Violence in Mexico: Data and Analysis Through 2010, San Diego: Trans-Border Institute, 2011 (Note: 2001–2006 data are from CNDH figures and 2007 to 2010 from the Office of the Mexican President database).

slaughtered, and indescribable acts of cruelty and torture enacted on a daily basis. This violence has grown exponentially, with a total of 6,680 drug-related killings from 2001 to 2005, and more than 36,000 killings in the latter half of the decade (see Figure 2.1). Nearly half of this violence was concentrated in states and cities in Northern Mexico or directly adjacent to the border. As violence escalated in 2008, the border city of Ciudad Juárez—the site of clashes between the Juárez and Sinaloa cartels—was described by journalists and scholars as a “drug war zone,” the “homicide capital of the world,” or simply “murder city.” Neighboring the U.S. border town of El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez is a sprawling industrial city whose export-driven economy struggled in the early 2000s due to economic decline in the United States and increased trade competition from China. Organized crime groups in Ciudad Juárez, a city of just over a million inhabitants, were responsible for more than 2,200 murders in 2009 and 2,700 murders in 2010, which each year exceeded the combined annual totals for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Meanwhile, violence also spiked in other parts of the border region that were once relatively calm, notably Baja California, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

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U.S. officials initially responded to these trends with public admonition of Mexico’s insufficient efforts in the war on drugs. In 2005, U.S. border governors Bill Richardson and Janet Napolitano of New Mexico and Arizona, respectively, declared states of emergency along their southern borders and called for Mexico to do more to control drug-trafficking and border violence. U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza issued two State Department warnings for visitors traveling to Mexico, and subsequently closed the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo in what Garza described as a U.S. effort to “punish” Mexico for its failure to control the drug situation.48 Such repudiations belie long-standing U.S. concerns about Mexico’s evolution as a major drug-trafficking conduit, and a number of high-profile setbacks that have seriously undermined U.S.-Mexican collaboration over the past two decades: the torture and murder of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena in 1985 due to alleged Mexican corruption, the discovery of the high-level corruption of Mexican drug tsar Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo in 1997, and the defection of elite military officers who formed the Gulf cartel enforcer-group known as the “Zetas” in 2001. In the 2000s, however, U.S.-Mexico collaboration on security matters has shown signs of improvement, and relatively fewer major setbacks. Notwithstanding the temporary prohibition of extraditions in cases bearing a life sentence from 2001 to 2006, the number of extraditions from Mexico to the United States grew rapidly thereafter. Indeed, during the later part of the 1990s, the number of extraditions from Mexico to the United States averaged eleven per year; yet this rate more than tripled by the end of the Fox administration. After President Calderón took office in 2006, the number of extraditions grew dramatically. (See Figure 2.2.) This trend toward greater bilateral U.S.-Mexico collaboration was complemented by proposals for larger, regional security agreements involving Canada and Central America. In fact, such proposals have become a partial reality with initiatives such as the U.S.-Canadian and U.S.-Mexican “Smart Border” agreements, which articulated specific objectives and areas for collaboration in ensuring secure and efficient crossborder flows. In March 2005, Canada, Mexico, and the United States went one step further by “trilateralizing” security collaboration with the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), an agreement to identify shared goals and coordinate security strategies between the three countries. Subsequently, during President Bush’s 2007 goodwill tour of Latin America, conversations between President Bush, Guatemalan President Oscar Berger, and Felipe Calderón laid the groundwork for the develop-

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States, Borders, and Violence 120

From Mexico

107

From the U.S.

95

100 83 80 63 60 41 40

31 18

20 6

1

13 6

8

17 1312 1512 11

24 18

17

34

32 25

18

15 6

0 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

figure 2.2 Extraditions Between Mexico and the United States, 1996–2009 sources: Embassy of Mexico Fact Sheet, “Rounding Up Fugitives,” May 12, 2004; press release, U.S. State Department, “U.S., Mexico Team Up to Arrest Mexican Fugitive from Justice: Fugitive on U.S. ‘Most Wanted List’ Captured, Customs Enforcement Agency Says” (2004–2005), June 20, 2006, available at www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2006/June/200606201046591xeneerg0 .8890039.html; Matthew T. Hall, “Gonzales Lauds Mexico’s Extradition of 15 to U.S.,” San Diego Union Tribune, January 21, 2007; email inquiry to U.S. Embassy in February 2007; and press release by Ambassador Tony Garza on December 31, 2008. Data for first ten months of 2009 reported in “Mexico-US Hold Extradition Talks,” BBC News, November 2, 2009.

ment of a regional security plan. In March 2007, Presidents Bush and Calderón held a summit in Mérida, Yucatán, that led to the announcement of a $1.4 billion package of U.S. aid to help fund Mexican and Central American counternarcotics initiatives over a three-year period. The Mérida Initiative (Plan Mérida) sought to aid the Mexican military and domestic law enforcement in efforts to combat narco-trafficking and organized crime with greater information sharing and new equipment, technology, and training for surveillance, aerial transport, land and sea interdiction, and border security. However, due to concerns about corruption in Mexican law enforcement, Congress imposed specific provisions intended to promote progress toward the development of police professionalization in Mexico.49 Meanwhile, roughly half of the overall Mérida funding package was appropriated to the Mexican military, given the perception that it has greater integrity than Mexico’s domestic police forces. President Barack Obama continued to support Mexico’s counterdrug efforts by expanding the framework of the Mérida Initiative to include

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four supporting “pillars”: more intense binational collaboration to combat organized crime groups, greater assistance to strengthen the judicial sector, more effective interdiction efforts through twenty-first-century border controls, and new social programs to revitalize Mexican communities affected by crime and violence.50 In parallel, the Obama administration pledged to increase its efforts to address the U.S.-side drivers of Mexico’s drug violence, with new funding to reduce illicit drug consumption and combat illegal arms trafficking from the United States. Reacting to U.S. public concerns about Mexico’s violence, the Obama administration deployed additional manpower and funds to the U.S.-Mexican border in an attempt to stave off possible “spillover” violence. The articulation of a new, shared framework for U.S.-Mexican cooperation is an achievement in itself. For many years, U.S. and Mexican security cooperation floundered because of mutual suspicions and a lack of agreement on basic principles. Working in an intense, sustained, and bilateral manner to think about and beyond the Mérida Initiative, authorities from both countries have successfully identified shared priorities, strategies, and avenues for cooperation. Moreover, the effort to move beyond the initial terms of the Mérida Initiative, deepening the U.S. commitment to judicial reform assistance and community development in Mexico and reducing U.S. contributions to Mexico’s violence could produce major dividends and provide alternatives to the militarized approach that has long characterized the drug war. That said, for the U.S.-Mexican border region, the Mérida Initiative portends more of the same: continued militarization and fortification as a means to interdict northbound flows of illicit goods. As part of that effort, the number of Border Patrol agents increased from 2,900 in 1980 to around four thousand by 1994, to around nine thousand in 2000, to twenty thousand by 2010. The U.S. government has also spent tens of billions of dollars in the construction and maintenance of new fencing, high-tech surveillance equipment, all-terrain vehicles, and aircraft at the border. Unfortunately, more walls, technology, and boots on the ground make for excellent symbolic gestures and photo opportunities, but they do not significantly diminish illicit cross-border flows. As the border has become more fortified, it has actually encouraged drug traffickers (and migrant smugglers) to transform their operations from the relatively smallscale, low-level operations of the 1970s and 1980s into the highly sophisticated, heavily armed criminal organizations that are seriously undermining both U.S. and Mexican security today.51 Meanwhile, although tougher border control measures have not significantly reduced transnational organized crime, they have had a detrimental effect on legitimate crossborder commerce by creating added hassles and delays at the border.52

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Under the new U.S.-Mexican security framework, recent discourse about a “Twenty-First-Century Border”—a paradoxical notion in the supposedly borderless world—promises to replicate rather than remedy these problems. The key question is whether greater bilateral or regional cooperation can lead to the development of a more comprehensive approach to security that effectively counters the transnational challenges facing both states today. Such collaboration would necessarily entail continued efforts to combat organized crime, but might also give rise to efforts to reevaluate threats and challenges. Indeed, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission’s “New Hemispheric Drug Strategy” has placed new emphasis on protections for basic human rights, evidence-based drug policy, and a public health approach to drug abuse.53 The more the United States and Mexico engage in cooperative partnerships with each other and with their neighbors, the more likely it could be that they will consider alternative approaches that can more effectively address their common challenges. Given the proliferation of both extreme and mundane forms of violence in the region, there is a need for both countries to work together to reduce the inequalities and disparities that manifest so visibly at the border.

concluding observations In sum, the picture that emerges from this discussion is one in which border regimes have been dramatically transformed over time with the evolution of the nation-state and the emergence of a new global economy. In the process, the nature of violence—and efforts to use or prevent it—in border regions has varied correspondingly over time. In early phases of nation-state formation, border regions tend to be violent places because they are an important focus of the process of state formation and consolidation, particularly in the nascent phases of state development and in the process of dealing with hostile or alienated relationships with neighboring states. In these early phases of state development, borderlands are subject to violence resulting from direct conflicts between states, as well as the “frontier” violence that predominates in the absence of an absolute monopoly on the means of coercion on the fringes of the state. As states become more consolidated, and as border relationships become more coexistent and integrated, the forms of violence that affect border regions change accordingly. Again, this is not to say that the evolution of relationships between neighboring states through higher levels

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of interdependence necessarily results in the elimination or even a reduction of violence. On the contrary, the acceleration of integrative processes in the era of globalization has resulted in newly invigorated applications of state power to address perceived transnational security threats, especially in cases where there are significant political asymmetries and economic inequalities between neighboring states. In such cases, increasing openness, cooperation, and interdependence between states contribute to perverse side effects that include a variety of forms of violence. This chapter has sought to outline the theoretical dimensions of the state in relation to its territorial boundaries in order to better identify the changing nature of border relationships, and especially the manifestations of violence that occur there. The basic argument that I have put forth is fairly straightforward: the processes of formation, consolidation, and regime change that occur within a particular nation-state have significant implications for its border relationships with surrounding states. The initial process of state formation is fraught with potential conflicts and tensions (as well as significant limitations in state capacity) that contribute to significant irritations and violence at the border. Border irritations tend to gradually diminish as neighboring states come into their own, find ways to operate in coexistence, and eventually identify collaborative areas of mutual benefit. Such progress is not guaranteed and backsliding is a definite possibility, but much hinges on the development of the nation-state and the processes of regime change that may significantly impact relationships with neighboring states. What is more, increased interdependence and integration between neighboring countries may result in significant challenges when there are sizeable asymmetries between states, in terms of resources, security capabilities, or economic factors. Many of these points are illustrated by the example of U.S.-Mexican relations in recent years. From Mexican immigration to the United States to U.S. social and economic influences in Mexico, nearly two decades of increasing integration has tied the two nations more closely together than ever before. The liberalization of trade and proliferation of social and political ties between the two countries were accompanied by great enthusiasm about the prospects for the U.S.-Mexico relationship in the new era of globalization. Alongside the largely positive influences of these processes, however, there were also decidedly negatives found in the violence posed in the binational context by narco-trafficking and other ruleof-law challenges. Many of these challenges are concentrated or most visible at the U.S.-Mexico border, and illustrate the paradoxes that result as asymmetrical neighboring states become increasingly interdependent. This suggests that U.S.-Mexican security would be improved either by

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dramatically reducing the two countries’ interdependence or by dramatically reducing their asymmetries. Since the former is neither possible nor necessarily desirable, the best option would be for Mexico and the United States to identify a shared bilateral agenda for collaboration not only on security, but on the macro-economic issues that often undermine the relationship between the two countries.

chapter three

Policing and Regime Transition From Postauthoritarianism to Populism to Neoliberalism diane e. davis

; policing and po liti cal change Perhaps the easiest aspect of transformative political change is the struggle to displace an unwanted regime or administration. Far more difficult is the task of consolidating the new governing apparatus that will take its place. This is especially true in the aftermath of violent conflict, when disorder and military force are the modus operandi of political transition, as was the case with the 1910 Mexican revolution. But it is also true in the context of “velvet revolutions,” that is, the more garden variety political changes that have characterized twentieth-century Latin America, including the shifts from authoritarianism to democracy, when the political coalitions of the past are repudiated but there is not necessarily consensus about what alternative should take its place. In Mexico, this challenge emerged even before the country’s more formal democratic transition of the 1990s, between 1930 and 1980, when differences over the extent to which populist principles should guide national politics divided even those loyal to one-party rule. In all these instances, a principal concern of the Mexican state was to consolidate its power and legitimacy by keeping protagonists or other opponents sidelined, while also generating new citizen support for the regime’s policies and ideological postures. Depending on the extent and organizational strength of citizen opposition, these goals were often difficult to achieve. Over the long sweep of the

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twentieth century, Mexico’s governing leaders faced opposition from conservative and/or radical social constituencies, depending on the administration and time period, some of it matched by a mobilized counterresponse— and violence—from potential supporters. All of this contributed to ongoing struggles within and between citizens and the state over the nature of the political regime in power. As shall be clear shortly, police stood at the center of these conflicts and political controversies, especially in Mexico City, which was capital of the nation, heart of the economy, and home to the single broadest array of class and social forces in the nation. Police did not merely secure the state in the face of citizen mobilization and political challenge; they also became part of the problem, and their actions contributed to bouts of violence and legitimacy challenges to the state. The state routinely used force to repress opposition forces— using the police, military, or both—and the government’s complicity in these acts of “political policing” bolstered the state’s coercive apparatuses. This meant that police and other coercive forces employed by the state developed a degree of authority and political sway that often made them difficult to control. This, in turn, fueled a culture of corruption and impunity within the police, a situation that bolstered citizen resentment. With citizens increasingly discontented about police corruption and impunity but the state beholden to its coercive forces for political policing and institutionally hamstrung by the complicities of the past, the governing administration had limited room for maneuver. Eliminating or reforming police was almost impossible, despite citizen complaints otherwise, making regime success or failure dependent on the state’s capacity to negotiate this tricky terrain in ways that kept both police and citizens loyal to the government. In what follows, I describe the role that police have played in the long durée of Mexico’s political transformations, from the postrevolutionary period to the contemporary neoliberal era. Because police have been some of the key perpetrators of violence, political and otherwise, and because they stand at the front lines of the state by helping to guarantee its authority in the Weberian sense of the term, via their coercive power, a focus on police allows us to address the main themes of this book, violence and state formation, even as it links these dynamics to each other. Likewise, because the roots of the highly contentious “police question,” political policing, and the unparalleled extent of police corruption and impunity still present in Mexico are traceable to the 1910 revolution and its aftermath, this chapter also provides an opportunity to demonstrate what Wil Pansters (Chapter 1) has termed the interconnections and historical roots of different dimensions, actors, and manifestations of violence, insecurity, and coercion in relation to state-making in Mexico.

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Specifically, this chapter offers a historical narrative of policing, police powers and organization, and the police-military-state nexus in three different moments of political transition in Mexico: (1) the transition from an authoritarian to a so-called revolutionary regime (1910–30); (2) the rise of populist regimes (1930–36 and 1970–76); and (3) the conversion from a one-party-dominant to a more democratic political regime in which a neoliberal agenda has taken root (1994–present). In the discussion of these three broadly cast periods, we miss certain administrations; and of those under study, we do not focus on each with the same attention. Nor do we offer a systematic treatment of all police actions or concerns, even in the key periods under study. Our intent, rather, is to identify contentious moments in the history of policing and police organization, and to highlight the ways that changes in the relationships between police, military, citizens, and the state both affected and were affected by political regime-type, defined in terms of their ideological orientation and political action. Likewise, we do not discuss all police, but primarily Mexico City police, using materials drawn from secondary sources1 and primary materials, including historical archives in Mexico City.2 Because the initial struggle within and between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces over state formation revolved in large part around who could capture control of the state apparatus in the capital city, both police and military, a focus on Mexico City police gives us a detailed view of some of the larger dynamics linking police and state formation in twentieth-century Mexico.

postrevolutionary policing and the challenge of consolidating a new state (1910– 1930) From the beginning of the postrevolutionary period, the development of Mexico City politics more generally, and policing institutions and practices in particular, was linked to the larger project of state consolidation. In the aftermath of Mexico’s 1910 revolution, the country’s new political leadership struggled to establish new administrative structures for governance as well as a new constitution and a new social order that would give life to the prodemocratic ideals that inspired much of the violent antidictatorship fervent in the first place. The administration of Porfirio Díaz had been very popular in Mexico City, however, both within the upper ranks of the military, many of whom were personal friends if not allies of President Díaz, and by the upper classes who benefited greatly from the

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economic model that the dictatorship pursued in partnership with a thriving domestic and foreign-linked commercial sector, much of it located or headquartered in Mexico City.3 As a consequence, when Díaz fled office in 1911 his departure did not end the political and military conflict, but ushered in a new and more contested period of violence over control of the state, focused on the capital city. Police were a key swing force in these battles, an observation consistent with Pablo Piccato’s pathbreaking work on the efforts to professionalize police in Mexico City in the first decades of the century.4 Bureaucratically modernized or not, the extent to which police shifted their loyalty to the counterrevolutionaries or the revolutionaries determined the political future of the nation and the institutional contours of the revolutionary state. In the capital city, many counterrevolutionaries, both military and civilian, rallied around the ex-dictator’s nephew and prior Mexico City police chief, Felix Díaz. Felix Díaz maintained a residence in Mexico City and served as a fulcrum for political coalition-building among those powerful military and elite forces who sought a return to the politics and ideology of the prerevolutionary regime. Intense conflict also persisted within the prorevolutionary political ranks, and between revolutionary generals and civilians who supported the revolution but disagreed about its future. In these initial conditions, and because revolutionary leaders were busy fighting counterrevolutionary forces and each other, little attention was paid to the task of restoring local order in the capital until 1912, when the city government (ayuntamiento) first took up the problems of policing and local security. Initially, however, local rather than national government officials addressed the problem, turning to citizens and bypassing much of the existent, prerevolutionary police force. Throughout the first half of 1912, local officials in Mexico City joined leading citizens in calling for the formation of citizen militias, or organized groups of self-defense units who would protect themselves and the city. Still, officials could not agree upon the basis for the formation of these so-called guardias municipales (e.g., neighborhood or work/employment location), leading to the proliferation of multiple armed groups organized on a variety of different logics, at one point numbering more than 2,000 according to Ariel Rodríguez Kuri.5 Neither could they agree on whether militias should answer just to city officials, to the still-unstable federal government (with Madero at the helm), to the military, or to some combination of the three. Ultimately, local officials left these questions of responsibility “unclearly defined,” although membership on the central executive committee for the guardias municipales was well specified to include the gobernador of the Federal District and the president of the ayuntamiento.6 That is, responsibility was uneasily shared between both elected

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and appointed local and national officials (with the gobernador appointed by the federal executive and the president of the ayuntamiento elected at the level of the city), without the military formally involved. Perhaps because of the diversity of interests represented within the executive committee, establishing the rationale and political objectives for the city’s militia was not easy. Class and social differences among the militia themselves also complicated matters. With militias originally organized around both workplace and residence, class distinctions emerged (e.g., factory-based militias held working-class members, militias organized around Paseo de la Reforma–held elite members, and so on), making it difficult for the various cadres to see eye to eye on security aims for the capital city, let alone on their role in supporting the revolutionary regime or certain of its factions. Some openly supported Madero, while others opposed him, resulting in more political tension and a schism within the city’s overall police organization, at times leading to violent conflict among the so-called security forces.7 In the wake of this turmoil, the national revolutionary leadership initially sought to harness local militias in support of their aims, by offering citizen groups both guns and ammunition as well as registering and supplying them through the new revolutionary government’s (national) military leadership.8 But Madero’s assassination changed all this. Because citizens with arms were quite difficult to control, and because they often used guns to pursue their own personal or political agendas, not all of which were in sync with the ideological aims of those in power, in 1913 the revolutionary leadership reversed itself. In order to establish control over the increasingly chaotic security situation in the city, where citizens, counterrevolutionaries, and vying revolutionary factions were all trying to establish a foothold in the wake of the assassination, the revolution’s military and political leadership, with Carranza at the helm, formally disarmed the militias and developed a new police force that could secure order in the capital city and support their larger state consolidation aims. The hope was that a new police force with more loyalists integrated into existent organizational structures would render inoperative the biases of the old police, many of whom had supported the Porfirian dictatorship, even as it would establish more order and stability in the capital. These initial efforts also met their limits, however, in part because revolutionary leaders patched together a rough-and-tumble police force whose new recruits were personnel drawn from their own loyal circles. Many were provincial peasants whose loyalties to the revolution had been clearly established in their willingness to join the armed struggle against the old regime. And because a significant number of new recruits were rural folk, they had little understanding of policing or even city life, and little

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understanding of the law or how to guarantee it. They also had few social, personal, or even political connections to the citizens they were charged with safeguarding, many of whom had remained politically uncommitted in the revolutionary struggle to oust the Porfirian dictatorship, factors that further exacerbated an environment of mistrust. Finally, these new recruits were poorly paid and susceptible to the vices that had historically been associated with local police, including drunkenness, evasion of duty, corruption, and abuse of authority. In order to supplant these newly formed local police forces, in 1915 Carranza turned to the revolutionary armed forces under his command. As documented by Pablo Piccato, the army by then was composed of personnel who Carranza and his allies felt could be organizationally controlled and trusted to root out political enemies.9 But these military personnel had much the same profile and behavior problems as the police, and Mexico City citizens abhorred the uncivilized, drunken, and uneducated police recruits drawn from the core of the military rank-and-file. Many citizens also felt that military recruits abused their power by wielding guns and other firearms that were only available to the military (neither citizens nor the existent local police were allowed to be armed, except through petition in exceptional circumstances). In expressing their dissatisfaction, citizens were making a statement about the heavy-handedness of the regime and the military as much as the police, since the use of military personnel in local policing made the connections between these distinct coercive forces of the state crystal clear. This connection did not disappear for decades, moreover, with military generals serving as Mexico City police chiefs in all but two instances in the years between 1916 and 1988.10 Initially, revolutionary leaders responded to citizen dissatisfaction over military control of local police services by allowing old cadres of locally appointed municipal police to uphold their duties alongside the new military-led police, with the former relegated to urban activities like regulating commerce and offering building permits, and the latter dealing with questions of public order, both social and political. Soon, however, it was clear that the superimposition of military forces onto existent police structures and the military’s empowerment as guarantor of public security in the capital city created their own set of problems—not just organizational competition between military and police, but also political and armed conflict over who should be calling the shots, in response to whose orders and concerns, and why. In the aftermath of these tensions, drunken skirmishes and fistfights between military and police personnel became relatively common.11 In an effort to stall the growing legitimacy problems produced by mixing police and national military personnel, in June 1916 President Carranza

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issued a decree to restrengthen municipal-level “policing and vigilance, which he considered necessary to the task of purging the country of armed partisans left over from the intense revolutionary movements.”12 The desire to strengthen police capacities at the local level may also have been part and parcel of an effort to generate wider political support for the new revolutionary leadership in Mexico City, where support for the municipio libre (free municipality), a rallying cry of the more liberal forces in the revolution, was still strong.13 As such, the reform of 1916 generated some sympathies for the Carranza regime among local citizens and other revolutionary leaders who sought to introduce more democratic elements into the new regime’s profile. But it did nothing to solve police misconduct, and if anything, it may have enhanced the police’s repressive capacities by also stipulating that “those individuals who had aided the governments or factions hostile to the constitutionalist [i.e., Carrancista] cause, either through armed struggle or public service” would be denied the right to participate in municipal elections.14 With police serving on the front lines of regulating electoral behavior, abuse of power was widespread and citizen dissatisfaction accelerated. That this reform came on the heels of the creation of an entirely new police force for the very central area of the city, known as the Federal District proper, which operated as a jurisdiction constitutionally subject to federal control, further disenfranchised the citizenry. Rather than answering to citizens, the new police force was subject to direct control by the national political leadership (its chief would answer to the president), it would coexist with other locally appointed police at the level of the municipality, and, with a military man at its helm, it would connect police actions to military goals. Concerned about growing citizen unhappiness with police but unwilling to lose control over the coercive force necessary to keep the new administration strong and opponents weak, in 1917 Carranza introduced a constitutional reform changing the legal status and juridical sway of police functions (in the Federal District and nationwide) and their powers to arrest. These changes, as stipulated in the 1917 constitution, separated police into two types of forces, “preventative” and “judicial.” Preventative police regulated the social, commercial, and aesthetic “order” of the city, a set of tasks more related to more conventional views of securing peace and public security. They functioned as “beat cops” who kept an eye on social disorder and violations of urban regulations. In contrast, judicial police determined whether a crime had occurred and they alone held the power to legally sanction (i.e., arrest), investigate, and try or jail citizens for infractions of the law.15 The division of labor between preventative and judicial police, while creating considerable ambiguity and overlap in police functions, was quite

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purposeful,16 and the contested process of state formation was one reason why. Part of Carranza’s rationale for introducing this reform was his concern that many of the existent “preventative” police—those longstanding municipal police employed by the “free” municipios, where counterrevolutionary or nonrevolutionary sentiments often prevailed— were politically unsympathetic to his administration’s efforts to consolidate the government’s political hegemony. One way to limit renegade police influence and limit opposition forces from challenging the new state was to establish a separate police corps with legal arrest and prosecutorial powers, or the judicial police, who would answer directly to the state and its executive branch (i.e., Ministerio Público, or Public Ministry) rather than citizens (i.e., the local beat cop, or preventative police, stationed at the level of the municipality).17 Yet the long-term consequences of this reform were less than ideal, and rather than strengthening the postrevolutionary state, the fragmentation of police functions opened a Pandora’s box of new concerns, several of which called the state’s legitimacy into question. The problems were twofold. First, these two distinct police forces operated in the same physical spaces but answered to different authority structures in which divergent political factions called the shots, thus fueling the potential for political violence on occasion. This was certainly clear during the 1920s, when Mexico City police (both judicial and preventative) were routinely ordered by their superiors to harass (or protect) protesting laborers, renegade social movements, and opposition party activists. These mandates generated tensions and even violence within and between different corps of Mexico City police and the citizenry, whose political loyalties were divided across local municipalities and the federal executive. Second, this new bifurcated structure of police organization fueled conflict and competition between judicial and preventative police over who had most coercive power, which was relevant not just for political reasons but also because it determined who maintained the greatest capacity to extort citizens. After all, preventative police did not sit quietly by and watch judicial police increase their greater power and influence over citizens and in the judicial process, despite the constitutional reforms. They readily sought other ways to keep relevant and to fill their pockets, primarily related to the regulation of urban commercial and social activities, thereby further contributing to a growing culture of impunity among police in Mexico City.18 These developments fed upon each other by upping the ante for bribery at various stages of the criminal prosecution process.19 This flagrant disregard for the law even among the police reinforced the precedents of impunity and disrespect for the law from early on; and the greater the total sums of money involved, the greater the impunity, and the less authority or centralized control the state had over

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the entire process. By the 1920s there existed a well-established pecking order of bribery and corruption, ensuring that beat cops on the ground could not acquire or keep their jobs without direct payment to superiors. And because many of those implicated in these corrupt processes were political appointees who answered to the executive branch or the city and municipal governments, a whole range of governing authorities— and not merely police officials—also became parties to the corruption.20

from populist inclusion to authoritarian pop u lism (1930– 1976) High levels of police impunity and corruption were a stain on the moral character of the postrevolutionary governments seeking to consolidate their popularity, even as they contributed to serious legitimacy problems for the still-fragile Mexican state. When repressive political policing combined with untrammeled acts of extortion, both police and governing officials found themselves on the receiving end of citizen ire. The precariousness of this situation worsened as the ideological contours of the postrevolutionary state shifted, and as opposition to the state or certain dominant factions within it continued. Much of this came to a point of crisis in the 1930s, in the aftermath of the political crisis produced by the assassination of Obregón and the Cristero Rebellion and during the administration of Lázaro Cárdenas, laying the groundwork for a major shift in the institutional and ideological contours of the postrevolutionary state and its policy priorities.21 Cárdenas came to the presidency at a time when more conservative forces in the revolutionary leadership had been known to routinely use police to repress striking laborers and communist-linked worker organizations as well as peasants. As a voice of popular democratic inclusion, Cárdenas sought to break from this past and recast the ideological contours of his regime so as to enhance the relative power and political inclusion of labor and peasants, among other marginalized forces. But doing so entailed a rethinking of existent structures of policing, or at least more state control over an abusive and corrupt police apparatus. Both would be difficult tasks, especially in the capital city. After more than two decades of political policing and complicity between revolutionary leaders and police in the use of extralegal measures to achieve their state consolidation aims, corruption in the Mexico City police had reached such heights that high-level police personnel were known—and publicly affirmed in both newspapers and secret police internal reports—to be involved in criminal activities. One infamous high-profile auto theft gang

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which was reputed to have begun in 1915 by revolutionary generals, known as the Banda de Automobil Gris, remained active over the 1920s and counted on Mexico City’s police chief, Valente Quintana, as a principal interlocutor.22 Although Cárdenas was committed to purifying the notoriously corrupt Mexico City police, doing so required support from allies who could offer assistance in controlling police corruption and impunity.23 One of the few forces with the coercive and political power to achieve this task was the military. Yet therein lay the conundrum. Any move to rely on the military to deal with the problems of police corruption—even if done for progressive, populist purposes—could further institutionalize the state’s authoritarian character, and thus undermine the larger populist or socially inclusive political aims that pushed Cárdenas to support police reforms in the first place. But the long-standing history of police corruption, and the deep complicity already established between high-level party officials and the police, who had joined together to strengthen the revolutionary state, left Cárdenas with very few options. As a result, he walked a delicate line between focusing and narrowing the state’s coercive capacity while also expanding its socially inclusive character to reinforce the legitimacy of his populist form of rule. The first of his organizational reforms in 1936 expanded the city’s police forces to include semiprivate security forces that had been operating parallel to the preventative police. With a new infusion of nonstate security forces in the public police ranks, Cárdenas hoped to limit the overall relative institutional influence of the highly corrupted officer corps. At minimum, he hoped to offer the city’s residents a renovated new police force with at least a few new members who would be relatively unconstrained by old networks of corruption, who could enhance an already established reputation of being responsive to the citizenry. By bringing private police into the city’s public policing services as an auxiliary force, he also sought to strengthen his own position within the conflictive revolutionary family at large. These new police officers, now called Policia Auxiliar (Auxiliary Police), were known to be extremely loyal to Cárdenas and his political ideals, and they were both organized and self-identified as part of his larger working-class movement. To further strengthen the ideological solidarity within and between the police and the rest of his loyalists, in 1937 Cárdenas sought a juridical reclassification of police to reflect their working or employment status, putting them in sync with all others employed by the state. This meant that like all other government employees, the police would be categorized as state workers, and within this rubric, as one of two types, de base (basic workers) or de confianza (confidence workers), each with different

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rights and obligations. This change not only would help reinforce the working-class consciousness of his new and politically loyal Auxiliary Police, who along with other rank-and-file police were to be considered basic workers, and thus brought into organizational and ideological sync with other working-class forces. It also meant that police were to be identified as just another form of state worker, rather than as an arm of the state, an identity status that would in theory link them more closely to the citizenry while also guaranteeing their civil and economic rights.24 Although both reforms had their advocates, especially among laborers and other social constituencies that formed the backbone of political support for Cárdenas, they also met with serious political limits, primarily because they gave the rank-and-file police powerful tools (the right to strike, access to courts for undue dismissal and labor process violations, etc.) to expose the corrupt hiring and firing practices used by the existent cadres of police officials. This would be a major challenge for higher-level police officers, who had grown accustomed to a hierarchy of unquestioned authority that allowed them to extort lower-rank officers for kickbacks and payoffs collected during the course of duty. Moreover, with the state worker legislation, lower-rank officers would now be able to hold their superiors accountable, and they would not have to be drawn into the circle of corruption and impunity that was built around the arbitrary threat of dismissal by their bosses. Further adding to the dissatisfaction were the class consciousness “effects.” By making organizational connections— around state worker identities—between the rank-and-file police and the working class, police leadership might not readily continue their “political policing” of class enemies or continue using coercive force against rebellious citizens, especially those involved in the labor movement, who had long been on the receiving end of police brutality. For all these reasons, Cárdenas’s police reforms were highly controversial, creating tensions within the police, especially between the “new” auxiliary and the “old” preventative police, and between some elements of the police and the military. In the face of severe opposition from within the ranks of the police, in light of accelerated regional and national opposition to his regime and many of his populist policies, and to help repair the damage inflicted on police-military relations by the state worker debate, in 1939 Cárdenas introduced a third and final reform: a legally sanctioned “militarization” of the police. Militarization meant organizationally and institutionally subordinating the police to the military once again, as had been the case during the revolutionary struggles. In the words of then Police Chief José Manuel Nuñez, militarization was a means for “incorporate[ing] the administration of the police force within the army, so that it will become subject to military law and discipline.”25

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Militarization undermined the radical aims of the state worker legislation, because it endowed all police with the same juridical status as military personnel, who were not allowed to strike or hold superiors accountable for employment decisions. It also helped assuage the fears of the conservative factions of the military, who worried about the inclusion of left-leaning private security forces into the police. Militarization also made it easier to control conflict between preventative and auxiliary police, who were struggling over power and influence, and to control corruption networks, or at least initially. However, the militarization of the police had its downside. First, it helped inculcate a military mindset and a siege mentality into a civilian activity, policing. Second, by institutionally fusing the police and military, militarization helped fuel the expansion and deepening of certain lethal forms of corruption, particularly related to drugs and border smuggling, in which police and military were jointly involved.26 Third, militarization added yet another layer of bureaucratic fragmentation to the personnel and institutions of policing, which already were divided between judicial and preventative police, making it ever more difficult for the state to control its myriad coercive forces. Fourth, and perhaps most important, militarization reduced the potential for citizen accountability, especially with respect to police behavior. Indeed, the decision to subordinate Mexico City police to the military meant that, institutionally speaking, the ruling party was bypassed almost altogether, and to a great degree, so too was the Departamento del Distrito Federal, or Mexico City mayor’s office, which could have served as a source of institutional accountability for citizen complaints about police corruption. Likewise, with the military controlling the police, but absent in representative political institutions, there was limited scope for citizen demand-making with respect to police accountability in that institutional domain as well. Each of these changes helped undermine the populist principles associated with the Cárdenas administration, leading to a political backlash against labor and other progressive forces by subsequent governments, erupting in heavy political policing and state-directed violence over the 1950s and 1960s, and generating a serious legitimacy crisis for the Mexican state once again. Much of this came to a peak immediately prior to and during the administration of Luis Echeverría (1970–76), and centered around the 1968 Tlatelolco killings of protesting students in Mexico City in which local preventative police, federal police, and the military all were involved. Faced with growing public outcry over the increasing authoritarianism of the Mexican state and its lack of democratic accountability, so evident in the nation’s capital, Echeverría came to the presidency with a mission to revive the state’s faltering legitimacy by introducing a

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populist flavor to his policies, much as had been Cárdenas’s intention. But at this historical moment, institutions of policing were more extensive, more fragmented, more corrupt, and more deeply embedded with the military than had been the case thirty-five years earlier, and these new conditions made legitimacy far more elusive, even with a strong commitment to populist economic and social policies. For one thing, the strong connections forged between the police and the military during the 1940s had revived a commitment to policing political enemies, while also expanding the definition of who fell into the “enemy” category. From the late 1950s and early 1960s, the concern was mainly communist-led labor organizations (piggybacking in some sense on the Cuban Revolution) and the emergence of guerrilla movements in the countryside; by the mid to late 1960s police and military began repressing prodemocracy social movements and protesting students, not to mention squatters, itinerant street vendors, and others classified as socially undesirable who increasingly peopled the streets of the capital.27 For another, police corruption had reached new heights, especially in Mexico City, fueled by the organizational and institutional reforms that isolated coercive forces from each other and from executive oversight. By the early 1960s, for example, Mexico City Police Chief Luis Cueto Ramírez had developed a loyal network of followers within the police and military. He wielded unparalleled power in the city’s corruption rackets and stood at the pinnacle of a formalized payoff system among the different semiautonomous police forces, using this power to maintain his position as police chief for an unprecedented six years.28 He also had the reputation for being publicly tough with anyone who could be seen as an opponent of the regime, and continued with this stance in the months after the 1968 massacre.29 The problem was not merely that high-ranking police or military personnel had amassed enormous power, through political networks or corrupt practices or both, and had thus become serious forces to be reckoned with by the early 1960s. Equally significant were the proliferation and coexistence of different police who answered to various local and federal levels of government. As police used their connections with the military or other distinct institutional vantage points to capture ever-larger pieces of the rent-seeking pie, citizens suffered the brunt of impunity, and in turn pressured the state for reform. The late 1950s saw a series of major anticorruption campaigns wielded by middle-class citizens in Mexico City.30 Yet such complaints just spurred the formation of new police forces to supplant the corrupted ones, further driving the fragmentation of police into new local and national agencies, each with its own structures of authority and potential for abuse of power.31 Such developments helped

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produce the notorious iron-handed police chief Arturo Durazo (1976– 82), who was known for bringing police corruption to new heights. He was one of the few Mexico City police chiefs to end up in jail, and it was during his administration that the infamous “brotherhood” of police, whose members became implicated in torture and auto theft rings during the 1980s and 1990s, first became public knowledge. As the number and fragmentation of police services started to spiral out of control, the federal executive struggled to insert itself into the picture, leading to a massive spillover of policing functions into federal agencies. Yet the federal executive’s efforts to create a new layer of policing services directly under its control, and separate from the military, merely exacerbated the problem of an increasingly fragmented police apparatus with myriad police forces answering to distinct government agencies, all of whom had their own internal networks of authority and corruption. Over time, the entire security apparatus had become practically impossible to manage, coordinate, or control, whether by the military, the president, or the party-state.32 Complicating this picture, fragmentation and increasing police overlaps between local and federal agencies sustained ongoing conflict within the different policing apparatuses, fanning the age-old tension between the preventative and judicial police (now routinely labeled the “repressive” police in many newspaper accounts), creating new conflicts between city and federal police, and fueling ever-more citizen calls for reforms for a police system in shambles.33 These problems soon spilled over into administrative tensions between Mexico City officials and the federal executive (or better said between the mayor and the president) about who should be policing whom, and with what accountability to which level of government.34 Such questions became the fodder for public debates after the massacres of 1968, owing to the outrage the massacres created among students and democratic activists about police violence out of control. The repressive police actions against protesting students not only cast a pall on Mexican society; they also exposed a rift between city and federal police, generating a call to rethink who had been responsible for policing political enemies and how such aims should be challenged in an environment where the party-state was seen as increasingly authoritarian.35 Echeverría, for his part, was unwilling or unable to accommodate these concerns sufficiently to recover citizen trust or generate widespread legitimacy for the state, mainly because he was institutionally hamstrung in his capacity to wrest control of—let alone reform—the expansive, fragmented, corrupted, and abusive policing apparatus that had “colonized” (in the Habermasian sense) the Mexican state and its people.36 Given the overall political disenchantment with the PRI, the rise of guerrilla movements

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around the countryside, the calls for fundamental change in the partystate, and growing criticism from private-sector and right-wing forces who opposed the social populism of his administration, Echeverría was not in a position to lose loyalty from those coercive forces in the military and elsewhere on whom he might need to count in order to keep his enemies at bay. And unlike Cárdenas, he could not count on new security forces drawn from outside the political system to infiltrate the existing police apparatus. The most he could do was introduce populist reforms to give some sort of political voice to disenfranchised groups, peasant and working class alike, to fund new social programs (both rural and urban), to involve a new cadre of young leaders into his administration, and to create new structures for citizen participation in Mexico City. But these policies could not alter (let alone reverse) the deep-seeded political authoritarianism of the regime, let alone the sense that Mexico had become a “police state”— not in the classical sense of the word, but in the sense that police were involved in every aspect of state and civil society, from policing political enemies to extorting citizens on a routine basis.37 The perception and reality of a state beholden to its coercive apparatuses, rather than vice-versa, limited Echeverría’s political room for maneuver, thus producing a combined carrot-and-stick policy that rewarded certain constituencies with populist programs or political advantages while holding the threat of repression over others who failed to embrace the administration’s priorities. Ultimately, this was an unsatisfying and contradictory set of objectives that failed to fool most of Mexico’s citizens, and that helped lead to the successful democratization of the Mexican political system by the 1990s.

demo cratic transition, neoliberal politics, and the continued challenges of policing With Mexico finally throwing off the shackles of one-party rule and transitioning to a more democratic political system, citizens and elected officials alike wondered whether coercive force, and the problems associated with repressive or corrupt police, could finally be put to rest. Most hoped that a veritable democratic transition would at least reduce the likelihood of “political policing,” and that democratically accountable institutions would be strong enough to remedy problems of abusive policing set in motion by earlier regime changes and political transitions. But reversing decades of institutionalized corruption among the state’s coercive forces— who themselves are not elected, and many of whom are covered by state worker and other federal legislation that prevents their firing—has turned

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out to be an enormous challenge. Since democratization, both Mexico City and federal administrations have sought to make headway on the problems of police corruption and impunity, but with different degrees of success.38 Nowadays, corruption and impunity seem to be flourishing in both police and military institutions, although state efforts to eliminate these problems have continued nonstop since the mid-1990s.39 Perhaps even more disheartening are the recent actions undertaken by the neoliberal administration of President Felipe Calderón, which show that the Mexican state has again turned to violence and political policing (in places like Oaxaca and Chiapas) to restore social order, that the state now relies on the military for these political efforts as well as for local policing services,40 and that the government is now supporting legislative enhancement of local police powers that will expand rather than limit police capacities.41 Together, these moves have inspired some wellrespected individuals to warn that contemporary Mexico is also showing the trappings of a “police state” despite its formal democratic character.42 The question, then, is why there seems to be such great continuity in police practices even after regime transition. Will the continuation of heavyhanded policing call into question the Mexican government’s legitimacy, despite its democratic foundations, thereby fueling another round of the dialectic between policing and political change similar to that seen in earlier times? Part of the answer to the first question can be found in a closer examination of the democratic electoral context in which efforts to change the policing system have unfolded. Elected officials in both local and national government are caught in a bind as they seek to secure administrative loyalty from security forces (so as to better respond to citizen demands for safety and a more reliable rule of law) and purify a corrupted police apparatus at the same time. Deciding on whether to start with the preventative as opposed to judicial police has further stalled their progress, as eliminating abuses from cops on the street will not change things if the prosecutorial end of the chain remains corrupt. Finally, the slow but steady democratization of the political system has set in play a vicious competition between Mexico City officials and federal officials, neither of whom seem overly eager to help each other out because of stiff electoral competition between the parties that control these two key levels of governance. Such dynamics have reinforced the fragmentation of the state’s security apparatus: within and between police and military, between Mexico City officials and the federal executive, and between preventative and judicial police at both levels of governance; and all of these are long-standing dilemmas seen in various forms or guises in earlier administrations.

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To understand why these dilemmas and historical continuities have persisted, it is instructive to examine recent efforts at police reform since the democratic transition and to assess how and why many of the changes have led to greater militarization of the state and security system. A good place to start is with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of Lázaro Cárdenas, who ascended to the Mexico City mayor’s office in 1997 on the ticket of the PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática). Like his father, Cárdenas was committed to democracy and reform, and one of his first objectives was to mount a capable and trustworthy police force, purged of old and corrupted elements and replaced with those loyal to the PRD rather than the PRI. Like his father, Cárdenas identified police reform as a key issue because Mexico City had suffered through a major crime wave beginning in 1994, leading to hijackings, robberies, car thefts, and a general climate of insecurity, driven in part by police complicity with criminal gangs. Yet in contrast with his predecessors, during the campaign Cárdenas publicly insisted that he would not actively “militarize” the police— although some of his most loyal political allies were in the military, owing to his father’s legacy. Even so, upon coming to office he appointed a retired military man as the first police chief.43 This act may have been quite consistent with the history of policing in the city, in which almost all police chiefs have come from the military, as noted earlier. But in the euphoria of democratic transition, this decision caused considerable public skepticism about Cárdenas’s capacity to depart from business as usual, even as it showed how hard it was to try to reform the police without bringing the military into the picture. Given the military’s reputation as conservative and coercive, not just stained by its show of force against Chiapas rebels and other dissidents but also strongly supportive of the PRI-dominated authoritarian state, public outcry nonetheless pushed Cárdenas to reverse his initial decision. Cárdenas soon appointed two civilians to head the police and spearhead reform efforts, respectively: Alejandro Gertz Manero as Distrito Federal (DF) police chief and Samuel del Villar as the attorney general for the DF. With two civilians at the helm, Cárdenas introduced new structures for hiring and formulated alternative mechanisms for much stronger oversight of the police, a measure he hoped would help create a more accountable police force. These changes included the introduction of lie detector tests for new and returning police personnel, forced resignations among the judicial police (those empowered with bringing criminals to court), and a new system of tracking preventative police (i.e., beat cops, or those entrusted with guaranteeing social order) by neighborhood. The reform’s ineffectiveness was visible almost immediately, however, owing in no small part to the institutional legacies of the prior five decades.

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First came opposition from Mexico City police officials, one of whom went directly to the press to vigorously defend the “moral quality” of the city’s police—despite their surprising public acknowledgment of “occasional” problems of “judicial police . . . linkages with mafia dedicated to the robbery and reselling of automobiles and autoparts.”44 Second, beat cops protested against the new government’s anticorruption measures by “withdrawing” their services completely in such a way as to facilitate the commission of crime in the city. With foot-dragging from both the police leadership and rank and file, crime rates immediately went through the roof, a direct product of police inaction—and perhaps even concerted action, seen in the form of blatant involvement of police in criminal acts as a form of retribution.45 This situation of open rebellion did not merely owe to the unparalleled power of police and police institutions reinforced over close to half a century. It also was made possible by the fact that reform of the police did not touch the heart of the problem, which was government incapacity to legally indict criminal elements so as to attack the source of violent disorder and criminality, owing to the corruption of the judicial police and the judicial system. The failures of the judiciary stemmed not just from the fact that most beat cops refused to cooperate with the state in investigating drug and other gang-related crime, as an act of protest in response to reform-fueled threats to their own livelihood. It also owed to the fact that strong-armed efforts to purify the judicial police alienated both judges and prosecutors, whose capacities to conduct work in the court system rested on long-standing relations with judicial police. In short, with reform efforts there was even less cooperation between different crime-fighting elements in the administration of justice system after democratization than before. This problem was later acknowledged publicly by then Police Chief Alejandro Gertz Manero, who lamented a lack of institutional or legal “coordination which [could] link [crime] prevention with investigation” or “articulate civil, business, and penal codes.”46 But police intransigence and a corrupted legal system were only part of the problem. Democratic transition also created a new environment in which political competition among parties vying for electoral success had reached such heights that it was difficult to reach congressional compromise on legislation or policy to enable police or military reform. While democratization did give the newly elected PRD government in Mexico City a public platform to rein in the police, political conditions and institutional goals on the national level did not follow suit. During all of Cárdenas’s term in office, the PRI still maintained its national monopoly on the executive branch and with it a reservoir of institutional capacities that could be used to undermine police reform efforts in the capital. They

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included a system of federal police forces—still tied to the (PRI-dominated) national executive—with a history of intervening in Mexico City affairs; a military bureaucracy still answering to the PRI and increasingly worried about what would be exposed in terms of federal armed forces’ complicity and impunity if Mexico City police were purged; and considerable federal control of local finances—in the form of a budgetary veto on Mexico City expenditures. Also, the constitution set clear limits on the autonomy of the mayor to independently name his own police chief, with any appointee having to be jointly supported by the president and approved by national congress. In such conditions, it was very difficult for the Mexico City mayor to make much headway on local police reform. The fact that many local police still had strong connections to the PRI, given the history of complicity noted above, further reinforced the federal “safety net” that kept the city’s mayor from successfully penetrating and purging the ranks of local police, even though he had a PRD-dominated local legislature behind him. All this meant that despite the changes in political culture and party strengthening in Mexico City, both wrought by democratization, the structure of the state (and particularly, the balance of local and national authority guaranteed by the Constitution) did not change that much, nor did the social networks and political relations among police and persons of influence within the party and the state. The persistence of these state structures and institutional practices constituted a nontrivial barrier to effective reform. But why then did the PRD not successfully compensate for Cárdenas’s failures when his successor, Andres Manuel López Obrador, became mayor in 2000 and when the PRI was finally defeated at the national level? One explanation is that even with the PRI purged from the national executive, yet another political party—the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN)—had gained control of the presidency, and they too had few networks of control over police or military. Among the few available were national, not local, institutions, many of which were also wracked by their own problems of intensifying corruption, which had worsened in the several years before the PAN came to power owing to the acceleration of military involvement in both drugs and policing, as noted earlier. Yet national efforts to struggle against corruption and public insecurity entailed a centralization of institutions and efforts close to the president’s office, in individuals and agencies trusted by President Fox.47 This may have opened up new possibilities for ensuring top-down police accountability, in the form of federal efforts to “police the police,” but these national-level institutions were not accessible to the citizenry, thereby limiting accountability “from below,” that is, for citizens themselves.

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The centralization of police reform efforts not only made the state less accountable to the citizenry; it also alienated Mexico City officials, who with democratic rights and responsibilities now had their own networks, orientations, and partisan goals with respect to public insecurity and whose ties to local populations might have facilitated greater accountability among the police, at least in the capital city. With these competing local and national political constituencies—tied to different political parties emboldened by the competitive democratic environment—both sets of authorities had limited maneuvering room for enacting a serious or substantial police reform. To be sure, there were some gains despite this circumscribed space for action. In Mexico City, Mayor López Obrador and his police chief Marcelo Ebrard offered the following reforms: (1) renaming old police forces with new citizen-friendly titles, such as the Policía Comunitaria; (2) appointing new police leadership and recycling corrupt police out of the force, but keeping old organizational structures intact; and (3) developing more community-run policing programs, built around PRD ideals of citizen participation, but with the aim of bringing citizens into the front line of crime-fighting.48 The latter reform came closest to establishing greater accountability vis-à-vis citizens. But the larger effects of this change were counterbalanced by the more systemic problems of police corruption and the fact that most police were still organized at the level of function rather than territory. In this environment, community policing efforts only dealt with a small number of police, and their main function was public relations as much as anything else. On the national level as well, there were some gains in rooting out police corruption, but most came in tandem with greater centralization, which not only fueled further police corruption and violence but also backtracked on decentralized democratic ideals.49 These centralized efforts to shut corrupted police out of the state and punish them for past abuses helped drive some high-ranking police and military officials directly into the criminal world; and in a vicious cycle, such developments further pushed the Fox administration to find greater means of hierarchical control to rein in the problem, including the use of highly specialized military personnel— clandestine and not—against the police and other potential suspects.50 The use of authoritarian-era militarized tactics to get the problem under control not only holds the potential to undermine key democratic principles; it also has led to bureaucratic fragmentation and infighting among the myriad new and old federal-level agencies that were created in a relatively short amount of time. This did not bode well for efficiency of efforts, as conflict, competition, and ambiguity about which police forces are supposed to be where, doing what, and why have stymied effective results.

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In the context of these minimal gains, Mexico held yet another major national election in 2006, which brought another PRD mayor to the capital city, ex-Police Chief Marcelo Ebrard, and another PAN president, Felipe Calderón. As Ebrard and Calderón came from two different parties divided by a very bitter election (openly contested by Ebrard’s former boss López Obrador), there was no love lost between their respective levels of government. But both Ebrard and Calderón have been struggling to win the hearts and minds of the Mexican citizenry by making advances in the security front. They have taken two entirely different approaches. President Calderón has turned to the military as his savior, deploying them in insecure and unstable regions around the country, and using the military to replace police in hundreds of local communities across the country.51 He and his party have also joined with the PRI to support new legislation that gives police expanded new powers to search and arrest. Ebrard, for his part, has tried to work with the local police under his command, but to modify their territorial and administrative jurisdictions so as to create new lines of authority that hold the potential to bypass old structures of impunity. This is best seen in the creation of a new police force tied to the historic center of the city, in the use of surveillance technology to both empower and monitor this new police, and in the development of direct relations of reciprocity between them, private sector investors, and city officials downtown. The Calderón approach, in short, is much more militaristic, it relies on reductions of civil liberties and more of a siege mentality, and it builds on a strong reliance on the military as an institution, while the Ebrard approach develops networks of reciprocity between police, local governing officials, and private-sector investors willing to join in the efforts to build a more circumscribed but more locally accountable police force. To be sure, both men are building on the personal relations and institutions over which they have most control: military and police, respectively. And the task at hand is by no means equivalent. Ebrard is merely trying to impose some security and accountable policing in one city, albeit an important one, and he is doing so by starting small—that is, in a prescribed but influential area of the city. Calderón is trying to address an entire, interconnected system of impunity and corruption that involves military and police, both local and national, and which has been thrown into disarray by an escalating drug war that is making parts of Mexican national territory bastions of complete chaos and disorder. This may explain why he is turning to an institution like the military, which has a national presence and deep historical connections with police all over the country. But he also wants to completely bypass the police, by using the military to take over their functions and, after this has been accomplished, to create

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a centralized police force that is removed from local hands and answers to the federal executive in the same ways as does the military. As such, the fact that Calderón is turning primarily to the military, albeit in combination with other federal-level forces to solve problems of local policing, should also give some pause, primarily because any observer with deep knowledge of the country’s history, or the police-military nexus in particular, will know that the military as an institution is not necessarily any “purer” than the police, and in fact the military and police have been complicit with each other in sustaining abuses of power, when not competing over control for networks of corruption. This is especially so in the area of drug-trafficking, which has accelerated since the liberalization of politics and the economy in the mid-1990s.52 A betting person might put his chips on the more localized approach to policing, consistent with what Mayor Ebrard has pushed and with the decentralization of decisionmaking enabled by democratization, at least if restoring a citizen-accountable police force and restoring government legitimacy are also priorities for the future.

where to now? But all bets probably should be off. Why? Because Mexico does not have the luxury of forgetting the national picture and focusing only on a few key areas for making progress in policing or democratic accountability, even when dealing with as important a locale as Mexico City. The democratic future of the country and the legitimacy of the national political system are intricately connected to conditions in the capital city, and viceversa, although perhaps not with the same degree of interconnectedness as in prior decades. Recent advances in regional free trade, including NAFTA, and the globalization of the Mexican economy have shifted the balance between Mexico City and the regions, bringing more investments to both regions, although connected to different sectors of the economy (services and manufacturing, respectively). In light of this observation, it is possible that Calderón’s strategy to reform a corrupted police apparatus is in fact intended to buttress a new state formative or a new economic project as much as a new security project. It is for precisely this reason that it differs dramatically from that advanced by Mayor Ebrard and the PRD in Mexico City. With the PAN holding considerable electoral strength in the northern regions of the country where many of the military have been posted to supplant the police, and where much of the violence and impunity associated with the drug trade problems rests, creating a new set of political

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alliances with the military over security questions and policing institutions that in the long run can make the regions more stable for investment may be just what the PAN needs to secure its electoral hold on the local and thus national executive in future years. In contrast, Ebrard is building his new police reform strategies around collusion with global investors and other domestic partners committed to reviving the built environment of the capital city.53 Both of these strategies build on the acceptance of a neoliberal economic framework, although with different “industrial regimes” as their productive base. If these divergent policing strategies both generate widespread political support from local constituencies, then both may be successful. The only question is whether at some future time these distinctive “regimes” will collide, especially in terms of their divergent policing institutions and practices, if not in their economic priorities. If so, we may see a new type of state, or governing regime, divided by region and contested within national territory, just as in the early decades of the century when forces both within and outside the revolutionary family battled it out for consolidation of the modern Mexican state. The outcomes may be different, but the players and institutional tensions between coercive capacity and legitimacy will no doubt be surprisingly similar, analytically standing the test of time once again.

chapter four

Who Killed Crispín Aguilar? Violence and Order in the Postrevolutionary Countryside paul gillingham

; Crispín Aguilar was a pistolero, one of the violent entrepreneurs who struggled for power across most of Mexico after the armed revolution. During Aguilar’s lifetime his murky biography interested journalists, peasants, and policemen, who held “el patrón” responsible for the deaths of hundreds of men, women, and children, some of whom vanished into a secret burial ground in the hills above his home town of Actopan in central Veracruz. A handful of hastily penciled, nearly unreadable pages in the Interior Ministry archives form one of his testaments, part of the “Incomplete list of crimes committed by . . . Crispín Aguilar”: a catalog of 94 killings over six years.1 Different types of social scientists could find different reasons to be interested in Aguilar’s life. A sociologist might delve into his struggle to remain a node of multiple political, economic, and criminal networks and to dominate a radical agrarista peasantry.2 A political historian might find his links to the army and President Miguel Alemán worth a look.3 Legal historians might be interested in his trial, acquittal, and subsequent jailing, while a criminologist or an aficionado of discourse analysis might like the Lombrosian press descriptions of Aguilar and his peers as short, fat, squat, with a bulky, dangling belly, “like a tear,” which is the work of the beer that they put away like pachyderms do water. The complexion battered by drink; red, it shines and sweats, without the hair of a beard or moustache. The top of the skull, flattened, is not abundantly covered and on the inside, the few good ideas which there may be have their own caciques [bosses], which are the bad thoughts. As is generally seen in that class of subhuman being, the lower lip hangs down, a sign of stupidity and inconfessable degeneration. The bulging red eyes, the low brow, indicative of little intelligence for good, but plenty for evil.4

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Crispín Aguilar was killed in a cleverly choreographed ambush at the noisy height of semana santa in Actopan. More than his life or filmic death, however, it is perhaps its date which is of the greatest interest; for Aguilar did not die in the convulsive agrarian violence of the 1930s, but rather in March 1950.5 Crispín Aguilar was a major figure in the politics of a major state from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. He was a key lieutenant of Manuel Parra: a violent agrocapitalist whose pistolero, political, and financial networks underpinned a regional power stretching over twenty-five municipalities.6 But Aguilar was far from unique. On the rich lands of central Veracruz, Aguilar jostled up against several rivals, the principal of whom, Rafael Cornejo Armenta of Plan de las Hayas, was capable of mustering large bands of armed men to “invade” Aguilar’s territory.7 Similar competition persisted through the early 1940s in southern Veracruz, where coalitions of ejidos (corporate landholding communities) under Juan Paxtián and Nicolás Parra fought it out with cattle raids, canefield ambushes, kidnappings, killings of dependents, and hamlet burnings in a “reign of terror” that aimed to build agrarista fiefs and personal livestock businesses.8 Contemporary Veracruz enjoyed a reputation as a failed state. Yet violent entrepreneurs like the Aguilars and Armentas were to be found in many parts of Mexico, variously dubbed caciques, matones, luchadores, valientes, gallos, and pistoleros. They were the flagship species of rural societies that remained markedly violent long after the traditional watershed of 1940: the year, so Mexicans and Mexicanists once concurred, when the lead of the revolution was transmuted (by the philosophers’ stone of cardenismo) into the época de oro of political stability and economic development. In 1950 the municipio of Ometepec, Guerrero, for example, had a homicide rate high enough to place it among the twenty most violent municipios in Antioquia, Colombia (the third most violent department during the Violencia).9 The idea that Mexican and Colombian provinces might be compared in terms of violence during the 1940s and 1950s is admittedly counterintuitive. The metanarrative of modern Colombian history revolves around a peculiarly high degree of violence, making violence “a privileged historical referent . . . one of the poles of attraction for . . . social investigation.”10 Mexico, on the other hand, has been repeatedly presented as exceptional in its post-1940 stability. Very different historians have begun questioning the overwhelming weight of violence in interpretations of the Colombian past.11 This study contends that Mexico’s postrevolutionary narrative of rapid pacification demands parallel reexamination.

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mea sur ing violence then and now: methods and hypotheses The continuity of high levels of violence in the Mexican countryside after 1940 has hitherto been underestimated for three main reasons: a lack of reliable primary material, pronounced obstacles to accessing what documents do exist, and clear disincentives to wandering around Mexican hamlets asking who killed who.12 A primordial difficulty is that contemporary metropolitan elites— politicians, journalists, generals, spies, and diplomats—had a distinctly tenuous grasp on provincial reality. Subordinates and citizens routinely provided fictions concerning most aspects of country life, from harvests to homicides. Censorship made the fourth estate of little use as an open intelligence source.13 Mexico City newspapers, particularly the “quality” press, were extremely effectively controlled in this period: when rebellion broke out at Balsas, Guerrero, in 1947, Excélsior ran two short articles on the “poorly armed cattle rustlers” and then dropped the story.14 Provincial newspapers were less reliably managed, but their contributors experienced pressures ranging from elegant co-optation to outright murder. When Veracruz’s government wished to remove the the nota roja, the lurid crime section, from the Diario de Xalapa, they gave the editor access to wire service and a deputyship.15 Vicente Villasana, the flamboyant PANista editor of Tampico’s El Mundo, was less fortunate; he was murdered by a state police commander.16 The consequent battle for “cognitive capacity”—the “sustained organization to collect, process, analyse and deliver the types of information about society needed for a modern state to monitor and interpret the impact of its measures”—is a staple of contemporary accounts.17 Realizing that neither federal nor state bureaucracies provided reliable reports on the countryside, President Alemán expanded the intelligence agencies, founding the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and inflating the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS) budget some 500 percent.18 DGIPS agents regularly found out how violent that countryside really was in the 1940s and 1950s: one, dispatched to the coast of Oaxaca, was given an automatic rifle, three hundred rounds, and two platoons as an escort (and was attacked nonetheless).19 Yet many of the actors involved in rural violence had strong motives to cover up; as we shall see below, even victims could collaborate in underrepresenting acts of violence. The DGIPS, moreover, remained a small agency even after its dramatic 1940s expansion. Personnel files reveal a handful of full-time spies who were used intensively; the director could only

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spare fifteen operatives to monitor the 1952 elections across provincial Mexico.20 Thus the description and quantification of violence, despite the federal government’s interest, remained one of the blanker regions of the state’s generally fuzzy cognitive map. In 1950 the governor of Guerrero reported forty-four arrests for homicide. During the same year Ometepec alone, a market town of 18,000 people, recorded twenty-three murders in the registro civil.21 Early leaders of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) were unsure as to how violent the countryside genuinely remained; they often suspected the worst, and kept their suspicions as quiet as possible; and quite often they seem to have been right.22 Just how right they were is difficult to assess, for studying violence in postrevolutionary Mexico is not straightforward. What primary sources exist are not just unreliable; they are often unreachable. Uncontroversial collections of documents can be of limited use due to periodization schemes that end history (more effectively than Francis Fukuyama managed) in the 1940s; the cataloguing of even the excellent Veracruz state archive ends in 1949. As for the security archives, the reforms of the Vicente Fox presidency were less sweeping than they seemed. The DFS, responsible together with the Guardias Presidenciales for much presidential dirty work in provincial Mexico, opened its doors a decade ago, but only recently has offered a useful search process. The IPS catalogue, helpfully released on disc, is distinctly incomplete. The drawn-out liberalization of the military’s archive has been particularly frustrating.23 Researchers are now allowed far more than the traditional, carefully negotiated access to personnel records. Yet the Archivo General de la Nación’s well-ordered, thematically catalogued military collection has two major flaws: its 470odd volumes cover little more than a decade, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s; and they omit monthly zone commander’s reports.24 These institutional essentials would give historians new levels of insight into the army’s central role in maintaining internal order, which may be why they are absent. Monthly zone reports occasionally crop up in other archives; in the mid-1940s they are punctiliously divided into “military, political and social activities”; they are extremely revealing.25 These archival missing links have been reinforced by careerist sanctions against scholars and violent sanctions against journalists who are interested in violence.26 The historians of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past were fired without pay and their report, a detailed critique of the military during the counterinsurgency in Guerrero, was edited to remove names and evidence. The perpetrators of Mexico’s disappearances were themselves to disappear from public history.27 Manuel Parra—the greatest pistolero of them all—rose from the dead to literally haunt sociologist Antonio Santoyo when he delved

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into Parra’s life forty years post mortem.28 While the current, extremely high death rate among journalists in northern Mexico is notorious, inquisitive journalists in PRIísta Mexico always ran risks. Finally, such lacunae may also obey theoretical preferences: it is difficult to square high levels of post-1940 political/state violence with either neo-Gramscian interpretations of the revolution or corporatist models of the postrevolutionary state. None of these problems are insuperable. There are abundant qualitative data on violence in the reports of DGIPS agents, more prolix than their (more thuggish) counterparts in the DFS; in political correspondence at the lowest levels of Mexican government, particularly that between municipal agents and town halls; in state judicial archives; in the voluminous protests countrymen sent to the presidency and Gobernación; in those provincial newspapers that resisted censorship, such as Ignacio de la Hoya’s magnificently plainspoken La Verdad de Acapulco; and in the work of contemporary ethnographers such as Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Paul Friedrich, and Marcos Muñoz (some of whom had a clear elective affinity for caciquismo; Friedrich was told “You could be a leader here, Paul, you could order killings”).29 Quantitative data are more complicated, despite Pablo Piccato’s useful compilation of federal and state crime statistics for the twentieth century.30 Federal homicide statistics were not compiled until the late 1930s, providing no valid baseline for postrevolutionary levels of violence. The series that does exist is moreover incomplete. Not all years are covered, and some of the missing data, such as those covering Guerrero in the late 1970s or Veracruz in the mid-1940s, coincide with periods of unusually intense violence. The lack of a census for 1980 means, additionally, that the population data necessary for calculating homicide rates grow sketchy just as Mexico’s population grew fastest. Above all, there is a fundamental reporting problem: fear of reprisal and mistrust of local government meant that homicides in particular went routinely unreported. Reviewing the Cuajinicuilapa, Guerrero, registro civil for 1948, Aguirre Beltrán found that only 30 percent of all deaths went recorded; Veronique Flanet obtained a similar estimate of reporting frequency twenty years later in Jamiltepec, Oaxaca.31 A 1948 protest from the eastern highlands of Guerrero pinned twenty murders on the Salgado brothers—well-connected cattle rustlers— and explained the rationale for victim underreporting: There was no investigation by any Authority of these killings, it was kept quiet and the very mourners knew . . . who they were and said nothing to avoid the same fate. . . . Generals and representatives of the Sr. Gobernador have come and have left Huamuxtitlán with a few thousand pesos in their pockets and they go and mislead the Governor that all is quiet and that there are no such troubles.32

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“It is customary,” one Veracruzano told the president, “that anyone who sees anything and tells tales to the Authorities is murdered.”33 The consequent omissions of reporting inject a tangible unreality into governmental accounts of crime.34 In some cases official homicide counts actually decline as violence peaks, and no one was using household surveys to provide alternative statistics in 1940s Mexico.35 “It is important,” Moisés de la Peña noted in the late 1940s, “to point out that that the data on recorded presumed crimes does not represent anything but a minimal part of the real number of crimes committed.”36 Yet this is a standard problem: using police or military statistics as an index of the real level of violence is “highly suspect” in many societies.37 Colombian statistical records are similarly variable: the Ministry of Justice homicide rate for the violencia in Antioquia is roughly half that calculated by the department’s governor.38 There is something of a paradox in that the more significant a society’s homicide rate is, the more difficult it becomes to measure accurately. (And the less politically convenient: an instance of Campbell’s Law, which holds that the more politically charged a statistic is, the less likely it is to be accurate).39 Thus civilian casualties during the occupation of Iraq, 2003–2006, were estimated to sum between 44,000 and 48,000 by the occupiers; and 655,000—an order of magnitude greater—by The Lancet.40 The Piccato dataset is clearly imperfect: it makes Guerrero one of the least violent states in 1940s Mexico. Yet it has multiple, critical applications. If we assume either constant or rising reporting rates since 1940—which given the growing “degree of stateness” across the period is a justifiable assumption41—then its finding of a long-term decline in the national homicide rate from 1940 onward is reliable.42 Furthermore, acknowledging the crude quality of both Mexican and Colombian statistics should not prohibit their comparison. At a regional level, such an exercise— tabulated in figure 4.1—reveals broadly similar rates of homicide in Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, and Veracruz in Mexico and all bar the most violent Colombian departments between 1946 and 1960.43 This, it must be stressed, can only be a tentative, suggestive finding. But it is reinforced by what we might call “grassroots statistics”: the homicide rates revealed by interviews and by the libros de defunciones, the catalogs of deaths, in registros civiles. In La Montaña, Guerrero (notably less violent than Tierra Caliente or the coast), 1953 figures gave results of about 100 homicides per 100,000 population for Ahuacotzingo and Xochihuéhuetlan, and considerably more than that for Olinalá and Huamuxtitlán.44 (For a comparison of homicide rates in selected Colombian and Mexican municipalities, see table 4.1) The high forced migration rates that can be extrapolated from ejidal census results are further indicators of violence. In Tulapan, Veracruz, in a zone where opportunist agrarian

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140

Antioquia

Tolima

Veracruz

Cauca

Guerrero

San Luis Potosí

120

100

80

60

40

20

60 19

59 19

58 19

57 19

56 19

55 19

54 19

53 19

52 19

51 19

50 19

49 19

19

48

0

figure 4.1 Three-Year Moving Averages of Homicide Rates per 100,000 Population, Selected Mexican States, and Colombian Departments, 1948–1960 sources: Ministerio de Justicia, Cinco años de criminalidad aparente, 1955–1959, vol. 2 (Bogotá, 1961), reproduced in James D. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima (Tuscaloosa, 1985), 254; Pablo Piccato, “Estadísticas del crimen en México: Series históricas, 1901–2001,” INEGI, Estadísticas históricas de México CD-ROM (Mexico City, 2000).

bosses battled with peculiar ferocity, the 1952 census revealed that half the original inhabitants had abandoned the ejido.45 The Mexican countryside remained a profoundly violent place in the 1940s and early 1950s: army officers in Guerrero stressed the “intense” and “very common” incidence of homicide, while in Veracruz an agent reported that “not a day [passed] without underhand murders.”46 Both government and grassroots statistics reinforce qualitative evidence that the PRIísta state was not born of any pax cardenista.47 Homicide was, of course, merely one point on a broad spectrum of violence. At one end of this spectrum lay the “everyday” violence of intimidation, jailings, fights, and beatings. At the other end were fully fledged

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table 4.1 Homicide Rates in Selected Mexican and Colombian Municipios, 1949–1953 Municipio and Year

Homicides per 100,000 Population

Ometepec, Guerrero, 1950

129

Cuajinicuilapa, Guerrero, 1948

397

Huamuxtitlán, Guerrero, 1953

203

Naranja, Michoacán, 1950

c. 600

Caucasia, Antioquia, 1949–53

840

Dabeiba, Antioquia, 1949–53

670

San Luis, Antioquia, 1949–53

189

Anzá, Antioquia, 1949–53

478

sources: Libros de defunciones, Ometepec & Ixcateopan registros civiles; Marcos Muñoz, “MixtecaNahua-Tlapaneca,” in Memorias del Instituto Nacional Indigenista, vol. 9 (Mexico City, 1963); Paul Friedrich, The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method (Austin, 1986); Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Cuijla: Esbozo etnográfico de un pueblo negro (Mexico City, 1995 [1958]); INEGI, Estadísticas históricas de México CD-ROM (Mexico City, 2000); Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: La violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953 (Durham, 2002).

(if failed) rural rebellions, such as the 1946 Padillista risings (when several hundred armed men took to the sierra in the defeated presidential candidate’s home turf of northern Guerrero), or the 1947 rebellion at Balsas, Guerrero, or the 1954–55 henriquista risings in Chiapas, Chihuahua, Morelos, and Veracruz.48 In the middle lay rapes, riots (particularly common after contested elections), murders, petty massacres, forced migrations, and peasant jacqueries, such as the lynching of a veterinarian and seven soldiers in Senguio, Michoacán, during the campaign against foot-and-mouth disease.49 The marked diversity of violent behavior may be conceptualized in various ways. A common framework seeks to divine the goals of the perpetrators, dividing their acts into social, economic, and political categories.50 This tripartite conceptualization often breaks down in practice, however, due to (a) frequent contests over the meaning of violent acts and (b) frequent overlaps between all three categories. In midcentury Mexico, at least, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the ready interconvertability of different forms of social capital—symbolic, economic, and political—may offer more analytical insight.51 Violence during the revolutionary and immediate postrevolutionary periods constituted a key commodity, as it could be very readily traded for any and all of these forms of social capital. Why that should have been so—why Mexico remained distinctly violent—will be the subject of the “rank” section of this analy-

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sis: a synchronic sketch of violence in the early to mid-1940s. What changed (and what did not) over the whole of the transition period, 1940– 55, will form the “files” of this history.

crispín aguilar, the army, and agrarian capitalism in veracruz The end of large-scale fighting in 1920 had left Mexico with a collapsed state, newly fluid property rights, and a society in arms. Such situations favor the emergence of violent entrepreneurship, defined by Vadim Volkov as “a set of organizational solutions and action strategies enabling organized force (or organized violence) to be converted into money or other valuable assets on a permanent basis.”52 No government in the next twenty years was capable of demobilizing these violent entrepreneurs: the Cárdenas government, by cutting deals with regional caciques while arming agraristas, often succeeded in empowering both peasant militias and their opponents, the right-wing paramilitaries of the guardias blancas. Neither of the central components of order enforcement—police forces and a functioning court system—was operationally effective, and state governments lacked the money to improve them. Neither Guerrero nor Veracruz established an effective state police until the late 1940s; in 1935 Guerrero spent 1.5 percent and Veracruz 2 percent of their respective budgets on policing.53 The judiciary, meanwhile, was prey to widespread political and economic corruption at all levels. Municipal judges and agentes del ministerio público (investigating magistrates) were usually recruited from or by the dominant local faction. Guerrero’s supreme court was controlled throughout the 1930s and 1940s by Rodolfo Neri, ex-governor and leader of one of the state’s major political dynasties.54 Justice in Veracruz was, a Gobernación agent reported, likewise “completely politicised.”55 A combination of low and declining salaries, lucrative opportunities for peculation, and a high tolerance of malpractice further stimulated judicial corruption. The state’s formal mechanisms for controlling violence had failed, and both state and local actors consequently dealt with high levels of rural violence by contracting locally specific protection arrangements with one or more of the four main violent agencies: the army, the diverse reserve forces of the defensas rurales, the police, and the pistoleros. The numbers and autonomy of these violent actors produced what Georg Elwert defines as a market of violence, [an] . . . arena . . . of long-term violent interaction, unrestrained by overarching power structures and mitigating norms, where several rational actors employ violence as a strategy to bargain for power and material benefits.56

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Incidents of rural violence were represented by both regional and federal elites as ruptures in the state’s control, driven by powerful traditions of atavistic feud and petty authoritarianism. Alemán delivered a succinct version of this official line during a chaotic 1949 tour of Guerrero: “The caciquismo which exists in various regions of the Republic,” he told journalists, is a problem with colonial roots, characteristic of our country, and whose influence the Federal Government tries to reduce to avoid damage to lives and livelihoods; but without ceasing to recognize that its extinction will only come about through the education of future generations.57

Such structural explanations served elites of all levels in two ways. Their cultural determinism lent the state’s provincial managers a ready-made excuse for failure to control their domains. Governor Rafael Catalán Calvo, for example, explained coastal Guerrero’s extreme violence as having its “origin, very remote of course, in personal questions and interests . . . as regrettably the majority of the inhabitants of this zone are uncivilized people . . . they cannot be kept in line by the judicial authorities.”58 In some cases, of course, violence was indeed rooted in local feuds. At other times such a presentation was misleading, and by essentializing regional cultures as intrinsically violent, politicians, caciques, military leaders, and landowners all attempted to remove (their) agency from the commission of violence. Political violence is a delegitimizing phenomenon for any state to recognize, signifying either the extremes of popular refusal or the incapacity of elites to achieve their ends by more stately means, and Mexican leaders naturally denied the political nature of violence and their deep involvement in its commission. They were sometimes right, and it would be one-sided to register the depoliticization of violence as a tool of the dominant classes without simultaneously acknowledging the existence of the opposite procedure, the politicization of apolitical violence by los de abajo, the underdogs. Homicides denounced as political by a protesting peasantry to a distant Gobernación could in fact be rooted in cantina quarrels, personal vendettas, or ill-judged romance, and elite protestations of innocence could (at least occasionally) be worth the flimsy telegram paper on which they were printed.59 Yet most violence—whether committed by state or nonstate actors—was profoundly political, and much of it was less a rupture with the state’s control than a foundation stone of what tenuous control existed. The mainstay of rural repression and policing was the army, by far the most powerful violent agency, mustering some 55,000 men in four divisions, forty-seven infantry battalions, and twenty-one cavalry regiments. It was a two-tiered military. The divisions, containing the best troops,

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tanks, and artillery, were reserved to defend the capital against disorder or military rebellion, while the inferior, often undermanned infantry and cavalry units were stretched thinly across the thirty-three provincial Military Zones. The cities housed regimental garrisons; strategic or conflictual cabeceras were garrisoned by companies or platoons; rural conflict zones were patrolled by flying columns.60 It was customary for governors to include a catch-all acknowledgment of the military’s role in “maintaining public order” in their annual reports, which greatly underrepresented the omnipresence of soldiers in carrying out a broad range of police tasks.61 In towns and cities the army controlled crowds, the press, gamblers, prostitutes, elections, and even municipal governments.62 Soldiers investigated banditry, robbery, and murder and arrested suspects; they sometimes guarded prisons into the bargain.63 Army commanders were critical determinants in the provincial balance of power: they frequently decided which faction to arm (with Mausers, as defensas rurales) and which to disarm (under the provisions of despistolización).64 And they committed violence themselves, in a confused world of half-formal policing missions and halfinformal political maneuvering. Formally, routine rural work meant garrison duty, patrols, and escorts, the mere presence of troops fulfilling a significant deterrent role. When deterrence failed, small detachments went to suppress gunfights and clear up village vendettas. Larger conflicts—waves of cattle-rustling or banditry, intervillage feuding, or the intensifying of local agrarian disputes that such phenomena reflected—drew larger responses: formations of several companies, sometimes reinforced with reservists, who embarked on regional sweeps that were often counterinsurgencies in all but name, complete with opponents who fought back. In 1944 a detachment escorting a federal treasury inspector was ambushed on Guerrero’s Costa Chica, losing four soldiers and the taxman; in the same year two more soldiers were killed while escorting an “Inspector de Alcoholes” on the Costa Grande; in September 1948 soldiers pursuing the killers of the Eureka Corporation’s accountant lost three men in a firefight in the hills outside Acapulco.65 Officers facing a dangerous countryside and failing courts frequently made their own rough justice, and the ley fuga remained commonplace.66 The protests that extrajudicial executions sparked make it clear, however, that some whom the army saw as criminals were seen by local societies as popular leaders. Even the bourgeois gente de orden of the Costa Grande qualified their strong support for the army’s operations by calling their tactics “drastic.”67 Extrajudicial killings could temporarily shore up the state’s drive for public order; they could also undermine the claims of both army and state to neutrality and legitimacy.

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Sectors of the high command and federal politicians had tried since the 1920s to construct a professional, institutionally neutral military. Toward that end in the 1940s they purged older officers and tried to insist on the regular rotation of zone commanders, a key policy in centralizing and depoliticizing provincial command that dated back to the Porfiriato.68 Everyday policing duties were inimical to that depoliticization, fostering incestuous relations between local elites and soldiers and providing rich opportunities for corruption. Defensa Nacional consequently tried to strictly limit the army’s policing role. A January 1946 circular specified that, given that various groups and civil authorities of the Republic continually come requesting detachments of Federal Forces in order to obtain constitutional guarantees, it has been ordered that the said troops should not undertake police functions.”69

Yet in the mid-1940s—as in the mid-1990s and the early twenty-first century—the state proved incapable of managing public order without substantial army assistance. Heavily engaged in policing (and in a host of other nominally civilian functions), the army remained embroiled in the economic, political, and criminal networks of local societies. Crispín Aguilar’s career is a case study in that interpenetration. Veracruz was a wealthy state: the revolution had largely destroyed its rivals in sugar and livestock production (Morelos and Chihuahua), leaving Veracruzanos dominant in both industries.70 Agraristas, however, exercised a powerful selective pressure on the state’s agrocapitalists; and so across the 1920s and 1930s a generation of hard-faced men who looked as though they had done well out of the revolution took over Porfirian haciendas and found new ways of making them profitable.71 Manuel Parra was the most successful of those men, arriving in the state in 1929 and making the Hacienda Almolonga the headquarters of a petty empire. At its base was violence: Parra was backed by a paramilitary force, the Mano Negra, which Gobernación estimated at five hundred men. He imported arms from “his” coast, and he enjoyed links with defense secretaries—one, Pablo Quiroga, became a business partner—and zone commanders.72 He was accused of thousands of killings of agraristas, ranging from smallholders to the 1936 governor-elect, Manlio Fabio Altamirano.73 Yet Parra was more than a simple hit man. He clearly enjoyed a certain mafioso-like legitimacy: the “Corrido de Manuel Parra” approvingly cites his tolerance of religion (in a powerfully anticlerical state), his protection of small cattle ranchers from banditry, and the discernment of his violence (“he only hits those who rob”).74 At least two of his local bosses were themselves agraristas, who considered Parra’s organization as “a sort of police force in the centre of

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the state, whose function was to maintain the order lost during the tejedista years.”75 Parra was also extremely well-connected at both national and regional levels. He was a reliable ally to national politicians seeking counterbalances to Veracruz’s agrarian radicals, from Calles through Cárdenas to Avila Camacho.76 His relations with state elites were horizontal and mutualist, not hierarchical and clientelist. Governor Miguel Alemán reportedly “didn’t take any important step without first consulting Parra”; the zone commander, General Alejandro Mange, maintained a “regular and frequent correspondence” with the head of the Mano Negra, whom he also armed.77 Crispín Aguilar was Parra’s lieutenant, a key player in this complex system of rural domination, which he joined after fighting the delahuertista rebels in the agrarista 86th Battalion.78 By the late 1930s Aguilar was boss of the wealthy cane and cattle zone of Actopan, Parra’s most reliable and used hit man, and a cattleman of some standing in Xalapa society.79 Crispín Aguilar’s power continued to grow across the first half of the 1940s. He killed scores of village and state-level agraristas, including the mayors of Villa Cardel, Ursulo Galván and Actopan (inheriting the latter job himself); he colonized the village governments, police forces, and defensas rurales of both the coast and the foothills to the north and west of the port of Veracruz.80 He also planned joint enterprises with other members of Parra’s network, such as the Cuban emigré Antonio Eguía and Ernesto Pardo, Parra’s doctor.81 But Dr. Pardo’s preventive medicine did not match his political acumen, and in 1943 Manuel Parra died unexpectedly of a heart attack. His death sparked a pistolero civil war over the succession. General Mange tried to stop hostilities: in April 1945 he summoned Aguilar and the other leaders—Manuel Viveros from Almolonga, Rafael Cornejo Armenta, the Campomanes brothers from Ursulo Galván—to a meeting in his headquarters. The zone commander complained that their feuding had given General Reyes Esquivel in Martínez de la Torre “a very bad impression” of them, and told them to visit Reyes and explain themselves. They went to Xalapa, rented a Flecha Roja bus, and traveled together to meet the general in Perote. At the subsequent summit in Reyes’s barracks they explained “that they were slandered in the sense that they were killers and bandits but that that was not true” and that they were unified and prepared to pacify the countryside. The pistoleros then returned to Xalapa, accompanied by LieutenantColonel Sebastián Contreras Barreras, and tried to report their meeting to General Josué Benignos, the chief of state police.82 It was an impressive display of the normalization of their role as one more violent agency, capable of quiet negotiations with military and police commanders. Yet any peace was a hiatus; the uncertainty and opportunity afforded by the

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death of Parra, the change of governor and the presidential election all fostered continuing violent competition as pistoleros fought with each other and with agraristas to redraw the boundaries of their territories.83 These were Hobbesian times, in which Parra’s network degenerated into a war of all against all,fueled by “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death . . . because [they could not] assure the power and means to live well . . . without the acquisition of more.”84 The ensuing state of nature lasted for five years as pistolero killed pistolero. Popular opinion enjoyed the show of self-destruction: “They did away with themselves,” crowed one corrido.85 In reality, however, the mass extinction of the Veracruz pistoleros was less suicide than state achievement. On a federal level, President Miguel Alemán’s administration forced General Mange to abandon his former allies, while in Veracruz Governor Adolfo Ruiz Cortines reformed the state police—providing them with new arms, jeeps, and commanders—and sent them against the pistoleros.86 In 1947 the state’s new mounted police began to arrest low-ranking gunmen in regional sweeps that captured 220 wanted men in the first eight months of the year.87 In December they arrested Crispín Aguilar himself, who was sentenced to eight years in jail.88 While Aguilar was in prison in Allende, Veracruz, his colleagues and rivals continued to kill each other. In March 1949 Aguilar gunmen shot Pardo and Eguía, once business partners, now enemies who had testified against him, on a bus in Villa Cardel.89 Meanwhile an energetic judicial campaign was supplemented with highlevel extrajudicial killings. Marciano Armenta was subjected to the ley fuga by federal agents on the road to México DF; José Aguilar, Crispín’s brother, was killed by men dressed as state police.90 In early 1950 Aguilar was released into a changed world, where his former gunmen were rumored to have turned against him, and where he was not expected to last long. On April 6 he returned to Actopan, where on the 8th he left his house for the drinking, cockfights, and horse races of the sábado de gloria. He began drinking with two bodyguards in the main square, defiant, singing “Traigo mi .45” and firing shots in the air. The local garrison arrested him and, after a struggle, let him go with neither pistol nor bodyguards. Aguilar went back to drinking; in the early evening he set off down the Calle de San Francisco with his fourteen-year-old son Gonzalo and Eleuterio López. The streetlights went out and the municipal police—led by his former clients, the López brothers—opened fire. Gonzalo Aguilar was killed almost instantly—by mistake, they claimed. Crispín Aguilar was hit in the chest and stomach and stumbled as far as the door of his house, where he died.91 The López brothers made full confessions: they had plotted to kill Crispín Aguilar before he killed them and their father, manager of the

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electricity plant, had turned off the streetlighting to aid the ambush. It was notable, however, that soldiers disarmed “el patrón” and patrolled the street where he was shot immediately before the ambush.92 Unquestionably the state seized Aguilar’s death as an opportunity to retake lost territory. Army units immediately flooded into Actopan, and the following months saw the disintegration of the rest of the Aguilar network in  shootings and arrests.93 Two years later Aguilar’s great rival, Rafael Cornejo Armenta, was similarly murdered in his hometown, his network dismantled by the state police.94 These deaths were turning points in regional history. They also exemplified three tangible changes in the quality and quantity of violence in Mexico between the mid-1940s and the mid1950s. State violence became more selective and institutionalized, and somewhat less militarized; entrepreneurial violence was decentralized; and across much, but not all, of the countryside, violence began to fall.95

changing modes and quanta of violence The demilitarization of state violence was due in part to a hard-won increase in civilian control over both the regular army and its anarchic reserves. The Mexican Army has managed memory with enduring success, promoting—like their Brazilian counterparts—a resilient image of early institutional unity and professionalization over an alternative, grassroots narrative of corruption, factionalism, and commercialized violence.96 The army version of history, sustained by tight archival control, bled into subsequent scholarly analyses that concurred with the military’s projection of a decorous withdrawal from politics in the early 1940s.97 Yet the Alemán sexenio was in reality a time of bitter struggle between different army factions, pitting loyal PRIísta officers against two hard-line groups that aspired to an intensification and formalization of military power. This struggle had three main battlefields: army attempts to stop Alemán’s candidacy in 1945, the mooted military takeover of 1948, and the henriquista campaign of 1951–52. From the government’s viewpoint it was a closely run thing; in August 1948 a trusted informant offered the U.S. embassy odds of six to four on a revolt.98 The line was held by measures including three sweeping reshuffles, among them the dissolution of the General Staff in November 1948; by the systematic bribery of zone commanders with money from the unaudited president’s discretionary fund; by a flood of promotions to general rank; by land grants, houses, full-pay retirements, life insurance, and soft loans to serving officers and veterans alike; and by tight presidential control over the army’s elite units in Mexico City.99 The 1952 repression of the henriquistas (factions of whom advocated agrarian rebellion or coup d’état) provided a further opportunity

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to purge dissident officers, and to finalize a modus vivendi that left the generals with considerable regional and institutional autonomy in exchange for national submission.100 Yet this same submissiveness had some trickle-down effect on the Military Zones, whose commanders lost power in the late 1940s. In Guerrero none of General Adrián Castrejón’s immediate successors enjoyed his independence or his powerful regional economic and political interests. And in Veracruz, General Mange’s cacicazgo endured until 1959; he preserved his business interests, and even expanded his territorial reach; but he never regained his extraordinary powers of the early 1940s, when, in alliance with the pistoleros, he ruled much of the state. Military power could not have been reduced without the simultaneous construction of a viable alternative source of state violence, namely, police forces, functioning courts, and penitentiary systems. This could be seen in unlikely places, such as San Luis Potosí, where Gonzalo N. Santos reformed the state police and warned judges against “cronyism.”101 Even at a municipal level, frequent denunciations of brutal incompetence and politicization were interspersed with indicators of an embryonic professionalization. In Ixcateopan the poorest townsmen refused in 1948 to continue with the amateur policing of the ronda, the customary nightwatch; similar protests in Jamiltepec, Oaxaca, led to the establishment of a paid police force.102 In 1951 Governor Alejandro Gómez Maganda reorganized Guerrero’s state police to provide nearly six hundred betterpaid, better-equipped policemen who covered some thirty of the state’s municipios and reported directly to the governor.103 The governments of both Guerrero and Veracruz deployed increasing numbers of rural flying columns in the second half of the 1940s, taking over some of the army’s former policing roles. Such state police forces grew significantly in size and sophistication during the Alemán sexenio, underpinned by significant increases in funding. Veracruz’s program of police reform between 1945 and 1953 encompassed new commanders, expanded recruitment, training, salaries and pensions, the provision of Mausers, submachine guns, trucks, and jeeps to the policemen, and the creation of an elite detective force. The new force under General Antioco Lara Salazar had notable successes: a roundup of outstanding arrest warrants led to a series of largescale police operations that yielded 452 arrests in 1948 and 840 in 1949. The rate of arrest warrant completion trebled. The courts in both states processed increasing numbers of cases, as figure 4.2 illustrates; meanwhile, the construction of new jails such as Perote’s San Carlos penitentiary and the improvement of existing buildings made custodial sentencing more effective than in the early 1940s.104 (That escape was once an easy way out was evinced by some 114 trials for jailbreak in Veracruz in 1943 alone.)105 This shift should not be overstated. Even in Veracruz the

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Guerrero

70

Veracruz

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1930 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953

figure 4.2 Successful Prosecutions per Annum, Guerrero and Veracruz, 1930–1953 source: Pablo Piccato, “Estadísticas del crimen en México: Series históricas, 1901–2001.”

new police were far from omnipresent; the flying columns were overwhelmingly concentrated in the center of the state.106 In Guerrero, which lagged far behind, even the main cities continued to lack effective full-time police coverage: in 1952 the DFS noted that booming Acapulco was policed by seventeen officers and thirty-six men, making it “completely impossible to provide effective security to society and repress criminality.”107 The army remained critical to provincial order: in the early 1950s small, platoon-sized garrisons remained in some 20 percent of the country’s municipios.108 But for all the caveats there had been a leap in civilian police capacities which enabled a move toward the Porfirian division of labor, with strategic centers under civilian police control while state peripheries remained largely militarized. The comparison was made explicit in recurrent proposals to resurrect the rurales, complete with charro uniforms.109 With presidents and governors able to control at least some of the countryside without recourse to the army, the generals’ bargaining power and the autonomy it once bought were correspondingly reduced. A younger generation of more educated and urban provincial politicians, less hard-bitten and with better police than their predecessors, simultaneously severed some of the traditional links between políticos and pistoleros. The police, courts, military, intelligence, and hired assassins were all used by the new men against the old guard of gunmen. When local governors proved recalcitrant in abandoning such useful allies, they

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40 Guerrero

35

Veracruz San Luis Potosi

30

National Average

25

20

15

10

5

0 1940

1945

1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

figure 4.3 Reported Homicides per 100,000 Population, 1940–2000 sources: Pablo Piccato, “Estadísticas del crimen en México: Series históricas, 1901–2001”; INEGI, Estadísticas históricas de México CD-ROM (Mexico City, 2000).

were pressured by the center. In 1952 DFS agents forced Gómez Maganda to fire the pistoleros whom he had recruited for Acapulco’s police force, then arrested and ley fuga’d the most prominent.110 In Veracruz the result was the mass extinction of the leading violent entrepreneurs, in Guerrero a curtailing of their formal political careers. Alfredo Córdoba Lara, for example, was forced by General Sánchez Taboada to resign his candidacy for Acapulco’s deputyship due to his implication in the murder of union leader Pillo Rosales; yet he led the state’s branch of the CTM until his death in 1962.111 Many gunmen continued their work inside the broad church of the state security services; as the “Corrido to the tragic death of Crispín Aguilar” had it, “pa’ los toros del Jaral, los caballos de allá mismo.”112 The Armenta brothers were killed by men working for central government; a rash of Presidential Guard credentials protected pistoleros from the south of Veracruz to the Costa Grande; and Miguel Alemán was

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guarded by men such as Miguel Portilla, his driver, whose nickname in Xalapa was “el asesino.”113 But Alemanista politicians were more sensitive to public opinion than their predecessors: they increased press and public relations spending and achieved a far greater distance in their relations with grassroots violence, “trying out,” one journalist observed, “new methods of elimination that were not our classic “preventive killings.”114 Their search for deniability was exemplified in the changing fashions of assassination. When Governor Alberto F. Berber tried to kill the agrarista Nabor Ojeda in 1941, he had his car machine-gunned; when union leader Pillo Rosales was killed, he was hit over the head and his car driven into a ravine, in a failed attempt to feign accidental death.115 Obvious murders were slowly superseded by suspicious suicides and contrived car crashes.116 There was, furthermore, a clear difference between the modus operandi of late 1940s governors such as Baltazar Leyva Mancilla or Marco Antonio Muñoz and their predecessors such as Berber or Cerdán; the former were never directly linked to political assassinations. This change was in part a genuine decentralization of informal state violence, encouraged by Alemán when he fired the governor of Tamaulipas for conniving at the killing of the newspaper editor Vicente Villasana.117 It quite possibly also represented a substitution of suggestion for former, explicit command; a case of “mátalos en caliente” being paraphrased by “Will no one rid me of this turbulent PRIísta?”

conclusion Crispín Aguilar was killed in the midst of a bloody campaign of extermination of Veracruz’s violent entrepreneurs; while ex-clients pulled the trigger, the state set him up. He died at the end of a decade less violent, on most indicators, than the later 1930s, but considerably more violent than the “national unity” propaganda of Avila Camacho and the early PRI let on. In 1950, the year Aguilar died, the regional homicide rate rose; thereafter it dropped sharply. This closes a neat narrative for the history of violence and order in Veracruz, whereby gunmen capitalists are critical in first containing and then destroying radical agrarismo, and are then discarded by the first generation of PRIístas, who manage to rule a weary countryside with less bloodshed than their predecessors. It is too neat to be representative of the entire country. Across Mexico the evidence for the tenacious continuity of violent practices by rulers and ruled between 1940 and 1955 outweighs that suggesting any sudden rupture. Pistoleros endured, remaining central to state control in regions like Oaxaca.118 Mario Colonna, a major Veracruz hit man, was not killed

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until the 1960s; el Animal, a legendary Guerrerense gunman, survived and was wheeled out to a place of honor when PRIístas came to the coast on campaign; Aristeo Prado, dubbed Michoacán’s “last valiente,” survived until the early 1980s.119 Reformed police forces and courts fluctuated in their effectiveness: vox populi in the 1960s had the state attorney and a  commander of state police running the Veracruz drug trade.120 Soldiers,  meanwhile, remained essential to provincial schemes of order, and a moderated military caciquismo persisted. The army’s early 1940s role in policing and counterinsurgency endured in many regions. Its significance rebounded—particularly in Chihuahua, Yucatán, and Guerrero—in the 1960s, as open guerrilla warfare spread in selected regions. As a 1967 CIA appraisal summarized it, Rural unrest is frequently manifested in violent outbreaks. . . . Peace is maintained by the Mexican Army, which is both brutally effective and politically astute. The army has dispatched units to scenes of unrest where, after publicizing an imminent “training maneuver,” they have used a hillside for massive firing practice, blasting all standing objects to rubble.121

By the 1970s large-scale antinarcotics campaigns—Operation Condor, for example, deployed more than 2,500 soldiers in helicopter units across Sinaloa—had been added to their remit.122 Across the Mexican countryside actual violence, the possibility of violence, and the decisive memory of violence past all continued to shape everyday lives. Yet the late 1940s were nonetheless pivotal. The incidence of violence in the three states sampled may have been broadly comparable to all but the most violent Colombian departments. But the political management of violence in the two countries differed markedly. As the violencia gathered momentum the Colombian government deprofessionalized the police, replacing Liberals with conservative peasant recruits, the chulavitas; encouraged the formation of paramilitaries, the contrachusmas, and the work of political assassins, the pájaros; and militarized the countryside.123 The net effect was to create a vigorous free market of violence. In Mexico the first generation of PRIístas pursued different policies: they created professional police forces, engineered the moderation of pistolero violence, and tried at least to curtail the army’s provincial autonomy. By the mid-1950s, as a result, markedly fewer Mexicans were using violence as an everyday political or business tool, and the free market of violence that earlier obtained was being narrowed by state regulation. Violence in Mexico decreased while violence in Colombia increased. These phenomena clearly varied from region to region: in Guerrero the homicide rate rose in the 1940s, dropped in the 1950s, and rebounded in the 1960s. Close study of Morelos across the period substantiates Tanalís Padilla’s conclusion that the pax PRIísta never

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existed.124 While urban violence became politically unfeasible, rural violence was acceptable if sufficiently well-masked.125 As Renan observed, though, “truth consists of nuances”: despite its continuing conflicts, Mexico under the PRI was substantially more peaceful than Mexico before 1950 or after 2006.126 Guerrero’s official homicide rate in 1970 was less than a quarter that of Chihuahua in 2010.127 A long-term national decline in violence began in the 1950s and continued across the twentieth century. State violence was critical in establishing what rule the PRI enjoyed across a disorderly countryside. The PRIístas’ subsequent, selective, and generally adroit management of both state and nonstate violence was central to that rule’s endurance.

PART THR EE

In the Gray Zone: Drugs, Violence, Globalization, and the State

chapter five

Narco-Violence and the State in Modern Mexico alan knight

; This is my first excursion into crime. To put it more clearly: this is my first attempt to look at crime, specifically, organized crime, as a source of violence in modern Mexico. I was drawn to this subject, first, by Wil Pansters’ invitation (I could say he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse) and, second, by the belief that, as I explain below, any study of violence needs to be disaggregated and contextualized; violence cannot be treated as a generic phenomenon obeying common identifiable causes. Violence may be a serious problem and an important topic for analysis, but to understand violence we need to look at particular cases in particular contexts. In this respect, violence resembles war (or, I would add, terrorism), rather than, say, malaria. In this chapter, therefore, I focus on organized crime, specifically, narco-crime and narco-violence, and their relation to Mexican state and society in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The analysis, I repeat, is preliminary and exploratory. It is a commonplace that Mexico is experiencing a wave of violence associated with drug-trafficking. For the first time since the 1994 Zapatista rebellion, the (London) Guardian devoted an entire page to a Mexican story, headlined “Battles and Beheadings as Vicious Drugs War Spirals out of Control.”1 For over a decade there has been talk of the “Colombianization” of the country; recently, we even hear of “Afghanistanization.”2 While, given its nature, the phenomenon is hard to research and particularly hard to quantify, the figures suggest a real increase in criminal violence and not merely journalistic hype or exaggerated moral panic.3 During 2006–7, deaths associated with drug-trafficking ran at about 120 a  month, or 1,500 a year: a significant increase, it is true, but not yet

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“Colombian” in scale.4 On taking power in December 2006, President Calderón embarked on a series of high-profile military interventions in several states. Initially popular, these interventions may have dented the problem, at least in some cities,5 but informed opinion remains justifiably skeptical and, over the last four years, the rate of narco-killing has risen, in some cases dramatically.6 This is not, perhaps, surprising. Military campaigns—such as President López Portillo’s Operation Condor in 1977—failed to eliminate narco power in the past,7 and temporary, local  “success” should not be mistaken for permanent solutions. Narco power is nothing if not flexible and tenacious, and apparent government successes—killings, arrests, and extraditions—may reflect the wellknown “cucaracha (cockroach) effect,” as targeted criminals scatter and regroup (hence, in part, the increase of narco-violence in previously relatively quiet states like Nuevo León and Veracruz).8 In the words of Eduardo Talavera—a slippery policeman and crime boss from Juárez in the 1930s—it was crucial to be forewarned, to “quitarse del camino cuando caía el martillo.”9 At present, therefore, the “war on drugs” has the appearance of an “interminable war.”10

explaining (drug- related) violence How is narco-violence to be explained? In the first instance, it is necessary to make a rough distinction between the low-level, individual, and quotidian violence perpetrated by drug-users and the high-level, organized violence committed by (and against) drug cartels as they go about their abnormal business. Of course, these two are connected (not least by the production, shipment, and consumption of drugs), and both contribute to mounting public anxiety (indeed, quotidian street violence is probably more worrying to most Mexicans than the turf wars being conducted by the cartels; the risk of being robbed or kidnapped on the streets of Mexico City is rather greater than that of being fatally caught in the criminal crossfire, as Archbishop Posadas—possibly—was).11 However, these two forms of drug-related violence are rather different. The first—low-level, “disorganized,” usually street crime—derives from drug consumption and the resulting delinquency; the second—narco-violence—involves largescale drug production, shipment, and sale (especially in the export market). The first is more individual and decentralized, the second more collective and centralized; it therefore conforms to the standard definition of organized crime.12 The first, if we recall the Marxist jargon of yesteryear, has to do with the use value of drugs, the second with their market value.13 Given Mexico’s size, purchasing power, and domestic drug culture, the first is

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much smaller than the second.14 The first is also common throughout much of the world; the second is distinctive to Mexico and a few other countries—Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Afghanistan—which are major centers of drug production and shipment. The first kind of crime—theft, robbery, muggings—increased in the 1990s, chiefly because of the 1994–95 economic crisis (an increase that has since ceased),15 while the second, as I have noted, has grown rapidly in recent years. The first involves decentralized markets, numerous Third World producers of coca and poppies and yet more numerous First World consumers of cocaine and heroin, while the second involves organized cartels which control processing and wholesale distribution, which is where the big money is to be made.16 The narco business therefore resembles an hourglass, with the cartels sitting in the middle, controlling the constricted flow between mass supply and mass demand: they are the Folgers or Maxwell House of this classic commodity chain.17 Finally, as Chabat points out, political perceptions differ: it is the international drug traffic, not domestic drug consumption, that now seems to threaten national security and that largely drives government policy.18 Narco-violence is just one of many forms of violent phenomena that can be identified, in Mexico and elsewhere. Indeed, violence is so pervasive and Protean that, as I suggested at the outset, it seems to me futile to try to explain it as a generic phenomenon. It may be that there are some very widespread, even universal, features of violence that derive from the hardwiring of humans (or from “human nature,” if you prefer)19: men commit more violence than women; young men are particularly prone to violence (and are disproportionately the victims of violence);20 and some violence can be attributed to individual psychopathologies (certainly some narcos seem to have been psychopaths, who relished casual violence and homicide).21 But these “universals” obviously do not help us explain particular waves of violence in particular contexts. It may be that, when violence is on the historical agenda—whether for criminal, political, or warlike purposes—the usual suspects will turn up: face-to-face violence is likely to be the work of men, especially younger men; and a few of them will be psychopaths who enjoy their work (who, in the case of Ramón Arellano Félix, gave a whole new meaning to the term criminal vice).22 Their own consumption of alcohol and drugs may also help to encourage, or permit, extreme, self-gratifying, “non-instrumental” violence.23 But that cannot explain changes in the agenda, that is, the context that elicits such (possibly hard-wired) behavior. After all, if we take the long sweep of Mexican history, we see huge swings in the incidence of violence: the Postclassic was a time of warfare (and mass human sacrifice, at least in the Aztec empire); the colonial period was, following the initial violence of the Conquest, relatively peaceful (there were no major wars and

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relatively few rebellions, especially in the populous heartland of New Spain); Independence, in contrast, came at a heavy price in terms of death and destruction; and, following the thirty-five years of the pax Porfiriana, (Porfirian Peace) Mexico experienced another huge hecatomb with the Revolution of 1910.24 Since the late 1920s macro-political violence— major wars and rebellions—have largely disappeared,25 and there is good evidence that, in Mexico City at least, violent crime also declined over the years.26 Thus, I see no explanatory value in grand psycho-cultural theories that attribute Mexico’s supposed propensity to violence to the Aztec heritage, Spanish Catholicism (remember the Inquisition!), caudillismo, the Day of the Dead, the torero complex, and so on. There may be macho traits in Mexican society, perpetuated by forms of education and acculturation, as there are in Britain or the United States (football hooligans and public schools; high-school football, Rambo, the Marine Corps, the NRA). But it is hard to see how such supposedly deep traits can account for big conjunctural shifts in the incidence of violence.27 In place of attitudes, I would stress situations: violence—like many other forms of human behavior—is chiefly the product of circumstances. A great many Mexicans were killed in the 1910s not because macho attitudes inexplicably blossomed in the second decade of the last century, but because serious social and political conflicts arose that could not be settled within the confines of a sclerotic political system. Over the last generation or so, we see a Mexico that is, by international standards, fairly violent: in 1995 Mexico had a homicide rate of 17.2 per hundred thousand, about the same level as Brazil (19.0) and Venezuela (15.8); twice that of the United States (8.6) and ten times that of Canada (1.7); but only a fifth that of Colombia (80.0). However, for most of the second half of the twentieth century, Mexican homicide rates fell rather than rose: the Mexican average for 1955–95 stood at 20.4.28 The recent increase in high-profile, drugrelated homicides has therefore reversed a gradual long-term downward trend, and, at the same time, has created major regional disparities. The dramatic variations we see in the incidence of violence over the long term—variations that would also be evident, mutatis mutandis, if we looked at the history of Europe or the United States over centuries— confirm that the historical context is key. Violence is a product of particular circumstances—wars, rebellions, state failure, commodity booms29— and it should be analyzed in context, as part of a repertoire of actions. So, the key question today is: what context has generated the unusual degree of (specifically) narco-violence that currently afflicts Mexico? I shall argue that, in answering this question (tentatively, as a first excursion demands), we have to explore a range of factors—political, economic, international. We may enter our analysis through a large and blood-

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stained portal labeled “violence,” but, once inside, we will find a series of interlocking chambers, occupied by a diverse range of people and interests. Narco-violence, though a very specific phenomenon, thus offers a useful lens through which to view modern Mexico in all its shifting complexity.

drugs and violence: continuity and change First, how new is the narco-violence of the 2000s? The task of the historian is often to reveal continuities, where others (political scientists, journalists) see novelty. This is not surprising, given that the historian’s comparative advantage lies in knowledge of the past; and it is usually not difficult to find precedents for current events, thus to proclaim (in extreme form) “There is nothing new under the sun” (a proclamation which, of course, is sometimes wrong and often exaggerated). To start with, I will conform to this historical proclivity. Organized drug production, shipment, and sale, especially for export to the United States, is very old in Mexico. Indeed, if we expand the category to contraband in general, Mexico has over two centuries of vigorous contraband activity.30 The illicit drug trade is nearly a century old and dates to the Porfiriato, when cross-border trade rapidly increased, along with U.S. demand for narcotics. During the 1910s Baja California—under the semiautonomous rule of Esteban Cantú, himself reputedly an addict—became a profitable center of drug shipments to the United States.31 By the 1920s many of the broad features of the drug trade were in place: the U.S. market was key; drugs—home-grown marijuana and opium and imported cocaine—formed part of a much larger cross-border traffic, both legal and illegal (which Prohibition, of course, further stimulated: the first forerunner of today’s narco-corrido [-ballad], Los tequileros, dates to the 1920s).32 Activities concentrated in the north, especially the center-north and northwest: the states of Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California, notably the border towns of Juárez, Tijuana, and Mexicali. By the 1920s Sinaloa had become a center of opium production, and the northwestern Chinese communities figured prominently as both consumers and traffickers.33 Though there were some well-known and well-heeled narco bosses—like Ben Jim Ungson, a Sonoran Chinese, based in Mexicali, who boasted gold teeth, diamond rings, and a fortune of half a million dollars34—many of those involved were smaller fry, who inhabited an obscure world of multiple names and apodos (aliases), and who dabbled in a variety of illegal activities: gambling, bootleg liquor, prostitution, the white slave trade, pornography, car theft, and other forms of fairly petty larceny.35 This pattern

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would continue for decades, establishing a regional culture where “drug trafficking is considered an inevitable, rather than a shocking, feature of the border economy.”36 Three features were already apparent, all of them inevitable and enduring products of illicit business: demand, violence, and the incestuous relationship between criminals and the state apparatus. First, drug-trafficking depended on U.S. demand; hence was skewed toward the Mexican north, especially the northwest; and took advantage of a long and porous border (whose porosity had been further revealed and exacerbated by the revolution).37 It was relatively easy to cross the border with small, but profitable, consignments of drugs, whose high value-to-weight ratio guaranteed a profit.38 Traffickers could literally sneak through holes in the fence (where a fence existed).39 They could also take advantage of transport innovations— by the 1920s they were using airplanes—and of the growth of border communities in the United States, where American officials could be bought off (official corruption was never a Mexican monopoly).40 Second, the trade was inevitably accompanied by violence; again, the recent experience of the revolution made violence, as a business or political strategem, more common, accessible, and, in a sense, democratic.41 More people had guns and violence was an accepted, if slowly declining, feature of postrevolutionary politics. Narco-gangs, like political factions, had their known pistoleros, frequently known by their apodos, like El Chihuili, the hired gun of narco boss (and police chief) Manuel Fontes Buelna of Mexicali, “probably the meanest bastard on the . . . frontier and the best pistolero.”42 But narco-violence took several forms, three of which are easily identifiable, at least in theory. Gangs fought state officials (Mexican and American) and vice versa; gangs fought other gangs in criminal turf wars (by today’s standards these were fairly small-scale); and, perhaps more surprisingly, state officials fought each other (thus, the Tijuana and Mexicali police conducted a prolonged feud during the 1940s).43 Indeed, there are stories from the wilder 1920s of Mexican officials firing on their U.S. counterparts in order to help illegal Mexican migrants cross into El Paso.44 Although ostensibly distinct, these three forms of narco-violence were, in fact, closely related, because of the close association of officials (chiefly police and políticos) with the drug trade. While some officials cracked down on the trade—for example, Antonio Bermúdez, police chief and mayor of Juárez in the 1930s and 1940s; General Juan Felipe Rico, military commander of Baja California Norte in the 1940s; or Amador Toco Cangas, the popular police chief of Tijuana in the 1960s—many protected it and profited from it (like Fontes Buelna, mentioned above).45 The TijuanaMexicali police feud of the 1940s was, in its way, also a narco turf war. Thus the imbrication of police and narcos which has been a key feature of

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recent years is far from new; indeed, it is a staple, structural feature of a flourishing narco-economy.46 Imbrication was evident in the use not only of violence, but also of discreet protection, the supply of information, tip-offs, and favors. Far from being ranged against each other in (metaphorical) trench warfare, police and narcos operated in a shared no-man’s-land, in which the supposedly sharp line dividing the state and the criminal world was blurred. Indeed, there was a lot of coming-and-going across no-man’s-land, as policemen turned into drug dealers or narco thugs. Thus, a list of those involved in the Tijuana drug business in the late 1940s includes the usual barmen, prostitutes, Chinese, truckers, and restaurateurs, as well as the ex–police chief of Mexicali and a former Tijuana policeman.47 The authorities colluded in the drug trade by organizing phony raids (the confiscated merchandise would then be rerouted on to the market); and by allowing jailed drug bosses, like Juárez’s notorious La Nacha, to continue in business while in prison.48 When “Chapo” Guzmán and Osiel Cárdenas continued to run their operations from behind bars, they were doing nothing new (although they were doing it on a grander scale, with the help of more money and fancier technology, such as cell phones).

drugs, violence, and state- making The intimate relationship between politicians and the drug trade formed part of a bigger syndrome, analysis of which requires a closer look at the revolutionary state. Two points stand out. First, very obviously, the revolutionary state, like its Porfirian predecessor, was far from being a model Weberian state, a Rechtsstaat committed to the rule of law and possessing a monopoly of legitimate violence.49 Again, this outcome should not be seen as some Aztec or Spanish-colonial inheritance, but rather as a rational, “situational” response to circumstances of instability, official penury, and class or sectoral self-interest. Second, the revolution increased the role and reach of the state and thus made forms of corruption, rent-seeking, and related violence more common. The state grew in three chief respects. First, it expanded its income and payroll (though not to the extent that many suppose; hence I would not place great weight on this factor; indeed, it was the relative poverty of the state that encouraged official peculation and corruption. Rich states can more readily dispense with official corruption and collusion).50 Second, more importantly, the state acquired a mass base (in the form of parties, ejidos, sindicatos [land grants and trade unions]), which the Porfirian regime had lacked; thus, it had to pay greater attention to popular demands

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and interests. Third, it deployed greater regulatory powers—over land, labor, property, education, and the church (and, as it happened, drugs)51— powers which, being in some measure discretionary, could easily be abused.52 Factors two and three (but not, I repeat, factor one) favored corruption, but in two distinct forms: politicians needed resources to distribute in order to win mass support; and they used the arbitrary power of the state to make money for themselves and their friends, families, and clients. In the words of Alan Riding, “public life could be defined as the abuse of power to achieve wealth and the abuse of wealth to achieve power.”53 When it came to winning mass support—in the “revolutionary” context of the 1920s and 1930s—policies of land and labor reform were crucial (I shall later draw a contrast with the new modalities of Mexican democracy in the 1990s and 2000s). Politicians typically won mass support by distributing land and supporting labor unions (these were “cheap” forms of distribution which cost little and involved a transfer of resources—land and income—from the private sector to the state’s corporate allies and clients. Of course, they could also incur costs in terms of business confidence, investment, production, and tax revenue). Drugs did not play a part in this calculation. But when it came to personal peculation—“rentseeking,” to use today’s preferred term—drug income was there for the taking. Of course, Mexican políticos elicited and extracted bribes from all forms of legitimate business as well: landowners, mining and oil companies, retailers, and newspapers. But illicit business was particularly vulnerable; the state had no formal obligation to protect such business (indeed, it had a formal obligation to close it down); hence protection could command a higher price.54 The ensuing racket was helped by several contextual factors, already mentioned: cross-border trade was large and growing; and postrevolutionary Mexico was well acquainted with violence (thus, the state enjoyed no clear-cut monopoly of the exercise of violence), so it was easy for criminal organizations to acquire both weapons and retainers skilled in the use of weapons. A great deal of Mexican politics involved camarillas, caciques (political cliques and bosses), and the selective use of violence; in such a climate, narco-violence merged into the background; it was not some egregious sociopathology, but a staple of the political landscape. Apart from stressing the relative normality—or lack of abnormality— of the narco phenomenon, there are two aspects that should also be stressed. First, in the relationship between políticos and narcos, the real Mafia was found among the former. By “real” I mean classic or typical: the mafia as exemplified by the Sicilian Mafia, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, and their many offshoots and exemplars. All such mafias specialize

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in providing protection in return for money (therefore, they must also withdraw protection, or actively intimidate, when the money is not forthcoming). But the basic service they provide, at a price, is protection, the service that is supposedly provided, as a “public good,” by the state.55 But in these instances the state is delinquent and the public good becomes a private deal. The other parties to the deal, those paying for protection, are businessmen and asset-holders. In the Mexican case under consideration, the mafia role is assumed by the state, which provides protection to narco interests in return for hefty payoffs. The narcos are (illicit) businessmen who are providing a good—illegal narcotics—and a related service (the delivery of the drug, not least across international borders. That means, of course, they are also exporters, earners of valuable foreign exchange). The narcos necessarily undertake their own protection as well, hence their direct employment of numerous known pistoleros. But the pistoleros are not selling their services in an open (if illegal) market, Mafia-style; they are the specialist employees—along with mules, accountants, and laboratory technicians—of the drug interests, the equivalent therefore of bank security guards. Banks, being (by and large) legal, can rely on the specific services of security guards coupled with the broad umbrella of a functioning Rechtsstaat, but narco interests must combine their specialist pistoleros with discretionary, corrupt, police/political protection. Hence it is the corrupt police/political network that operates like a Mafia, selling protection; the narcos are a special case of businessmen selling for profit in a (clandestine) market and requiring protection, over and above that which their own pistoleros provide in house. And while in-house pistoleros can—partially and perhaps messily—substitute for the legal forces of law and order, there is no substitute for political power, short of the drug interests creating entire narco-mini-states.56 Political elites therefore have to be bought. Second, in the postrevolutionary period we are considering, the políticos held the whiphand (or, we should perhaps say, the carved ivory handle of a Colt .45). This reflected in part the ample discretionary power of state actors, already mentioned. Powerful and corrupt camarillas, like that of the Quevedos in Chihuahua in the 1930s, used their political muscle to profit from gambling, prostitution, drink, and drugs; they participated directly in such activities; and they played the field, running numerous operations (to put it differently, we could say that this was still a diversified market, with a primitive division of labor).57 Most importantly, as political masters of the state, they called the tune. While it was not good business to topple too many narco bosses (the secret of successful parasitism is to feed off the host without killing it),58 it seems clear that the Quevedos could veto a business if they chose; while the narco interests

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could not easily pose a reciprocal threat to the Quevedos, since they lacked the muscle and the money. The real threat to the Quevedos came from powerful political rivals or the burgeoning power of the federal government, especially once it fell into the hands of the austerely Puritanical President Lázaro Cárdenas.59 The power of the Quevedos and other political camarillas contrasted with the relative weakness of the narcos (indeed, the very term may be anachronistic). In the 1920s and 1930s, the chief producers and dealers appear to have been relatively small fish; a good many were Chinese; their consignments were relatively small; and they often combined drugs with a range of other goods and services, both legal and illegal (liquor, bars, restaurants, brothels, stolen cars, later stolen TVs).60 Their political protectors were similarly diversified; and, in the main, the políticos controlled the relationship. Thus, we see a vigorous but quite limited and decentralized market, with a lot of small producers and shippers, all to some degree beholden to politically powerful protectors. The Chinese, the pioneers of Mexico’s opium trade, were especially vulnerable. Though they started the business—and could count on useful cross-border ethnic links—they were vulnerable to popular xenophobia during the armed revolution and to official policies of ethnic cleansing in the 1920s and 1930s (especially when the depression began to bite after 1930). Indeed, economic rivalry— which, of course, went beyond drugs—was a major cause of Mexican Sinophobia.61 Persecution and expulsion did not eliminate the Chinese role—we have encountered Ben Jim Ungson, still doing very well for himself in the 1940s—but that role declined over time, as Mexicans took over the drug business (while retaining the useful excuse that drug-related vice was a Chinese affair).62 Like oil, drugs were a successful example of revolutionary nationalism, where the old adage of “Mexico for the Mexicans” carried weight. What the Chinese learned in the 1920s and 1930s, the Colombians would also learn some sixty years later. Furthermore, as we move from the “revolutionary” 1930s through the transitional 1940s into the postwar period of PRIísta hegemony, the balance becomes yet clearer. The “revolutionary family” now ran a fairly stable, predictable, and profitable system; as the drug trade grew during and after World War II the “family” (“Cosa Nuestra,” as Hansen provocatively but aptly called it)63 retained a substantial measure of control. That control, and the associated kickbacks, appear to have reached the upper echelons of the PRI, including governors of the border states (such as Braulio Maldonado [Baja California] in the 1950s, and Carlos Armando Biebrich [Sonora] in the 1970s) and even presidents, such as Miguel Alemán (1946– 52), it was alleged.64 Like much of the Mexican economy, therefore, the  drug business depended on the tacit collusion of políticos whose

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public discourse—still resolutely progressive, reformist, and enlightened— contrasted with their private practice, which could be ruthlessly entrepreneurial and corrupt.65 The políticos protected favored clients (at a price), enabled them to preserve their local monopolies, and kept them out of the news. The regime (usually) protected discredited provincial políticos and officials.66 The press usually did not inquire too closely into these matters and allegations of drug-related corruption could be dismissed as politically inspired canards,67 and, as yet, there was no robust opposition capable of exploiting the issue. The police, underpaid and underappreciated, enforced the law selectively and venally; sentences were light; and, again, we find narcos (like Rafael Cárdenas Téllez) running their businesses from their jail cell (in this case, in Mexicali).68 Occasionally, a narco would be sacrificed pour encourager les autres: such occasional sacrifices reminded the narcos who was in control, and that they themselves were “replaceable cogs” (we could draw a loose analogy with the federal government’s treatment of caciques).69 Of course, there was sporadic violence, as new narcos challenged the old (necessarily, the leadership of such enterprises could not be determined by transparent shareholder voting), but in general the system ticked over quite peacefully and certainly no threat to national security was perceived. The political elite did not want to besmirch the pax PRIísta, so violence tended to be limited and exemplary; and, as businessmen, albeit illicit businessmen, the drug dealers also liked a measure of order, stability, and predictability.70 The allocation of dealerships (or plazas) operated according to well-known informal rules, like so much of the PRIísta system.71 In short, the political elite retained substantial control and the drug “problem” seemed minor and manageable;72 the relations between the state and organized (narco-)crime perhaps roughly conformed to the “elite-exploitation model,” in which “’the organized crime enterprises are . . . treated rather as ‘cash cows,’ to be manipulated and exploited by political authorities.”73 Again, it was the state that performed the classic Mafia role of selling protection. Meanwhile, the cash that was extorted probably served both forms of corruption: that is, it enriched the camarillas (it was “government in the service of graft”); but it also helped fund political campaigns (it was “graft in the service of government”). Campaign funding was of some importance, since the politics of populist redistribution—land and labor reform—had declined since its heyday in the 1930s. However, since the PRIato was not a competitive democracy, and PRI victories were usually foregone conclusions, I doubt that the narco “political contributions” were particularly important; a stable, semiauthoritarian system did not need regular infusions of drug money, and anyway, Mexico’s drug earnings were, during the 1950s and 1960s, quite modest.

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the economics, politics, and social basis of drugs and violence since the 1980s But then things changed. Since the 1980s three broad processes combined to upset the old system and generate a different, more chaotic, uncontrolled, and violent relationship. For the sake of analytical clarity, I will address these processes under the headings of the economic, the political, and (most tentatively) the sociocultural.74 Probably the most important single factor, the necessary condition of all that followed, was the rapid growth of U.S. demand for drugs, apparent in the 1960s and unmistakable in the 1970s.75 Demand, in part, was the product of rising disposable income and changing mores in the United States (loosely, the “sixties revolution”); and demand for Mexican supply was further enhanced by global trends—the closure of European and Asian routes (such as the famous “French connection”), the crackdown (if the term can be used) on the Colombian (Medellín) supply in the 1980s, and more effective U.S. policing of the Caribbean sea-lanes.76 Mexico thus benefited from an international “cucaracha effect.” The country now began to export greater quantities of home-grown marijuana and opium/ heroin; even more striking and profitable, Mexico served as the principal gateway for cocaine into the U.S. market, and to this was added the more recent surge in methamphetamine exports. By the mid-1990s Mexico was earning between $25 and $50 billion (8–15 percent of GDP) from its drug exports to the United States, which now cornered some three-quarters of the U.S. market.77 This was North American economic integration with a vengeance. Programs of eradication and interdiction came thick and fast, triggered by events and sponsored by both the U.S. and the Mexican governments (President Calderón’s being the latest and most aggressive); but the effects have usually been limited and ephemeral. As good neoliberals, Mexico’s leaders should have realized—perhaps, deep down, they do realize?—that while political controls can distort and affect a market, they cannot cancel out the laws of supply and demand, especially while demand is strong and supply is ample. Indeed, the narco business could be seen as a very successful manifestation of neoliberal economics, of free trade and comparative advantage: Mexico can produce drugs (marijuana and opium/heroin); more important, it can also export to the United States across (or under)78 a border that, for all the efforts of President Bush and the Minute Men, remains porous. Mexico thus combines the comparative advantages of Colombia and Canada: it is hardly surprising that eradication and interdiction have largely failed. NAFTA and neoliberalism have, of course, facilitated the drug trade by boosting cross-

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border trade and migration. With $90 billion of goods crossing the border each year, it is not too difficult to transport quantities of low-bulk, highvalue goods; we see, therefore, a kind of endless Darwinian struggle between smugglers and authorities which the latter can never definitively win.79 With additional demand and income, the narcos have acquired unprecedented resources with which to prosecute this struggle. Bribes (on both sides of the border) increased: in the 1990s Mexican police were receiving a good million dollars a week from the narco interests.80 Drug money now funds political campaigns and helps support investment and consumption in Mexico (as I mention below). It also boosts the narcos’ armory. It is a commonplace that, when police and narco pistoleros clash, the latter may often be better armed. The folkloric cuerno de chivo (the trusty AK-47) is supplemented by M60s, AR-15s, Uzis, bazookas, and grenades.81 One consequence is that “collateral damage”—the death and wounding of innocent bystanders—has increased.82 Ground transport displays similar sophistication, and while aerial smuggling has been going on since the 1920s, there was no “Señor de los Cielos” until Amado Carrillo Fuentes acquired his fleet of 747s. Again, the recent growth in global trade—in this case, of armaments—has benefited Mexico’s drug cartels. As a result, the state’s “monopoly of legitimate violence,” never perfect, has been thoroughly compromised, especially in particular regions that have become “criminal enclaves”: the border cities, the Sierra Madre Occidental, the tierra caliente (hot country) of Michoacán and Guerrero.83 These regions, policed (if that is the right word) by narco paramilitaries, seem to be growing; it remains to be seen whether Calderón’s offensive will eventually reassert state control or will merely result in more cucaracha effects, more casualties, and more corruption-by-contagion of the armed forces.84 Meanwhile, intercartel violence has grown more extensive and lethal. Not only is the weaponry more potent; the cartels have now begun to recruit specialists in violence—Maras, Zetas, Kaibiles—in order to prosecute their turf wars.85 The old story of police/pistolero imbrication is thus repeated, but in more violent and intense form (which bears some comparison with the bad old days of the revolution and its immediate aftermath, when freelance paramilitaries, schooled in violence, could flout the authority of a weak state).86 Enhanced resources and weaponry alone do not, of course, explain the recent spate of intercartel violence which, apart from costing more lives, is also being conducted with unprecedented ferocity and openness, with bloodcurdling threats, beheadings, torture, and even exemplary YouTube videos.87 Clearly, the boom in the Mexican drug trade upped the stakes; the rewards are high and can fund guerras a ultranza (wars to the death)

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(such as that now being waged between the Gulf and Sinaloan cartels for control of the northeast border); and, since the ultimate goal is access to the U.S. market, it is a decidedly territorial war, in which control of, say, Nuevo Laredo is a major prize.88 (Cartels may also fight over productive resources—e.g., in lowland Guerrero and Michoacán—but acquiring sources of supply [of marijuana or opium] is less crucial than commanding the cocaine routes into the United States.) In Juárez, it seems, vicious cartel competition has combined with decentralized street warfare between rival gangs—linked to but not controlled by the cartels—to produce exceptional levels of violence.89 Military logistics aside, however, the political context is also crucial. After all, drug bands have fought each other for decades; drug capos are taken down, and rivals fight for the succession.90 The decisive intervention of the authorities may trigger such events: when the murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena provoked a strenuous response from the U.S. and Mexican authorities, several narco heads rolled, but, after the usual process of Darwinian struggle—this time, between rival bosses and gangs—a new leadership emerged.91 Thus, Mexico currently possesses (probably) four major cartels (and several lesser ones); these cartels enjoy a loose geographical base (Gulf, Juárez, Sinaloa, and Tijuana) and quite a long history (back to the 1970s in most cases; back to the 1920s in the case of Sinaloa, the Ur-cartel of the system).92 But the scale and severity of the intercartel battles are unprecedented. A major reason for this, aside from the economic factors already mentioned, is the political context. Thus, any analysis of narco activity (including violence) must analyze it in terms of state-narco relations; such an analysis introduces a whole set of political variables—the strength, character, and capacity of the state— which “stage” theories of organized crime tend to overlook.93 During the heyday of the PRI, as I have said, the políticos were largely in control; they milked the drug gangs (“cartels” would be too grand a name) to their own advantage.94 Control and collusion went right to the top; while, necessarily, the facts remain obscure, the association of PRI governors and presidents with narco interests seems undeniable; during the Salinas presidency, the association became notorious.95 But the decade of the 1980s, which witnessed a dramatic growth in drug-trafficking, also saw a decline of the PRI which, though temporarily reversed under Salinas, resumed during the 1990s and culminated in Vicente Fox’s victory in 2000. The PRI became but one of three major parties in a more genuinely pluralist and competitive system; the presidency lost authority and the president could no longer perform the vital equilibrating within the political system, balancing state, party, and “revolutionary family.” The family was, in some sense, orphaned (Zedillo’s “sana distancia” [healthy dis-

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tance] was a polite way of putting it), and the old rules of the game fell into desuetude. PRI políticos had to learn new rules, in a more decentralized, unpredictable, competitive system. So did the PRI’s political rivals and the PRI’s erstwhile cronies in the drug business. Aspiring políticos needed funding as never before, and the narcos had plenty of money.96 Sporadic political funding had occurred in the past but, for the reasons already mentioned, it was not crucial. Now, narco finance acquired greater political prominence (as did the role of the media, notably Televisa); at the same time, Mexico acquired a more diverse and robust press, which provoked reprisals against investigative journalists who offended the narco interest.97 Democratization thus brought unintended and not always happy consequences. More broadly, the drug business meant jobs and investment at a time when economic crises were recurrent (1982, 1986, 1995). Meanwhile, as it lost its central lynchpin—the hypertrophied, patrimonial, metaconstitutional presidency—the political system became more decentralized and unpredictable (unpredictability is, after all, a feature of democracy: we are not meant to know the result of elections ex ante).98 The legendary party discipline of the PRI had broken down in 1987 and was never fully restored; splits and defections ensued; and the corporatist bloc vote proved unreliable, notably in 2000. Distanced from, and eventually deprived of, the presidency, the PRI hunkered down in states where it retained a strong base. Power within the PRI devolved to state governors, some of distinctly dinosaurian/cacical character; collectively, state governors came to exert greater power, both within the PRI (TUCOM) and more generally across the party divide (CONAGO).99 Governors like Jorge Carrillo Olea in Morelos and Mario Villanueva in Quintana Roo were seen as closely tied to narco interests, whom, it was said, they protected and from whom they derived money and support;100 some political neophytes, like Carlos Hank Rhon, built political careers (it was also said) on the basis of such ties.101 Indeed, as the PAN turned into a party of power, it tended to shed its squeaky-clean, Catholic-and-businesslike, image and became a target for narco threats and blandishments.102 Lower down, the links between narcos and security forces (police and army), though hardly new, became tighter, and produced notorious examples of individual corruption and egregious violence.103 The narco bosses now found themselves dealing with weaker, more vulnerable political interlocutors, who needed their support and who were no longer subject to the centralizing discipline of the PRI.104 A call from Los Pinos, the presidential palace, could no longer help settle political disputes or narco turf wars; Los Pinos no longer called or, if it did, there was no answer. The old “Leviathan on the Zócalo” had abdicated. As result, the drug cartels, flush with resources, had

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to fight their own battles in a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” a war of mounting violence and mutual intimidation, marked by growing “collateral damage,” unstable truces, betrayals, and decapitations (both literal and metaphorical). And today’s políticos, from the president down, lacked the authority to impose their will, at least until Calderón launched his recent, risky military strategy. Finally, I turn to the social, or social-cultural. The old Leviathan was also said to be a “philanthropic ogre,” that is, a huge machine for the disbursement of patronage and benefits, which underpinned the peculiar and durable Mexican political system. But, from the early 1980s, that “philanthropic” role also atrophied, as resources ran out, inflation ran high, and the regime, converted to a new neoliberal agenda, slimmed the state and curtailed state benefits. The old forms of “revolutionary” redistribution, such as agrarian reform, were formally wound up; and the “neopopulist” alternative favored by Salinas (Pronasol) proved short-lived. At the same time, the traditional corporatist ties linking, in particular, the trade unions to the PRIísta state weakened. The slimmed-down state lost much of its capacity to mobilize and mediate. Since, at the same time, the population was suffering the effect of sequential economic crises, a huge sociopolitical vacuum opened up, into which stepped a revived, dissident left (the PRD, the EZLN), the “new social movements,” varieties of vigilantism,105 and the narco interests. All, in their different ways, were testimony to the atrophy of the old corporatist state; hence, narco power and violence must be seen, in part, as a function of state failure, as narco bosses evaded—or even supplanted—the impaired authority of the state.106 Drug production and export had always brought limited benefits to select communities, since they offered rewards far in excess of ejidal farming or wage labor.107 In this (as I note in conclusion), the narcos followed an  ancient tradition of somewhat “social” banditry.108 Drug production brought jobs, payoffs, and investment: the impact was evident in boom areas, and it also became (negatively) evident when booms collapsed and narco communities reverted to their pre-boom penury.109 Economic elites benefited from narco investment,110 but it was the poor for whom these benefits counted most. Furthermore, narco bosses took care to distribute their largesse in openhanded, patrimonial fashion. They maintained long payrolls (Pablo Acosta “knew how to spread the money around”);111 they sponsored public works (roofing for a high school at Santa Elena [Chihuahua]; street lighting for Badiraguato [Sinaloa], a bandstand, park benches, satellite dishes, and cedar church pews in Babunica [also Sinaloa]);112 they held lavish fiestas (in Ojinaga, these drew “thousands of people, [with] makeshift stands serving carne asada, corn tortillas and beer”);113 they tipped generously, paid for medical treatment for the poor,114 and gave

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alms (narcolimosnas) to the church. Some, like the Arellano Félix brothers, were churchgoers in a somewhat flashy, gossip-column kind of way and, it is said, they enjoyed the active support of some priests (for example, when they were blamed for the death of Cardinal Posadas).115 The narcos and their clients even had their own saint, Jesús Malverde, “el bandido generoso,” whose cult flourished, in Sinaloa and beyond.116 In this respect, the narcos reprised the role of social bandits: men outside the law who maintained a measure of popularity by distributing benefits.117 The classic social bandit, Robin Hood, robbed the rich to give to the poor; but narco-bandits did not have to rob the rich (often, indeed, they colluded with them); their ill-gotten gains came principally from the United States and, in respect of drug-trafficking, the majority of victims were far away and anonymous. Of course, there were victims of violence closer to home, especially in the big border cities;118 but there were still plenty of beneficiaries who collaborated with the narcos not out of fear, but out of self-interest and sympathy.119 Since this point is contentious, it requires a brief explanation. The debate over social banditry is now a staple of social history, including Latin American social history. Initially put forward by Eric Hobsbawm, the notion of the social bandit became fashionable in the 1970s, only to encounter a predictable wave of revisionist criticism from historians and anthropologists, like Anton Blok, who argued that bandits, such as Blok’s Sicilian mafiosi, were mercenary criminals, who preyed on the common people and colluded with the elite.120 Robin Hood was a myth (as, indeed, he was) and the so-called social bandit usually resembled a mercenary thug like the eighteenth-century English highwayman Dick Turpin. It was perhaps also predictable that the revisionist wave went too far and threw the social bandit baby out with the greasy gray bathwater of common crime. While the revisionists were often right in particular cases (such as Blok’s mafiosi), and while Hobsbawm’s work was certainly flawed and superficial in important respects, the concept of the social bandit was not valueless, and relevant cases could be cited, not least in Mexican history: Heraclio Bernal, Pancho Villa, Isaac Mendiolea (“el Tigre del Pedregal”).121 Mutatis mutandis, the major drug bosses also display social bandit qualities: they are often self-made men who flaunt their popular origins;122 they distribute largesse; and they are celebrated in popular culture as brave, resourceful, and macho—like the old Mafia, they are “men of respect.”123 Of course, this is far from a unanimous opinion. But it does not require unanimity to confect a social bandit myth; no doubt the Sheriff of Nottingham had his own sincere supporters who regarded Robin Hood as a troublesome hoodlum. The popularity of narco-corridos—or of related narco culture, from novenas to narcoblogs124—cannot be taken as transparent

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proof of narco popularity, not least because some of the production is clearly sponsored by the bosses themselves, keen to burnish their own positive image. Some corridos are “commissioned paeans to some very nasty characters, vicious thugs who buy corridos as status symbols alongside big cars and beauty queens.”125 But members of the public are not forced to buy the stuff or listen to it; even if they like the corrido genre, they could listen to traditional forms rather than the new narco variety. Interestingly, Edberg argues that narco-corridos seem to appeal particularly to poorer, working-class listeners.126 And the cumulative evidence for a genuine measure of popular support for (some) narco bosses in (some) places seems powerful, to the extent that “dismayed” schoolteachers may find themselves having to counter the appeal of narco culture to their impressionable students who, in one case, “petitioned to have one of the drug traffickers sponsor a graduation ceremony.”127 Rather than apply sweeping judgments of social or unsocial banditry, it makes more sense to probe the bases of narco popularity or support. I have elsewhere proposed a simple model of social bandity that can be cautiously applied in this particular case.128 It involves three circles of support: an inner core of “bandits” (narcos), who run the outfit, incur the chief risks, and, if successful, reap the considerable benefits. These are often family and compadres; indeed, as time goes by, we can begin to see incipient dynasties or clans, which we might—only a little fancifully—compare to the feuding families of Renaissance Italy (for the Medicis and Sforzas read the Félix Arrellano and García Abrego). Thus, the inner relationships of the Sinaloa cartel “are woven together with marriages and godparenting (compadrazgos) between neighbors and families”;129 not surprisingly, assassinations easily spark vendettas between rival gangs. Within the inner group loyalty is key and treason is anathema (which is not to say that treason does not sometimes occur). Beyond the inner circle is a broader network of clients, stretching across the “criminal enclaves” and their connecting supply routes: a network of those who produce, protect, report, and transport, especially in the narcos redoubts of the “golden triangle” (Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua). Their loyalty is more conditional and depends on a combination of stick and carrot, of both fear—here Toro is no doubt correct130—and reward (pan o palo, bread or the stick, to use the old Porfirian phrase; or, in today’s narco discourse, plata o plomo: silver or lead).131 But, especially in poor regions and hard times, the material rewards of narco involvement are considerable, far greater than those available to most poor-to-middling Mexicans. Crucial to the enterprise, this network can, however, quickly unravel if the inner circle starts to collapse. Finally, there is a broader circle of diffuse support or sympathy, that of “noncombatants” who receive no material benefit but who discount

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official versions of narco delinquency ( just as they may discount many official versions: of good government, electoral transparency, First World status, and the like) and who see the narcos as exemplifying certain estimable virtues. After all, the narcos provide jobs and perks, they live a Rabelaisian lifestyle,132 they export, they display bravery and resourcefulness, and they elude both the Mexican and the U.S. authorities (neither of whom inspire popular affection; Mexican public opinion does not much rate policemen, políticos, or the Migra). Macho virtues here conspire with a certain popular nationalism (note the frequency with which “Viva México” crops up in narco-corridos, and how often the plotline involves clever Mexicans tricking gullible gringos).133 Jesús Malverde, the narco saint, is “100% hecho en México.”134 Indeed, given their contribution to local economies, their export achievements (“Chapo exporta”), and their successful trumping of the Colombian cartels (whom they reduced to “junior partners” in the cocaine business),135 the narcos could be seen as a more genuinely nationalist national bourgeoisie than many in modern neoliberal Mexico who might claim that title. In part for that reason, direct intervention by the United States in Mexican drug matters runs the risk of being counterproductive, since it merely stirs up nationalist, pro-narco sentiments;136 now, as in the past, cross-border cooperation needs to be lowkey, informal, and discreet; and U.S. policy-makers have therefore learned to speak uncharacteristically softly in their dialogue with Mexico (compared, say, to Peru or Colombia, or the rest of the world). To conclude: narco-violence has significantly increased in recent years and is both a source of concern and, some say, a threat to Mexican national security. Hence Calderón’s recent initiative, which, in the short term (2007–10), appears to have aggravated rather than curtailed the violence. The problem should be seen in historical context. Many aspects of narcoviolence, and of narco culture more generally, are old: smuggling, political corruption, police collusion, and the inexorable pull of the American market. However, for much of the twentieth century, the drug trade was more modest and decentralized, and the political elite—acting in Mafia style— were the dominant partners. In the last generation, the relationship has shifted. Since the 1970s, U.S. demand has boomed, and Mexicans have exploited their comparative advantage in meeting that demand. If drugs were legal, this would be a great neoliberal, NAFTA success. Since they are not, the export boom upset the old narco-político relationship, just at a time when the PRI was entering—possibly terminal—decline. As the party and the presidency lost power, the burgeoning drug cartels forged alliances in a more plural political arena, from a position of increasing strength. The practices of the past—corruption, collusion, and violence— were exacerbated, in a quasi-Hobbesian “state of nature,” in which Leviathan no longer ruled; indeed, in the extreme case of Ciudad Juárez, it is

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not clear that anyone rules. Furthermore, in this new, open, competitive, and costly political market, where the old populist methods of mobilization and mediation had declined, políticos now needed drug money more than ever. The ensuing collusion, to which even some PANistas succumbed, risks further delegitimizing the political class. Absent Leviathan, and with huge profits at stake, the rival narco cartels are now conducting a more open and violent battle for control, especially along the border. And they have responded to Calderón’s tough policy by confronting the state headon, deploying more extreme and extensive violence. Yet they are not friendless; intimidation aside, they enjoy a measure of genuine support, premised (chiefly) on material largesse, and (partly) on popular identification with these modern, macho, patriotic, self-made, and (somewhat) “social” bandits. After all, as Elijah Wald pertinently observes, “if (Pancho) Villa had been born a poor boy in the mountains of Durango in 1978 rather than 1878, he would have turned his talents to the drug trade.”137

chapter six

States of Violence State-Crime Relations in Mexico mónica serrano Not all types of war are won by war-fighting; indeed some are lost that way. —Sir John Kiszely1

; In Mexico, as in many other countries, the presence of an illicit drug economy has long challenged the authority of the state. In the last decade the expression of violence has become unprecedentedly extreme. Recent times have been hard times for the Mexican state. The contemporary discussion about this has to start with an adage that, for all its familiarity, is far from trivial: it is the claim of authority over its citizens that, in principle, should distinguish modern states from organized groups of bandits.2 A closely related and defining feature of the state is its supreme and comprehensive claim of authority. The state is thus seen as standing in a special and, in some way, superior position among other authorities, and when it shares its authority with other actors and groups, the state is expected to do so “on its own terms.”3 As the historical sociology of the modern state has long reminded us, such supremacy has been the result of a protracted process leading to the monopolization of power. It is precisely such concentration of power that has enabled the state to successfully claim supremacy for its own authority and to defend its claims against those of competitors.4 Since Weber, it has been routinely argued that the state is the one entity that can successfully claim a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence in a given territory. Yet seldom in history has a state enjoyed an absolute monopoly of coercive power. Many historic states have fallen short of that aim, and even in the era of the modern state, private security agencies,

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private military companies, big corporations, and organized crime have long shared in that coercive power. Notwithstanding this, the theoretical narrative of the industry of protection in which the state operates emphasizes both the state’s regulatory prerogatives and its intrinsic drive to defend itself against encroachment from such competitors.5 The degree to which the state succeeds in this enterprise is not solely an empirical question, but one of great consequence. This chapter begins by tracing the emergence and evolution of the illicit drug market in Mexico. The study of the evolution of this market allows us to identify some of the factors, influences, and triggers that change the relations underpinning illicit markets. I then canvass some of the main arguments on the relationship between illicit markets and violence in an attempt to critically evaluate the conditions under which criminal actors in Mexico resorted to ever-more-vicious practices. A concluding section takes us further inside the dynamics of violence in an effort to unpack the dilemmas currently confronting Mexican authorities.

the emergence and evolution of mexico’s illicit drug market The study of the evolution and changing organization of drug-trafficking in Mexico reveals three main periods: (1) the emergence of a local illicit drug economy; (2) the rise of a centrally regulated illicit market; and (3) the transition to a privatized and increasingly violent drug economy. The emergence of an illicit drug economy in Mexico has been intimately linked to the enactment and enforcement of prohibition policies north of the border.6 Beyond Mexico’s geographical location and weak central rule, over a century, the progressive and tightening enforcement of U.S. prohibition policies became a sine qua non for the steady growth of Mexico’s illicit drug economy. Ever since the promulgation of the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Law, the organization of drug-trafficking in Mexico has been the result of smuggling efforts aimed at reaching importers and consumers in the U.S. market. While policy decisions in Washington opened up opportunities south of the border, political choices in Mexico helped shape the contours and configuration of the illicit economy. By the early 1920s, punitive enforcement in the United States had helped create a “vice” boom along the border. Yet, Mexico’s shift toward prohibitionist policies also revealed an anxious attempt to  enforce the state’s central authority. The Mexican government was soon forced to tackle the wider implications of Washington’s restrictive policies.

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As an independent state, Mexico had in principle the sovereign authority to issue and to implement its own drug control legislation. Viewed from this standpoint, the pieces of legislation enacted through the 1920s, introducing controls on the consumption and commercialization of opium and marijuana, illustrated the ways in which the Mexican government responded to the changing conditions unleashed by U.S. prohibitionist policies.7 Such decisions were ultimately motivated by the need to discipline local illicit economies that threatened the government’s central authority. The organization of this clandestine economy revolved around the production of marijuana and opium poppies, and was gradually built along a local but vertical system of political-criminal relations.8 As the 1930s advanced, poppy fields spread from Baja California to Sinaloa and from there to Sonora, Chihuahua, and Durango. In the South—Guerrero, Puebla, and Tlaxcala—marijuana cultivation also expanded. Available evidence suggests that relations between the political class and the criminal world were locally managed and structured around fairly defined roles. Indeed, local authorities acquiesced, regulated, and/or protected criminal activities in exchange for revenues and political subordination. The result was a system of “elite-exploitative” relations in which local political actors maintained the upper hand.9 The Rise of State-Led Regulation The gradual centralization of state power and the shift of gravity toward the center provided more auspicious conditions for the ascendancy of federal state control over the country’s local drug economies. Although military-political competition was still pervasive, the impulse toward centralized authority became apparent. The negotiation of the 1928–29 political pact and the creation of the National Revolutionary Party paved the way to the gradual centralization of political and military power, and thus to establishing the conditions for more consistent and regular drug control enforcement. The changes introduced in Mexico’s 1931 penal law redefined drug consumption and drug-trafficking as federal crimes.10 While enduring concerns about order and stability were certainly critical in the assertion of central authority over the illicit drug market, the rise of tighter federal enforcement also responded to the continued pressures exerted by Washington on successive Mexican administrations. Indeed, reports of rising drug production in Mexico did much to strain both statefederal relations in Mexico and bilateral relations with Washington.11 Through the 1930s and 1940s, governors in the North remained under constant suspicion of tolerating drug-trafficking, by both the central government and U.S. consular authorities.12 Historical testimonies and records

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suggest that both military and civilian authorities (including antinarcotic agents) may have helped finance their institutional activities and their running costs and “salaries” with drug seizures.13 At times, members of the political and military elites were not simply accused of protecting traffickers, but of actively leading trafficking rings.14 The period of local state-led regulation of a fairly limited market concentrated in northern Mexico came to an end in 1947 as regulatory authority was increasingly transferred to a cluster of central agencies, including the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS). By then, internal concerns and external pressures converged to produce not just a federalization of policies, but greater harmonization with U.S. antinarcotic policies. Indeed, as Washington overtly questioned its neighbor’s commitments in the newly created UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Mexican authorities embarked on a broader institutional overhaul along the lines of Washington priorities.15 The creation of the DFS and the transfer of responsibility over drug policy from the Ministry of Health to the Office of the General Attorney marked a significant regulatory shift. Created under some duress, the newly established antinarcotic bureaucracy was also part of Mexico’s broader postwar international realignment. In line with Cold War priorities, the new central agency soon became notorious because of its repressive tactics against radical left movements. As the illicit drug market expanded, the DFS control powers intensified accordingly.16 The rise of the DFS set the stage for a state-led model of regulation built around a number of agreements binding state agencies and criminal entrepreneurs.17 As laid out in this chapter, the state-led model of regulation describes a process in which a mix of mechanisms and tacit norms underpinned relations between political authorities and criminal organizations. In the period between 1947 and 1985 the experience of state-crime relations coincided with this model and was sustained by a number of unspoken rules. First and foremost, traffickers were not allowed to emerge as an independent power and the logic of political power presided over the criminal market. Second, levels of criminal violence were to remain within accepted and tightly confined limits. Third, nationalist tenets reminded traffickers of the benefits of maintaining their profits at home while deterring the development of domestic consumption markets. In this regulatory framework, the local and the federal judicial police, not criminals, were the key actors controlling the plazas. These were the strategic transit points, which served as checkpoints for the collection of bribes, the monitoring of the movements of criminal actors, and ultimately the surveillance of the drug market.18 In return for “taxes” paid to these agencies, criminal actors were provided with protection and their market activities were effectively regulated.19 Throughout this period, central

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agencies asserted a firm and centralized control over the deployment of antinarcotic policies and secured their central grip over the regulation of the illicit market. In doing so, federal antinarcotic authorities positioned themselves at the front line of exposure to both corruption and violence. This offered both the system as a whole and members of the ruling elite a useful shield against violence and corruption scandals. Through the decades of state-led regulation of illicit markets, relations were characterized by contained levels of violence. Although the influence wielded by security agencies was at times persuasive and occasionally coercive, their power to enforce contracts was significantly assisted by two concurring factors. On the one hand, surveillance was helped by the size and structure of a market organized around two main commodities, marijuana and heroin. And on the other, the presence of an authoritarian political environment barely concerned with due process and the respect for human rights provided a permissive environment for the coercive regulation of the market. Notwithstanding this, the sequence of events through the late 1960s and 1970s suggested that the power and scope of these regulatory mechanisms could easily wane. Indeed, the compounded effect of a number of factors, including the sudden rise of demand in the United States and the window of opportunity opened by the successful clampdown on illicit opium cultivation in Turkey altered the structure of incentives, expected profits, and the protection requirements of actors participating in this illicit economy.20 By the early 1970s, as the share of Mexican heroin in the U.S. market jumped from 10–15 percent to 80 percent, the ability of federal agencies to wield their authority critically diminished.21 The growth of demand in heroin and marijuana in the United States was to be swiftly exploited by a new generation of younger and more violent traffickers. As the drug market expanded and U.S. pressures intensified, the capacity of mediating mechanisms to offer credible regulation began to crack. The Crisis of the Regulatory Model: Crime and Politics The logic at work in Mexico’s illicit economy was briefly interrupted in the first half of the 1970s by a unique interlude of successful eradication campaigns. Yet, it would soon resume with a vengeance. Without a doubt the biggest changes in Mexico’s drug market occurred in the early 1980s as a result of a rerouting of cocaine flows from the Caribbean and toward Mexico. This shift radically altered the nature, size, and organization of the Mexican illicit drug market.22 What had remained a market characterized by relatively low levels of violence and geographically

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contained zones of opium and marijuana cultivation was suddenly transformed into a thriving and increasingly violent cocaine transit economy. The days of the regulatory system were numbered. The opening of the cocaine corridor radically increased the value and thus the corrupting power of Mexico’s illicit drug market. This prompted the United States to declare its second war on drugs and to push for coercive and inflexible enforcement. In 1985 the Camarena affair and a chain of unilateral, punitive actions launched by Washington in response to the assassination of the DEA agent in Mexico, provided significant evidence of the magnitude of the problem.23 On the internal front, the escape of the drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero from Guadalajara airport and the attempt of a 100-strong Jalisco police force to cover the evidence in another state (Michoacán) revealed the extraordinary corrupting powers of the drug industry.24 Under the new market conditions, the credibility of Mexican state-provided protection was mortally wounded. By the turn of the decade Mexico had not only reasserted its position as the main producer of marijuana and heroin for the U.S. market but, due to the U.S.-caused switch in cocaine routes, had also emerged as a major transit route of over a third of the cocaine bound for the United States. Estimates of the amount of cocaine flowing across Mexican territory jumped from 30 percent in 1989 to 50 percent in 1998 and to 70 to 80 percent by the turn of the century. Not surprisingly, the availability of huge quantities of cocaine and cocaine revenues rapidly subverted corruption patterns; by the 1990s criminal organizations were able to spend as much as US$500 million per year in bribery.25 Drug-related corruption had long been a feature of Mexico’s illicit landscape, but the road to unbridled corruption and uncontrolled violence was manifestly linked to the expansion of the cocaine transit economy.26 Not only did the opening of the cocaine market increase the scales of corruption, but by allowing traffickers to buy an unprecedented number of policemen and politicians, it also and radically modified the rules of the game. At one level, the Mexican authorities found themselves increasingly unable to navigate their way through the more crowded and violent waters of drug-trafficking. As the market became more crowded and the power of criminal organizations increased, the credibility of effective political protection diminished. At another level, the Mexican government remained hostage to Washington’s unyielding pressures. In the new context the tasks of policing and regulating the illicit market turned into a daunting job. Indeed, the intensification of U.S. pressures increased the cost of political protection and the exposure and vulnerability of traditional mediating mechanisms. Over time, the consequence of this would result in a protection deficit.

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Driven by the twin imperatives of simultaneously containing the size and ensuring the peaceful behavior of the market, Mexican authorities continued to rely on many of the old regulatory mechanisms, but as fundamentals of the illicit drug economy mutated, the federal system of control was sent into disarray. The capacity of state agencies to tame and regulate a highly mobile and rapidly expanding illicit market eroded. One manifestation of this was the relentless disbandment and reform of security agencies and police forces. In the course of a decade, the overhaul of five chief antinarcotic agencies—the Under-Secretariat for Investigating and Fighting Drug-Trafficking, the General Agency for Crimes Against Health, the National Institute for the Combat of Drug-Trafficking, the Special Attorney for Crimes against Health, and the more recent Under-Secretary for International Organized Crime—owed its origin, in almost all cases, to corruption scandals. Another manifestation was the depreciation of the purchasing power of bribes to guarantee credible protection and the closely related proclivity of criminal organizations to more openly resort to violence. The relative restraint that had long characterized the Mexican cartels was replaced by defiant patterns of behavior. Prevailing restraints on violence were first broken in the 1990s by the brutal behavior of the Tijuana cartel led by the Arellano brothers, a pattern that was soon emulated by other trafficking organizations. Since then, clashes among cartels became more frequent and ever more violent, while their readiness to challenge the state also became apparent. Indeed, through the 1990s a number of events indicated an unfolding open confrontation between criminal organizations and the state. These included the assassination in 1993 of Rodolfo Alvarez Farber, former state justice attorney of the State of Sinaloa, in a popular park in Mexico City; the murder of Cardenal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, allegedly in a crossfire among drug organizations at the Guadalajara City airport; and the assassinations, surrounded by speculation that they were drug related, of the PRI’s presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, and the then president of the official party, Francisco Ruiz Massieu, in 1994. Equally revealing were the ever-more-frequent instances of armed resistance to fumigation and eradication campaigns.27 The breakdown of the regulatory model and the concomitant change in drug-related violence are also related to the impact of two simultaneous transitions: from import substitution to an export-led economy and from authoritarianism to alternation. Indeed, the disarticulation of the political system and more specifically of the institutional arrangements that had for decades regulated and contained the illicit market played a part in disrupting the modus operandi of the criminal system. Starting in

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the mid-1980s, local electoral competition gathered force, spreading from the north into the center, and from there toward the south. It is not difficult to imagine the way in which alternation and political circulation fostered distrust within criminal-political networks, tearing apart the foundations of protection agreements. Clearly, the degree of uncertainty that is only too natural to democratic competition soon proved unsuited to the continuity of the old regulatory game. Similarly, the new international setting created by NAFTA and the effects of political decompression on a largely discredited security apparatus eroded the capacity of Mexican authorities to resist U.S. pressures pushing for unrestrained enforcement. However, intensified enforcement via the militarization of antinarcotic policies also subverted existing protection pacts. The escalation in punitive enforcement had a lethal effect upon the connective tissue that had once sustained trust and helped maintain the credibility of state protection. Under the effect of these parallel trends, the reliability of existing regulatory mechanisms evaporated and the demand for (il)legal private protection intensified.28 The compounded effect of externally driven enforcement and the political reconfiguration unleashed by economic opening and democratization goes some way toward explaining the changes in the dynamics between the political and criminal worlds. By the turn of the century, the erosion of previously effective mediating mechanisms fostered ever-more-vicious competition among criminal organizations and unprecedented levels of violence. This set the stage for a direct confrontation with the state.

states of violence At the heart of present discussions of Mexico’s drug problem(s) is the question of violence. In the period between 1985 and 2000, a number of violent events not only were indicative of the reduced capacity of state agencies to regulate the illicit market but also provided the first symptoms of an unfolding two-front war between the state and drug organizations, and among drug organizations themselves. The evolution of violence in the recent Mexican landscape strongly suggests that the relationship between illicit drug markets and violence requires thorough rethinking. The prevalence of conditions of violence in illicit drug markets has been generally recognized and the nature of their relationship has long captured the attention of scholars. Although illegality in itself does not automatically translate into high levels of violence, and the correlation between one and the other is not straightforward, the threat and the use of force have long been an inbuilt feature of illicit mar-

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kets. Indeed, illicit markets and enterprise crime routinely take place in environments punctuated by fraud and violence. What is at issue here is the way in which the mechanisms that underpin illegal markets patently diverge from those that support legal economies. On the one hand, the standard protections against fraud and violence available in legal markets are visibly lacking. On the other, uncertainty is the “constitutional” setting in which participants in such markets operate. The life of illicit markets is thus intimately entwined with high doses of unpredictability and often, too, with acute security dilemmas. Illicit exchanges and violence easily find each other. Although illicit markets are intrinsically prone to violence, it is also true that patterns in violence in different illicit markets, including drug markets, often exhibit important variations. A closer examination of the varied universe of illicit markets would most likely bring to light different causal connections, patterns of violence, and types of violent behavior. Most frequently, the expressions of violence accompanying such markets have been linked either to types of drug usage and/or to the inbuilt systemic dynamics of the illicit drug trade.29 The logic of this variation can best be captured at one end of the spectrum by the levels of violence associated with the 1980s crack consumption market in cities including Los Angeles, and at the other extreme by the violence associated to the opening of new routes and markets as observed in Miami, Colombia, and Mexico over the past three decades.30 While manifestations of violence may vary in levels and tones, two points are relevant to the arguments developed in this essay. First, and notwithstanding variations observed in thresholds of violence, the threat or use of force is often a defining feature of illicit markets. Second, violence, whether overt or concealed, and resting on public or private hands, plays a crucial role in the regulation of the market. Insofar as illicit exchanges and markets are established and coercively enforced, it is the threat and/or the use of force that provides public and/or private actors with the tools to contrive some measure of order. Indeed, corruption and the threat of the use of force are part of the “tool-box” for illegal market “regulation” and essential features that help distinguish organized crime from “ordinary criminality.”31 Clearly, a number of factors—including problems of trust, high labor turnover, shortlived structures, and on-off operations—constantly undermine the ability of criminal entrepreneurs to keep their grip on the drug economy. All these factors can affect the calculations of criminal actors, and thus feed and exacerbate transactional violence. In combination they assiduously provide the conditions for market disorganization.32 Insofar as the systemic dynamics of illicit drug economies stimulate the resort to physical force,

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rising levels of violence can in fact be indicative of market disarray. Understanding what ignites and triggers higher levels of violence has become a major task. Indeed, the need to explain when, where, and how illicit transactions mutate into violent exchanges compels us to pay attention to the more complex question of the utility that violence may afford to participants in the market. Although drug economies do not easily lend themselves to centralized control, one of the most salient and paradoxical aspects of illicit drug markets concerns the extent to which state actors may succeed in undertaking the tasks of regulation. State authorities may extract a rent, but may also provide—if at times violently—market protection. The Mexican record—as that of Peru under Alberto Fujimori, or Colombia under Alvaro Uribe—suggests that through the monopolization of coercive protection, local and federal authorities have been able to assert their supremacy over the market and have occasionally engineered heterodox types of order. In doing so they may help foster trust, promote certainty, and channel criminal actors into more orderly patterns of illicit exchanges. At the same time, state fragility, particularly at the center, can easily undermine the quality of the synapses among these complex fibers of trust. The Mexican experience suggests that for a while state authorities played an important role, in terms of both checking the size of the market and taming its structural violence. In addition, through rent extraction, some authorities may have even harnessed some of these illicit resources toward their institutional interests.33 In Mexico the operation of the illegal market traditionally rested upon three main devices: threats and/or use of force, corruption to neutralize law enforcement, and the unstable yet essential presence of a key ingredient: “trust within networks.” Yet the U.S. induced transition, from an export local-agrarian drug market to a national cocaine service illicit economy, played an important role in the intensification of violent illicit exchanges and in the more brutal manifestation of violence. In the period between the 1930s and the early 1980s, the overall behavior of the illicit drug market was characterized by geographically contained and restrained violence. In this period the major inhibitors were clearly associated with the regulatory mechanisms previously outlined. And this was nowhere more clear than in the way state protection—first local then federal—guaranteed the effective regulation of the illicit drug market.34 In other words, the state monopoly over organized violence provided Mexican authorities with the capacity to guarantee effective protection, to brutally discipline traffickers, and to effectively regulate the market. Two points are worth stressing here. On the one hand, corruption remained the most favored currency to secure illicit gains, and on the other,

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the costs of resorting to violence to seize and multiply illicit profits continued to outweigh the benefits. An apparent correlation prevailed between high levels of corruption and relatively low levels of violence. Not only did corruption continue to lubricate the smooth operation of the market, but, to the extent that it helped guarantee the effective protection of illicit transactions, for the most part it made violence redundant. Available evidence suggests that by means of strategic coercion, state agencies were able to influence the choices of criminal actors and to effectively induce their relatively nonviolent behavior.35 The signaling of “strategic threats” and fear of violent state sanctions influenced both the calculations of criminal organizations and their overall motivations toward compliance.36 The correlation between copious corruption and low thresholds of violence fostered the stability of the illicit market and encouraged its orderly, if unconventional, organization. While corruption and impunity ruled, violence was effectively contained. In that order, it is important not to lose sight of the brutality, of the otherwise exemplary and disciplinary terror, selectively and instrumentally deployed by the state against those who were ready to transgress tacitly agreed rules. The specific instances in which such brutality helped to keep Colombian traffickers at bay are worth remembering, as are the permissive international conditions that allowed for the impunity of vicious police practices. Indeed, at the heart of current discussions of state-crime relations and of the transition to a disorganized and violent marketplace is the question of the distinctive nature of the pax priísta and its isolation from international human rights standards. On this account, then, a system of state-crime regulation not only allocated acceptable standards of behavior, but through strategic coercion effectively—and at times violently—induced criminal actors to comply. In retrospect, Mexican authorities appeared to have put too much faith in the correcting power of this regulatory framework and failed to anticipate the devastating effects of the diversion of the cocaine flow toward Mexico’s territory. Nowhere was the impact of the new reality clearer than in the penetration of police corps and the associated unyielding efforts at police reform at the local, regional, and federal levels. Following the dismantling of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad in 1985, corruption scandals continued tainting the credibility of state and federal police forces. Efforts at police reform intensified under the Zedillo administration, leading to the hasty removal of more than 800 agents of the Federal Judicial Police and to the dismissal of more than 1,300 policemen on corruption or incompetence charges in 1996. One year later, in 1997, not only was the head of antinarcotic policies at the National Institute to Combat

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Drugs (INCD), General Jesús Gutiérrez Rebollo, arrested on charges of being on the payroll of Amado Carrillo Fuentes—also known as el Señor de los cielos (Lord of the Skies)—in exchange for protection, but according to some estimates 30 to 50 percent of the judicial police had been captured by drug money.37 Corruption became pervasive and reached uncharted domains. Two recent examples illustrate this point. Not only did corruption find its way to the higher levels of the Office of the Attorney General, but it also acquired a more systemic face. As the general attorney Eduardo Medina Mora himself acknowledged, in the course of five years, between 2004 and 2009, a significant number of officers appointed to the Special Office for Organized Crime (SIEDO) remained on the payroll of traffickers.38 An equally alarming trend was the capacity of corruption to break into the headquarters of U.S. diplomatic and consular offices based in Mexico. U.S. public figures, including Barry McCaffrey, U.S. drug tsar under the Clinton administration, acknowledged the infiltration of drug corruption in both the Interpol office and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. A local DEA employee was found to be an agent for the Sinaloa cartel and had allegedly received US$450,000 for his services.39 Beyond the capacity to penetrate such unanticipated territories lay the reality of immense illicit profits. But high-level enticement did not provide the only set of circumstances in which police corruption thrived. Ill-fated programs of police reform also created opportunities for penetration and plunder. The efforts at police reform encountered resistance and led to vexing unintended consequences. Indeed, reforming police agencies in a context dominated by chronic corruption and high impunity rates, driven in turn by drug-trafficking and organized crime, yielded three equally problematic trends. First, the extraordinary levels of available drug-profits allowed traffickers to secure, in turn, unprecedented levels of impunity and to more frequently resort to violence. Second, the dismissal of security personnel from either federal and/or state police agencies effectively resulted in the supply of new cadres for the booming illicit economies. And last but not least, the tensions between rising security concerns and a flawed regulatory framework soon prompted the militarization of security and antinarcotic policies. Efforts at police reform not only ran into difficulties but also appear to have contributed to the rise of a private protection industry and to the opening of new outlets for organized crime. In Mexico, as in Colombia or Russia, the sudden rise of the protection industry and the explosion of organized crime were linked to a surplus of qualified security personnel made available by either police reform and/or state contraction.40 In less than one decade, Mexico emerged as an avid consumer of private protec-

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tion services, securing in turn the second position, after Colombia, in the rising world industry of kidnapping. As the number of private security companies mushroomed from 40 in 1970 to 1,400 in 1980, the industries of kidnapping and extortion flourished. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 1994 peso crisis, reported kidnappings, which had remained at relatively low levels through the 1970s and 1980s, jumped to three-digit figures reaching 355. By 1997, this number had escalated to 1,047 abductions. According to some estimates, in the period between 1994 and 2005 the total number of kidnappings may well have exceeded 75,000, positioning the country in the second rank in the global kidnapping industry.41 In Mexico as in other countries, rising trends in the homicide and the kidnapping rates provided unambiguous symptoms of a rapidly deteriorating security situation. Before long the impact of the rising drug-related violence was detected in an equally ascending homicide rate. By the mid1980s the homicide rate, which in the previous decade had remained at around ten to twelve homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, doubled, picking up to twenty-two homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Although this trend appeared to again abate in the early 1990s, it soon bounced back to eighteen to nineteen homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.42 The impact of illicit transactions was also reflected in the criminal map. Indeed, in the 1990s the rate of reported offenses doubled. Unsurprisingly, the already weak capacity of the state to respond simply faded away. Administering trust in a more crowded and profitable market, whether among criminal organizations or between these and state actors, became increasingly problematic. As one important participant in this upheaval described it, the expansion of the market made its control, whether by traffickers and/or criminal-political actors, an impossible job. And, as the supply of trust shrank, deceit and violence came to the fore. One consequence of this was the rapid erosion of the old rules of the game by which women, children, and families had remained out of harm’s way.43 By the turn of the century not only did the crime rate soar, but nearly all indicators of violence went out of control. As new and shocking manifestations of violence surfaced, whether in the manner of brutal mass killings and/or ever-more-virulent semantics, the transmutation of the behavior of criminal actors also became clear. The news of massacres, decapitated corpses, and mutilated bodies soon captured the front pages of local and national newspapers.44 Not only did homicide rates soon reflect this distressing trend, but the number of drug-related deaths, individually or collectively perpetrated, provided the benchmark against which evolving patterns of violence would be assessed.45 An important aspect of this violent mutation concerns the multiplication of spheres of impunity industriously manufactured by drug corrup-

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tion and drug violence. The history of the last two decades illustrates the way in which the interaction of unbridled corruption and intensified violence paved the way to a security nightmare that pushed the country into a vortex of violence. What is at issue here is the way in which the drug trade eroded the capacity of the judiciary to contain lawlessness and violence. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the paralysis of the justice system and the resulting reign of impunity were major drivers in the country’s slide into the abyss. There are two distinct but related ways in which the connections between the drug trade and the abdication of responsibility by the judiciary can be addressed. The first revolves around patterns of reported crimes and their geographical configuration. While it is true that only 4.9 percent of all reported crimes fell under the category of federal crimes, as experts have long argued, the offenses perpetrated in either the province of the federal or the common-local jurisdiction tend to be closely and intimately interconnected. Thus, on the federal front, drug possession charges as well as heavy weapons possession figured prominently, while at the local level violent robbery emerged as the dominant type of crime.46 The second link relates to the outbreak and enduring dynamics of impunity. As crime turned violent and offenses climbed, the capacity of the criminal justice system lagged behind, and impunity reached unprecedented levels. Ever since the 1960s, criminologists had warned against the risk of settling for normalized impunity. Four decades later, a far and wide rampant illicit economy helped push the impunity rate to critical levels. By the turn of the century, the estimated impunity rate in the capital city had reached 96.25 percent, six points above the estimated national impunity rate.47 Incompetence, lack of resources, and serious problems of institutional capacity and design all congregated to push the impunity rate to such alarming levels. For quite some time, the trend observed in the dark number—that is, the percentage of unreported crimes—had been identified as a serious cause for concern, but in the period between 1996 and 2000 the percentage of filed denunciations also tripled, from 6.7 percent to about 20 percent. By then, the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, in terms of its capacity to investigate and elucidate reported crimes, was estimated at around 18.25 percent of total reported cases.48 As experts warned of a major unfolding security crisis, one that could easily derail Mexico’s young democracy, the Fox administration embarked on a desperate effort to denarcotize U.S.-Mexico relations. Underlying the efforts of Mexico’s first democratically elected government lay a powerful motivation: to dispel the ever-present Colombian ghost.

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the privatization of violence The results of the 2000 elections marked Mexico’s transition to democracy. One of the most striking and welcomed aspects of this election was that it was conducted in a quiet and orderly manner. In the course of a long and protracted political liberalization, many had feared the risk of political violence, but democratization proceeded in a relatively peaceful manner, eventually paving the way for the election of the first president from the opposition, Vicente Fox. While it is true that in 2000 and again in 2006 fears of postelectoral conflict lingered, these gradually faded away. Sadly this would not be the case with drug-related violence. Although in most Latin American cases transition to democracy had helped to bring the military back to the barracks, in Mexico this was not the case. The combination of internal and external pressures had paved the way to the more active participation of the military in both public order and antinarcotic policies. Since Presidents de La Madrid and Carlos Salinas declared drug-trafficking a national security threat, the participation of the armed forces in counternarcotic operations swelled. By the late 1980s, 25,000 soldiers—approximately 25 percent of the armed forces and some 580 federal policemen—were permanently engaged in counternarcotic operations. Subsequently the Zedillo administration further escalated the participation of the armed forces in antinarcotic and public order missions. The 1995–2000 National Program for the Control of Drugs significantly widened the involvement of the armed forces from eradication to surveillance and control of the airspace.49 Both the army and the air force were by then granted authority to survey and intercept vehicles and airplanes. The immediate consequences of these decisions were twofold. On the one hand, the expansion of military missions into counterdrug operations ended a period of relative isolation of the armed forces in eradication operations and increased their exposure to drug corruption.50 Not surprisingly, corruption scandals soon reached the higher echelons of the military institution. At another level, the irregular but continued deployment of troops across the territory, together with the persistent replacement of federal police agents by members of the armed forces, predictably impacted the human rights situation. Over the past two decades, the emphasis on the use of force and the propensity of civilian authorities to rely on the armed forces to discipline society proved increasingly problematic. Not surprisingly, as allegations of human rights violations mounted, pressures to provide the armed forces with guarantees of immunity intensified.51 Although the relationship between troop deployment and stability

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is far from being straightforward—it may help contain violence, but it may also fuel instability—the military’s more active involvement in antinarcotic and public order operations has resulted in an upward spiraling of human rights violations.52 The deployment of the military has inevitably impacted the texture and the quality of Mexico’s young democracy. The past two decades have witnessed the ascendance of military prerogatives and authority. From the mid-1990s, not only have members of the armed forces been recurrently appointed to high positions of political authority, at both the local and federal levels, but a series of rulings by the Supreme Court of Justice has deemed legal the support granted by the armed forces to public order tasks in times of peace when so requested by civilian authorities.53 The extent to which greater military involvement in counternarcotic operations and public order has resulted in improved levels of security has been seriously questioned. Clearly the muscular deployment of the armed forces has not enhanced conditions of security. Not only did levels of corruption continue to increase, but also the crime wave of violence, fueled by a mutating kidnapping industry and fierce confrontations among criminal organizations and between these organizations and the state. Although the euphoria accompanying transition to democracy helped conceal some of the darker trends, these did not go entirely unnoticed. Indeed, the first symptoms of the rising trend of drug-related executions were precisely registered in the early 2000s. Soon, the trend was openly acknowledged by state authorities and was systematically reported in the press. While some states, including Baja California, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, and Michoacán, figured prominently in the new map of violence, the signs indicated a wider and more complex scenario, which included the rising assassination of municipal and state police agents killed either in combat or in compromised circumstances.54 As the new and brutal manifestations of drug violence called into question the stability of Mexico’s young democracy, the fears of “colombianization” again resurfaced. This time such concerns expressed themselves in two equally disturbing scenarios: the risk of an all-out war between the state and drugtrafficking organizations and the potential incubation of illegal armed insurgencies funded by drugs. By then an unprecedented supply of weapons, made possible in turn by extraordinary drug profits and by the presence of an arms bazaar and lax controls over the U.S. border, had made for a lethal cocktail. From the late 1990s the sequence of events had provided ample evidence of an evolving and more open confrontation between state agencies and drug-trafficking. Soon after the Fox administration assumed

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power, the eruption of drug violence in Baja California, Sinaloa, and Tamaulipas forced President Fox and his Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) to revisit earlier nonmilitary choices for drug control policies. Under the first democratically elected government, General Rafael Macedo de la Concha was appointed general attorney, and the armed forces were again identified as the institution best suited to deal with the drug emergency. By 2005, the decision of President Fox to deploy “Operation Safe Mexico” and to send troops first to Tijuana (in response to the alleged FARCTijuana cartel connection) and soon after to the states of Sinaloa and Tamaulipas reinforced the spectacle of a state fully engaged in a war on drugs.55 As the Fox administration embarked on its Operation Safe Mexico, a  wave of drug-related killings swept over the country. Although high levels of violence had long been present in and around border cities, fierce outbreaks of fighting rapidly spread to other corners, and in particular, to tourist resorts. The intensity and the expressions of violence registered during the Fox administration indicated an important mutation in the illicit marketplace. Although the main leaders of the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels had been successfully arrested, not only did Joaquin “Chapo” Guzman escape from prison in 2001 to secure the grip of his organization over the cocaine market, but since his arrest in 2003, Osiel Cárdenas, the leader of the Gulf cartel, allegedly continued to run his criminal organization from prison. In the course of the century’s first decade, in border cities, from Tijuana to Nuevo Laredo, the major cartels waged a violent war for the control of access to direct routes into the U.S. market. While Tamaulipas and Nuevo Laredo had long played an important part in the Mexican drug scene, during the first decade of the twenty-first century they emerged as the violent stage on which criminal organizations displayed their power to corrupt, kill, and violently challenge state authority. In the summer of 2005, in response to the alarming murder rates registered in these cities, President Fox again decided to deploy hundreds of soldiers and immediately dismissed over two hundred local police suspected of corruption.56 However, attempts by the central government to reestablish state authority in Nuevo Laredo soon met with formidable challenges. One challenge was that the ugly but too-familiar law of “plata o plomo” (silver or lead) not only had claimed the life of Alejandro Domínguez, Nuevo Laredo’s police chief, only seven hours on the job, but also had swiftly forced the resignation of his successor, Omar Pimentel, eight months later. Not surprisingly, the job remained vacant for a number of months.57 Another challenge was that the Fox administration was forced, under duress, to acknowledge that the Gulf cartel

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had been able to recruit the Zeta corps from the federal army—a shocking blow that would materially contribute to the escalation of violence in the country. Indeed, the Gulf cartel became famous not only for the ruthless violence deployed by its armed branch, the Zetas, but also for its incursion into previously uncharted political territories. The operations of this organization have encompassed a number of social and political activities ranging from the organization of family associations, groups of “democratic lawyers,” and media strategies to the coordination of mass demonstrations calling for the withdrawal of the armed forces.58 The wave of intensified violence was in no way confined to the border cities. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, tourist resorts also became the battlefield for the control of strategic routes, territory, and local drug markets. The southern states of Guerrero and Michoacán, which had long been major cultivation zones for opium poppies and cannabis, were also drawn into the wave of violence. In the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century a two-front war broke out between the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels and their respective local enforcers, and among these and state authorities. In an important sense, the more frequent murders and attacks attributed to organized crime announced the emergence of a threatening pattern. Indeed, brutal group assassinations coupled with simultaneous grenade attacks on police stations in both Acapulco and Zihuatanejo were graphic messages of the readiness of drug-traffickers to exceed bounds and taboos.59 As the Fox administration came to a close, and shortly after the 2006 presidential elections, two top police officers who had taken part in an operation against a drug gang were abducted, killed, and decapitated in Acapulco.60 Behind the rising levels of violence a two-front war was rapidly unfolding.61 At one end of the spectrum lay the fierce confrontation pitting criminal organizations against each other.62 In a context characterized by tightened enforcement and declining cocaine consumption rates in the United States, competition for the control of strategic routes and territories, particularly those connecting with the U.S. marketplace, had brutally intensified. In the new market conditions, traffickers were pressed to diversify and to consider alternative outlets, including the opening of local consumer markets. Not surprisingly, violent clashes among drug organizations also proliferated around major tourist resorts and urban centers.63 In Mexico, as elsewhere, the opening of an internal market has encouraged decentralized forms of control, fostering in turn the more violent disorganization of the marketplace.64 The failed attempt carried out in the early summer of 2006 by the Fox  administration to decriminalize illicit drug possession indicated a

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desperate move to reduce violence. Rather than containing the problem, Operation Safe Mexico had further aggravated the situation. Indeed, the deployment of troops and the ever-more-punitive enforcement of supply control policies soon spread the violence to cities, including Monterrey, which had until then remained beyond its reach. As enhanced enforcement and troop deployment appeared to fuel the wave of violence, the Fox administration briefly pursued the route of decriminalization. Yet, as had been the case in the 1930s, under intense pressure from Washington, in less than a week the Mexican government abandoned this policy option. On taking office, President Felipe Calderón again declared the war on drugs. In retrospect this critical decision appears to have been motivated by two considerations. While the increase of violence provided the new administration with a powerful justification, the legitimacy deficit left by the hotly contested 2006 election prompted the president to take a bold course of action. Whatever the underlying motivations, the fact is that the lessons of the previous decades went unnoticed, drug control was yet again conceived in terms of a war, and the armed forces were again deployed without a clear strategy for victory. As an unprecedented number of troops were dispatched throughout the territory, the second theater of war between the state and drug organizations was clearly opened. President Calderón’s decision to deploy roughly forty thousand army troops throughout the country was probably one of his most controversial policy decisions. Notwithstanding the robust troop deployment, by the end of 2008 the casualty figure rocketed to nearly six thousand drug-related murders. While it is true that the bulk of these casualties remained concentrated in a relatively small number of the municipalities, the total proportion of both federal and local public officers killed in service offered a powerful reminder of the magnitude of the stakes involved.65 Indeed, in the course of “settling accounts,” a significant number of army and police officers—according to some estimates as high as 14 percent of the total casualty figure—were killed.66 Although some of the more than four hundred police and soldiers who were killed during the first three years of Calderón’s offensive may have already shifted loyalties to the criminal world, the brutal assassination of state and high-ranking federal officers showed that criminal organizations were clearly on a warpath.67 The targeting of public authorities was not the only piece of evidence that supported the diagnosis of an unfolding state-crime war. In an important sense, the unlocked theater of war enabled the traffickers to assert unconditional “political” demands. As had been the case in Nuevo Laredo, in mid-February 2009 the municipal

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secretary of public security of Ciudad Juárez resigned following the assassination of the city’s head of police. It was an eloquent testimony to the chilling persuasiveness of the drug-traffickers’ threat to kill a policeman every forty-eight hours.68 In some other instances the macabre expressions of violence might be better understood as a mode of communication.69 Underlying the proclivity of criminal organizations to resort to violence lay a larger calculation. On the one hand, through violent methods criminal organizations sought to undermine the government’s authority. On the other, by unleashing widespread panic, criminal actors also sought to intimidate populations into protesting against state security decisions.70 Understanding why, when, and how criminal organizations decide to resort to violent action is a fundamental step toward explaining their changing motivations and agendas. Although resort to violence can be costly and divisive for criminal organizations, their readiness to confront state authorities revealed a strategic calculation in which the benefits appeared to outweigh the costs. It might have been expected that after such signs of defiance the Mexican state would have reasserted its authority and re-created its stability. But as had been the case in Colombia in the 1990s, in Mexico the concentration of violence no longer favored the state. By the turn of the century, the emergence of private protection armies, something Mexican authorities had long been trying to avoid, had materialized as a threatening reality. Ever since the first 1948 National Eradication Campaign, the idea of permanent eradication as a means to stem arms smuggling, secure the disarming of rural populations, and prevent the rise of organized violence had remained an imperative.71 Indeed, for decades, central authorities had relied on eradication campaigns to contain the illicit economy and to reassert state authority in remote zones. Yet, as in Colombia, in Mexico eradication campaigns had clearly encouraged the geographical dispersion and fragmentation of the market, stimulating the demand for private protection and the rise of private defense organizations. In Mexico the daunting scenario of a three-dimensional war, involving an armed peasantry and an armed insurgency, has not yet materialized. However, the rise of private armed groups, routinely providing protection to leading criminal organizations, has been a major factor in the escalation of violence. The first signs of this alarming trend were linked to the mass defection of members of an elite military group, the Army’s Airmobile Elite Division GAFES (Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales), who were joined by former members of the Guatemalan special forces, known as Kaibiles, to integrate the “Zetas” battalion under the orders of Osiel Cárdenas Guillén and the Gulf cartel.72 The emergence of the Zetas

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spurred other major organizations to follow suit and to develop their own armed protection branches.73 This was clearly the case of the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín el Chapo Guzman and his army of contract killers known as the “Negros” and its local enforcers the “Pelones” led by the “Barbie.” Added to this dynamic of privatization of violence was the unprecedented desertion within the armed forces. In 2007, the then minister of defense, Guillermo Galván Galván, conceded in a congressional hearing that during the Fox administration more than 100,000 soldiers defected from the armed forces due to a combination of factors that included poor salaries, the transfer of some 4,000 elements to the federal police, and the fear of superior firepower in the hands of criminal organizations.74 These trends, together with the enhanced availability of weapons to meet a mounting demand for violent protection, prompted some searching questions about their effects on existing balances of accumulation and concentration of violence, as well as on their implications for the immediate stability of Mexico’s young democracy.75 The extremely acute crisis in which the Fox administration handed over power to his successor created an understandable demand for urgent responses. Indeed, the unprecedented levels of violence and their dreadful manifestations attracted much attention, but also prompted some hasty conclusions about the utility of military force. With the Colombian experience in mind, commentators in Mexico and the United States vehemently argued that the strategic deployment of military force could help restore stability. The risks of overstating what military force can achieve and of underestimating, in turn, the potential costs involved soon became clear. On the one hand, the much-praised Colombian model of rebuilding state authority has been promoted at the expense of disregarding the lingering questions about its sustainability in the context of a thriving cocaine economy. On the other, there is a real danger of miscalculating the risks associated with this course of action, particularly in terms of human rights. Indeed, the apparent achievements of the Uribe administration on the security realm cannot eclipse the dark realities facing Colombia on the humanitarian front.76 Although there are some important technical and institutional lessons to be learned from the Colombian experience— particularly those aspects of justice reform that originated in the 1991 constitutional reform—accounts of Uribe’s successes have often overlooked the massive problems still facing that country. These include not only a resilient cocaine economy and the strong authoritarian bias of the administration’s security policies, but also the more recent regrouping

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of paramilitary groups. This reality makes clear the need to pay careful attention to the implications of thriving illicit markets for the long-term prospects for stability in Colombia or Mexico.77 It is undeniable that Calderón’s decision to belligerently confront drug organizations has created more problems than it has solved. Indeed, the casualty figures released by the National Rights Commission point to the reality of war—15,400 killed between December 2006 and October 2009—in which the authority of the state remains openly and violently disputed.78 On embarking on this coercive route, the Calderón administration may have worked out a plan for rapid troop deployment, but nothing beyond that point. This is not to suggest that the increased attention given to Mexico’s drug problem by state authorities was ill timed, but simply to ask some questions about a course of action that appears to have put too much faith in what military force alone can accomplish. Coercive policies and the deployment of military force have been justified on two accounts: to contain the wave of violence and to recover public spaces and territory previously surrendered to illicit actors. The resulting policies have systematically emphasized the need to bolster force deployment and to improve training and coordination. Yet this perspective has often failed to consider the socioeconomic and political environment in which security policies currently operate. Moreover, it has overlooked the extent to which attempts to create or reestablish security environments often create political dilemmas. The inescapable political reality that underpins decisions concerning troop deployment easily turns them into problematic choices. Indeed, the claim that the use of force is intended to create “security” is not only a political claim, but one that too easily presumes that the force is “legitimate” and that it is targeted to unambiguous “outlaws” and/or “spoilers.”79 As this chapter has argued, in Mexico since the mid-1990s troop deployment and military responses have assumed greater importance. However, their record of success and failure cannot be abstracted from the larger political and socioeconomic dynamics. If like its predecessors the Calderón administration saw in the use of force a solution to Mexico’s drug problems, the results on the ground have called this strategy into question. Indeed, the limits of troop deployment in terms of putting an end to violence and offering lasting solutions to the drug problem have been blatant. Restoring tranquillity to the streets requires much more than a digging of war trenches. In Mexico, as elsewhere, troop deployment has been conducted on the assumption that society has remained in a state of permanent and irreconcilable confrontation with the illicit drug economy and the drug trade.80 Yet in Mexico, Colombia, or Afghanistan, the success of military force

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will ultimately depend upon the legitimacy of the political objectives that it is intended to serve. This is in turn a function of the ability of official authorities to enlist the support of the population behind troop mobilization. Where local populations show their readiness to grant their support, military responses might succeed. This could well be the case in places in which the brutality of violence had already tilted the balance in favor of the military’s presence. Yet, in contexts in which local resistance to troop deployment remains entrenched, such an assignment is likely to prove hugely problematic. The words of an unidentified soldier deployed to the north of the country are eloquent and may go some way toward explaining the dilemmas confronted by military responses: “This is a war you can’t really win . . . there’s [sic] so many more of them than us.”81 The record of the last five years appears to suggest that the operational environment in which military force was deployed was a great deal more convoluted than either President Fox or President Calderón may have envisaged. The difficulties faced by the military strategy have brought to the fore the elusive dimensions of the drug trade. These include the imprecise boundaries between licit and illicit activities, and the  economic dependency of significant segments of the population on informal-illicit revenues. The need for effective security policies that could bring back some measure of stability is beyond doubt. However, as has been the case in other latitudes, military force alone cannot do the job. Indeed, there is an urgent need to broaden the government’s response beyond its present narrow understandings of military security. The process of restoring peace and security to the country cannot be reduced to military deployments, or to technical agendas for security sector reform. The successful pacification will require a more comprehensive strategy encompassing institutional, political, and socioeconomic changes. In the absence of a comprehensive framework aimed not solely at the “hearts and minds” but also at the economic needs of the population, the military providers of security will find themselves trapped in a vicious circle.82 The authoritarian implications of such a scenario are too evident. As the Colombian experience indicates, processes of pacification often entail an important redistribution of power. In some cases, such shifts in power can allow for a settlement favoring the reconfiguration of the state. But as this experience tragically illustrates, this may come at a high cost for human rights standards and democratic values.83 In Mexico as may have been the case in Colombia or in Brazil today, consensus among civilian and military elites has not necessarily offered the main driver for policy decisions. The analysis provided by this chapter strongly suggests that the militarization of antinarcotic policies was in no way driven by a preexisting policy consensus equally shared among

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incumbents and the armed forces. Rather, what became a consensus was forged in response to the pressing exigencies of a rapidly deteriorating drug crisis. The difficulty for the Mexican military is that they have been assigned to assume one distinct mandate with only a limited portion of the instruments needed to secure the success of the mission. In Mexico, as in Colombia, we have witnessed the propensity to understand this mandate as simply “a question of better training and doctrine.” But as the long history of drug control efforts in both countries suggests, successful counternarcotic policies are bound to be shaped by other forces, including the effective “provisions for the economic welfare of the people.”84

chapter seven

Policing New Illegalities Piracy, Raids, and Madrinas josé carlos g. aguiar

; Shortly after taking office, Mexican president Vicente Fox (2000–2006) promoted a number of policies and constitutional reforms that resulted in a far-reaching program against the trade of bootlegged products. Under the umbrella of the so-called war on piracy, in a period of six years, the sale of bootlegged goods became, through a number of amendments, a federal crime; infringements of intellectual property were later defined as organized crime and penalized with prison terms of up to twelve years. In addition to these legal reforms, police raids on piracy retail increased up to 1,600 percent, and just as ominously, the Mexican government launched a propaganda campaign on TV stations and movie theaters in an attempt to influence public opinion. These operations to enforce intellectual property rights employed federal resources like never before. The Mexican war on piracy is by no means the outcome of a purely domestic interest. The international copyright industry lobbies played a key role in this process, as they demanded from the federal government better enforcement of intellectual property. Since the 1980s, markets and street commerce in Mexico have showed a stable trend toward the retail of copyright-protected material, to the point that informal commerce has virtually become piracy commerce. The U.S. copyright industries have insisted that the Mexican government take action against market sellers and peddlers who “steal” blockbusters and summer hits. The war on piracy demonstrates that the copyright industries have been successful in creating and legitimizing legal bodies that restrict the use of registered material and criminalize offenses. Copyrights are regulatory mechanisms and create new notions of illegality, placing vendors

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of bootlegged copies at the margin of the law. Transnational companies and international lobbies often describe them as crooks, criminal actors, and terrorists.1 Outlawed, actors who infringe intellectual property rights are defined as a danger to the legal order and international trade. These discourses expose the impact of global neoliberalism on street economies around the world: “the former Third World, it appears, has cornered the market in the manufacture of counterfeit documents, faux IDs, and fakes of every conceivable kind.”2 Comaroff and Comaroff, García Canclini, Lessig, and Hardt and Negri perceive these international structures of governance as an asymmetry between regions, since intellectual property laws privilege U.S. economic interests over those of other nations. Even more, copyright protection has become part of the commercial diplomacy of the United States, and corporate interests are protected with legal systems of global validity that ultimately define national penal codes and direct police action against local actors. The war against piracy is based on a repressive perspective, since the programs for the eradication of counterfeit goods promote police raids, seizures, and detentions as the core measures to halt the commercial circuits of piracy. Clearly, the war against piracy has some parallels with the war on illegal drugs, since both are based on a law-and-order perspective that advocates punitive actions and the iron fist of the state as the solution to infringement.3 These perspectives pose that illegality can be suppressed by the use of public force, leaving the political aspects of the phenomenon aside—that is, the problematic configuration of the political authority and corruption in Mexico. In the context of neoliberal reforms and global security policies that are transferred across the globe, copyright enforcement presents a relevant case to analyze, on the one hand, how national governments adopt new definitions of crime, and on the other, the results from neoliberal policies concerning illegal economies.4 In a larger theoretical debate, Fox’s war on piracy is helpful in building a broader argument about the effects of copyright protection on local contexts, particularly the effects of neoliberalism on the “informal economy.”5 After incorporating international legal standards on copyright protection like the ones included in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the neoliberal Mexican state has criminalized popular sectors, such as street vending and popular markets, that openly and tacitly had previously been protected by the oneparty PRI state. In order to investigate this complex fabric of (international) connectivity of power, one has to bear in mind the linkages that the PRI state established with the informal sector. Influential works have studied the ambiguous relations the PRI state developed with the popular sector that

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are characteristic of a clientelist and corporatist system.6 Interestingly, street and market selling in Mexico have taken place for centuries, but these activities remain “informal”; there has never been an effective or all-embracing project to regulate or tax the informal economic sector. In fact, the postrevolutionary state encouraged and profited from informality; state actors selectively enforced regulations according to political and economic interests.7 As a result, over time the state and informal vendors developed a mutually profitable relationship.8 Vendors become a source of economic and political revenue for the state; in exchange, the state turns a blind eye to the legally ambiguous undertakings of informal vendors. In the current context of the political transition in Mexico, one may assume that the changes in the government have had an impact on this set of forces. Yet, the extent to which democratization has affected the structures of corruption and clientelism in the informal sector is an unexplored field of inquiry. In this regard, this chapter seeks to make a contribution to the study of neoliberal policies and the policing of informality in the era of PAN administrations. Departing from ethnographic material gathered in Guadalajara between 2004 and 2010, in this chapter I analyze a number of antipiracy raids carried out in the San Juan de Dios market. All informants have nicknames, except the interviewed local authorities. Here, I investigate the ambiguous accommodations that emerge from the interaction between policing agents like the federal police, and informal actors such as market sellers. Structured protocols and agents like madrinas (information traders) and pitazos (lookouts, warnings) result from the exchange of favors and values between state and illegal actors. The San Juan de Dios market is located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, the second largest city of Mexico. Official counts estimate the city has 4.5 million inhabitants, although it is commonly assumed that due to irregular settlements the population may be as high as 6 million. Even after the opening of supermarkets and shopping malls all around the city in the 1960s, the San Juan de Dios market still remains a profitable commercial point, and it performs cultural and social functions, as locals perceive it as a space and source of “identity” and “tradition.” The San Juan de Dios market has been in service since the sixteenth century, after the city was founded by Spanish settlers. Since Guadalajara turned into a commercial hub, the San Juan de Dios market became an important trading enclave. Through the years, three buildings have housed the market (built, respectively, in 1888, 1925, and 1958), and each new construction highlighted the market’s relevance to the economy of the city. In its three stories, the San Juan de Dios market counts more than 1,300 stalls; about 3,000 sellers work every day to help 10,000 to 30,000

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visitors. It ranks among the largest popular markets of Latin America. Dynasties of traders can be traced back four and even six generations; sellers have formed unions which were controlled by the PRI state; nowadays they are shifting and sometimes even opposing the municipal government in the multiparty system.9 In the stalls one can find everything a market has to offer: food, clothing, local handicrafts, and other kinds of craftsmanship, but since the 1980s bootlegged goods have flooded the San Juan de Dios market. Buyers seek bootlegged software, music, films, clothing, perfumes, electronics, and even medicine. Pirated cassettes and videos, and later CDs and DVDs, have become major commodities, changing the face of local trade. Based on profitability and convenience, sellers make a rational choice: they switch from self-made goods or local products (like fruits, vegetables, or groceries) to bootlegged copies of music and films, prompting transnational smuggling networks. By the mid-2000s, about a half of the stalls in this market offered some kind of product that contravenes intellectual or industrial property rights. This shift from locally produced commodities to transnational bootlegged products has transformed local merchants. The sale of bootlegged products is by no means exclusive to the San Juan de Dios market, since it takes place all across Mexico, in large cities and small towns, along the national borders and in rural areas. But this market differs from other locations: the commodity chain is territorialized here, since the production process of pirated goods and agents become observable in the marketplace, setting distinctive rules and hierarchy. With the expansion of piracy retailing in the San Juan de Dios market, new chains and productive processes emerged. Retailers depend on larger networks for merchandise supply that spread out to the United States and as far as Taiwan and China, since CDs are smuggled across national borders until they are copied, are distributed, and reach final consumers. Inside the market building, smuggled CDs and DVDs are available for wholesale, cases and covers of almost any possible film or music album can be found, and in many stalls computers and printing machines are ready to produce. This transition from informal commerce to piracy has had a number of dramatic consequences. Activities or merchandise that locals perceive as “traditional” (like handicrafts, knife sharpening, or butchering) and that were passed on through generations increasingly disappear due to the boom in CD and DVD sales. The rise of pirated merchandise has transformed the economic processes and material culture of this market, since piracy sellers make use of restricted supply networks, credit systems, and, as I demonstrate in this chapter, security services. Hence, piracy retailing should be understood as a far-reaching economic process that reorders the commercial networks and legal position of sellers.

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Until now the literature dealing with bootlegging or the emergence of informal piracy retailing has been rather scarce and mostly from a legal perspective.10 Since piracy retail is a new object of study in the social sciences, a proper theoretical framework has yet to be elaborated. After all, the production, organization, and distribution of pirated goods do not correspond to traditional definitions of underground, parallel, or illegal economies studied previously, since piracy retail takes place in the open, in the presence of local and federal authorities, and is not monopolized by cartels or violent gangs, as is the case with illegal goods like drugs.11 If the “classical” anthropology of marketplaces pinpointed local distinctiveness (expressed often in terms of “tradition” and “culture”) and regional and ethnic trading networks as the main axes of analysis, we now need new approaches to study the role of piracy retail in the economic life of marketplaces and street commerce.12 Moreover, the rescaling of vendors’ networks to transnational commodity chains, as occurs with piracy, challenges familiar understandings of market sellers or informal sellers as “autonomous” agents whose networks expand just beyond their immediate locations. The economic and political aspects of piracy retail reveal a new kind of frontier, a global economy where the distinction between legal and illegal is blurred in the exchanges of goods across national and legal borders. While the sale and consumption of pirate goods appear to be socially accepted, they are redefined by the state as illegal and accordingly sanctioned.

making illegality: neoliberalism and piracy The reproduction and retail of copyrighted music and films represent a new form of illegality. The legal bodies that outlaw these activities result from the ambiguous effect of neoliberalism upon nation-states, which at the same time regulates and deregulates markets. In the name of individual liberty and freedom, democracy and well-being, neoliberal theories have, at a discursive level, encouraged institutional reforms, amendments, and state programs to reduce the role of the state on the economy. This has transformed the relation between the (international) private sector, the state, and citizenry. Free-market doctrine seeks to reduce state intervention. A central aim of US economic policy since the Second World War has been the worldwide acceptance of free-market ideology—the belief that the free flow of goods, services and capital is to the mutual benefit of all; that corporations should be managed for the maximization of shareholder-value; that stock-markets should

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be used for buying and selling corporate control; and that governments should intervene only in cases of obvious market failure.13

In the architecture of the financial and trade market, nation-states are increasingly constrained by international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). These organizations promote legal bodies with international authority that safeguard the interests of the private sector against illegal competition; that is, they promote laws that forbid practices that negatively affect corporate interests. Most relevant here are the so-called Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), an agreement on “minimum legal standards” compulsory for WTO membership.14 The WTO and international agencies such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) encourage national governments to incorporate intellectual property protection into their legal codes. At a global scale, nation-states implement policies that are aimed at outlawing, criminalizing, and reducing the sale of unauthorized copies of international copyrighted products.15 Hence, intellectual property protection and, by extension, antipiracy programs are a typical result of the global expansion of neoliberalism and its definitions of legality. In the neoliberal doctrine, “state interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum, [yet] the actual practices of neoliberalism frequently diverge from this template.”16 The analysis of intellectual property legislation reveals that neoliberalism has a curious and seemingly contradictory output. State control over financial, trade, productive, and labor market sectors diminishes. However, states also respond to pressures to protect international corporate interests by increasing their police apparatus, by regulation (i.e., direct state intervention in the market), and by privileging international legal codes over national policy.17 The legal definition of copyright protection is based on the criminalization of offenses and the judicial prosecution of lawbreakers (i.e., a police raid, the seizure of bootlegged goods, the detention of piracy retailers). This perspective requires the state to take strong action against copyright offenses through increased policing. As a result, copyright protection reinforces the role of the state and expands the legal framework of the international private sector (i.e., copyright industries) in the national jurisdiction. Property owners gain legal ground to demand police action to enforce their commercial rights. Clearly, neoliberalism does not dismantle but redirects state power. Within this context, there is no alternative to the legal provisions regarding intellectual property, or the regulation of trade and financial mar-

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kets. In fact, neoliberalism has become a hegemonic discourse that has promoted the privatization, management, and manipulation of crises, and the tailoring of the nation-state to fit the interests of international actors.18 In the doctrine of neoliberalism, following Harvey, there is no debate or alternative model: in the beginning of the twenty-first century, neoliberalism has been naturalized.19 TRIPS are legal mechanisms that ultimately aim at increasing profits from the retail of registered property. Their main objective is to restrict the commercialization of material; property holders are the only party legally entitled to make revenues from the sale of protected works.20 Unauthorized reproduction or retail is perceived as theft, and every pirated CD or DVD sold is seen as a direct loss.21 This may partly explain why the seventeenth-century notion of the pirate is currently used to refer to bootlegged material and sellers of bootlegged goods, since an economic agent (market or street vendor) contravenes the established commercial order and “steals” material to sell it unlawfully.22 Indeed, as seventeenth-century pirates did with colonial commercial empires, twenty-first-century pirates break the legal framework instituted by international powers when they sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted music or films. Even more, the political discourse on piracy describes retailers of bootlegged material as criminals, organized through global networks that ultimately finance international terrorism.23 The political weight of copyrights is related to its economic relevance. In fact, the worldwide protection of intellectual property is a critical element to the U.S. economy, since copyright sales in the foreign market added up to US$110 billion for 2005, and have kept growing since.24 Computer software, motion pictures, and TV and video generate about 86 percent of the revenues. TRIPS configure legal structures for governing unruly economic spaces, at the very local level where bootlegged copies are on sale and purchased by consumers. Hence, global structures aim to govern the economic undertakings and commercial processes “from below.” But this is a problematic process, since those from below are not passive actors who blindly obey the governing structures of global neoliberalism. As I show in this chapter, the intensification of the war on piracy in Mexico elicits resistance and opposition against these legal mechanisms. There is an asymmetry between the progression and sharpening of legal procedures that international corporations push forward, and the immediate environment of territorialized actors who engage in these now illegal economic activities. We build upon a distinction between what the states consider to be legitimate (“legal”) and what people involved in the transnational networks consider to be

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legitimate (“licit”). Many transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas are illegal because they defy the norms and rules of formal political authority, but they are quite acceptable, “licit,” in the eyes of the participants in these transactions and flows.25

The disjuncture between the legal system upheld by the state and what economic actors consider licit explains the limitations of the structures “from above.” Resistance and opposition should not only be understood as resulting from the ambiguities of the rule of law; they indicate the very place where law enforcement becomes valid or not.

copyright legislation unleashes police action The Mexican state has undergone deep transformations since the 1980s. The country has moved from a single-party state to a multiparty system.26 This period also marks the transition from import-substituting industrialization to the neoliberal model. President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado (1982–88) initiated neoliberal reforms, and Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) signed NAFTA between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and launched a number of policies that eventually culminated in the privatization of communal lands (ejidos) and telecommunication and opened the doors of the energy sector. The impact of NAFTA on Mexico’s economic, political, and cultural life is immeasurable. Isidro Morales views it as a transition toward “postsovereign governance.”27 Neoliberalism intensifies the relationship between corporations and nation-states, and creates new scales of governance where new actors and powers come into the scene. However, the processes of market integration and the redirection of state power are neither finished nor entirely successful, since they face contestation in Mexico and all across Latin America.28 Social and political sectors, particularly grassroots organizations, perceive the privatization of national resources and the expanding influence of global capital as an update of former processes of colonization. Under NAFTA, copyright protection gained new political relevance in Mexico. In the treaty, the national governments assume the responsibility to enforce the commercial properties (copyrights) of private enterprises. Prior to this treaty, the trade in bootlegged video- and audiocassettes was already forbidden but common in streets and markets across the country, and there is no evidence that any antipiracy campaign was launched. Nevertheless, prior to NAFTA, recommendations and warnings regarding

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Policing New Illegalities table 7.1 Police Action Against Piracy in Mexico, 2000–2006 Year

Raids

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

4

32

710

3,312

6,313

6,587

8,753

source: Elaborated with information from the Procuraduría General de la República, see www.pgr .gob.mx (accessed January 18, 2006).

copyright infringements had begun to creep into the commercial diplomacy between Mexico and the United States. But with the presidency of Vicente Fox, federal resources were marshaled like never before to enforce copyright laws. Fox, the former president of Coca-Cola in Mexico, became the architect of an extensive war on piracy. At the beginning of his mandate, four police raids were carried out in Mexico to seize illegal material; by the end of the mandate in 2006, there were almost nine thousand operations carried out (see Table 7.1). The exponential increase in police raids on piracy parallels the war on drugs, since in both cases the authorities target vast criminal organizations, and aggressive policies have unintentionally increased repression, violence, and death.29 The fight against piracy has turned into a political issue: the federal government responds to corporate pressure, and prioritizes copyright enforcement as a way to reassure international partners, gain trust, and demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law. The private sector has historically perceived street commerce and marketplaces as illegal “un-modern” spaces inherited from populist governments, and has hence promoted repressive interventions in these places.30 These punitive arguments enjoy longevity in the criminalizing discourse typical of copyright protection, which legitimates police intervention, encroaching on the livelihood of the economic other, the seller of bootleg material. In this way, neoliberal discourses and programs on copyright enforcement have served elites to maintain relations of domination. The political transition in Mexico has only accelerated the trend, since post-PRI governments have closely followed neoliberal perspectives and policies. Fox’s electoral campaign successfully overcame the PRI’s seventy-year stranglehold on the basis of providing hope and change for Mexicans. Once in office, however, Fox protected the interests of the corporate world. In 2005, the former president was the object of much criticism, when the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) was signed. The treaty is envisioned as an extension of NAFTA, which intensifies international cooperation on issues of security, intelligence, the fight against crime, and

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border control.31 In the agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, piracy reduction is framed as a strategic measure toward prosperity and security in the region. While these legal constructions were developed from “above,” they have clear bearings “below.” A consequence of the treaty is an exponential increase of raids on markets and street commerce. Raids against pirated goods represent the last step in an intricate process. The film and music industries file most complaints and are most successful in bringing forward police action to protect their commercial properties. The owner of the registered material (in most of the cases a legal representative of a U.S. copyright enterprise) presents a denuncia (complaint) to the Justice Department, which argues that protected material has been misused. An investigation is then carried out to support or reject the complaint. The Justice Department turns over the case to the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI) that starts an investigation into the case. When evidence of a copyright offense is found, the AFI delivers the information to the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR). The PGR issues a search warrant, and gives the federal police the order to carry out an operativo (raid) in a particular place to confiscate particular merchandise from a particular vendor. This is known as tener orden, that is, a search warrant. The federal police may only confiscate pirated material from stalls where the illegal nature of the merchandise has been proven in an investigation. Thus, a police raid is encaminado (routed) or dirigido (directed) at seizing only the merchandise identified by the complainant, that is, the label or property holder. Recent legal reforms in Mexico have changed this framework. From 2010, copyrights are enforced de facto, and penalties for copyright infringement have increased up to ten thousand days of minimum salary and six years of imprisonment. Denunciations, investigations, and seizures involve only federal institutions. When needed, the municipal police may provide seguridad perimetral (support) during a raid, but these kinds of petitions are made at the very last minute in order to avoid the leaking of information. The number of policemen sent out for seizures varies and depends on the amount of stalls to clear; it can be fifty, two hundred, or even two thousand officers. In these operations, pirated CDs, DVDs, audiocassettes, video games, toys, clothing, electronic supplies, and perfumes are seized. Since 2000, Fox’s approach to the San Juan de Dios market has led to a dramatic increase in seizures of bootlegged merchandise, and so offers a representative case to investigate the impact and limitations of the war on piracy. The market represents a model for the study of the relationship between police officers and illegal actors in Mexico.

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seize, show, and rule: raids against pirated goods On the morning of May 7, 2001, more than a thousand policemen from the Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP) and the Secretary of the Treasury raided the San Juan de Dios market, known as a major piracy distribution point of bootlegged items. The aim was to seize illegal products such as smuggled electronics and pirated goods. Police first secured the more than fifty entrance points of the market and then began to screen stalls on all three floors of the building. About seven thousand people were working or shopping at that time of the day, but the police did not allow anyone to leave. Outside the market, there were dozens of police vans with more officers waiting for the cue, in case they were needed. Two helicopters were idling above the market and kept the surrounding area under surveillance. Never before had the police employed such a large number of officers and large amount of material resources for a raid on bootlegged goods. The seizure is engraved in the social memory of the market. “Suddenly you saw a lot of people in uniform with guns,” reports Laura, a grocer. Reflecting on el operativo (the operation), Andrés, a pirate DVD retailer, adds, “It was a manifestation of arrogance. They wanted to make an argüende [scandal] to please the big enterprises to which they owe favors, to let see [prove] how much they do to screw us.” When the sellers saw the policemen taking control over the market, some tried to get away. “We closed and left,” said Juan, a pirated clothing seller. “And when I left, I saw outside all the police vans,” said Rosa López, who runs a taco stand. As the police came in, several vendors took their curtains down, closed their stalls, and tried to head off, but the police would not allow them to leave. “No one could go. [They said] ‘Wait till we finish ‘to weight’ [check out] all San Juan,’ ” confessed Ernesto, a pirated clothing seller. People were terrified, partly because of the presence of the federal police but also by the reaction some vendors showed. Pepe, a pirated clothing seller, describes the brewing tension that escalated the situation. “Everybody in the market was scared, everything was closed, but there were some people throwing stones, bottles, and even fire extinguishers.” While the police were searching, a number of vendors (many of them young) began to throw objects at the officers; they wanted to protect their merchandise but also to protest. The storm of falling objects impelled the police to track down those who were throwing them. A number of vendors started to look for tubes, sticks, and even cooking pans to use as weapons. Rosa Lopez describes what happened next. “Some vandals, youngsters, started

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to throw bottles at the police and at everybody, and that was when the police used tear-gas. . . . [Then] somebody shouted ‘Everybody down,’ ” and soon the police and the defiant vendors began to engage in hand-tohand combat. “There was a little war . . . we fought them back,” said Néstor, a pirated CD seller. Although ever more people were resisting the police, officers carried on confiscating merchandise. Some angry retailers improvised Molotov cocktails and threw them at the police. The federal police decided to use tear-gas grenades to dissolve the riot. But instead of reaching the fighting ones, other vendors and customers were hit. “I heard when the smoke grenades were fired and then there were people crying; I could not see a thing because of the smoke,” said food seller Don Everardo. Telephone cabins, garbage bins, and news- and shoeshine stands were set on fire. The police lost control of the entrance points to the building. People wanted to get away from the smoke and were running in panic, trying to get out. On their knees, some people managed to reach the exit and leave the market. “We had to leave like fumigated rats,” said Japonesa, a seafood seller. On the streets, it was not any better. Some people took advantage of the situation to steal from shops, transport vehicles, or street stands. Streets in the surrounding area were also blocked. The riot seemed to be getting out of control. Policemen then formed a line of defense with their shields and slowly advanced at once, as an attempt to draw back the fighters. Some witnesses, who were safe and standing on the pedestrian bridges or in surrounding buildings, found the situation entertaining and laughed. As it became clear that the federal police were no longer able to manage the situation, a thousand municipal police officers were called in. Guadalajara’s secretary of public security, Luis Carlos Nájera, described the events like this: It was an action of the PFP. And they had us there, bang, bang, wasn’t it so? I was the director of the [municipal] police by then and we were never informed, we were never asked to support them at all, until we started to see that the situation, like all turmoil, became pure pillaging and vandalism, and then we had to take part in it. Just to restore public order, not to help with the seizure. . . . They [federal police] were busy with their seizure, they were confiscating, and the people in the market were upset and physically attacked the police as a means of showing their objection. . . . We had to come in when the people started not only to assault the police but to break shop windows, and stealing; that was when the police of Guadalajara had to come in.

The riot lasted about ten hours before the federal and municipal police finally regained control over the situation. Around 7 pm the market and

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surrounding streets had more or less gone back to normality. Never before had a police action against pirated goods involved so many police officers, nor had a raid elicited such a powerful response from the vendors. The official outcome of this intervention was five trailers full of seized “illegal merchandise,” thirty people detained, and another twenty wounded, including two police officers. This seizure and the riot that broke out had a considerable impact on local and national media, where the capacity of the federal police to carry out operations of this kind was questioned.32 The lack of cooperation between the different police agencies and levels of government was evident.33

vendors assess police action: “is this legal?” With the just-described raid, the federal government wanted to deliver an unequivocal message: the sale of bootlegged goods is a criminal activity and the state will prosecute it with all its strength. The political tension provoked by the seizure had some long-term, unintended effects. The Mexican state’s display of human and material resources should have worked accordingly. But the staging of federal power seemed paradoxically to diminish the iron fist of the war on piracy, since the state could not claim unequivocal victory. After the raid, as a form of tacit agreement, the federal police changed its strategy in the San Juan de Dios market. In an intriguing manner, police raids on bootlegged CDs and DVDs in the San Juan de Dios market began to be carried out in a low-profile fashion: at night, involving a small number of officers, and directed against a few stalls. In order to avoid confrontation with vendors and discontent among the municipal authorities, police action began to take place surreptitiously, and under the cover of darkness. No police action makes the headlines anymore. From an open war model, the federal police switched to a stealth, low-intensity campaign. Police seizures against pirated goods in the San Juan de Dios market have become surgical, and have further reduced visibility, since they are now rarely reported by the local media. Every third month federal police officers come to the marketplace and confiscate bootlegged merchandise before dawn, when there are no retailers or shoppers around. Sellers and policemen refer to these seizures as operativos encaminados (targeted operations), since just a handful of stalls are hit. Federal police officers work from a list that includes the stall number to search. Police officers break the locks open and roll up the shutters. Since these police raids are selective, many stalls with equally illegal merchandise remain untouched. In the morning, as retailers start to arrive at

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the market, they may discover that the locks of their stalls have been broken open, and that their merchandise has disappeared. Néstor, a bootlegged CD vendor, explains: They do not do it during the day because they know very well that they cannot, that is, it won’t be possible and this is why they come at night and search. When there is nobody, when everybody is sleeping. . . . They came early one morning and didn’t have a search warrant and broke the locks, smashed the curtains and did everything they wanted, even took the soft drinks with them, they emptied the fridge. . . . They confiscated everything, and it happened to us, they took all the merchandise. . . . They didn’t even leave a note behind, a notification, nothing. . . . You can call that robbery.

This discriminatory character of law enforcement upsets retailers. No official communication is left behind on the apparently seized merchandise, and this is one of the reasons why vendors feel as if the police have robbed them. In fact, their constitutional right to be present during the confiscation of their private property is abused with these proceedings. Andrés, a bootlegged DVD vendor, describes the unfair policies this way: The authority is the first to do something illegal, because these controls at night . . . that is stealing. The law states that piracy has to be prosecuted under querella [complaint]. If Disney comes and says such and such guy is pirating me. . . . These pressing attacks they do, like fighting against piracy, or so they want to show off, they are actually showing off an offence, because there is no judge, no judicial officer, and no nothing, who has the right to come and open stalls like that. The judge first has to hand over a search warrant and only when there is evidence of law infringement[; otherwise] my property cannot be controlled.

Doña Rufina, a public servant who also has a stall in the market, gets irritated when hearing about night raids: “Oh dear . . . that, and stealing, are the same thing.”34 She waves both hands, openly upset, as a sign of disapproval, then remains quiet for a second or two, and poses the question: “Is that legal?” She immediately elaborates an answer to her own question: You know almost all sellers here work with credit, and [the police] seize their merchandise. What are they going to do? How are they going to pay for that? How are they going to work? How are they going to supply merchandise again? That is damaging the people, isn’t it?

Rufina is in her eighties, and is very well known in the market. She has a large network that includes sellers and municipal officers, and knows the stories of vendors whose merchandise has been seized. She is aware that after a seizure, retailers of bootlegged goods often accept loans from

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their suppliers to restock merchandise. In order to increase and speed up sales to make up for the loss, vendors make use of various commercial strategies, like lowering CD and DVD prices to encourage consumers to buy even larger quantities. This may explain why pirated CDs and DVDs have become cheaper and more accessible in this market.35 Hence, police seizures of bootleg have an unintended effect: they oil and mobilize the supply and retail networks of bootlegged material. On the other hand, Rufina’s statement questions the system of legality, and makes evident the gap between the legal structures guaranteed by the government and the perceptions of legitimacy among the people on whom that legality is superimposed. She opens a discussion on justice and legality, or to put it another way, she critiques how global neoliberalism promotes a legal system that is foreign to people and their notions of justice. For the vendors in the San Juan de Dios market, that way of enforcing the law, raiding stalls by night, is not fair. It is seen not just as robbery but as a breach on the very human right to earn a living. Rufina elaborates a widely held view that shows the paradoxes of postcolonial societies, where state policies lack popular legitimacy, and illegality is perceived as licit, acceptable, or even representing a sort of popular justice.36 Rufina identifies legality as resulting from a class system, where the state promotes the law so as to defend the interests of the rich and powerful, while definitions of crime and illegality are inflicted on the poor. Copyright enforcement observable in the practices of global neoliberalism does not seem to be much different. But these debates on justice quickly fade away. The morning after the seizure, just a few hours later, young men with trolleys carry hundreds of boxes with bootlegged CDs and DVDs that are delivered to the stalls that were raided that night. By now the state is no longer present to stop suppliers and confiscate material.

madrinas and pitazos : neutralizing the rule of law Although corruption has widely been seen as an “agglutinating” factor in the PRI’s relation to elites and citizens, as well as a factor in the party’s long-term dominance, surprisingly little ethnographic research exists about corruption within and among law-enforcement agencies.37 This is perhaps in part due to the difficulties and risks inherent in this kind of fieldwork.38 The result has been that mechanisms and agencies that emerge between state and illegal actors are insufficiently studied.

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The role of the police as an enforcing institution has been analyzed since the late 1990s, and so far the discussion points at the functioning of a “parallel order,” characterized by abuse, corruption, and criminality. The social representation of the police officer in Mexico does not correspond to the role of public servant. According to Botello and López Silva, candidates become officers to pursue personal benefits or, ironically enough, as a way to escape from legal problems. [Some] with ties to narcotics or stolen-goods distribution rings see police work as a chance to expand their distribution and sales networks. There are also persons who have been police officers most of their lives, and have gone from one police force to another, after being discharged for violent behaviour, corruption, or links to drug trafficking and consumption.39

In the light of the current security crisis, anthropologists and sociologists have started to look again at the “black box” that contains the representations, values, and practices inside the police institution. In Policías: Una averiguación antropológica, Suárez de Garay describes the processes of identification inside the municipal police force of Guadalajara, and the relations police officers establish with “the other,” that is, the social actors with whom officers come in contact on the street. The core argument of Suárez de Garay is that the police are actually ruled by otro orden (another set of values), a world different from the law and order the institution should enforce. The networks and habits of corruption are amongst the main problems of the police institution. Any officer who becomes part of it knows about the metamorphosis everybody undergoes when becoming part of the real world of the police, so far away from the values that the academy tries to convey.40

Policing practices and relations between police and society are mediated by corruption and mistrust, and they contradict the institution’s stated purpose.41 Fraud and bribery become daily practices, and give shape to the perceptions and expectations of police officers; corruption becomes part of the social fabric, developing a police culture, a weltanschauung at the heart of the institution. Based on a large survey among municipal police officers in Guadalajara, Suárez de Garay, Moloeznik, and Shirk point at the urgent need of a new police model in order to promote the values and professionalization of the institution, and protect the security of citizens.42 Within this framework, the relation between the police and illegal actors is ambiguous, often contradictory. Police officers frequently become part of the problem they are fighting, since criminal networks can also integrate officers, who benefit from selling their complicity, information,

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or security.43 This relationship is mediated by an agent, the madrina, who communicates between the world of the police and the world of illegality. Police forces had scores of secret agents who were known as “madrinas,” or godmothers, who were kept off the books but whose responsibilities went far beyond those of informers. They were often allowed to carry guns and were used by federal and state police chiefs to do the dirty works that couldn’t be done by those on the government’s payroll –from stealing cars across the border to killing opposition activists. The fact that the madrinas were not kept on a regular payroll gave them a virtual license to commit crimes and fostered additional corruption within the regular forces.44

The madrina is a middleman who has a number of contacts with the police, and connects informal and formal networks. He can sell his services as a provider of information to illegal actors about police actions or perform dirty work. The madrina is often a former police officer who was sacked.45 “Kinship or compadrazgo (godfathership), along with solidarity networks created among corrupt policemen, [is] helpful” in the trading of information.46 The case of bootleg retail is no exception. As with drug-trafficking, negotiation and arrangements between the police and pirated CD smugglers are customary. When screening the networks of retail and supply in the San Juan de Dios market, at a certain point one comes across the madrina. In order to minimize the risk of a police raid, which may result in the confiscation of material or even detention, vendors make use of the services their supplier offers. The supplier is an interesting figure: he can be a smuggler of CDs, who copies them, wholesale among vendors in the San Juan de Dios market, and provides a number of services that include informal credits, bookkeeping, and security. Merchandise is often given to sellers on consignment. Retailers also have access to loans from their supplier, a service that deepens their relationship. Even more, suppliers have contacts in the police and sell information on upcoming seizures and security to sellers. As someone who owns and makes use of his networks in the marketplace and within the federal police, a supplier of pirate CDs can thus also be a madrina. The wide array of services and products makes the supplier of CDs in the San Juan de Dios market a dynamic entrepreneur. In the San Juan de Dios market, Eduardo Saldaña is a well-known madrina among sellers of bootlegged CDs and DVDs. People in the market might say that Eduardo studied accounting in the public University of Guadalajara, but in more intimate conversations, they will admit he is a former police officer. To the world, Eduardo takes care of retailers’ paperwork; to the retailers, he provides security and information on

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upcoming police seizures. Eduardo skillfully displays his professional side as an accountant, and would never use the term madrina to describe himself. Eduardo owns a company offering financial advice, Asesoría El Mañana, and has an office in the lower middle-class north side of the city, where a secretary politely answers the phone. His clients are sellers of pirated CDs, contraband, and clothing, who pay him an honorarium for his services. By providing this accounting service, Eduardo has access to information on the earnings of many sellers at the market, his clients. Eduardo is able to perform in different social and political settings and is used to handling the local media. He was quoted by local newspapers when the federal police raided the San Juan de Dios market, lobbying for the retailers’ interests. Eduardo has also appeared a couple of times on TV in meetings and debates with the copyrights lobby, defending the reconversión (conversion) of piracy sellers. The reconversión was a program of the local government to curb piracy retail by providing assistance to sellers of piracy to switch to legal merchandise. Eduardo has a certain sartorial flair, and regularly attends the market tenant meetings, where the tenants and their representantes (agents) gather and discuss issues and problems that concern their undertakings in the market. In one of these sessions, Eduardo wore gold rings, bracelets adorned his hands and wrists, his shirt was half unbuttoned showing his hairy chest, a showy mobile hung from his belt, and despite being young (he was not even forty years old) Eduardo somehow looked older and wasted. He introduced himself as the representante of the piratas and fayuqueros (the representative of vendors of bootlegged goods and illegal imports). When the PRI was still in power, these representantes would be labeled as leaders, yet in the current political transition, representante is a more neutral term. During the meeting, Eduardo introduced his proposal to organize a fair in the main patio of the market, where different local producers would be given the chance to offer their products directly to the tenants. The idea was to link producers and retailers. Eduardo pointed out the great opportunity to profit from direct supply, low wholesale prices, and the bigger choice of merchandise. He spoke slowly and carefully, describing the demands of the new era of globalization with new challenges ahead. He argued that retailers should not “stay in the past,” selling small amounts of handmade sandals and folkloric handicrafts. Ramona, who sells leather sandals, was visibly uncomfortable at being depicted as part of the past and regarded Eduardo suspiciously. Eduardo thus has two roles. One role is as representante who engages in public debates and enjoys media exposure, based on the professional assistance he offers. In the other, more obscure role, Eduardo is a central link in the network who provides information and security

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to piracy retailers in the San Juan de Dios market and protects his protégés against police action. In a similar fashion to illegal or mafia-based organizations, monthly payments are collected from retailers in order to bribe the federal police.47 Vendors organized by Eduardo are safe as long as they pay their cuota, a monthly payment between US$40 and US$70 per seller, depending on the merchandise and the size of the stall. The cuota flows upward through the contact the madrina has, and finally reaches higher levels of the police structure, the federal police commander with whom a madrina deals. Madrinas and police commanders negotiate via subcommanders, because, as Sergio, a bootlegged DVD seller and former madrina, explains, “the head will never show his face.” Once the commander takes his share, the bribe atomizes and flows down to police officers who may choose to take action against a particular seller. The madrina is a key actor in the security provided to vendors at the San Juan de Dios market. In Figure 7.1, the money runs through the different actors involved in the bribery system, and flows from bottom to top. Retailers are the source of cuotas, which once collected, pass through the entrepreneurs and madrinas; then the quotas reach up to the (sub) commanders with whom the agreement was made; and they, finally, distribute the bribes downward among their subordinates to make them follow orders.

Federal police commander

CD supplier/madrina

Federal police officer

Cuota collector

Federal police officer

Retailers (cuota payers) Money Information figure 7.1 Exchanges Between Police and Piracy Sellers

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These flows demonstrate the structural involvement of law-enforcement agencies in the economy of the bootleg industry. Federal police officers profit from a parallel taxing system collected from piracy sellers, and regulate the sale by selectively enforcing the law. Note, however, that cuotas do not guarantee security, since many police officers are unaccountable. Shifty or unexpected police action may hit a cuota-paying vendor. In other words, the system is not stable or trustworthy. While money flows upward in the piracy structure, the pitazo runs the other way around, top-down. The pitazo is the warning the cuota-paying seller receives from the madrina on upcoming police action. Once alerted, sellers can hide and protect their merchandise. They may leave some merchandise behind in their stalls (old CDs, for instance) just to fake the seizure and avoid another visit by the police. At first glance, the cuota and pitazo systems suggest a well-oiled network in which federal police, entrepreneurs, madrinas, and sellers smoothly cooperate. But, in addition to the potential hazards of unaccountable police, sometimes the lines of communication are blocked. Pitazos may stop circulating when a new police commander is appointed in the zone, for instance. Then, pitazos will not perform until the commander and the entrepreneurs come to a new arrangement, and this process can take months. Informal deals must be renegotiated, and while the new commander usually agrees to continue them, higher cuotas may be demanded. In this uncertain interim period, unexpected raids may occur. Contacts between police officers and piracy entrepreneurs are to a certain extent structured, since they do not rely on the favor of one (sub) commandant in particular, but on agreements that are not guaranteed but typically are honored. The negotiations between federal police officers, madrinas, and piracy entrepreneurs are no secret to local authorities. In interviews with high-ranking government officers, such as the supervisor of municipal markets, the director of markets of Guadalajara, the secretary of government of Guadalajara, the secretary of public security, or the administrator of the San Juan de Dios Market, the authorities acknowledged the efficiency of madrinas and pitazos. Luis Carlos Nájera, the secretary of public security for Guadalajara, even describes it as a sort of natural development. We have to speak the truth, don’t we? One of the biggest problems is corruption, right? And I have a theory, maybe it sounds a bit odd. I call it the fly theory. A fly, when it is tired of crashing against a glass, it looks for another way out. And many times the policeman is like that: he sees so much of, in this case, the retail of pirate things, and sees that he cannot do anything, then he tries to take advantage. He says “OK, I know that what you do is not legal; that what you do is bad. Then, I do not punish you; I do not pick the discs you are selling that are illegal.

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Give something to me.” And there is in many cases corruption in this regard, and it happens; we have to acknowledge that it occurs many times.

In Nájera’s statement, the police force, as an institution, perceives itself as powerless in the face of piracy. It is revealing how the secretary describes the role of the police: after all the attempts to enforce the law, a police officer “cannot do anything” but try to profit from it, “to take advantage.” According to Pablo Lasso, a specialist on informal commerce in Guadalajara, this attitude of knowing but not taking action includes a double standard. The government plays with two different sets of cards. One of dignity and honesty; at the upper levels, [corruption] tears them apart. And then, those at the lower levels who are appointed to uproot corruption, sadly, those are bought off . . . but when they are forced from above, we know that now and then somebody will be picked and the merchandise seized, but they do it randomly and try to not always raid the same retailers.

Many note that political discourses on transparency and the fight against corruption are little more than lofty rhetoric, since discourses do not lead to reform of law enforcement institutions. Mario, a market leader, put it succinctly: “The famous honesty is a bluff.” The war on piracy seems to be state performance, because the police repress yet they also organize to certain extent the retail of bootleg material.48 In fact, there is a homeostasis to the political economy of bootlegging. As a market tenant named Amanda put it: Everybody profits from it because there is scandalous corruption. Nobody knows anything, but everything is under control. And if they come [the police] in the morning, by noon they [retailers] again have discs to sell.

This ambiguity of the federal police in antipiracy programs may explain why, despite the governmental programs, the loss in Mexico reported by the U.S. copyright industry grows every year.49 Information published by the copyrights lobby may be debatable, but it coincides with my own research findings: the number of piracy vendors in the San Juan de Dios market has not visibly decreased, but increased. Antipiracy measures have shown little or no success in reducing piracy. Hence, the war on piracy seeks not to reduce the sale of bootlegged merchandise, but to prove Mexico’s commitment to copyright enforcement.

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final remarks: the war on piracy as state per for mance The extreme case of police raids on piracy in the San Juan de Dios market reveals the limitations and ambiguities in the enforcement of intellectual property rights in Mexico. The introduction of legal bodies that regulate global commerce has defined new crimes, unleashing as a result police action against local actors. The definition of new forms of illegality in the context of global neoliberalism echoes, nevertheless, the political asymmetry between regions. The worldwide validity of TRIPS exacerbates inequality between countries, since only dominant economies in the copyright industries hold enough political power to influence the system of legality. Neoliberal regulations outlaw the undertakings of actors who contravene the commercial interests and supremacy of the corporate sector. At the core of the neoliberal civilizing project there is a strong state, which functions as a watchdog of the commercial interests of international actors. Up to this point, there is a vertical flow of power in which global agencies attempt governing local spaces, introducing new definitions of crime. “Criminality with violence, it seems, has become endemic to the postcolonial condition,” as John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff have pointed out.50 Neoliberalism entails a civilizing project that reorders the relationships between the international corporate sector, national governments, and local actors. The economies at the margin are increasingly defined as crime. Clearly, global neoliberalism constructs new savages. The global structures of governance, as copyrights enforcement, engender controversy. Local actors resist the “domesticating” power of the legal framework of global neoliberalism. Police raids are countered by sellers and middlemen. Furthermore, agents adjust to circumstances and act according to complex sets of interests and loyalties. Parallel mechanisms like the pitazo and agents like the madrina demonstrate that there is no vertical governance, but rather horizontal negotiations between actors that blur the boundaries between legality and illegality, and the distinction between illegal and state actors. The state deploys helicopters, hundreds of policemen, and gas grenades; it multiplies police action to confiscate millions of CDs per year; yet still the networks and accommodations between illegal actors and law enforcement agents remain untouched. Why is the political economy of corruption left aside in copyright protection programs? What does the Mexican state gain from this war on piracy? The “war on piracy,” the enforcement of copyright rights in Mexico, can better be understood as state performance. The staging of

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the rule of law has value as an enunciative action, namely, to pronounce the legal framework of copyrights with police action and produce thereby evidence of the state’s efforts to eradicate piracy retail. As I have set out in this chapter, the war on piracy has no winner, since it constitutes but also erodes state authority. Local, national, and international actors jockey for position, and as they do so, reveal the various layers of power that constitute present-day Mexico.

PART FOUR

State-Making and Violence in Society: Corporatism, Clientelism, and Indigenous Communities

chapter eight

The Rise of Gangsterism and Charrismo Labor Violence and the Postrevolutionary Mexican State marcos aguila and jeffrey bortz

; Between 1910 and 1917, the armed violence of revolution and civil war swept away the Mexican state. Not surprisingly, the violence also swept away the old labor regime, a subset of the state.1 Following Francisco Madero’s call to arms and taking advantage of the inability of the state to repress their activities, workers in various industries employed violence and other means to unionize, to change the social relationships of work and community, and to fight for better wages and working conditions.2 After 1917, a combination of worker activism and the reaction of aspiring elites to the new conditions of revolutionary Mexico led to the creation of the most pro-worker labor regime in Latin America. Although Article 123 of the 1917 constitution was its centerpiece, the new labor regime included state labor codes that gave control over hiring, firing, and discipline to the unions, strong unions that in some industries controlled the workplace, strong legal protections for unions and striking workers, new union confederations that became powerful political actors in the unsettled political ambiance of Mexico in the 1920s, and an activist spirit among many workers, men and women, based on the belief that they deserved new rights in what they perceived as a revolutionary Mexico. Both the new state and the new labor regime remained quite unsettled throughout the 1920s. By and large, those who came to power with and following revolutionary general and later president Venustiano Carranza were never truly at ease with a labor regime that seemed to give workers excessive power. Carranza himself repressed the electrical workers’ strike of 1916. Mostly they were men who sought personal wealth through

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what they hoped would be a modernizing capitalism, a set of arrangements inconsistent with workers’ power. But given the fragility of their rule in the 1920s, a frontal assault on workers and unions was out of the question. If postrevolutionary Mexico was never truly a democracy, aspiring elites nonetheless needed political support, and organized workers were important political actors. Another factor that influenced labor violence after the revolution was the changed nature of unions and union leadership. Before the revolution, leading a union required some heroism. Industrialists often fired and blacklisted union leaders, and could often count on the state to imprison them. After the revolution, not only did law and politics protect union leaders, but heading a union brought management of the collective contract and therefore the power to control hiring and firing. Given Mexico’s labor market and political culture, such control presented lucrative opportunities. Thus there was no shortage of individuals and groups willing to fight to control unions and their contracts. Absent hegemonic institutions, violence became an accepted means to settle the issue of union control, as we shall observe. Both factors, the state’s need to control workers in the context of the pro-worker labor environment and the value of managing collective contracts, made for a potentially violent labor environment in which the new state could not afford neutrality. The most successful political leaders, in state and national governments, were those who could get labor leaders to provide political support while utilizing those same leaders to control workers, thus allowing the politicians to also obtain backing from businessmen, industrialists, and investors. From Alvaro Obregón through Adolfo López Mateos, Mexico’s political elites carefully chose their labor allies because everybody walked the tightrope of legally powerful but politically controlled unions. In short, a once revolutionary labor regime came to depend on vertical union leadership, with the secretary general of the favored labor confederation occupying a critical role. This explains the importance of Luis N. Morones, who trained the two men who followed him, Vicente Lombardo Toledano and Fidel Velázquez. While unions remained strong, the state controlled them, after a fashion, through autocratic and state-supported leaders. While this made some economic concessions inevitable, the Mexican state believed that such concessions were cheaper than independent worker action.3 In effect, the state financed its labor followers, so that newly powerful labor leaders built their authority not only on violence, but on their capacity to deliver the goods. In the 1920s, this process was personal but thirty years later evolved into a set of institutional forms. This explains why the violence necessary to impose the system was personal in

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the 1920s, private individuals carrying out murder and rape, and why this would yield to an institutional form in the 1950s, an army imprisoning strikers. Fidel Velázquez, the best symbol of charrismo (union bossism) between the 1930s and his death in the mid-1990s, played the crucial role of providing political control in exchange for concessions in the economic realm. The formula worked because of the relative prosperity of the economy and the very low standard of living that Mexico had earlier. “In the beginning [Fidel Velázquez answered in one of the few interviews he ever gave], we abused the use of violence to control unions and workers, but later, not anymore, because the labor movement had matured and it was not necessary to make use of violence (echar mano de la violencia) to impose ourselves.”4 However, this solution to Mexico’s contradictory modernizing capitalism and progressive labor regime was not obvious when the revolutionary Constitutional Congress drafted Article 123. It emerged in a series of labor battles that took place in numerous industries between the interunion conflict in Atlixco in the 1920s and the nationwide railroad strike of 1959.5 In the former, the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), backed by President Plutarco Elías Calles, fought the Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT) and Libres for control over unions in Mexico’s largest factory industry. In the latter, the governmentalist Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), which had replaced the CROM as the ruling elite’s key labor ally, fought dissidents, some allied to the Mexican Communist Party. In each branch of the economy, different battles took place, but the exclusion of the radicals was the constant, or the radicals eventually claudicated. This chapter compares and contrasts these two moments of labor violence in Mexico’s postrevolutionary labor regime. Their similarities and differences reflect some fundamental continuities and changes in the Mexican state between 1920 and 1960, as well as in the country’s postrevolutionary labor regime. At the center of both episodes was the state’s ambivalent incorporation of a pro-worker labor regime. But the nature of state violence was quite different because Mexico of 1959 was not Mexico of 1924. In the thirty-five years that separated the two movements, the economy grew spectacularly, urbanization and industrialization reshaped the workforce, and the political institutions that had been new and rough around the edges in 1924 had become practiced and sophisticated by 1959. Furthermore, the 1931 Federal Labor Code provided an institutional framework lacking in 1924. Added to this, the Cárdenas land reforms, nationalization of the oil industry, and short-lived workers’ administration of the railroads strengthened the legitimacy of Cárdenas’s and

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subsequent governments. In the 1920s, private gangs carried out the murderous violence that gave victory to the government’s labor ally, the CROM. Although the federal army supported them, union thugs did the dirty work. In 1959, there were no murders, simply the federal army imprisoning thousands of striking railroad workers. Quite a different, more institutional sort of violence. This chapter therefore has two sections, the first on the textile wars, the second on the railroad upheaval. In the first, the chapter describes political and agrarian violence in Puebla to show that the kind of violence employed in the mills was of a type with the social and political violence during the 1920s. It was not extraordinary in that sense, but rather typified how conflict was settled in the decade following the 1917 constitution. In the second section, we trace the railroad conflict from the strike of 1948 to the conflict of 1959. What stands out is that ultimately the state employed violence in order to impose its control over railroad workers, but that the nature of that violence was quite different from the textile wars because Mexico had changed so greatly in the intervening years. What had not changed, however, was Mexico’s ambivalent postrevolutionary labor regime, with gains for workers at the cost of state control, an ambiguity that ultimately necessitated state violence.

textiles and the crom, 1918– 1929 Puebla Politics During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Mexico’s largest factory industry was cotton textiles. When the revolution broke out in 1910, cotton textile operatives (operarios) quickly unionized the industry, creating factory unions where rank and file democratically elected leaders.6 From the initial and successful general strike in late 1911, operarios continued to fight owners, supervisors, and the state in order to consolidate their unions, obtain unprecedented benefits, and get control over the shop floor. Their victory led to the creation of powerful unions and a pro-worker labor environment, forever changing the face of industrial Mexico. If after the revolution Mexico’s new state was to gain control over the labor environment, it had to deal with textiles because that is where unions were strongest and most combative, at least initially. Taking advantage of the new legal and political environment for unions, Luis N. Morones founded the CROM in 1918, in Saltillo, with the support of the governor of Coahuila. He believed in vertical leadership in which

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loyal unions supported him while he negotiated directly with the state. Not surprisingly allied with soon-to-be-president Alvaro Obregón, Morones sought to destroy independent and democratic factory unions, a project that found favor with Obregón, Calles, and the other leaders of Mexico’s new state. There were of course many unionists and labor leaders who disagreed with Morones. They established their own labor centrals, particularly the CGT. Through the 1920s, competing trade unions and rival labor confederations fought over two key issues: the workers’ alliance with the state and the related question of rank-and-file democracy. The competition was frequently violent because Mexico of the 1920s was an extraordinarily violent country. Revolutionary struggles did not end magically with the February 1917 constitution, or in the decade that followed. Carranza believed he could legitimate his state through his new constitution in 1917 but did not survive the assassin’s bullet in 1920. His successor, Álvaro Obregón, also fell to the assassin’s bullet in 1928. Between the assassinations of Zapata in 1919 and Obregón in 1928, murder was the preferred political tool in Mexico. Not just presidents, but many other political leaders suffered assaults and assassinations. Not until 1929 did Obregón’s successor, Plutarco Elías Calles, found the political party that would bring a degree of political stability to Mexico. Importantly, his party brought a sector of labor inside the ruling coalition. Until then, however, Mexico’s new state was both violent and weak. National and local leaders felt no hesitation in killing their enemies when it seemed necessary and retaliation was always in the air. A weak state in a society of generalized violence guaranteed that conflict over unions would be settled by guns. The labor wars were particularly dramatic in Puebla, the center of the textile industry.7 The violence in the textile industry can be understood only within the context of political instability and generalized violence in the state. Needing allies in state government when he assumed the presidency, Carranza appointed Dr. Alfonso Cabrera, the brother of his treasury minister, governor of Puebla. Cabrera looted the state government, then followed Carranza when the president fled Mexico City to avoid being killed by Obregón, leaving the state government in the hands of General Carlos García.8 García was in office just long enough to extort some money, then turned the statehouse over to another general, Provisional Governor Rafael Rojas. Rojas also did not last long in office, giving way to Luis Sánchez Pontón. Unlike his military predecessors, Sánchez Pontón was a lawyer, a Puebla native, and “from a distinguished family.” His family was so distinguished that he used state funds to support them, generating discord among the state’s leading families and a conflictive process to elect his successor. Sánchez Pontón supported

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Rafael Lara Grajales and Obregón supported General José María Sánchez, while public opinion seemed to back Pastor Rouaix. Sánchez Pontón thought that he could impose Lara Grajales, but Obregón dissolved the local congress and took Lara Grajales off to Mexico City, leaving Claudio N. Tirado as interim governor.9 In early 1922 Tirado installed a local congress of Sánchez supporters, and the congress quickly named José María Sánchez governor. The Sanchista congress quickly split into competing factions that “hated each other as Africans do.”10 Alfonso Moro, brother of anti-Sánchez congressman Antonio Moro, shot and killed pro-Sánchez congressman Tranquilino Alonso in Puebla’s central square. This set the stage for the revenge murders of prominent enemies of Governor Sánchez, including Congressman Antonio Moro, his brother Dr. Fernando Moro, and lawyer Ramón Medina, on February 14, 1922. The killings cost Sánchez his job, leaving the local congress to designate Froylán C. Manjarréz as the interim replacement. Police reports suggest that the previous governors, all of whom engaged in theft, extortion, and murder, were not as “immoral, depraved and corrupt” as Manjarréz, a noted alcoholic and pederast.11 Manjarréz began ordering the requisite assassinations, including Melquiades Guerrero and his wife, and Amador de los Santos. The governor and his friends also raped a number of girls in the state’s orphanage. None of these activities affected his tenure, which was cut short only when he stupidly joined the De la Huerta rebellion in 1923. The defeat of De la Huerta led to the naming of Vicente Lombardo Toledano as provisional governor. Lombardo quickly ceded the post to Alberto Guerrero, who then convened elections for the state congress. The new state congress decreed the rehabilitation of Obregón’s friend, José María Sánchez. Although the local populace did not support Sánchez, who had a reputation for theft and murder, he needed nothing more than the support of Obregón and Mexico City to return to power. The president outvoted the electorate. From Governor Cabrera to Governor Sánchez, state authorities neither enjoyed legitimacy among the populace nor had the strength to survive without allies in Mexico City. Their most useful strategy was to simply kill their enemies and curry favor with the president. Murder was a necessary but not sufficient political tool. Some popular support was needed, which is why the new ruling elite sought the support of mass organizations. Morones and the CROM represented a political opportunity, not least because the rising labor leader shared Obregón’s understanding of the trilogy of political rule in Mexico: loyalty to the boss, the exercise of violence in order to generate fear, and the use of public monies for private ends. In these goals, the CROM was an ally.

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If the Puebla statehouse was violent, so was the Puebla countryside, as many agrarian communities fought hacienda owners and each other for land. In the early 1920s, the CROM entered the fray with a rural strategy. This strategy and the state’s agrarian violence can be seen in the municipio (municipality) of Chalchicomula, Puebla. During the early 1920s, agraristas (agrarian activists) established Ligas de Comunidades Agrarias (LCA) in order to further their land claims. The CROM moved in with rival rural unions, often called the sindicalista or laborista. Agrarian revolutionaries had been active in the municipio throughout the revolution. The violence between competing groups was already in full swing when the CROM established its union in 1923, led by Octaviano Rojas. On May 18, 1923, a campesino, Juan Sánchez, was shot eight times and stabbed twenty.12 On July 22, a shootout resulted in the death of a soldier. On October 17, Miguel Ventura was clubbed to death. On January 4, 1924, Domingo Orato was shot to death. A few days later, on January 17, an assault on the store of Ignacio Contreras resulted in the death of the owners. On February 9, following a shootout, Andrés Hernández, Francisco Pérez, and Salvador Pérez were assassinated. Subsequently, Emilio Roque was shot to death. On January 5, 1926, the sindicalistas killed the local judge, Diego Pérez, and three campesinos, Braulio de la Lus, Miguel Gómez, and Amado Ventura.13 Within a day, Antonio Martínez was also shot and killed. In April 1926, Dionisio Hernández was visiting Miguel Aparicio at his house when Gerónimo Flores led an assault on the dwelling, the marauders dragging the men outside, wounding Hernández on the head with a machete and stabbing Aparicio in the arm with a knife. They took both of them to the municipal jail, where they planned to take them outside and shoot them. Only a gathering of family members at the jail saved the two from a certain death, though they remained incarcerated and fearful of their lives for quite some time.14 In July 1927, the sindicalista burned the headquarters of the Liga. The next month, three laborista women, supported by local authorities, attacked José Serrano.15 A few days later, laborista Benito Vivanco attempted to murder Raymundo Abrego and Antonio Rojas, rojos (reds), and when he failed, he had the local laborista police put them in jail. On August 21, three laboristas grabbed a young boy, Miguel Angel, during a local celebration and began to beat him with a rifle. Two young women intervened, trying to protect the boy, saying that if a crime had been committed, they should take him to the jail rather than beating him. Instead, the laboristas took all three to the local jail, where they raped the women.16 Thus for four years between 1923 and 1927, agraristas and laboristas, both with some apparent popular support, fought for control of

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Chalchicomula. If national and state politicians employed violence to obtain their goals, why shouldn’t those in the municipios do the same? In Chalchicomula, laboristas and agraristas both tried to get the state to support their violence, which in practice meant appeals to local detachments of the federal army, local police, and local judges. During a period of the CROM’s rise to power, it was not uncommon to find laboristas in control of these institutions, which they used to protect their killers. This ultimately made Chalchicomula a laborista stronghold, providing the laboristas control over the distribution of new land grants and the money that followed. The Labor Violence of the CROM However diminished and altered compared to the previous decade, the political and agrarian violence of Mexico’s revolution continued through the 1920s. It was not a peaceful country. If political and agrarian disputes were often settled at the point of a gun, why should labor disputes be different? Of course, each sphere—politics, rural life, factories—had its own peculiarities, so that if violence was a common denominator, the reasons for violence varied. The peculiarity of industry was tied to the labor regime. Article 123 and the state labor codes that implemented the constitutional mandates not only strengthened trade unions, created unprecedented benefits in the Latin American context, and protected strikes and striking workers; they virtually mandated unions in the workplace and often provided them the tools to control hiring, firing, and discipline and therefore the workplace. In Puebla, on November 14, 1921, Governor Sánchez issued a labor code to bring state law into compliance with Article 123, including protections for unions and strikes. The new law limited the right of businesses to fire workers to four specific rule violations, each of which could be appealed to labor boards at which unions had the same number of votes as owners, making firings virtually impossible. The law also required businesses to sign a collective contract with their union, and gave the unions, not the businesses, the right to hire. As a consequence, Puebla labor law virtually mandated powerful unions and gave them control over the shop floor through their rights to hire and to prevent firings. This was the profile of rules for the new labor regime, which advanced according to regional conditions of labor power throughout Mexico. New labor law provided opportunities but also new constraints for trade unions. While federal and state law provided stability and permanence, adherence to the codes made unions dependent on the state from which the law emanated. In fact, the law required unions to register with

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the state, tantamount to giving the state a veto over which unions even existed. The new labor codes created numerous municipal, state, and federal labor offices, labor boards, and even labor courts. In practice, contentious unions and businesses would go to the boards and courts seeking favorable rulings. If the new state needed the support of mass organizations, the new trade unions needed the support of these government offices. In fact, when railroad workers weighed the possibility of going on strike in 1930, a government spy noted that “with regard to the strike threats, they are nothing more than threats designed to pressure the company, because the workers’ organizations know very well that they can’t go on strike without the support of the government.”17 Thus the labor environment in Mexico in the 1920s was something quite new, in effect, unexplored terrain. Labor leaders who could work within the new rules had a clear advantage. In the 1920s, nobody understood them better than Luis N. Morones, the founder of the CROM. He knew that while Obregón and Calles needed him, he needed them.18 It was a match if not made in heaven, certainly made in the cauldron of postrevolutionary Mexico. It also explains why the labor wars in textiles adopted the pattern they did, in which government did not attack unions per se, but rather supported the leadership of Morones and the CROM, tools for crushing out-of-control workers. The wisest of government leaders sought to control unions not through frontal battles but through proxy wars, in which the CROM was a star player. The strategy reached a high point when President Calles made CROM Secretary General Morones minister of Industry, Commerce and Labor, and entrusted him with enforcing the new labor rules. At the height of his personal power, Morones, for instance, used his office against the striking radical unions in the railroads during the “Great Strike” of 1926 and 1927, defending his own subordinate leaders of the CROM.19 With seven cotton textile mills, Atlixco, some thirty kilometers southwest of Puebla City, was a center of the textile industry and of textile unions. In mid-1919, the CROM founded the Federación Sindicalista de Atlixco (FSA), with the goal of affiliating the local factory unions.20 Convinced anarchists, who opposed vertical and undemocratic unions, left the CROM in 1921 to found the CGT. Their activists in Atlixco founded the Federación Local de Obreros y Campesinos–Confederación General de Trabajadores (FLOC-CGT).21 The mill owners disliked sindicalistas (CROM) and rojos (CGT), so they set about organizing the so-called libres, business-oriented unions with some ties to the clergy. In less than half a dozen years, Atlixco went from factory unions unattached to regional or national alliances to a bitter three-way fight between competing labor centrals, each with some popular support.

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Much of the CGT leadership in town came from the radical workers who had built the factory unions during the revolution. Although their local ties and reputations represented an advantage for the organization, these leaders often lacked allies in government, increasingly necessary in the new legal environment. The libres relied on the owners, and to a lesser degree, the church. However, both owners and the church, if not religion, had lost power in the revolution and were much discredited among many workers. Article 121 of the state labor code declared that proof of a union’s religious character was sufficient to nullify its collective contract, so that the rules of labor worked against Catholic unions.22 Thus, while the CGT and libres had some advantages, neither gained from the new postrevolutionary legal and organizational structures. The CROM, on the other hand, counted on powerful allies in local, state, and federal governments. In 1924 the head of the local CROM became municipal president, a post the organization would not relinquish for decades. The CROM also maintained close but uneven ties to the governor’s mansion. Governor Sánchez began his term an ally of Obregón and the sindicalistas. Political conflicts ended his term early when he was tried for fraud and then implicated in a murder case. In November 1923, he engaged in a shootout with Luis N. Morones that wounded the latter. Just before leaving office, however, he signed the state’s new labor code. His successor, Froylán C. Manjarréz, named a prominent CROM member, Juan Lozano, director of the state labor office. Subsequently, Manjarréz also broke with the CROM, whose September 1923 convention declared him “traitor to the labor movement.” CROM labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano replaced him in office, as mentioned earlier, though for a very short time. For the next two years, the state had six governors, each of whom believed, correctly, that he needed the CROM to govern.23 In this highly unstable region where rival parties had become accustomed to settling conflict through violence, the competing labor centrals in Atlixco did the same. In September 1921, the CGT carried out a general strike in order to strengthen their factory affiliates against both the owners and rival labor unions.24 In El León, the administrator, Bernardo Barrolo, reported that “these Communists,” meaning the CGT union, walked out when he hired a non-CGT worker. He added that the division among the workforce between comunistas or rojos and sindicalistas did not permit the mill to function “on a regular basis, as it should.”25 A few days later the CROM workers voted to carry out their own wildcat strike unless the mill fired one of the supervisors for being abusive with workers and their families.26 The CROM and CGT unions fought each other

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and the owners, keeping the mill closed from late September to early January, 1922.27 In the end, Barrolo reopened his mill with libres, requesting federal troops to protect his mill as he attempted to break the more radical CGT and CROM affiliates.28 In nearby Metepec, the intraunion conflict brought death threats and shootings. On October 28, 1921, a half dozen CGT members were accused of threatening to kill a pair of libres if they showed up to work. In defense, the comunistas argued that the factory administrator, Constantino Matilla, was substituting sindicalistas with libres. Amid mutual threats, a libre, Fidel Luna, shot and wounded Juan Montiel, a rojo. Unionists claimed that Matilla had hired Luna to carry out the shooting and then protected him when he fled town.29 Like El León, Metepec was forced to close. The mills finally reopened in late December and early January with libres as the owners tried to break the established unions.30 As Antonio Huerta, administrator of La Carolina, explained, “As ordered by ownership, I withdrew recognition of the existing union, as with other factories in the district, I will arrange things with the workers in the mill and not with the Confederación de Sindicatos.”31 In Metepec, ownership claimed that the mill resumed work “by the will of the majority of the workers.”32 The owners argued that the walkout had been “due to a difference of opinions among its workers,” but with libres the mills were now free of strife.33 On the other hand, neither the CROM nor the CGT accepted the owners’ version, nor did they accept being thrown out of the mills. The CROM accused El León of violating the new labor law, while the CGT sought intervention by municipal authorities. Knowing that both groups were likely to respond with more than just accusations, administrator Barrolo requested that the mayor place more soldiers inside El León.34 He also requested permission to arm his security guards inside the mill with 30-30 carbines.35 He needed an armed factory because most workers were already “carrying pistols.”36 On June 10, 1922, the libres organized their regional federation, the Unión de Obreros Libres de Atlixco.37 Governor Manjarréz issued a decree that protected the right of workers to decide their own union representation and promised armed guards in the factories.38 In early August, armed CROM militias resumed their attacks. On August 4, a group of sindicalistas went to El León to convince the workers to go on strike, returning the next day with red and black strike flags. On Monday, August 7, nobody came to work at the mill. Fearful of an armed assault, the company closed the factory, requesting police protection.39 On August 8, a confrontation broke out between sindicalistas and libres. When the police could not control the violence, they called in federal troops. During the

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fighting, Everardo Calderón and Aurelio Olivares were murdered, and Cándido Camela and four others were arrested. The police impounded seven guns and twenty-two knives.40 This led to a meeting of the municipal president with the leaders of the sindicalistas and the libres at which both sides agreed to “not carry out hostile acts” and “to treat each other with greater respect.”41 Of course, nobody had any intention of carrying out the agreement. When a federal labor inspector came to the mill in October with the goal of getting the workers to join the CROM union, Thome, the administrator, claimed that only a quarter of the workers belonged to the sindicalistas.42 True or not, the CROM demonstrated its capacity to control the shop floor. Following the meeting with the mayor, workers carried out a union meeting inside the mill during work hours, “provoking chaos inside the factory.”43 Then on October 31, they simply walked out without permission in order to carry out another meeting. Following death threats against him, Thome shut the mill once again.44 In a spate of countercharges, the sindicalistas claimed that Thome refused them permission to hold union meetings while Thome declared the collective contract null and void and fired all the workers.45 It was too little and too late. The CROM had defeated the CGT, the libres, and the administrator. It is impossible to know whether the takeover was for or against the majority of the millhands, but it was achieved with great violence. The year had opened with workers and employees arming themselves and engaging in shootouts and killings. The mill shut down twice, in August and October, trying and failing to fire sindicalistas. Finally, on November 5, the governor ordered management to reopen the mill with the original, that is, sindicalista, workers.46 The factory accepted, knowing that it was a victory for the CROM and a defeat for management and its libres.47 The CGT never returned as an effective force in the mill. Thus, a combination of a militant and determined group of armed activists with significant popular support, state intervention, state and extrastate violence, and CROM political ties to local, state, and national leaders gave the sindicalistas the victory in Atlixco’s second largest mill. This pattern repeated itself in the other mills. Despite the initially successful CGT strike of 1921, CROM violence in 1922 and thereafter allowed it to retake most of the mills. Metepec remained the last holdout of the libres.48 The violence in the mill escalated as a result.49 A 1924 report included eight murders, six wounded individuals, four attacks on groups of workers, and two attempted murders of labor leaders.50 By the summer of 1924, the CGT in Atlixco was dead, the libres survived only in Metepec, and the CROM controlled Los Molinos, El Carmen, La Concepción, El Volcán, La Carolina, and El León.51 Strengthened

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sindicalistas finally decided to take control of Metepec the same way they had taken the other factories. Benito León led a group of millhands from El Volcán, La Carolina, and El Carmen to the gates of the mill, where they awaited the libres. At dawn on August 24, the two forces went to battle. Several men died, including Lorenzo Rodríguez, the leader of the Federación de Sindicatos de Atlixco.52 That evening a gang of libres attacked several homes in the Metepec compound. The sindicalistas claimed that the libres “set about committing the most unspeakable of acts, raping the wives, sisters, and daughters of our members; there were many cases, among them one of a very old woman, another of a woman about to give birth, and girls of only ten.”53 The libres replied that the sindicalistas “carried out their plans for killing, stealing, and pillaging, beginning Saturday evening, when various groups came to kill one of the workers, wound another three, and stab an old woman in an attempted rape.”54 Finally, the industrialists and sindicalistas met in September to resolve the situation in Metepec. The Puebla CROM announced that if the libres were not expelled from the mill, it would carry out a general strike.55 The Atlixco CROM demanded that Metepec rehire the fired CROM workers and recognize the CROM union. It demanded, first, that the mill give preference to the CROM in hiring; second, that department chiefs divide the work in the mill upon agreements with the unions’ general secretaries; and, third, that no union worker lose his job for participating in labor actions.56 While the union demanded virtual control over the shop floor, the company responded that any hiring not based on aptitude “is hateful,” and that the involvement of third parties meant that “property rights are undermined.” Nonetheless, on September 29, the industrialists caved in, signing an agreement with the CROM, the state governor, and the Federal Labor Department that expelled the libres from Metepec, in effect turning the town over to the CROM.57 President Obregón sent a battalion of federal troops to Atlixco to put four hundred libres on a train to Mexico City, where they were given twenty-five pesos each. Thus on October 4, Metepec fell to the sindicalistas and the CROM solidified its control over the seven mills and the town itself.58 CROM leader Benito Flores was the Presidente Municipal, a far cry from the days when the factories fired union workers and the pro-business municipal governments supported the owners. One old worker remembered Flores as municipal president. “Ah, that was beautiful, he sent for Federico Fantini, the administrator of the Metepec factory, he arrested him within the hour, imposing a 100 peso fine and making him sweep the Zócalo; I don’t remember the cause but it was very beautiful.”59

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Supported by the federal government, the CROM engaged in illegal strikes, assaults, and murder, without fear of retribution. The combination of extrastate violence supported by the state, a new legal environment that favored unions over owners, and a political environment that included close ties between labor leaders and the state gave the CROM the victory over its labor rivals and over mill owners. Their victory gave them control of the mills and of the town, including the town government. At the same time, the federal government extended its control over labor through its support of a compliant labor confederation while apparently respecting labor law and the gains of the workers in their revolution—an ingenious solution whose difficulties, the absence of union democracy, would lead to conflict on the rails some twenty-five years later. Power Transferred from Workers to Leaders, 1920s to 1950s Having come to power through state-supported violence, Benito Flores did not impose a workers’ paradise in Atlixco. But he and the CROM did make life better for workers and worse for owners. Just as they had predicted, mill owners saw their private property rights sharply curtailed. There can be little doubt that this benefited mill hands, at least those who kept their jobs. Workers enjoyed higher pay, good benefits, and strong protections in the workplace. What some workers did not enjoy was the transfer of power from rank and file to labor leaders, and through them, to the state. Achieving these gains through violence and murder, however, was not a process sustainable in the long run. In an attempt to put some order into a somewhat chaotic labor situation, in 1931 the Mexican government federalized labor law, in effect suppressing the state labor codes and to a certain degree the labor independence of state authorities. The new labor code was part of the process of the institutionalization of labor affairs which accompanied the increasing institutionalization of the state. In this new environment and spurred by labor’s gains, workers enjoyed increased wages and benefits. Labor leaders held unprecedented power and status. The new state benefited from the support of workers and their families. The textile industry benefited from industrial peace, at the heart of any process of industrialization. Lastly, spurred by the brief yet profound impact of the Great Depression, the owners benefited from increased tariffs, allowing them to raise prices to cover the increased labor costs.

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This trade-off spurred industrialization, particularly from the second half of the 1930s onward, which made state control over unions via compliant labor leaders ever more important.60 Led by the former governor of Puebla and CROM leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano, a group of modernizers abandoned the CROM to found the Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), which followed the CROM closely in subordinating unions to the state, albeit now inside the official party. From Luis N. Morones to Vicente Lombardo Toledano to his successor, Fidel Velázquez, there was continuity of strategy—subordinating unions to the state—even if there were personal differences.61 Slowly, of course, the system became bigger than the individuals who built it. Morones eventually made the mistake of coming to think of himself as more important than the state, an error that Velázquez would avoid.62 For most workers in the formal sector of the economy, a system constructed on an alliance with the state brought benefits and protections, even though they lost power in their own unions and would eventually see their real incomes decline. There were always dissidents, of course, but the system became ever more efficient and successfully crushed most challenges. The resulting industrial peace brought a new economy, urbanization, and modernization. Educational levels increased and a new popular culture gripped the country, led by a Mexican film industry, new popular magazines, and the spread of Mexican music and art throughout the Spanishspeaking world. It is safe to say that by the late 1940s, the Mexican state enjoyed a greater degree of legitimacy and hegemony than had any previous regime in the country’s independent history. Part of that hegemony lay in the labor regime. Although the industrial economy did not eradicate poverty, particularly in rural Mexico, it provided industrial workers with good jobs, good wages, and many protections and benefits. Slowly, some, though not all, members of the working class began to see themselves as middle class, with new consumer opportunities and, perhaps even more important, with the perception of a brighter future for their children. The workers’ revolution of a previous generation may have been subverted, but it was not dead. On the other hand, many workers continued to see themselves as workers and refused to accept state control of their unions, among them, railroad workers. In 1947, the large railroad union, the Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana (STFRM), abandoned an officialist CTM to form the Central Única de Trabajadores (CUT) with other powerful national unions, the miners and oil workers. Railroads played a critical role in a growing Mexican economy oriented toward the internal market. Thus, the STFRM occupied a crucial space

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in the country’s economic growth. It was a large and powerful union with 75,000 members in 1943; 95,000 in 1952; and close to 100,000 in 1958. The national union was divided into regional sections with strong influence in strategic cities such as Guadalajara, San Luis Potosí, Monterrey, and Mexico City.63 In this union, with decisive economic power, workers sought to reestablish labor democracy, which had been lost long ago in the labor wars of the 1920s. The attempt to break free from state-allied labor leaders would lead to another episode of labor violence in postrevolutionary Mexico. This violence was both like and unlike that of Atlixco. It was similar at its core because it was about the nature of trade union leadership. Yet the nature of the violence—private murderers in Atlixco, the army on the rails—was different in a way that suggests the profound changes in Mexican society and in the Mexican state that had come about since 1924.

conflict on the rails, 1948– 1959 1948: The First Charrazo Given the size, power, and relative democracy of the railroad union, it is not surprising that there was constant struggle within it to gain control of the executive committee. By the 1940s, there were two principal groups that competed to control the STFRM, the sindicalistas and the comunistas. Sindicalistas in the railroad union were not the CROM sindicalistas of the 1920s, although there were similarities. They had a narrow view of union goals, focusing on economic improvements and paying little attention to larger political strategies or labor solidarity.64 The comunistas of the late 1940s were also different from the comunistas in 1924. In Atlixco, rojos or comunistas referred to the anarchosyndicalism of the CGT. By 1948, comunistas meant Communists, members of a Mexican Communist Party that had become a significant force inside the railroad union. In 1948, sindicalistas and comunistas compromised on the election of Jesús Díaz de León, “El Charro,” as secretary general of the union.65 On the outgoing committee, Luis Gómez Z., former general secretary, represented the sindicalistas, and Valentín Campa, secretary of Organization and Education, the communists. Gómez Z. and Campa had achieved some successes in their collaborative administration, particularly helping workers recover real incomes, which had been hammered by the severe inflation of the 1940s. They believed that Díaz de León would continue their policies, but the Charro had other plans in mind. Soon after his election, Díaz de León moved closer to the government and sought to rid himself of the radicals.66 He accused Campa and

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Gómez Z. of illegally employing union funds in the creation of the CUT. It was widely believed that behind the criminal accusations was an increasingly conservative and hostile federal government. The union’s Comité de Vigilancia y Fiscalización, dominated by groups loyal to Campa and Gómez Z., demanded the temporary suspension of Díaz de León for “wanting to divide the union in complicity with the government.”67 It is not difficult to see the parallel between Díaz de León in 1948 and Morones twenty years earlier. Seeing the opportunity to impose its will on the rebel union through its support of Díaz de León, the government sent federal troops, police, and secret agents to assault union locals in Mexico City. The assaults were accompanied by a demonization campaign in the press that accused Gómez Z. and Campa of being corrupt Communists. The official leadership began to apply the “cláusula de exclusión,” which allowed the union to expel select enemies. Workers sympathetic to Gómez Z. and Campa lost their union membership, costing them their jobs. Díaz de León also used gunmen and armed groups to intimidate workers. In short, the Charro and his allies in government felt free to employ legal and semilegal state violence to carry out a coup d’état within the union. Given his nickname, El Charro, the coup was known as the Charrazo. In late 1949, the government imprisoned Campa and Gómez Z. Nonetheless and despite reports to the contrary, Campa remained a popular leader. He spent more than three years in jail (in his several visits to jail throughout his militant life, Campa spent over fifteen years in prison), while Gómez Z. was released after just a few months. Campa suggested that his partner had perhaps reached a deal with the Alemán government,68 an idea that lacks support in the public reports from the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS). Meanwhile, Díaz de León acted decisively to carry out Alemán’s labor project: get rid of Communists and cut positions, wages, and benefits. Collaboration with the government thus weakened whatever support he might have enjoyed among workers, forcing him to maintain control through corruption and violence. Meanwhile, the Communists continued their opposition, albeit underground. The police reported, “Since the detention of Valentín Campa, the communist element that for many years has been active in the railroad sector . . . has stopped acting publicly, but has been intensely developing its activities underground.”69 Díaz de León relied heavily on gangsters and gunmen to maintain control, men such as Fidel Tabares, “a distinguished member of the Díaz de León and Pedro Hernández Patiño mafioso and a professional strikebreaker since 1926.”70 The reliance on such men, hated by rank and file, underscored Díaz de León’s lack of legitimacy. On January 17, 1951, Rodolfo

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Acosta, an opposition leader, led an assault on the union building and kept the secretary general kidnapped for a day, demanding his resignation. The federal government sent troops to regain control over the union’s offices and to liberate the Charro. A few hours later Díaz de León was addressing a meeting in support of President Alemán, whom he described as “always preoccupied for workers’ welfare.”71 The Charro remained in office increasingly isolated from rank and file. The virtual coup d’état by Díaz de León introduced a new problem into the large union, that of succession. Once Fidel Velázquez displaced Lombardo in 1940, he became the eternal leader of the CTM. He set a pattern of union leaders staying in office as long as they could or until they died, whichever came first. All unions, and even the CTM itself, formally held elections, so these eternal leaders needed government support and control over rank and file to maintain their positions in office. By contrast, within the railroad union, the elections every three years had been relatively free and honest. The government’s imposition of the Charro changed that. Toward the end of 1950, Díaz de León and the administration of Ferrocarriles Nacionales began to prepare the union’s national convention with carefully chosen representatives, which resulted in the election of secretary general David Vargas Bravo (1951–54), who previously seemed somewhat independent. As secretary general, however, Vargas Bravo also became compliant with the administration. On September 13, 1951, a few months after his election, he and the executive committee met with Adolfo Ruíz Cortines, minister of government, where “they had the opportunity to become plainly identified as loyal Alemanistas.”72 Support of Ruíz Cortines, the country’s future president, assured him his political future. He eventually became a federal senator, a post later bestowed on another member of the committee who made that visit to Ruíz Cortines, Alfredo Navarrete. Thus the alliance of charros with the government yielded its predictable fruits: political jobs for subordinate union leaders. The STFRM was beginning to resemble the organization it had once abandoned, the CTM. In July 1952, the PRI offered four positions as candidates for federal deputy to the railroad union: Mariano Ordorica in the Federal District, Alfredo Navarrete in Mexico State, Jesús Ibarra in Guadalajara, and Luis T. Díaz in Aguascalientes. On July 28, the entire Comité Nacional Ferrocarrilero (CNF) met with the president, and afterward stood guard at the Columna de la Independencia. Such alliances were condemned by common workers. In 1958, rank and file demanded that “once and for all” unions stopped being “factories of deputies and senators.”73

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The next change in leadership, January 1954, was more difficult for the charros. The democratic opposition nominated Rafael García Colón, who even the DFS saw as “honest and honorable and who will end the gangsterism of Vargas Bravo.”74 Vargas Bravo employed bribery and force to impose his secretario de ajustes, Ricardo Velázquez Vázquez (1954–57), as secretary general.75 Velázquez Vázquez closely followed Vargas Bravo in his actions and by May of 1955 was rewarded with a candidacy as a deputy for the Federal District.76 Velázquez’s first great challenge to his leadership was the work slowdown (tortuguismo) carried out by workers in Section 19, Monterrey. Vargas Bravo and Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FFCC) signed an agreement on August 7, 1953, which imposed severe fines on those responsible for accidents. The agreement established a Comisión Mixta de Apelaciones Disciplinarias to rule on cases. FFCC appointed the commission head and its judgments were not subject to appeal. Given the nature of work on the rails, some occupations were more affected than others, particularly patieros, fogoneros, garroteros, and maquinistas. These workers, those most subject to the new, draconian procedures, carried out national meetings in Querétaro and Mexico City to organize opposition to the agreement, but when they failed to obtain the support of the union’s executive committee, they devised a new tactic, the “rule-book slowdown.” They decided to strictly enforce certain work norms that had been written into the contract—in 1925. These workplace rules had not been modified despite technological changes, including the use of diesel rather than steam engines.77 The result was predictable: chaos on the rails. Rank-and-file resistance to charrismo was on the rise. Campa obtained his release from prison in 1953 and quickly joined the resistance to the charros. He became a leader of the slowdown. The leaders of the movement in Monterrey, Luciano Cedillo, Juan Colín, Eladio Bustamante, and others, formed a committee to oppose the disciplinary offense. The DFS reported to Gobernación that “Communist agitators are actively directing this movement and manifest that they will not give in until the company and the National Executive Committee of the union agree to their demands.”78 The protesters were successful, and after just ten days almost a thousand boxcars piled up in Monterrey. Their impeccable legalism forced the company to act outside the law. The new manager, Roberto Amorós, asked the superintendent of the division to force a lockout on September 21, 1954. After six hours of the lockout, Amorós accused the local union leaders of a series of crimes, including attacks on means of communication, social dissolution, and criminal association. The police arrested six workers and the company fired another

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fifty-nine.79 The national union, controlled by the charros, sent strikebreakers to replace the rebels.80 The arrests, firings, and strikebreakers smashed the resistance movement but left a bitter undercurrent among workers. Meanwhile, Velázquez Vázquez crushed a smaller challenge to his authority by railroad office workers in Mexico City and, in a not very smart move, signed an economic appendage to the collective contract that extended current wages two more years without any pay raise. This proved a time bomb for his successor, Samuel Ortega Hernández (1957–58). The Gran Comisión When workers discovered that their wages had been extended two years without a raise, they quickly turned against the executive committee. Section 15 in Mexico City decided to create a commission to study real wages for railroad workers. Other sections joined, including Section 27 in Torreón, Section 25 in Tierra Blanca, Section 13 from Matías Romero, Section 12 in Jalapa, Section 26 in Tonalá, and Section 28 in Veracruz. Frequent meetings led to a decision to meet in Mexico City on May 2, 1958, following the union’s participation in the annual May 1 parade. On May 2, these union representatives established the Gran Comisión ProAumento de Salarios (GC). The union’s national leadership originally supported the commission, and Samuel Ortega inaugurated the opening meeting. Ortega believed that since the commission was outside the official union structure, and since its work concentrated on technical issues of prices and wages, he could dissolve it whenever he wished. On May 6 he told the GC that they could attend the union’s formal national convention (which was taking place simultaneously), without voting or speaking rights.81 Although the GC study showed that workers required a 350peso wage increase a month, the convention decided to ask for only 200 pesos. GC members and rank and file were angered by the convention’s decision. On May 20, Secretary and Federal Deputy Ortega and his sectional leaders met with FFCC Administrator and Federal Senator Roberto Amorós, where they agreed on a sixty-day period to analyze the union’s wage proposal. The sectional leaders declared the convention’s work finished on May 23, apparently ending the attempt of the GC to fight for higher wages. While most of the leaders of the GC believed themselves defeated, a few, like Demetrio Vallejo, were determined to do something, so they took advantage of the two-month extension.

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The Telegram and the Rebellion of the South When Vallejo returned to Matías Romero, Oaxaca, where he was a popular leader, he explained how the charro national committee had reduced the wage demands of the GC. The sectional assembly proposed rescinding recognition of the sectional representatives who had supported the national committee. The assembly also proposed designating a commission to bring together union sections in the Southeast (Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, Tonalá). The proposals became known as the Plan del Sureste. Rebels within Section 13 took control of the union local away from the official leadership, and on June 11 sent a notable telegram to the other sections: Extraordinary Assembly yesterday, unanimously agreed to send telegram on the 16th to the Administrator of FFCC, giving him a period of ten days to provide a wage hike of three hundred and fifty pesos for each worker, including retired workers and retroactive pay. The Executive Committee is given the same time period to support the demands. If on June 25 the company does not provide the pay raise, at 10 am on June 26, there will be a work stoppage of two hours, increasing two hours a day until becoming a total work stoppage.82

The telegram from Section 13 may have been the most effective telegram in Mexican labor history. On June 26, as scheduled in the telegram, railroad workers throughout the country carried out a national work stoppage of two hours, which they repeated the next day for four hours. Rank and file then deposed the charro leaders of Sections 1 (Acámbaro), 2 (Aguascalientes), 10 (Guadalajara), 11 (Irapuato), 19 (Monterrey), 21 (Puebla), 22 (Oaxaca), 25 (Tierra Blanca), and 27 (Torreón) and replaced them with local leaders. On June 28 workers extended the stoppage to six hours, while workers from other industries and students carried out an important pro-rank-and-file demonstration in Mexico City. On June 29 the work stoppage was for eight hours, and the next day, ten. It was now a strike with national consequences. Pressured by an uprising of democratic workers in the country’s most strategic industry, President Adolfo Ruíz Cortines met with leaders of the rebellion and offered a wage settlement if they suspended the stoppages, which they did. Because the company had offered a wage hike of 180 pesos and the workers had lowered the wage demand to 250 pesos, on July 1 the president met with forty-eight representatives of the rebellious sections, offering a hike of 215 pesos a month for each worker and 100 pesos for retired workers. Although most of the new union representatives were inclined to accept the offer immediately, Vallejo requested that the offer be taken up with rank and file, which Ruíz Cortines rejected. Vallejo insisted

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that he be allowed to at least consult the forty-eight assembled union representatives, and the president agreed. The leaders of the union rebellion accepted the president’s offer, receiving an important victory in the midst of a government-orchestrated hostile press campaign and strong police presence. For the moment, violence and repression were contained. The Emergence of “Demetrius the Magnificent” Once the workers accepted Ruíz Cortines’s offer, Vallejo and his supporters, including a sizable Communist group, organized a union convention in order to unseat the official leadership. The convention elected Vallejo secretary general without opposition, but the government, which had accepted its economic defeat, wanted to preserve its control of the STFRM. Ruíz Cortines tried to impose an official secretary general from the charro’s committee. Rank and file responded with another series of work stoppages on July 26. That evening the labor ministry requested a  seventy-two-hour delay to respond to the union. When the ministry failed to respond, the work stoppages resumed on July 31. On August 2, in the midst of another hostile press campaign, the government occupied union locals with troops and police. The company began mass firings. Amorós offered higher wages to some retired workers to return as strikebreakers while the police arrested local leaders. Vallejo and his collaborators then decided on a total work stoppage on August 3. In many towns, work associated with the rails dominated local society, as was the case with Section 4 in Cárdenas, San Luis Potosí, with its two thousand railroad workers. The struggle of rebel workers became the town’s struggle and entire families participated, as when the wives of workers threw themselves on the rails to prevent trains from moving.83 Such acts were repeated around the country, making repression quite a bit more difficult.84 With a new president about to take office, the government backed down and recognized the victory of the rebels. Amid celebrations, many workers called their leader Demetrius el Magnifico (Demetrius the Magnificent). This expressed an obvious strength of the movement but also a weakness in the dependence on one man’s leadership. Mario Gill wrote that vallejismo had created a “monster,” a “monster of a hundred thousand volunteers” that would be difficult to handle.85 On the other hand, Luis Gómez Z. characterized Vallejo as Campa’s puppet (monigote),86 and one of his journalist supporters wrote a book against the popular leader, and portrayed him as an “indígena mal nacido . . . con ausencia de personalidad” (“a badly born Indian . . . with no personality at all”).87 He thus

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became Demetrius “the Magnificent” for the rank and file, but a “badly born Indian” for the charros. 1959: The Second Charrazo On January 1, 1959, Adolfo López Mateos assumed the presidency, and one of the first items on his agenda was the revision of the national railroad contract. Vallejo’s new union leadership had won a wage hike of 16.66 percent above the previously agreed-upon 215 pesos, better medical services, and a housing program for railway workers and their families. The victory of the radicals seemed absolute. However, the press campaign against the union continued unabated. For example, on March 17, 1959, the magazine Hoy said, “It wasn’t a desire to help his union members that led Vallejo to provoke a strike. The truth is otherwise. The impulse came from a pre-meditated plan with the classic techniques of insurrection. . . . Vallejo’s days are numbered. He has failed as a demagogic and irresponsible leader.”88 Although the union fought back with its own press campaign, its resources were no match for those of the federal government.89 It was only a matter of time until the government took on the independent leadership in the strategic railroad union, and the time came with the contractual revisions between the union and the smaller railway companies, El Pacífico, El Mexicano, and the Terminal de Veracruz, in March 1959.The government refused to concede the conditions it had given to the workers in the much larger FFCC. Since the workers in the other companies belonged to the same union, however, the new executive committee was forced to begin a new series of work stoppages. It became a trap when promised solidarity from unions in other large industries, particularly electrical workers, miners, and teachers, never took place. The railroad workers were isolated when they began their new series of works stoppages on March 25, 1959. The federal labor boards declared the new strikes in Ferrocarriles del Pacífico and Mexicano illegal, and union lawyers could not obtain injunctions against the rulings.90 On April 6, Attorney General Fernando López Arias told a national television audience that Vallejo had antipatriotic goals, that he had terrorized the great majority of workers, and that work stoppages were illegal, causing “great damage” for which the attorney general “would continue ordering the detention of those workers who had committed crimes.”91 With that notice, the government jailed the leaders of the union, democratic leaders of other unions, and perhaps 10,000 railroad workers, 10 percent of the total workforce.92 As in 1948, the military

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took control of union locals, allowing the government to once again impose a new leadership on the railway union, installing a provisional committee at a 2 am ceremony which named Alfredo A. Fabela the new secretary general.93 Among the regional sections, the hardest hit were those in Guadalajara, Monterrey, Veracruz, and Matías Romero. The antiunion propaganda had been quite extreme in Guadalajara, where leaflets had been distributed claiming that the vallejistas were going to cut off the ears of workers who opposed the work stoppages.94 The federal army imprisoned some 1,500 railroad workers and sympathizers.95 The trains ran “protected by federal troops, with escorts of twenty men each.”96 In addition to using the army, police, and secret agents, the government used its intelligence services to remove the opposition leadership, fabricating accusations against the Russian Embassy in order to make the railroad union appear a pawn of the Soviet Union.97 Valentín Campa and Demetrio Vallejo, the two principal leaders of the movement, remained in prison until July 28, 1970. Their eleven years in prison signified their failure to prevent the complete government takeover of their union. Fidel Velázquez gave full support to López Mateos’ coup d’état. Lombardo barely made some shy criticisms but soon returned to his traditional posture of a reliable ally to the state.98 Both men were faithful to the ideas they had learned long ago from their teacher, Luis N. Morones. The national charros of the 1950s operated in a more legal fashion than the labor gangsters who came to control the textile unions in the 1920s, but both groups came to authority supported by quasi-legal state violence.

conclusion: labor violence, 1920s to 1950s Mexico’s twentieth-century labor violence was also an expression of the changing nature of the postrevolutionary Mexican state, which explains the similarities and differences between the two episodes described in this chapter, the textile wars in the 1920s and the national railroad upheaval in the 1940s and 1950s. The background for this labor violence was the workers’ upheaval between 1910 and 1923 that smashed the old labor regime. Aspiring elites who came to power after 1917 were forced to accept a worker-created labor regime. Furthermore, they needed allies in the working class, just as their desire to modernize the economy meant they had to placate industrialists. How could the new state negotiate between these apparent enemies? It was a task that most twentieth-century Latin American governments failed to achieve, at the cost of military

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coups.99 Through the 1930s and 1940s this contradiction only deepened as the state sought to construct a new hegemony while building an industrial economy. The solution was diabolical but effective. Mexico’s postrevolutionary labor regime placated workers by keeping the formal victories of the previous workers’ revolution (protections for unions and strikes) and strengthened working conditions for those in the formal sector of the economy, which grew significantly and thus provided new job opportunities in expanding industrial cities, especially Mexico City. The state, on the other hand, would placate owners by taking control of the labor movement away from a radicalized rank and file, substituting a compliant set of labor leaders beholden to the state for their power and prestige. Thus, through its control of key labor leaders, the state could provide labor peace. Through tariff adjustment, the state would also subsidize the increased labor costs that came about because of better working conditions. The only losers were democratically inclined workers and consumers, neither overly important in the construction of postrevolutionary hegemony. The first attempt at carrying out this strategy was in the industry whose workers had been the core of the workers’ revolution, cotton textiles. During the 1920s, the chaotic politics of Mexico, with one governor succeeding another in rapid order, numerous political assassinations, and threatening national rebellions, meant that political elites could not directly attack labor. Therefore their strategy was to use allies within the labor movement to impose government control. The government’s strategy in Atlixco was typical of what it did throughout the country. Through its support of CROM violence, the federal government made Luis N. Morones and his organization the dominant labor power in Mexico, one that defended some gains of the workers’ revolution while subordinating workers to the state. Cromistas became municipal presidents, governors, senators, and federal deputies. Furthermore, state violence often appeared only indirectly as the state-supported armed labor groups rather than directly employ the army (which in the 1920s was largely influenced by local caudillos). The labor violence of that period was rough, but not rougher than the violence observed in the countryside or in national politics. And the labor violence appeared as a conflict among workers in which the state was neutral. There was no showdown in Atlixco between the federal army and striking workers, but between armed bands killing other workers and raping the women. By the late 1940s, the strategy had been successful. Mexico’s industrialization was in full swing, economic growth was strong, and the government had acquired unprecedented legitimacy among the population.100

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Most unions were under state control and the powerful CTM was an important component of the country’s ruling party. However, railroad workers remained relatively free of state control and potentially rebellious as rising inflation limited their real incomes. A rebellion by them, if successful, would undermine the state’s control of labor. If that happened, the labor regime would collapse, and with it, the state that depended on that regime. The government responded strongly to the threat but differently than in the 1920s. By then the “Mexican Miracle” provided the underpinnings for a stable and somewhat legitimate government. Adolfo López Mateos understood that he could use the army against workers without risking a wider rebellion. Thus during the 1940s and 1950s, the government responded to unrest among railroad workers with a variety of legal and semilegal measures and varieties of state-sponsored violence. Finally, a workers’ democratic rebellion toppled the spurious leadership of the railroad union and popular leaders came to power, though not for long. The army intervened, jailed the leaders, and fired almost 10 percent of the workers. The application of state violence was much more direct on the rails in the 1950s than in textiles in the 1920s, because the state was much stronger, and perhaps because the size and potential impact of the democratic threat were also larger. On the other hand, almost nobody died.101 Murder and rape had been replaced by firings and prison, quite a different sort of violence. That other unions and workers did not support railroad workers in the 1950s suggests the strengthened hegemony of Mexico’s postrevolutionary state. To assault unions in the 1920s, the state supported one group of workers against another. To assault unions in the 1950s, the state employed the army. On the other hand, even as late as 1959, the attack on the railroad union did not include an attack on the underlying labor regime as government left intact protections and benefits for workers in the formal sector. That is why state violence in labor in 1959 had the same goals as state violence in labor in 1919 or 1929: impose compliant leaders but leave the formal structures of the labor regime alone. In the 1920s and 1950s, the state upheld the right of unions to exist, to negotiate collective contracts, and to speak for workers. In both cases, fundamental protections such as overtime pay, sick pay, health care, housing, and educational benefits and protections against discharge remained strong. In short, the state sought to subordinate unions but not destroy many of labor’s fundamental gains. That is what allowed the reconstructing state of the 1920s to build a new hegemony, and the stable state of the 1950s to maintain it. It was not until the following decade that another social group, university students, paradoxically a group benefited by the postrevolutionary social pact, would challenge the hegemony of the system, leading to its

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eventual downfall. But that challenge did not come from workers, who found themselves deprived of democratic unions but not of real gains in the workplace. State violence in labor affairs in postrevolutionary Mexico was not always legal, was not always just, and did not always favor workers. Nonetheless it helped construct and maintain Latin America’s most legitimate state of that period while sustaining labor rights that, as watered down as they may have been, were nonetheless unprecedented in an underdeveloped labor market such as Mexico’s.

chapter nine

Political Practice, Everyday Political Violence, and Electoral Processes During the Neoliberal Period in Mexico kathy powell

; forms of violence and po liti cal practice Violence has been a persistent feature of Mexico’s social and political history—perpetrated by the state, by private forces, and by popular movements; and as in other “postauthoritarian” regimes in the region, both arbitrary state violence and private violence appear to have increased alongside the “democratization” processes of the neoliberal period.1 Equally persistent—and equally brutal—features have included historically embedded political, social, and material impoverishment, inequalities and exclusions, which can be read as the effects of structural violence;2 many aspects of these too have been exacerbated under neoliberalism. The dayto-day political practices of domination and repression which sustain these deprivations in themselves constitute forms of violence and are central to the political process; they share with physical violence logics and effects of power, as well as tactics of coercion and intimidation which constrain action and perpetuate injurious states of powerlessness, insecurity, and extreme need. A couple of approaches seem fruitful in considering how different forms of violence are interwoven in political processes and their effects on social and political life, and in recognizing that there are many violent forms of power, that “violence enacted is but a small part of violence lived.”3 First, there are clear reasons for examining what Bourdieu terms the symbolic violence which makes relations of domination appear normative

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and affective, not least because the state is involved in the political struggle for the monopoly of symbolic violence as much as it claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical violence.4 At the same time, everyday forms of domination, regulation, and repression are to a significant degree sustained because in practice, the “monopoly of the legitimate use of force” reliably guarantees neither security, freedoms, nor rights for much of the population. These state derelictions—manifested in institutional corruption and indifference as much as in highly differential access to basic services—constitute what Márquez5 terms structural or political violence, the social and political deprivations of institutional negligence and state omissions. Second, a related approach focuses on the productivity of forms of violence as effects of power.6 The production of discourses on different forms of violence (state, private, and popular as well as symbolic and political) informs and reflects political disconformity and opposition on one hand, but also confirms the constraints and logics of power which sustain relations of domination and regulation, and maintains the power of the possibility of violence as part of the political cultural repertoire.7 These forms of violence and their discursive products are embedded in everyday political cultural practices, particularly those associated with clientelism. Clientelism has long been a prominent feature of Mexico’s social and political landscape, and a significant instrument of symbolic and political violence, as it conforms to a rigorously hierarchic social logic. Clientelist practices, however, have also long engaged in a contentious interplay with struggles for political and social rights informed by liberal-democratic principles and formal equality—an interplay characterized by routine attempts to subordinate rights to clientelist relations and practices. This inconsonant tendency in political cultural practice is in part regulated by symbolic and political violence as well as discursive logics that rationalize hierarchic relations of domination; at the same time, the intermittent use of state or private physical violence remains an always-available recourse when challenges to these relations seem to gain momentum—with particular implications for political opposition movements—while the more persistent threat of violence exerts a disciplinary force. This chapter argues that multiple forms of violence and coercion are integral to the relations of power that underwrite clientelist political practices, and that their regulatory force has intensified as neoliberalization has significantly reordered the political landscape. First, it explores the nature of clientelist practices as instruments of symbolic violence, considering how clientelism operates in political processes; its convergence with bureaucratic indifference, corruption, and coercion; and the subordination of rights to the logic of hierarchic sociopolitical relations. Second, it

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considers how these political cultural practices and discursive products have constituted important political resources at the disposal of the neoliberal project in conventionalizing its premises, and in confronting and constructing political opposition, particularly evident in electoral processes during the Salinas sexennial and in the 2006 presidential elections. Patronage, coercion, and corruption have continued to play their part in attempts to guarantee electoral outcomes, while hierarchic discourses on popular violence are exploited to discredit and contain opposition, precluding meaningful discussion of the enduring social and political injuries and sociopolitical divisions which neoliberalism has intensified. Primarily, this chapter seeks to make a theoretical contribution to understanding violence by considering the sociocultural logics and effects of power that enacted violence and coercion share with relations of domination embedded in the political-cultural “institutions” of patronage and corruption—that is, to understand the contested meanings of violence, without which analysis of violence risks being self-referential. While not intending to offer an exhaustive ethnographic account, the observations developed here are grounded in research in the Los Reyes region of Michoacán, for a long time dominated by cane production and sugar mills. This has been an interesting area in which to map neoliberalization: the monoculture of cane from the 1940s, largely under ejidal land tenure, and state ownership of the mills from the early 1970s corresponded to a period of state-led development, while the reprivatization of the mills in 1991 and the subsequent decline in cane production and closure of one of the mills in 2001 amid the arrival of foreign multinationals renting land or contracting production of berries in turn signaled the ongoing institutionalization of market-led development. This shift has brought increased insecurity, class differentiation, and out-migration, and changed the relationship of campesinos and workers to the state. Moreover, the cañero (cane producer) and worker unions and institutions that govern cane production also provide a context in which the tension between struggles for social and political rights and clientelist logics plays out for the cañero-ejidatarios, mill workers, and day laborers of the region, and in which the disjunctures of neoliberalization clearly registered.

clientelism, po liti cal practice, and symbolic violence Clientelism and Hierarchy in the Political Process Clientelism, or patronage relations, has been a rather contentious concept, particularly when it has rested on progressivist assumptions that

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local political intermediaries “fill gaps” in the political formation that are due to the (as yet) incomplete reach of the state on its road to modernity.8 Throughout Mexico’s postrevolutionary period, clientelist relations and practices have been central to the consolidation of Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) mass patronage and thus played a crucial part in state-building and in determining “how the State states”; they have not just persisted in the interstices where the state is weak or “incompletely modernized,” but have been central to the workings of power and, importantly, to perceptions of power and authority. The priísta state harnessed clientelist relations to corporate organizational forms as they developed and centralized: on the formation of an early labor confederation, Boyer observes that clientelism and the politics of caciquismo were nothing new in rural Mexico, but the advent of powerful and hierarchic popular organizations . . . changed the locus of caciques’ power, shifting it away from the community and vesting it within political institutions. . . . And this displacement of political power grew even more pronounced once it became possible to use the confederation and its successor organisations as political patronage networks.9

Clientelism thus became central to the organization of political power relations within and between institutions—such as those that represent cañeros and mill workers—which ostensibly represented class interests in a project of national development. Consequently, clientelism’s commerce in personalistic favors and obligations (and, to a degree, caciqual power10) became “institutionalized” as an instrument of “social and political control as well as cultural domination”11—an instrument of symbolic violence— precisely in contexts where class struggle could be managed and class unity disorganized. Struggles for social rights were thus constrained by political practice rooted in relations of domination that obey a profoundly hierarchic social logic. As Taylor suggests, hierarchic logic articulates both “naturalist” and “historicist” understandings of inequality, which posit either “natural attributes” of race, gender, or intellect or meritocratic success, in a hierarchy of desirability and disdain, and which share the assumptions of superiority and entitlement that permeate relations of power and determine who gets to lead and who must be led, who commands deference and who must defer.12 Hierarchic logic is integral to symbolic violence as it organizes the uneven distribution of sociocultural and political power in ways presented as “natural.” In the context of local cañero and worker unions, this logic produces some complex positions among militants and leaders: one of opposition, which asserts equality and solidarity; one of instrumental career-building within organization and party which accumulates both entitlement and

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disdain; one of social conscience which posits the duty of the more resourceful, educated, and able to represent and protect the interests of less fortunate compañeros, enhancing position and sometimes wealth in the process. One particularly experienced union leader juggled each of these and more, without dissimulation in shifting between them. These positions are, however, difficult to manage: clientelism’s privileging of hierarchic personalistic ties is logically opposed to the equal distribution of rights, and is particularly hostile to positive rights (as these “belong” to subordinate classes), and to collective action that presses for these rights. As suggested above, the tensions emanating from the co-implication of clientelist and “liberal democratic citizenship” practices, and the routine subordination and transformation of the latter, constitute an emergent and problematic dynamic of political culture and political process.13 Moreover, “liberal democracy” has itself been very differently interpreted and contested: throughout the postrevolutionary period, a state-led form of socialliberal development (focusing on the corporate subject with positive rights to social justice) has competed and colluded with more classical liberalism as well as with regional “catholic nationalist” backlashes against the postrevolutionary state14 and, together with more radical positions, continues to assert itself against the “new” symbolic violence of market liberalism (with its focus on the private individual and negative rights) as well as its current conservative revanchist variant. These competing politicalideological discourses inhabit the social and political terrain upon which clientelist practices take place, and introduce a great deal of contradiction, frustration, and ambivalence into how political practice is experienced. Certainly, as Lazar suggests, clientelist practices need to be recognized as “actually existing” relations between people and state, rather than as a deviation from those that are “supposed to” pertain, according to theoretical models.15 Nonetheless, people themselves engage normative understandings of how the state is “supposed to function”: clientelism thus contends within political fields that are also mediated by referents to broader political projects, where considerations of “what should happen” intrude into how “what does happen” is thought and experienced (particularly when experienced as an injury), and inform critical discourses that threaten to rupture symbolic violence by contesting the legitimacy of “actually existing” relations of power. And while “actually existing” clientelist relations may be viewed more positively as “popular political strategies” on the grounds that people can sometimes turn these relations to their “advantage,”16 they continue to guarantee a hierarchically organized political field. Mexico’s long period of postrevolutionary “stability,” the pax priísta, constituted such a field and in significant part rested on the contested

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reproduction of pervasive clientelist practices and relations. These were inscribed through the differential dispersal of social, political, and material resources through mass party patronage—a political system memorably portrayed by de la Peña as a “hierarchical network of patronage,” characterized by alliances and important patronage ties that connect the political institutions present in the regions and allow actors to informally capture and control the limited resources those institutions command.17 In a sense, mass patronage straddled the competing political cultural discourses of personalism and of liberal-democratic citizenship, in that the PRI worked as operator par excellence within patronage networks, while at the same time making claims to ethical political leadership of a modernizing national project—claims that had some legitimacy, as the state made limited “economic-corporate” sacrifices to confirm the allegiance of the peasantry and workers. This hybrid political dynamic produced political actors required to similarly mediate these discourses and the sets of values attached to them. In the Los Reyes region, the informal connections between institutions that govern cane-sugar production involved branches of the two cañero unions (affiliated to the Confederación Nacional Campesina, CNC, and the Confederación Nacional de Pequeños Propietarios, CNPP) and the mill workers’ syndicate (affiliated to the Confederación de Trabajadores de México, CTM), the mill management, and the agrarian bureaucracy; officials here developed their connections “vertically” to state and national levels, as well as “horizontally,” to link to other networks within the wider political community such as the local party branch and important figures in local and regional private business, including landholding caciques (who in some cases also held union posts). On one hand, a history of struggle within the cañeros’ unions had won some important gains for their memberships in regard to conditions of production and social provisions, which, together with the agrarian reform, provided the basis of mass patronage and priísta loyalty: on the other, however, “informal connections” have consistently afforded opportunities for the “informal” capturing, control, and differential distribution of some of these same resources, and the consolidation of power. Long-standing complaints about these practices focused on personalistic accommodations with mill management on the part of union officials, including complicity in the overdiscounting of cane for debris and in the overcharging of interest and underreporting levels of sucrose retrieved, as well as the misappropriation of union funds and preferential treatment in the allocation of production inputs and the timetabling of irrigation or harvesting. Personalistic and corrupt practice has pervaded both relations of production and political representation.

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Nonetheless, a combination of relatively reliable and low-cost credit and social welfare provisions made for a more-or-less workable “package”; until the early to mid-1980s when neoliberal adjustment policies began to make significant inroads, “we lived well enough,” as one cañero remembered, “poor, but we lived well, if you know what I mean.” Hindsight looked favorably upon a time not when union officials were less corrupt, but when there was more to go around. Within networks, union officials occupied complex positions which involved intermediation between the demands of political patronage (from delivering the vote of the membership to colluding in the appropriation of resources destined for them), and the rights, entitlements, and struggles of the membership as corporate subjects and as citizens—intermediation, that is, between competing value systems of personalism and of liberaldemocratic practice, informed by principles of social justice. However, the privileging of patronage means that the distribution of social rights and resources has been very unevenly and contingently guaranteed. Access to resources is conditional upon political support, deference, and relative social proximity to networks; for many, those weakly tied into networks, clientelism is experienced as an insecure way of accessing resources, and for many more, it is experienced as exclusionary: this is crucial to its functionality.18 Resources are limited: the “diversion” of resources by officials and preferential distribution to loyal supporters mean many may often get nothing at all, but the “excluded” help “being connected” make sense, and provide an important coercive lever. These insecurities deepened as neoliberal policies incrementally whittled away at resources. Thus, even where personalistic ties constitute “problem-solving networks”19 in an immediate sense, they must also be recognized as “problemreproducing” networks in that they privilege hierarchic distributions of power over shared entitlement to material and political resources: here Gilsenan’s insight into patronage politics should be borne in mind: “here what is withheld is more important than what is granted.”20 Corruption, Impunity, and Displaced Rights Gilsenan’s observation underscores the coercive nature of personalistic politics; the fact that “what is withheld” routinely overlaps with what people are entitled to, reveals clientelism’s close kinship with corruption, oppression, and injuries to rights. Complaints about corruption and abuse of rights are central to political cultural discourses; as Gupta notes, “the discourse of corruption, by marking those actions that constitute an infringement of such rights, thus acts to represent the rights of citizens to themselves.”21 It also constitutes a critique of political practice and of the

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lack of fit between “how things are” and the rights people “should be able to” exercise. In this regard, Taylor opposes “client-ship” to citizenship; client-ship is “not about equality but inequality: not about rights but favours: not about democracy but negotiated authoritarianism: not about formal relationships but informal ties.”22 Yet, clientelism is less about the opposition of rights and favors than about the corrupt conversion of rights into favors—a conversion that disavows rights, constituting an everyday site of political injury. Entitlements distributed (or withheld) according to political friendship, the right to a free vote constrained by obligation, the right to protection under labor law undermined by informal practices by unions and management, all represent political resources central to the consolidation of personalistic politics as superordinate to formal equality. Yet, while union officials may have been in key positions to capture resources in order to “get rich,” for many people a degree of participation in clientelist relations was the condition for getting anything at all, including, significantly, their entitlements. Here dubious relations take on a strategic “inescapability”: moving down long queues in public offices, getting an appointment with mill management to sort out a problem, making progress with agrarian bureaucracies over land entitlements, even acquiring inputs for production became considerably easier if there was someone well placed within local networks who could intervene on one’s behalf. Patronage relations do indeed seem to “compensate” for this form of “political violence”—the routine experiences of bureaucratic neglect and contempt23 that help reproduce disempowerment and material need: yet the same bureaucratic indifference encourages patronage to thrive and reinforces political conditionality, while these “enabling” interventions veil more predatory practices. And because informal networks permeate bureaucratic institutions, attempts to expose corrupt officials are unlikely to succeed; “no-one here wants a problem with any kind of government office, because we know we’ll never get justice,” as one local campesino put it. Bureaucratic “inefficiency” is both an instrument of and an alibi for the logic of clientelist practices. Corrupt practices thus play a strategic part in reinscribing hegemonic relations of power. As Gramsci observed: The “normal” exercise of hegemony . . . is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent. . . . Between consent and force stands corruption/ fraud (which is characteristic of certain situations when it is hard to exercise the hegemonic function, and when the use of force is too risky).24

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This insight suggests that the relationship of corruption to leadership/ consent and to coercion is regulatory, a relation of intimate conversion where rights and entitlements, as referents to claims to leadership, are too often conditional on political deference. The “manufacture of consent” and the threat of coercion are creatively mediated by corrupt practices, forms of regulation that require both support and a lively awareness of the possibility of coercion from the same subject. Corruption emerges as a flexible instrument in the inscription of hierarchic relations of power—an instrument of symbolic violence which requires a significant level of the “political violence” of bureaucratic indifference to function effectively. The convergence of corruption, coercion, and hierarchic relations is, moreover, evidenced in discourses about the private use of violence by the more powerful, and about the political violence that fails to guarantee security against such abuses of power. Clearly, at a local level the webs of personal relations in patronage networks are visible to people: when intermediaries who are well located within networks participate in the corrupt “capturing and control” of resources, people are very likely to know that they do this, how they do it, and in collusion with whom. “Clients” and political intermediaries thus confront each other as known quantities, socially, hierarchically, and politically “located.” Challenges to corrupt practice are thus much less frequent than they might be, as it is also widely known that the politically connected also enjoy (relative) impunity; this is not merely a “perk,” but a signifier of status and power which demands to be apprehended, and occasionally displayed. Theatrical flaunting of impunity reinforces status and power: for example, the union official who made no effort to conceal vote manipulation, the illegal logger who beat up protesters, the cacique who paid the police to violently dislodge land invaders—all dramaturgically revealed both their impunity and their disposition to be cabrón (a son of a bitch) and reinforced the link between authority, violence, and contempt for the law: the law is for pendejos (losers or, stronger, assholes). Investment in being cabrón is of course as much material as it is affective: members of a newly elected ejidal committee in the region felt powerless to confront their predecessors’ embezzlement of funds, as the president of the outgoing committee was a man noted for belligerence, who “turned very nasty” when they asked him to pay his water rates. The implication was that threatened aggression might well take the form of damage to property (the destruction of fences and the violation of boundaries separating plots of land) and that further confrontation would lead to physical violence as well as personal campaigns against the reputation of the new committee members.

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Regional social memory is littered with tales of physical violence and intimidation in the resolution of disputes (especially over land), vengeance, and perceived offences, as well as in the consolidation of priísta union power; “violence talk” both discursively “produces and positions subjects,”25 as victims, as cabrones, as corrupt police, and confirms the futility of challenges to potential aggressors. Many local powerholders may, of course, never have recourse to overt acts of violence; but cognition of impunity, inscripted by tales of aggression and violent acts that go unpunished, works by investing the powerful with what might be called “coercive capital”—the social-political advantages derived from the association of power and authority with violence. The low-intensity coercive force embedded in clientelist practice counts on and abets the exemplary and disciplinary effects of intermittent physical violence, continuously avows hierarchic relations of power and their logic of disdain, and reveals how “violence is constitutive of various dimensions of social life,” and not merely an “extraordinary measure of last resort”: insecurity and the specter of violence reside within clientelist relations and the impunity of the powerful and are integral to their logic.26 That personalistic practices might nonetheless be engaged as “popular strategies” does not reduce their coercive and violent supply, nor does it provide an alibi for their pernicious relationship to rights. Respect for civil rights has been highly subject to differential social position, while political rights, especially those related to the vote, have been routinely flouted, as discussed in more detail below; but if personalistic relations work to subordinate rights to hierarchy, then social rights, the (largely unfulfilled) claims and hopes of the politically weak, have been particularly vulnerable. Under postrevolutionary social-liberal ideology, social rights in practice not only were weakly guaranteed but, especially for campesinos, were vulnerable to the controlling discourse and techniques of paternalism and a tutelary state, while under neoliberalism, social rights have been aggressively subordinated to economistic interpretations of individual rights (themselves very differentially enjoyed). Social rights—in effect, the rights of the poor—have been harnessed either to the benevolence of ruling elites or to technocratic social programs for the extremely needy “unable” to avail of market solutions, reflecting a perennially contested endeavor of symbolic violence—to encompass social rights and, ultimately, class struggle, within a hierarchic framework that naturalizes relations of power. This endeavor took on a more assertive dynamic in Mexico’s shift to neoliberalism during the Salinas administration. The reduction of state resources to support mass patronage during the adjustment of the 1980s fed discontent at the state’s abdication of its role as mediator between

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capital and labor, while the priísmo of corporate organizations compelled them to “manage” adjustment rather than challenge policies and defend their constituencies. They were only partially successful in this as, nationally, a significant part of the core PRI vote defected in the 1988 presidential elections; consequently a widespread suppression of political rights, backed up by coercive force, was required to usher in Salinas, and with him a neoliberal agenda which rested on the subordination of social and political rights to market freedoms.

neoliberal disjunctures Salinismo engaged neoliberalism as an aggressive political project that entailed a reconfiguration of symbolic violence—the normalization of market logic. It confronted a political climate that had seen the fracture of the PRI and the emergence of an opposition which the PRI then had to use its most dubious resources to prevent winning the presidency. Efforts to claw back legitimacy after the fraudulent 1988 elections while pushing forward the policy agenda included an energetic discrediting of opposition and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) in particular. That their efforts enjoyed some success owed much precisely to the considerable political-cultural resources that the Salinas administration had at its disposal; besides control of electoral institutions and the media, significant among these were endemic clientelism throughout the regions and the PRI’s extortionate claims on “stability,” articulated through discourse on popular mobilization as violent and disordering. Putting these resources to the service of institutionalizing a neoliberal project, however, altered the terrain upon which political practices played out. As suggested above, the PRI “straddled” competing discourses and political practices through the strategy of mass patronage on one hand and claims to ethical-political leadership of a “social-liberal” national project on the other; it was precisely this hybrid political dynamic that was disjoined by the consolidation of neoliberalism. Renouncing corporatism was always going to threaten PRI continuity, as the 1988 elections demonstrated; yet Mexican neoliberalization carried strong guarantees for the technocratic political elite. It was, as elsewhere, to accomplish the reassertion of class power and class antagonisms—although this was to mean the rupture of PRI hegemony. This rupture has intensified the long-standing tension between personalistic practices and the struggle for social and political rights by “decoupling” them: the distributive effects of mass patronage receded sharply, which both threatened and exposed the uneven and meager nature of the

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social wage, while neoliberalism delegitimized the ideological grounds for defending it by subordinating social rights to market logic. As the argument for social rights and class struggle was discredited in favor of the argument for individual initiative and market solutions, so too was its capacity to act as some measure of constraint upon the hierarchic logic of personalistic power relations. Increasingly detached from such constraints, and on the heels of the withdrawal of state resources, the focus of these relations relocated to private spheres and resonated without difficulty with neoliberalism, sharing both ideological compatibility with a historicist conception of hierarchy and a blindness to structures of inequality: already-existing symbolic violence adapted well to new configurations of power, sharpening class antagonisms and reinforcing the culture of disdain toward the less advantaged, while dismantling the political cultural framework that had “mediated” them. As state resources that had underwritten patronage practices shrank, networks appeared to become more exclusive around a diminished pool. Cañeros, for example, experienced deterioration in their conditions of production with the loss of hard-won gains27 and became increasingly vulnerable to international market competition, yet union “mafias” continued to consolidate their own positions, now in collusion with the management of the reprivatized mills, who in turn reneged upon shared commitments and increased the transfer of costs to producers.28 Corrupt practices involving union leaders and mill management have been claimed by cañeros to have worsened since the sale of the mills to the private sector; instead of the hoped-for sanitization of the industry, they experienced a “privatization” of corruption and a resubordination to capital. Mill workers too were anxious for their jobs in the wake of privatization and redundancies and experienced an intensification of work, while some were made redundant and then rehired as temporary workers without union representation, rights, or medical insurance. At the same time, the integrity of political representation seemed increasingly thin, as the political clout of the corporate sectors declined. Incremental inequality and material and political insecurity, moreover, proceeded within a disrupted framework of political struggle, which introduced a great deal of uncertainty about the future. “The way things were” was deteriorating and the way things “were supposed to be” was being contentiously redefined. As the state’s role shifted from that of mediator between the peasantry, workers, and capital to that of guarantor of the conditions for market liberalization, the corporate relationship between these sectors, the state, and the national community was disconfirmed. The emerging centrality of the market, moreover, represented workers’ rights as an obstacle and smallholders as a problem: where they might stand within the “new” national

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project and how to defend their position seemed dubious at best.29 As the state attempted to “interpellate” campesinos no longer as social producers but as small private producers aiming for market competitiveness, it was insisting upon a subject position in which many were failing—and the resources needed to make the “adjustment” available to few. Yet discontent, anxiety, and insecurity did not necessarily translate into joining the ranks of the opposition, particularly not among cañeros, and despite the widespread support for the PRD in Michoacán and historical loyalty to the agrarianism of Lázaro Cárdenas, former president and father of the PRD’s erstwhile leader, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. The “new” class violence under neoliberalization hybridized with “old” forms of regulation: the coercive deployment of clientelist relations during electoral processes, exploiting discourses on popular “violence” in constructing the opposition which played on insecurity, underwritten by state violence. Guaranteeing Elections and Constructing Opposition During the early part of the Salinas administration, the PRD disputed the results of several elections for municipal president or federal deputies in Michoacán; the PRI’s strong reluctance to concede PRD victories, coupled with increasingly common “postelectoral” protest, meant intensified insecurity around elections themselves. The political context was colored by repression and assassination of PRD militants (as well as independent journalists), and growing concern over human rights abuses committed mainly by the police30—a violent form of power which operates through the disciplinary “virtue of example,”31 providing an uneasy backdrop to electoral processes: as Huggins et al. point out, “the victimizing of some is a constant reminder of what could happen to others.”32 During campaigns and voting, patronage relations are visibly mobilized; “favors” called in or promised, corruption in the misuse of resources to secure the vote, and in the suppression of the right to a free vote by linking it to the expectations of patronage relations, while the coercive implications within these relations became more explicit. The mobilization of people loyal to candidates to campaign, to man voting booths, to dispense goods and money to negotiate support, exemplifies what Foucault called the “irrigating” effects of power: at the level of the village, the barrio, the polling booth, the intimate inclusions and exclusions of patronage relations help to map supporters, opposers, the wavering and the indifferent. And in a context of heightened political tension and violent repression of the opposition, the kind of “face-to-face affective politics” which Lazar describes was as likely to make people feel compromised or intimidated as it was to make them feel that “they count, [and that] their support is being

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sought.”33 Accepting inducements in exchange for votes, for example, may represent “offers that can’t be refused”: vote-buying that takes place among the poor involves exploiting highly unequal relations of power, as it potentially puts people in a position of having to deny someone far better connected than themselves. The acceptance of money, dispensas (basic supplies), or construction materials in exchange for one’s vote may be informed by anxiety that denial could have consequences, or by a pragmatic assessment that this would be the most one could expect to get out of the election of a particular candidate; such cases are unlikely to make citizenship feel more “meaningful.” Vote-fixing maneuvers are part of local political conversation and are hardly secrets; indeed, knowledge that they were routine reinforced the very awareness of impunity which contributes to resignation. They included fabricating grounds for annulling the results of polling booths where the vote was known to be predominantly perredista, returning results from small ranchos where the PRI vote exceeded the number of inhabitants, the exclusion of perredistas from voting registers, “losing” or “stuffing” ballot boxes, and so forth. These tactics are well known and endlessly inventive, and were also used in internal PRI elections. Unpopular candidates for Federal Deputy were still imposed by “friends in high places” while elections for leaders of unions attached to the CNC, CNPP, and CTM were criticized by factions of their memberships for lack of transparency and coercive tactics on the part of union committees seeking reelection, or outgoing committees seeking the election of “their” favored candidates. In the CNPP elections, electoral registers were tampered with so that dissenters found their names missing; the dissenters nonetheless prevailed, but the new union leader was, again, unable to expose his predecessors’ fraud as he had proceeded to a post at state level and was now in a position “to make life difficult.” In the CNC elections, voters were also critical of the presence of a former union boss to support the incumbents—a cacique with a reputation for violence who had ruled the union for many years. His attendance, to press palms as voters arrived, was viewed as an attempt to intimidate—a tactical flaunting of coercive capital. Attempts to reconsolidate PRI hegemony thus included increased “patronage coercion” within the ranks, which rather tested historical loyalty, as well as persecution of PRD members: the possibility of defection was also, however, heavily constrained by the way in which PRD militancy was constructed by hierarchic discourse drawing on the social and ethnic composition of opposition support, closely conjoined with discourse on popular violence as threatening to disrupt the pax priísta. After so many years of one-party rule at the national level, it was unsurprising that characterizing opposition militancy as a “threat to stability” to

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some extent worked in a tautological sense. The use of agents provocateurs in PRD rallies was vividly dramaturgical, reinforced by the efforts of the media, achieving the visual association of militancy with violence and unrest; perredistas were portrayed as people who “act out of turn” and thus “asked for trouble.” Tensions were both reflected and heightened by the presence of the army around election times, which local party militants felt contributed to abstentionism; some abstained to avoid “getting mixed up in politics,” viewing the vote less as a right than as a potential problem. Raising the specter of threats against social order and political stability is a routine tactic of incumbent ruling groups and has its specific significance in Mexico with a revolutionary past and numerous periods of political volatility as referents. It insists upon a somewhat Hobbesian conception of political community in which violence is external to the authority that guarantees order; disavowing the constitutive nature of violence in social and political life, this inhibits recognition of the violence immanent in the everyday practices that sustain existing power relations, and naturalizes a conservative, gradualist view of change while designating more radical approaches as disordering, dangerous, even traitorous. This disavowal “mistakes the relationship between violent and non-violent action,” and pumps up the value of “social order” as an ideal that the state vigorously upholds while at the same time accommodating the “substantive rationality of the political sphere.”34 By “externalizing” violence, it delegitimizes opposition activity while reinforcing the argument for the use of authoritative violence to sustain “order”—hierarchically organized relations of force. It is common locally for manifestations of collective grievances to be scorned as grillismo (strident, self-serving politics) by those not involved; rallies, demonstrations, marches, occupations, blockades, strikes, and other actions provoke a fairly uniform repertoire of comment: that such actions represent the clamor of the uneducated, people who react rather than reason, or who are manipulated by unscrupulous leaders with political ambition. It is a repertoire that ascribes excess to collective action, with implications that people out of their place represent a threat to the stable order of things; the prospect of popular violence threatens the normativity of symbolic violence. The legitimacy of popular protests is swiftly subordinated to the individual rights perceived as threatened by them—the protection of property, the freedom of movement and access to public places and to carry on with one’s daily business; it is taken for granted that these have primacy and have a natural affinity with stability. Complaints about the PRD in the region were precisely that it encouraged the poor, the indigenous—the politically uneducated—to mobilize

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in ways perceived as threatening to others; antagonism was closely linked to the social and ethnic composition of PRD support. The construction of the PRD as champion of the poor and the Indians was tautologically offered as evidence that it was a party that both exploited and was itself subject to the whim of the undifferentiating masses and their irrational claims. Priísta (and panista) campesinos who themselves were feeling the impact of neoliberal policies and suffering a decline in their political and material security still differentiated clearly between the concerns of the PRD support base and their own: sympathetic or not, they did not identify with “the poor and the desperate” and especially not with indigenous groups. The “worrying” politicization of the latter revealed a hierarchic logic internalized by people who in other contexts contested it: as gente natural (“natural people”), the Indians were less capable of mature political judgment and more prone to irrational collective violence—or, according to more explicitly racist opinion, that the Indians were cynically taking the opportunity to agitate in the hope of further “special considerations” to which they felt entitled “just because they were Indians” and in spite of which they have “failed to develop” because they “cling to traditional ways.” Their persistent poverty was related to the fact that “they don’t know how to manage their resources.”35 A similar rationale informed the same campesinos’ views of nonindigenous campesinos, landless or not, who were very poor, although in other contexts they could also agree how unjust it was for day laborers to have to support their families on their meager wages, as they themselves had done earlier in their own careers. This illustrates the ambivalence felt about, on the one hand, identifying with jornaleros on the basis of shared class identity, and on the other, drawing distinctions that reinforced their own beleaguered status within a hierarchic social order. At the same time, campesinos who repeat these received wisdoms about Indians and those poorer than themselves can in other contexts be fully aware that the middle classes, for example, say much the same about them. Caldeira has described this shared language of discrimination and blame as “the hegemony of the repertoire of derogation”; campesinos engaged in the “complex exercise of . . . claiming commonality and maintaining difference,”36 an exercise that as much informs social identity as it complicates that of class, and which appeared to have intensified in response to threats to their ability to “maintain difference.” An extension of this “repertoire” was the insinuation that the “poor, the desperate and the Indians” were not politically mature enough to be trusted to vote “rationally”;37 hence their vote was not considered to be of equal value. Offenses against the integrity of their vote were not therefore

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to be taken that seriously, while public protests against such offenses both confronted and fed the same culture of disdain. The banality of these discourses is itself revealing; it is precisely their overstatement and their intensification at times when los de abajo (those from below) assert themselves, dispute the hierarchic order, and expose class antagonisms that are significant; as Caldeira observes, rigid stereotypes serve “not to describe the world accurately but to organize and classify it symbolically . . . to counteract disruption at the level of experience.”38 Although persistently “running in the background” as the fortunes of the PRD drifted during the mid- to late 1990s, these discourses were to return in intensity the next time the PRD looked as if it was going to win presidential elections and the “poor and the desperate” might gain some political ground, in the challenge to foxismo.

foxismo and the 2006 elections The Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) victory in 2000 reflected swelling repugnance toward the PRI as the excesses of salinismo were exposed: the Fox government was well positioned ideologically to inherit the neoliberal class project, and, moreover, to inherit already-existing techniques of rule—symbolic and exemplary forms of power and violence—to guarantee ongoing neoliberalization. While confidence in the integrity of elections strengthened considerably, “improved” political institutions still presided over deepening material insecurity as foxismo continued to produce regional versions of neoliberal structural violence visible globally. The Los Reyes region saw further job insecurity as one of the sugar mills closed and cane gave way to production for transnational fruit companies, leading to further class polarization and a feminization (and “ethnicization”) of the day-labor workforce, while already high levels of U.S. migration increased. Moreover, electoral corruption remained embedded in political practice, alongside changes in expectations and institutional reform. In municipal elections in 2004, the PRI continued with impunity in its attempts to buy votes and bully voters; for example, a family of large landowners growing berries and employing dozens of indigenous workers (mainly women) from the largely perredista Meseta Purhépecha collected the electoral credentials from their employees on the pretext that they were needed to enroll them for medical coverage and loan entitlements. They were not returned until after the elections, and the promised benefits were not forthcoming. Neither has the PAN remained aloof from such practices—dispensas and materials arriving in villages within the municipality in the run-up to

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the 2006 presidential elections, and business owners coercing their staff. Reflecting a more general complaint about PAN “campaigning” on the part of the business sector, the local owner of a chain of stores made it clear to staff that they were to vote for the PAN or lose their jobs. Significant here is that this avowal of hierarchic authority and coercive capital worked: while the young women who worked in the stores “knew” that the ballot is secret, they nonetheless feared that their boss, a well-connected person, would somehow find out how they had voted. The storeowner’s actions also reflected growing assertiveness in panista circles locally, particularly as the PRI floundered in opinion polls. For their part, the remaining cañero core PRI vote mourned an “imagined” past when PRI hegemony afforded some benefit, were divided between hope and dismay over the presidential candidacy of Madrazo, and were flummoxed to see their party free-fall in the increasingly polarized contest playing out in the political nation. The contentious 2006 presidential elections provoked a dramatic intensification—and vulgarization—of hierarchic repertoires of discrimination, targeting the “ignorant and uncultured,” los nacos, who made up the perredista support base, making for an electoral process characterized in the press as “poisonous.” While many questions can be raised about how radical the PRD’s political program really was, the coalition slogan, “Por el bien de todos, los pobres primeros” could not have better posited an inversion of the established order, nor could the PAN campaign’s response have more firmly declared the intention to keep it as it was; that a coalition victory would represent un peligro para México.39 Facing robust support for the PRD under the leadership of López Obrador, and widespread disillusion with foxismo, the PAN could not afford to count on the PRD’s patchy organizational strength and stumbling campaign strategy and sought to guarantee victory deploying familiar tactics of power: symbolic construction of the opposition as socially undesirable and destabilizing, which valorized hierarchic ordering, the complicity of the media, the partiality of electoral institutional practice, and the use of state violence against popular protest.40 The political climate in the months preceding the elections was colored by heavy-handed state repression, including killings and rapes, of strikers and protesters at Sicartsa, Atenco, and Oaxaca. Response to the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) movement provides a vivid example of the swift recourse to state violence when symbolic violence is ruptured by “disorderly” elements. Grounded in opposition to the neoliberal Plan Puebla-Panama, the APPO’s grievances included the fraudulent imposition of the PRI’s Ulises Ruiz as governor, his disrecognition of popular general assemblies in the indigenous communities, and his diversion

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of funds for basic public services to Madrazo’s electoral campaign. A teachers’ strike that began in May 2006 provided an impetus for the convening of the APPO, an alliance of organizations with a range of demands to address extreme poverty and exclusion in the state, to remove Ulises Ruiz, and to transform the way in which the state is governed. Supported by Fox and Calderón, Ruiz deployed the militarized PFP in a series of operations, leading to violent confrontations in Oaxaca City.41 In Los Reyes, some teachers came out on strike in solidarity with colleagues in Oaxaca, but middle-class panistas judged the APPO to be “a bunch of liars and rebels without a cause, they don’t even know what they want . . . they’re just after power and money like the rest of those groups, like Marcos in Chiapas.” Discourse on the dangers of popular violence, always already available, presented again, less description than a symbolic ordering of the world: popular forces do not know what they want—they are irrational; at the same time, they want “power and money”—which it is not their place to aspire to. This comment was informed by an assumption that the APPO’s leaders were self-serving opportunists, and while infiltrations—perhaps by elements of a fractured PRI looking for a home—and nontransparent relations with shady established interests are indeed a plausible danger, confining assessment of the movement to this dismisses the validity of the APPO’s grievances and fails to recognize that, as popular movements are generally susceptible to such attempts at infiltration and co-optation, these inevitably become part of the struggle.42 Concurrently, an escalation in drug-related homicides around Los Reyes, including that of the local police chief, as competing cartels fought for dominance in the region, provoked demands for firm action and the establishment of the rule of law; in one view, this hardened opinion against disruptive protest, while another drew ironic comparison between state oppression and state ineffectuality in providing public security. State and private violence contributed to a climate of wariness which encompassed and polarized these positions; state violence also furnished graphic images that resonated closely with the PAN campaign’s strategy of defamation of López Obrador and, by association, his supporters. Evoking the “danger” of social revolution and the violent seizure of property, the threatening imagery of the PAN’s TV spots coordinated with propaganda on the part of the business sector, yet the Federal Electoral Institute was slow to cancel the defamatory broadcasts and meek in rebuking the interference of private-sector interests, and again, vivid visual association between the mobilization of los de abajo, violence, and threats to property and possessions had been achieved. Targeting those of modest means exploited the fears of insecurity which foxismo had done much to deepen. “I’m not going to vote for Andrés Manuel, he’s going to take

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away my television,” as one young man told a PRD campaigner, conjuring an imagined, dangerously radicalized politics of envidia (“envy”). That defamatory tactics flouted electoral law made no inroads into a mindset invested in the PAN as the party of “decent” people, those with education, propriety in social behavior, the party best equipped to protect the integrity of the person and of property against potential claims of the masses. Censure of a “dangerous left” appealed to petit bourgeois– type sensibilities in which it would be “una vergüenza” (“a disgrace”), as one local woman put it, to be associated with “the kind of people” who made up the perredista support base. The association of violence with perredistas was to spiral during postelectoral protests and to take on an explicitly racist tone. Numerous anomalies during the elections and a fractional PAN “victory” prompted López Obrador to call for a total recount of the vote and to organize a massive occupation of Mexico City’s Zócalo, while recourse to mass protest predictably incited panista prejudices. In response, the federal electoral tribunal stonewalled: numerous irregularities were discounted, and a 9 percent recount lacked transparency and credibility: the result remained intact.43 The frugality with which the tribunal interpreted and applied the law recruited both bureaucratic contempt and class partiality. Institutional parsimony, moreover, masked a profoundly ideological gesture; it can be asserted that procedure has been followed, yet at the same time the purpose of selective scrutiny has been accomplished. In what Žižek has called “lying in the guise of truth,” Calderón’s victory was confirmed, the coalition supporters branded as contemptuous of institutions and of the law, and institutional practice itself—however “improved”— remained “instrumental in the relation of domination,” achieving once more the convergence of political and symbolic violence.44 Persisting in protest placed opposition supporters beyond the realm of order—a gesture that disregards grievances by making “order” the extortionate political choice, prompting some to float the ironic notion of a “patriotic fraud.”45 The closeness of the result again revealed the inferior value attributed to the “lower class vote”—national stability could not be held to ransom by a violent rabble of renegade nacos y indios (plebs and Indians), inciting a kind of patriotism that identifies with power and demands “loyalty to power rather than principle.”46 The intensity of the “repertoire of derogation” which followed the election reflected this position. An alarming discourse of “hate” was very much hijacked by extreme right-wing groups championing Calderón, who inundated the Internet with websites dedicated to the vilification of the “human zoo” occupying the Zócalo; single mothers and the unemployed were routine targets, and, as with far-right rhetoric elsewhere, racist contempt was

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elevated to a marker of “distinction” in the inciteful use of indio as an explicit term of contempt. Perredistas in turn posted predictable caricatures of Calderón in Nazi regalia. Such attacks were perhaps only partially representative of broader public opinion, but served to generate a surplusinvestment in the notion of violent disorder which provided a rationale for reasserting a naturalized, hierarchic political order and the necessity to aggressively defend it. This politicized misrecognition of violence that attaches to neoliberal logic precludes meaningful discussion of enduring social and political injuries and historically accumulated inequalities, while a fatal social hierarchy, sustained by the violence of “assaults on personhood, dignity, sense of worth or value,” remains central to symbolic, private, and state violence and to the power of a political elite unconstrained by residual attachments, however cynical, to the struggle for social rights.47 That it is these contested social and political cultural “dimensions of violence . . . [which give] violence its power and meaning” makes struggles for social and political integrity in significant part a struggle over the meaning of violence.48

chapter ten

Violence and Reconstitution in Mexican Indigenous Communities john gledhill

; I begin and end this chapter by looking at the different forms of violence inherent in the relationships between indigenous people and the contemporary, neoliberal, state. My starting point is the militarization of internal security that accompanied the unraveling of the system of rule underpinning what Mario Vargas Llosa dubbed “the perfect dictatorship” of the Party of the Institutional Revolution. This produced some spectacular episodes of repressive violence that take us from the massacre by the Guerrero state police of seventeen members of the Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur (OCSS) at Aguas Blancas in 1995 and the counterinsurgency war of the Mexican army against the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in Chiapas through the repression of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) by federal police under the Vicente Fox government in 2006 to the escalating violence of the drug cartels that provided Felipe Calderón’s administration with a further pretext for criminalizing a wide variety of social movements. State violence was not directed exclusively at people who saw themselves as “indigenous.” In 1995, many people who did preserve a local indigenous identity in states such as Guerrero still also saw themselves as campesinos, the peasant “class” identity that the postrevolutionary state encouraged them to adopt through its extensive land reform program.1 The APPO originated in Oaxaca City and remained socially and ethnically diverse and politically plural. The way that “indigeneity” came to figure prominently in activist representations of this and other movements seen as “radically democratic” and “against neoliberal capitalist globalization,” such as the movement against water privatization in Cochabamba,

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Bolivia, is both symptomatic of changed political times and in need of further critical scrutiny, given the APPO’s failure to build a wider rural base.2 Nevertheless, all the violence against Indians, peasants, and urban social movements had the common quality of being an attack, often preemptive, on “political suspects,” as Lynn Stephen pointed out in her analysis of violence against indigenous people in Chiapas.3 The most notorious episode in Chiapas took place in 1997, when paramilitaries murdered and mutilated the bodies of nine men, twenty-one women— four of them pregnant—and fifteen children, members of the nonviolent Las Abejas (the Bees) movement in the hamlet of Acteal.4 Physical violence inflicted on indigenous bodies reflects ideologies of conquest that are deeply violent symbolically and strongly gendered. Stephen links them back to the colonial doctrine of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) and the figures of La Malinche and the Virgin of Guadalupe, dichotomous archetypes of indigenous femininity that also have implications for men. Like La Malinche, indigenous women should make their bodies available to the conquerors, to produce mestizos. Indigenous men, rendered as passive and silent before the dominant in the story of Juan Diego’s meeting with Bishop Zumárraga, are also subject to the feminization associated with colonial conquest, to be “pacified and possessed by other men in military occupation.”5 This kind of violence exists in everyday as well as “spectacular” forms that aim to send a public message, and it is a brutal reality that we should keep firmly in view. One of the consequences of its historical perpetuation is that even people who do not see themselves as indigenous may be  “indigenized” by violent state agents when they become “political suspects.” An example of this process is the repression that took place in Atenco in the state of Mexico in 2006. The Atenco movement became more than “suspect” in 2002 when its militancy and willingness to use violence forced cancellation of plans to expropriate lands granted under the postrevolutionary land reform in order to build a new Mexico City airport.6 Although the people of Atenco had duly abandoned an indigenous for campesino identity after they received their ejido, by 2006 their organization, the Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra, had reached out to other dissident groups in Central Mexico and beyond, including the EZLN, and forged relationships with indigenous organizations. On the day that state police attacked Atenco, the spokeswoman of the indigenous flower sellers’ organization, the Mazahua Magdalena García Durán, a member of the National Indigenous Congress, was denied the services of a translator when charges were read and repeatedly called a “bitch” by the police who violated her, along with various young women from Atenco itself.7

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Yet the “indigenizing” of Atenco underscores the need not to take the category “indigenous” at face value without looking at the historical processes that have shaped its meaning. This entails looking at the changing relationships between indigenous peoples and four kinds of state: the colonial, liberal-national, postrevolutionary, and neoliberal. The latter seems an improvement for indigenous people because Mexico was the second country (after Norway) to ratify ILO Convention 169 and introduced a politics of recognition that is a quintessential example of neoliberal multiculturalism. Yet at the end of this chapter I show how “multicultural” discourses can be manipulated by state entities to disqualify efforts by indigenous people, in particular women, to change aspects of community power relations that they find oppressive; to obfuscate the real causes of paramilitary violence; and to attack dissident communities and disqualify indigenous judicial procedures that can save lives and reduce conflict. Multiculturalism in Mexico all too frequently proves cover for the deepest kind of cynicism in defense of dominant interests. My principal focus here is not, however, on denunciation. I want to analyze how histories of violence and the impacts of different kinds of violence, including symbolic violence and the social violence that can hide behind the strict rule of law,8 are constitutive of individual subjectivities and of particular forms of sociality and social cosmologies. One approach is that which the Comaroffs have adopted toward understanding the linkages between neoliberalism in Southern Africa and “occult economies,” including popular ideas about witchcraft and organ theft.9 Their argument points, first, to how neoliberal capitalism produces social fragmentation and the way that “identity” becomes central to the production of social life through individual strategies of consumption and “technologies of the self.” They argue that, in consequence, “diffuse concerns about cultural integrity and communal survival are vested in ‘private’ anxieties about sexuality, procreation, or family values.”10 The second strand of their argument relates to the contemporary cosmologies of capitalism itself, as seen by those excluded from the good life. Popular ideas about the “magical” production of wealth actually mirror the growing mysteries of wealth creation through the “spectral tendencies of capitalist financialization.”11 The virtue of this perspective is that it enables us to link the multiple social violences of neoliberal capitalism to the forms of violence that exist within poor communities. It suggests that the ideas that indigenous people sometimes have about the causes of their afflictions are not different in kind from other types of beliefs that haunt the popular imagination today, such as conspiracy theories and neo-Pentecostalist beliefs in the pervasive presence of malignant spirit entities. It also steers us firmly

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away from any idea that violent behavior can be explained by positing atavistic, essentialized “cultures of violence.” This is important because opponents of indigenous rights and autonomy often argue that indigenous practices are unfriendly to the rights of minorities and violate “modern” human rights principles because they are rooted in “premodern” forms of social organization and mentalities. In doing so, they replicate a wellestablished historical theme that more positive expressions of contemporary multicultural sensibility have not succeeded in eliminating.

the violence of mexican mestizaje Here we need to look at what happened in the nineteenth century after Mexico became an independent country and its elites set about “nationbuilding.” Although the “protective” role of the colonial state was motivated principally by the need to conserve the tributary base of the Spanish Empire, and often failed to deliver protection, the majority of Mexico’s rural population entered the nineteenth century living in the “Indian communities,” or pueblos de indios, created by the colonial regime. Their identities were essentially local and community based, but they were identities that placed them at the Indian end of the spectrum of the colonial caste system. This was a situation that the liberal governments that emerged victorious from the civil wars of the first half of the century sought to change. Now conscious of their region’s “backwardness” relative to the North Atlantic countries, elites came to define the problem as both institutional and racial, in line with thinking emanating from Europe. One solution was the abolition of corporate property, which entailed transformation of colonial communal landowning communities into private property regimes and ending of their special corporate privileges, which included a degree of autonomy in management of their internal religious and secular affairs. Because Mexico is a country of regional contrasts, dealing with the “Indian problem” took different forms in the North, Center, and South. The remaining transhumant and seminomadic populations in the North— the “wild Indians”—were subjected to roundups, massacres, and deportations, as were groups that had been settled by Jesuit missionaries but not effectively subjected to secular state authority, notably the Yaquis of Sonora.12 Indian communities in the South were places where migrant laborers working on plantations could sustain themselves; although some lost their lands and were turned into landless workers on private estates, others managed to conserve some land for subsistence farming as well as distinctive forms of religious and secular administrative organization,

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even if the systems of civil-religious hierarchy based on the prestige acquired from individual sponsorship of ritual roles in festivals that classic ethnographic studies dubbed “fiesta-cargo systems” were actually nineteenth-century developments that reflected adjustment to changed social and agrarian conditions.13 In Chiapas, an ethnicized class system in which Indian laborers effectively lived in “reserves” was well adapted to the type of agro-export capitalism that dominated the state economy.14 In the center of the country, the zone of greatest demographic density, the process of communal disentailment was sometimes more negotiated, but also more sweeping in its effects.15 Once again, we are talking about violence, but not always of the physical kind. The liberal land laws proclaimed that they were applying a universal system in which all citizens would be treated equally. Yet they produced a massive process of dispossession and proletarianization in Central and Western Mexico, because even when they were implemented without any cheating on the part of nonindigenous elites, they created a game that the Indian community simply could not win.16 Indigenous communities normally assigned permanent use rights to farmland to individual families, so transformation of these lands into private property was seldom the big issue. The problem lay in the undivided resources that communities did possess in common, such as water resources and forests, often the resources most coveted by domestic and foreign capitalists. The trick was that state governments revalued them for tax purposes in terms of their commercial potential and demanded that the communities pay taxes at the level determined by this nonexistent income. When the communities were unable to pay, their lands were sold off at public auction, and the generalized impoverishment that loss of resources and escalating tax burdens produced made it easy to get the Indians to sell off their farm plots as well. The violence of the rule of law thus lay in the fact that it applied equal treatment to social entities that were not equal, as a few indigenous community representatives themselves pointed out in futile legal attempts to get courts to recognize their preference for communal land tenure as a “right.” Legalized violence was reinforced by new forms of symbolic violence. Mestizo identity was extracted from the older logic of caste differences based on various forms of “race mixing” and identified with movement toward “progress,” “modernity,” and “civilization.” During the nineteenth century, Mexico conserved a distinction between a “white” pole, the criollo, and a mestizo intermediate category, but the politics that underlay the struggles between liberals and conservatives, and ultimately the Mexican Revolution, erased the criollo to make the mestizo the bearer of national identity. The postrevolutionary state therefore embraced a project of “Mexicanizing the Indian” through fostering cultural mestizaje (mixing).

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Yet this project remained tinged by biological concepts of racial difference that became central to attacks on the “unproductive” and “backward” nature of the indigenous community in nineteenth-century debates about modernization. In consequence, even when the inhabitants of former indigenous communities retained or recovered access to land and maintained local cultural practices inherited from the colonial era, there was a  strong incentive for them to “de-indianize” their identities under the postrevolutionary regime, which worked hard to reinforce this tendency through the public education system and rural outreach efforts. People became ashamed of being indios.17 Nevertheless, the way that mestizo national identity was politically constructed left open the possibility of mestizos re-identifying with their “indigenous side.” Some social movements, such as the EZLN in Chiapas and the Unión de Comuneros “Emiliano Zapata” (UCEZ) in Michoacán,18 have tried to foster a politics based on this principle, deconstructing the state version of national identity from below.19 Yet the subjective legacies of the violence(s) of the nation-building process are difficult to erase: even indigenous people often adopt essentialist racial models of difference in distinguishing themselves from both non-Indians and other local indigenous groups. As Peter Wade has argued, contrary to the optimistic perspectives offered by hybridity theorists and analysts contrasting Latin American mestizaje with U.S. binary models of racial classification, the logic of mestizaje does not “undo racial essentialisms per se,” because “ideas of racial mixture . . . always recreate the images of racial origins that supply the basis for racist essentialisms.”20 It is this that we see remerging in contexts of spectacular violence against “political suspects” in general and indigenous political suspects in particular. At first sight, however, there is an upside to this story. Under the stresses produced by Mexico’s combination of neoliberal economics and politically sustained crony capitalism, some communities in Central Mexico have been able to reinvent themselves as “communities of resistance” in which local traditions and practices have been re-signified and deployed. Tepoztlan in Morelos offers an example. Although Tepoztlan leaders opted for reintegration into the conventional political system after the town won its battle against developers planning a golf resort, their ability to use traditions and organizational practices associated with religious festivals to invigorate local democracy and revivify communal landholding traditions indicates how the legacy of an indigenous past can be used to rebuild a sense of community in largely “de-indianized” regions.21 Unfortunately, however, there is also a downside.

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problematizing “community” “Community” as a socially imagined entity based on strong boundaries and internal rules of conduct may prove an unfriendly environment for new forms of religious practice or shifts in authority structures driven by the changing articulations of some of its members with the outside world, through education, migration experience, or new alliances with external political forces. The recent histories of Chiapas and Oaxaca abound with examples of local political bosses (caciques) who have maintained themselves in power by accusing their opponents of “attacking the community and the cultural bases for its reproduction.” Here community is an objectification linked to the sanctity of so-called traditions or uses and customs that not only give it a special identity but also, allegedly, guarantee its harmony and peace.22 Many episodes of mass expulsion of Protestants are more than a product of the refusal of members of non-Catholic churches to participate in community religious activities valued by the majority. In cases like San Juan Chamula in Chiapas and some of the communities of the Sierra de Juárez in Oaxaca, expulsions are unambiguously linked to attempts by non-Catholics to challenge the rule of caciques backed by nonindigenous elites, generally associated with the PRI, at state level.23 Yet where this unconditional external political support is not available, compromises can generally be reached between contending parties, usually by means of an agreement that non-Catholics will provide community service in nonreligious forms. Some North American evangelical churches now urge their converts to display respect for the cultural and religious sensibilities of their neighbors.24 In this, as in questions of a greater role for women in public life, and changes in gender relations within the family, indigenous communities seem perfectly capable of negotiating their own routes to modernity, even if they are marked by episodes of tension and conflict. Once again, we need to consider the constitutive role of various forms of violence in these processes. It is not surprising that we often find strong pretensions to patriarchal authority within indigenous families on the part of men subjected to regular humiliation by nonindigenous people when they navigate in the wider society beyond their villages, particularly if they lack prestige and authority within their own communities. Nevertheless, a view of indigenous patriarchy that reduces women to victims is simplistic, not least because it is often women who do much of the navigating, either as agricultural laborers or as traders in rural and urban markets, while their demands for change and justice do not always correspond to western feminist conceptions of what women ought to want.25

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The colonial state and the postrevolutionary state both, albeit in different ways and to different degrees, treated the internal organization of indigenous communities as a “black box,” allowing them to operate with a degree of autonomy. Both created and re-created the “indigenous community” as a juridical entity, by assigning particular groups of ethnically defined people rights to land, and in the case of the postrevolutionary and contemporary state, defining how that land should be administered and specifying rules and procedures for election of authorities and review of community membership. All these state conceptions of landholding communities could differ radically from indigenous understandings of territoriality and the logic of social and political organization. Nevertheless, bearing in mind such potential differences in cultural logics, analytically we need to unpack the idea of “community” into the social and political processes underlying its internal politics and abandon the temptation to reify “community” while recognizing that it often is reified in practice in the discourse of indigenous political life itself, not least when indigenous people engage with state institutions and contemporary indigenous rights politics. Here it is important to start thinking about violence within the indigenous community rather than simply focusing on violence against indigenous people. As June Nash shows for Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas, even communities that make relatively successful long-term adaptations to changing economic and political conditions may be convulsed by internal violence during key moments of structural transformation. In this case, in a process of intergenerational conflict familiar throughout indigenous Mexico, although both the timing of change and the social actors who join together to bring it about are variable, the authority of the old men who had previously governed community affairs as shamanistic “curer-diviners” was challenged by younger, more educated men who began to occupy the top posts in civil administration in the late 1940s. A spate of witch killings ensued as these new civil officials sanctioned assassinations, with the tacit support of the state and federal authorities.26 In the 1960s, as women’s growing economic success as pottery producers “breached the boundaries that defined their sphere,” Nash documents how “rape and death were infrequent but ominous reminders” of those boundaries.27 Compared with a community such as San Juan Chamula,28 Amatenango del Valle escaped the worst excesses of community caciquismo, and in recent years has transformed its earlier strong ritual expressions of “caste” hatred for nonindigenous ladinos into gentler forms of mockery of official figures such as corrupt forestry agents.29 Yet Nash observes that the payback meted out to “modernizers” by the surviving curer-diviners in the late 1960s often seemed like “reverse selection of the fittest” as conservative

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forces tried to hold back social, economic, and political changes, killing various young leaders, male and female, who had brought new development projects to the town.30 The new social problems that neoliberal capitalism has brought to “de-indianized” communities have also sometimes provoked responses in which everyday feelings of insecurity, coupled with the failure of classbiased and easily suborned police and official justice systems to provide protection, lead their members to target “suspects” to be subjected to “self-help” justice through lynching. Although Carlos Vilas argues for a “formidable link between lynchings and ethnic communities with strong kinship ties” in his study of the period 1987–98, 27 percent of his cases were in fact urban, albeit, he contends, in “neighbourhoods with strong socio-cultural, trans-generational ties.”31 In another study that identifies 291 lynching cases nationally between 1984 and 2001, Antonio Fuentes found 64 cases in the Federal District and 32 in the State of Mexico (8 urban, 13 rural, and 11 suburban) as well as 24 in Puebla, 12 in Hidalgo, and 8 in Tlaxcala (all mostly rural): Chiapas and Oaxaca had the highest numbers, after the Federal District, with 41 and 36, respectively, but many of the cases that Fuentes describes did occur in “de-indianized” communities under pressure.32 There are a number of areas within the asphalted Federal District of Mexico City where barrios retain strong local community traditions and identities and people are actively engaged in thinking about their indigenous roots. Fuentes makes the same kinds of links between lynchings and neoliberal “fragmentation” that have been made by the Comaroffs for South Africa and Daniel Goldstein for Bolivia.33 We therefore need to consider how “community” as a complex social construct can itself produce violence, though not in a way that can meaningfully be separated from the violence(s) to which its (socially differentiated) inhabitants are subjected. I now turn to some case studies that illustrate the possibilities of more positive kinds of community reconstruction within histories of violence, and to the problems that the cynicism of state power can create for indigenous communities seeking to resolve their own problems of internal violence.

the violence of the dominant From 2001 to 2003 I carried out an ethnographic and historical study of Ostula, one of seven Náhuatl-speaking communities established on the Pacific Coast of Michoacán, four of which were extinguished during the period of liberal reform.34 Ostula maintained unbroken de facto control over the lands it received in the colonial period, officially re-recognized

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as communal property by the state in 1964, despite being itself threatened with extinction at the start of the twentieth century, when a criollo elite in the district capital, Coalcomán, dreamed of industrialization, replacement of the Indians by white European immigrants, and transfer of exploitation of the indigenous communal forests to business associates located in California.35 The 1910 revolution ended this dream, and after it the principal threat of dispossession came from less prosperous mestizo rancher families migrating down from the sierras. The latter proved the principal beneficiaries of the destruction of the community of Maquilí, on the northern boundary of Ostula’s territory, and some of these settlers were later granted an ejido under the revolutionary land reform by Lázaro Cárdenas in 1936.36 The rancher invasion had a fundamental long-term impact on interethnic relations. To the south of Ostula, in the community of Coire, both land and community authority were usurped by a group of mestizos who suborned the indigenous authorities. An attempt to expel the invaders in 1936 was answered by a bloodbath in which fifteen indigenous people were killed.37 President Cárdenas sent in the army to expel the invaders, but the state subsequently brokered a deal in which the indigenous community grudgingly agreed to accept some mestizos within its territory as second-class citizens without rights in community governance. Nevertheless, in Pómaro, also south of Ostula, the cristero general Gregorio Guillén, who had established his headquarters there during the fighting between the Catholic rebels that he commanded and the secularizing state, established a cacicazgo (system of personalized boss rule) that went much further than anything the mestizos achieved in Coire.38 Ruling through bilingual deputies drawn from the indigenous community itself, Guillén continued to live in Pómaro, although he became municipal president of Coalcomán and his power extended throughout the region until his assassination in 1959, all thanks to a backstage agreement with Cárdenas that was the price for pacifying a hotbed of cristero mobilization. He was succeeded by indigenous caciques, who continued to allow mestizo infiltration until 1964, when the community halted further entries.39 Although Guillén’s intermediation seems to have been accepted as the price of preventing the community’s total destruction, and the mestizos under his protection were allowed the status of full community members (comuneros),40 the result was a serious erosion of the proportion of communal land that remained in the hands of families of indigenous descent, to less than half the officially recognized total, and a legacy of ethnic antagonism. In the village of San Pedro Naranjestil, on the southern border of Pómaro, the village center was completely taken over by mestizos. A teacher who worked there in the 1970s described to

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me how the pupils in the primary school practiced a strict ethnic segregation in classroom and playground. Only Ostula avoided mestizo colonization altogether. After thwarting an invasion backed by the mestizo authorities in the town of Aquila, the new municipal capital, in 1928, Ostula adopted strict rules on settlement and intermarriage, turning itself back into a veritable “closed corporate community.” This difference of outcome can be explained in terms of the leadership and authority systems produced by Ostula’s once strongly hierarchic civil-religious organization, which was far more elaborate than that of its neighbors, and created multiple styles and positions of authority that made communal assemblies an effective, if often tumultuous, arena for checking abuses of power in the twentieth century.41 The importance of internal community organization in this case is manifest by the failure of those who performed functions of intermediation with state institutions to acquire enduring power as caciques. This had been a real possibility at the time of the campaign for official titling of the community’s communal lands, when, in 1960, the group controlling this process brought in the local military detachment to torture their opponents.42 Yet the wouldbe bosses were defeated, and this pattern continued through the following decades. The survival of indigenous communities in this zone was, nevertheless, a close-run thing, and the legacy of past violence is interethnic bitterness. Racialized definitions of ethnicity characterize both indigenous and nonindigenous people alike, a product of the genocidal force of regional modernization projects: what violence constituted here was an internalization by indigenous people themselves of new ideologies of race brought into play by nonindigenous regional elites as well as a relatively successful reorganization of the surviving indigenous communities in a new kind of relationship with a new kind of state. The decades that followed de jure re-recognition of indigenous communal landholding were marked not only by intense factional struggles but also by boundary disputes with nonindigenous neighbors, complaints to and confrontations with state and federal agrarian authorities, and, more recently, the entry of political parties into the community political field. Much of this reflects external interventions: illegal logging has caused severe environmental degradation, and there have been a host of failed development projects. Yet another contextual factor is even more important for understanding the changing shape of violence and insecurity in the zone. Although both men and women sallied forth to sell products in regional markets and worked as seasonal laborers on capitalist farms in Colima State, in the case of Ostula, or the Michoacán Tierra Caliente in the case of Pómaro, while international migration became a

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significant option for some in the mid-1960s, until the 1980s leaving the community involved lengthy and arduous journeys in the absence of paved roads and a bridge over the Coahuayana River. Unfortunately, the construction of a highway along Michoacán’s coast facilitated not only migration and peasant commerce but also the involvement of indigenous people in marijuana cultivation. The marijuana boom was short-lived. Indigenous peasants lacked the means to protect themselves in this relatively lawless zone, easily falling victim to attacks after they delivered the merchandise and attempted to return home with their money.43 Community policing was and is effective, because police service is a cargo (unpaid community service duty) that all able-bodied men are expected to fulfill. Yet nonindigenous municipal and state police and the military frequently prove abusive. Marijuana cultivation is now concentrated in more remote areas, such as the hills in the southern part of Pómaro’s territory, where it has had striking social and cultural effects. Young indigenous men no longer work in commercial agriculture and have been replaced by migrants from Oaxaca. As these young men stride about with their AK-47s and pistols, their expressions of masculinity make village dances tense affairs that often end prematurely due to the threat of violence. Today, however, marijuana is not the main business, and indigenous communities were marginal to the cocaine processing that replaced it. In 2002, nine men were assassinated in a ranch used as a cocaine laboratory in Aquila that had been sold to a purchaser from Sinaloa by Ing. Mames Eusebio Velázquez Mora, Aquila’s municipal president from 1996 to 1998. Velázquez Mora was responsible for a sea change in Aquila politics with respect to indigenous people, vastly increasing the budget of his huge and poverty-stricken municipio by attracting social development funds following the politically convenient appearance of an armed group supposedly affiliated with the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR). His administration made considerable infrastructure improvements in Ostula and sponsored indigenous cultural events and the marketing of artisan products. There was, however, another side to the engineer. Although people in Ostula spoke well of him, they displayed anxiety about discussing his role in Aquila. A mestizo friend who subsequently became mayor of Coahuayana for the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) told me explicitly that “researching Mames” was not likely to prove a healthy activity. When I interviewed him in 2002, amiably tipsy after an evening at the cockfight, he showed me videos of the indigenous forum that he had organized and came across as a man who often moved in circles where a different style of cultural interaction was required to the bluff but warm ranchero manners of Aquila. A few weeks later, Velázquez Mora, along

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with the former Aquila police chief who was driving him, died in a hail of bullets in Guadalajara near the upscale Plaza del Sol shopping center: their car came from Los Cabos, Sinaloa, and contained a large quantity of U.S. dollars as well as a basket of imported wines. This was an early episode in the intensified drug wars that rapidly engulfed the whole of the state, in which the Zetas, then acting as the paramilitary arm of the Gulf cartel against its Sinaloan competitors, played a prominent role that included the assassination of a serving municipal president. The Zetas offer us another window onto the effects of violence on indigenous communities. Founded by former members of the Mexican Army Special Forces, the Zetas also recruited Guatemalan Indians who served in the Special Forces units responsible for much of the killing during the Guatemalan civil war. Unable to live contently in their villages after the conflict, these Kaibiles, along with the gang members from El Salvador who work as assassins for the Sinaloa cartel, reflect the complex transnational displacements U.S. intervention in Central America provoked: El Salvador’s gangs originated in Los Angeles and were exported to the South through the deportation of young men from the United States.44 From the indigenous perspective, such developments are disturbing not simply for their violence but also as evidence of the penetration of public power by criminal organizations. Yet at the start of the new millennium, most people preferred not to think about a criminal economy in which they could not participate. By and large they continued to associate the state’s police and military with harassment and racism, so there was little logic in demanding improved security from any extracommunal agencies. Yet although they lacked confidence in the federal or state government’s ability or disposition to guarantee their security, Ostulans remained eager to “engage” with powers beyond their community, to secure funds from Oportunidades and other social assistance programs. One might describe this posture as reproducing the clientelist politics traditionally practiced by mestizo authorities. Yet “civic discourse” is prominent in Ostula’s public culture, both in long-standing features of the secular ritual calendar and through improvised events, such as a fiesta that catechists organized with a now-indigenous municipal president to demonstrate Ostula’s “worthiness” of support from Oportunidades as an “organized community.” At this level, Ostula illustrates Yael Navaro-Yashin’s argument that overt cynicism about “the state” and the actors behind that fetish is often overridden by practices that strongly affirm the state.45 Patriotic symbolism is equally prominent, but Ostula insists on belonging to the nation on its own terms of territorial integrity and selfgovernment. All its factions, including the priístas, were ready to take risks by resorting to violence in long-standing boundary disputes with

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the ranchers from the former indigenous community of Maquilí and coastal community of La Placita, established by the mestizo invaders when there was no permanent indigenous occupation of the coasts. In 2003, just as my fieldwork was ending, Ostula massed large numbers of men with machetes on its borders in a show of force. In 2006, in the interests of furthering the campaign to defend its ancestral territory against twenty-first-century forms of capitalist predation, a new leadership subscribed to the Sixth Lacandón Declaration as a “community in resistance,” and Ostula received a visit from subcomandante Marcos. Three years later, following the murder of the schoolteacher presiding over Ostula’s Commission for the Defence of Communal Property and an incident in which heavily armed assailants from La Placita fired on women and children, the community used its communal police to take back 1,309 hectares of disputed land by force. The perredista state government undertook to indemnify the ranchers and to recognize Ostula’s police as a legitimate self-defense force, but no concrete steps were taken to regularize the situation legally, opening the way to continuing violence: two more Ostulans serving as town councillors in Aquila were kidnapped and “disappeared,” and by 2010, the community had finally attracted the attention of human rights NGOs as it denounced intensifying attacks from “paramilitary” forces. The suggestion was that the ranchers had sought help from the cartels. Having become independent of the Gulf cartel, the Zetas were now fighting a war of “narco-messages” and severed heads with a newer crime organization whose members they originally trained, La Familia Michoacana. La Familia, whose leaders made regular public declarations and adopted the model of a religious cult, claimed to be engaged in a moralizing project that opposed the local consumption of drugs and offered the population the protection that it did not receive from the Mexican state. It achieved a deep infiltration of local government and police forces, a reflection not only of its economic power in a situation of economic stagnation, made worse by the impact of the crisis in the United States on migrant remissions, but also of widespread popular resentment about the way that the Calderón government used federal security forces and the military in the state. Although the La Familia cartel began to unravel following the death of its principal leader, nicknamed “the craziest one,” in a federal security operation at the end of 2010 and the subsequent arrest of others, two of the original founders who remained at large formed a rival organization with a similar orientation, the Knights Templar (Los Caballeros Templarios), and the conflict with the Zetas continued on its sanguinary course. The twenty-first century is thus repeating the history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Entangled in the violence of actors who do not belong to their

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local social world yet have the capacity to reach inside its borders, Ostulans once again feel that they are fighting for survival. Although every case study has its peculiarities, Ostula does offer some broader lessons on how indigenous communities deal with violence and conflict. An example is how its institutions and normative systems handled the internal conflicts provoked by new relations with the postrevolutionary state. The agrarian representative who resorted to violence against dissidents in 1960, Trinidad Verdía, was obliged to offer a public apology and compensation to his victims, after which the matter was considered settled. The next would-be cacique, his son, was not disqualified from office, despite involvement in the earlier events, and also survived being found guilty of the rape of a married woman by a nonindigenous court in Aquila, from which he received lenient treatment thanks to his political friendships in the municipal seat.46 At first sight we seem to have confirmation of the familiar idea, to which I return below, that the judicial logic of indigenous communities differs from that of the nonindigenous state in prioritizing reconciliation between conflicting parties rather than punishment of offenders. Yet the Ostula case also illustrates how crises can transform structures. Since Trinidad Verdía acted with the backing of some of the elderly “men of discernment” who constituted the power behind the old cabildo (town council), and the dissidents sought help from a state functionary, much of Ostula’s established governance structure changed in consequence, not because “the state” could impose a solution, but because a majority of the community itself willed it, picking and choosing what it liked from the new institutional possibilities.

the violence within Once we look more deeply into the “black box” of internal community arrangements, however, we must look more carefully at the variety of situations that exist within indigenous Mexico. I therefore turn to Chiapas to reopen the question of “violence within.” My aim here is to question rather than reproduce the stereotypes evoked by those who argue that the “differences” that exist in indigenous ways of doing things must be erased. At the same time, I want to draw attention to how the power structures of nonindigenous Mexico may act to conserve “differences” that some indigenous people themselves would like to eliminate. Some of the “multiculturalist” discourse of the Mexican state may constitute a symbolic violence just as iniquitous as past racist and assimilationist discourses, while also distracting attention from the ways in which dominant class violence(s) produce social problems.

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As Aída Hernández documents, when it comes to issues of domestic violence and the rights of women to control their bodies, the state’s justice system frequently reinforces the unequal power relations that exist within indigenous communities. By “idealizing indigenous normative systems,” courts have treated with leniency men whose physical abuse has led to the death of a partner by invoking the “cultural mitigating circumstances” provision enshrined in an amendment to Article 220 of the Federal Penal Procedures Code that preceded the amendment of Article Four of the constitution which, in 1992, recognized Mexico as a “pluricultural” nation.47 Although advocates of indigenous rights initially welcomed the amendment, its unexpected consequences became apparent as a legal team began gathering “anthropological evidence” to defend the fifty-seven paramilitaries charged with the Acteal massacre. Hernández argues that although individual women have died as a result of witchcraft accusations as well as domestic violence in highland Tzotzil communities, there are no recorded precedents for mutilation of the bodies of pregnant women, or for mass aggression against an entire group of women and children. The most that I can find evidence for elsewhere is that witch killings have sometimes taken the form of killing an entire family with machetes (matar la raíz, kill the root), something that now generally evokes feelings of shame and revulsion. As Hernández contends, it makes more sense to see the Acteal tragedy as a consequence of the new “rules of engagement” produced by the state’s resort to the “deniable” violence of paramilitarization, than to see it as rooted in the cultural logic of “customary interfamilial fights” among the Tzotzil. Hernández therefore emphasizes the way that oppressive orders within the domain of indigenous “uses and customs” and appeals to “tradition” are frequently maintained by the articulation of communities to the power relations that structure the wider social and political order. This argument is equally applicable to the cases in which defense of “tradition” and the persecution of minorities that combine religious with political dissidence has been the bulwark of the power of community oligarchies and cacicazgos supported by nonindigenous ruling groups in states such as Chiapas and Oaxaca, as I noted earlier. Furthermore, as Shannon Speed and Jane Collier point out, when state or federal authorities do intervene in community affairs in the name of defending universal human rights and the individual guarantees that national law (supposedly) provides to citizens, they do so selectively, reserving the most intrusive police and military interventions for Zapatista communities.48 We thus have the paradox that both indigenous people and nonindigenous authorities are engaged in debates about what are “good” and “bad” customs, but that when indigenous actors, such as the women described by Hernández, argue for the

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need for change, they may find nonindigenous authorities in a strongly cultural relativist mode that confirms community power structures that they find oppressive, unless there is some extrinsic political advantage from the point of view of these external power holders in promoting a change in local power relations. Nevertheless, in considering an example of how the internal justice system of Zinacantán, Chiapas, might be said to have violated the constitutional rights of the accused, Speed and Collier also draw our attention to the possible practical virtues of indigenous “customary law.” In this case, seven young men were accused of a crime that does not appear in the national penal code, that of being cortecabezas, wandering the roads to kill people whose bodies could be placed in the new bridges to be built after heavy rains that had plunged the area into deep economic crisis.49 By determining that the accused, who refused to confess, were “presumed responsible” for “road assaults” despite the absence of evidence, after keeping them in jail for a period beyond the maximum allowed by state and federal law, the Zinacanteco judges not only managed to avoid their immediate lynching but also tranquilized the situation in the longer term by drawing all the parties into a “harmonious agreement.”50 First, they protected the accused from further harm, since the people from the three hamlets agreed to pardon them on this occasion, while the young men, who had attracted suspicion by careless talk, were disciplined by being told that they would be held responsible should anyone from the hamlets disappear or the roads be blocked by stones in the future. The accused agreed to pay the transport costs of the hamlet authorities to the hearing. Second, the fact that cortecabezas had been identified satisfied the worried people of the hamlets that the danger was now passed. Thus, although the court’s decision offended wider legal and human rights standards, it was an effective solution to the problem posed by the cognitive system of Zinacantecos and the need to repair the social peace disrupted by the tensions induced by unusual climatic events that had serious economic consequences. The Zinacantán authorities lacked the “investigative capacity to determine guilt,” but determining guilt is not the objective of a non-occidental legal order that starts from the premise that conflicts are inevitable and that the job of authorities is to stop them from getting out of hand.51

violence and reconstitution of the indigenous That people believe that bridges will not resist heavy weather unless they have human bodies in their foundations is the kind of thing that makes outsiders think that indigenous people do not belong in the modern

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world. Yet they should not be seen as reactions that are different in kind to the conspiracy theories and “moral panics” of North Atlantic societies, and they are certainly not different in substance from beliefs that lie beneath the surface of most mestizo communities in Mexico. They are cosmologies shaped by histories of domination and crisis, and it is in moments of crisis that they express themselves with their most violent force. Nevertheless, although the experience of neoliberal modernity has given new life to beliefs that might otherwise have passed into history, the growth of alternative cosmologies, such as neo-Pentecostalism, indicates that indigenous people are exploring other, if no less supernaturally grounded, means of maintaining a web of sociality. The growing importance of conflict-inducing political and religious alternatives might suggest that “the indigenous world” is undergoing fragmentation and dissolution. Pedro Pitarch has argued strongly to the contrary. Not only residents of rural communities in Chiapas but also immigrants to the urban periphery of San Cristóbal de Las Casas have displayed a feverish interest in experimenting with new churches, rural unions, and political parties, and the movement of individuals from one to another is continuous.52 Yet Pitarch argues that this is simply a “simulation” in which indigenous people “belong” to the nonindigenous world through mimesis of its forms. They can communicate with it without losing their sense of identity since they keep the two firmly ontologically separate.53 This separation is expressed in the idea of the people of Cancúc that there are mountains in which the doubles of the shadow soul (ch’ulel) that gives each individual his or her singular temperamental characteristics lead parallel lives, equipped with money, televisions, and motor cars.54 Where people achieve social mobility and become more separated from the rural village world, we might, however, expect shifts of personal ontologies away from such simulation, toward new ways of experiencing indigenous identity that reject these older concepts of personhood in favor of others. Forty percent of indigenous Mexicans now live in urban areas, and more than half a million live in the Federal District. Many who retain ties to rural communities are migrant workers in other areas of Mexico, urban and rural, or in the United States, and some have become virtually permanent absentees from their places of origin. Migration as such does not necessarily spell the abandonment of indigenous identities and cultural practices, but it is often associated with their modification, and the environment in which indigenous lives are shaped is changing too. For example, changing ideas about gender relations and sexuality can have various implications, some pointing toward changes in the domestic and public roles of women that most women might find

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positive, and others toward more brutal scenarios of commoditization of sex and the body, linked to changes in male livelihood prospects, the growth of commercial sex work, and media exploitation of sensuality. To return to the Comaroffs’ point, anxieties about the body and sexuality resonate symbolically with anxieties about the fabric of community and sociality. The new options that indigenous people explore in seeking solutions to their everyday existential dilemmas may therefore not always be as superficial in their effects as Pitarch’s study suggests. Even the most “inculturated” forms of Catholicism and Protestantism are antipathetic to the full acceptance of Amerindian versions of spirituality, despite remaining consistent with the principle that supernatural forces play an important role in human welfare. Yet “indigenousness” is not merely a social or political construction to be understood simply in terms of ethnic boundary processes, since it is reproduced through personal experience and socialization within the family. Furthermore, it is not completely dependent on the existence of community-level structures of governance and organization of the kind found among the Michoacán Nahuas or the populations of the central Chiapas highlands, as the case of the Tojolabales illustrates: totally subsumed under the dominion of the fincas in the mid-nineteenth century, and always interacting intensively with non-Indians, this population on Mexico’s southern frontier nevertheless sustained a translocal ethnic identity that helps us understand both its ability to pursue successful agrarian struggle and its pioneering endeavors in the field of regional autonomous government.55 Although there is evidence that, despite enhanced government indigenous rights programmers, some indigenous migrants in northern Mexico might now prefer to assimilate into a “mestizo mainstream,”56 such tendencies are far from universal and may even be diminishing. The constitutive histories of violence that I have recounted here have something to do with that. The class violence of neoliberal Mexico has fostered responses of ethnic reconstitution as a way of claiming rights and making demands, responses that will continue to look beyond the narrow horizons that neoliberal multiculturalism seeks to impose on the struggles of indigenous peoples.

PART FIVE

Comparative Conclusions

chapter eleven

New Violence, Insecurity, and the State Comparative Reflections on Latin America and Mexico kees koonings

; Over the past two decades or so, a “new” pattern of violence has emerged in Latin America. Just like the “old” violence of the 1950–80 period, this pattern is shaped by persistent social inequality and exclusion in the region. But whereas the old violence can be seen as a direct political response to social inequality, political exclusion, and authoritarianism— and therefore focused on the control of state power—the new pattern of violence is less openly political. Instead, new violence has been characterized as “economic” and “social,” reflecting the expansion of informal domains of livelihood and sociability as well as the fragility of the state and the public domain, especially with respect to the rule of law and citizens’ security.1 Although violent actors and violent strategies in the region nowadays no longer seek to gain (or secure) control of state power, this does not mean that new violence has no political impact or consequences. Current issues of law enforcement, the influence of organized crime on the state and political power, and the security of citizens (especially poor and excluded groups) are profoundly political. In extreme cases, such as the drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro or Kingston, the “narco-paramilitary” groups in Colombia, or the Mexican cartels, the “extralegal” armed actors seek to pressure the state or even to secure access to political power through combinations of coercion and co-optation of politicians. The paradox is that these new patterns of violence coexist with formally democratic regimes and with citizenship as an increasingly influential framework for the organization of Latin American societies.2

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The expansion of new violence has led to the proliferation of armed actors and “violence brokers” that use violence not primarily as an ideologically grounded means to secure formal political or state power but rather as a flexible resource to attain other goals, especially economic gains or social status and control. Still, this is often connected to the political process, often in perverse ways such as governments that incline toward heavy-handed (mano dura) responses to violence, crime, and insecurity or so-called uncivil actors that use coercion to backstop their interests in political arenas.3 At the same time, the incursion of violence into domains of citizenship and mobilization (especially of so-called subaltern groups and their grassroots organizations) has a profoundly disempowering effect.4 As such, the new violence has a clear political dimension in the sense that it weakens or cancels out the consolidation of the institutions, practices, and legitimacy of democracy, rule of law, and citizen participation. One of the central arguments of this book is that Mexico became increasingly included in this dismal scenario of new violence precisely during the period of political openings, democratic pluralism, and “participatory publics.”5 Hence, it is argued that the historical position of Mexico, in particular after the 1910–17 revolution, as an “exception to the rule” of chronic “old style” politico-ideological violence no longer exists. The purpose of this chapter is to substantiate this proposition by looking, first, at the nature of contemporary violence in Latin America and, second, at the various ways new violence has ended Mexican “exceptionality.” To do so, I first discuss the concept of new violence and the principal armed or violent actors involved in present-day Latin America. Then I look at three (ideal-typical) scenarios of new violence: democratic counterinsurgency, violence in illiberal democracies, and urban criminal violence in nearly consolidated democracies. Then, I use this typology to comparatively examine contemporary violence in Mexico. For this exercise I mainly draw upon the previous chapters of this book.

old and new violence in latin america “Old” violence in Latin America refers to violence that serves to maintain state power and the related structures of social hierarchy and privilege, or to revolutionary or insurrectional political violence aimed to challenge or overthrow “the powers that be.” Elsewhere we made a distinction between the “traditional” violence of the oligarchic order and violence stemming from the irruption of the masses into politics.6 The first type was basically grounded on the patrimonial character of state power and the

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use of state, public, or pseudo-public violence as one of the instruments of social disciplining toward the subaltern classes and castes. Historically, this cycle of violence is often placed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but in many countries and places, this violence continued well into the second half of the previous century. The second cycle of old violence is more explicitly political in a modern sense. The appearance of the so-called masses on the political stage provoked new strains and fault lines between, roughly, conservative or pro–status quo forces and reformist or revolutionary forces. Political violence became routine for nationalistpopulist or antipopulist regimes and movements since the 1920s. From the 1960s onward, military or bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes relied in a systematic way on state violence and terror to confront real or imagined— but in most cases fairly weak—violent opposition from the revolutionary armed Left.7 In short, violence was aimed at the ideology and politics of state power. During the 1980s, the advent of political democracy in most Latin American countries was accompanied by the expectation that social and political violence would give way to peaceful, civic, and institutional forms of societal contention.8 Still, the old spectrum of violence, fear, and insecurity has left important legacies during the past two decades.9 It is reflected in the continuation and even deepening of social cleavages in virtually every Latin American country. In addition, decades of arbitrary rule contributed to an overall climate of impunity among incumbents of the security forces (most notably the police and special antisubversive units) which very often gave law enforcement under the new democracies a grim and, in fact, criminal overtone. We witness state authorities who resort to arbitrary violence despite the installation of democracy and the adoption of proactive human rights policies by central governments. We see the spread of (organized) criminal violence at the same time that grassroots civic organizations with peaceful agendas proliferate. In fact, a persistent ambiguity of Latin America is reproduced: progress toward democratization and citizens’ empowerment goes hand in hand with the erosion of state legitimacy due to the state’s failure to promote social participation, citizen security, and the rule of law. This generates what could be called “governance voids,” which are inevitably occupied by actors who obey the law of the jungle. Can the so-called new violence be distinguished from the violence of the “traditional order” and that of the authoritarian regimes of the 1960s– 80s? Pereira and Davis observe that contemporary violence in Latin America is different from the historically established patterns of violence in the region. They point at the rise of “citizens-on-citizens violence,” as well as at the blurring of the boundaries between state and society due to

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the confluence of such things as repressive crime fighting, social cleansing, criminal racketeering, and the elimination of political opponents by state, pseudo-state, or nonstate actors.10 In this sense, the notion of new violence is akin to Kaldor’s concept of “new wars.”11 One could try to pinpoint the new violence by noting its increasing variety both in form and in the nature of its perpetrators or its predominantly urban character.12 Newness may also lie in its purpose. As I already observed above, whereas the “old violence” revolved around defending or challenging state power, new violence entails in a way its “democratization” in the sense that a variety of social actors pursues a variety of objectives with coercive strategies and methods. Perhaps the principal dimension of newness is the manifest contrast between the persistence and proliferation of violence and the simultaneous adoption of democracy, inclusive citizenship, and the rule of law as norm and goal in Latin America. Precisely for this reason, the new violence does not aim at conquering state power or changing or defending a regime per se. New violence instead occupies the interstices of the fragile and fragmented formal legal, institutional, and political order. As a tentative definition I suggest that “new violence” is socially or politically organized to wield coercion by evading or undermining the legitimate violence monopoly of formally democratic states. This implies the permanent “uneasy coexistence” of a legal democratic order and new violence in a parallel logic in present-day Latin America. As has also been argued by Pansters in the opening chapter of this volume, this coexistence implies antagonism: armed actors and violence brokers in the “zone of coercion” against peaceful actors in political and civil society, the “zone of hegemony.” But it also implies complementarity: uncivil or violent actors operating in and twisting the domain of (pseudo)legal politics (consider the parapolítica scandal in Colombia, for instance),13 or state agents entering the world of crime and extortion on the crest of extralegal violence and systemic impunity. This complex configuration represents, in fact, a hidden form of state failure: on the surface the institutions and practices of democratic politics, civil society, and the rule of law hold sway; at the core, these very notions are undermined by violence.14

armed actors and violence brokers Following the distinction between old and new violence, the relative importance of different types of armed actors in the region has been shifting over the past two decades.15 The most prominent armed actors during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, namely, the military and guerrilla

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forces, have experienced a relative decline insofar as their active involvement in violence, conflict, and state repression is concerned.16 The democratic transitions and formal peace processes that took place in the Southern Cone, Brazil, the Andean region, and Central America have brought the military back to the barracks (at least, most of the time) and transformed guerrilla forces into political parties or at least former guerrilleros into prominent politicians, generally on the center-left side of the political spectrum. Only a few countries in the post–Cold War period continued to experience guerrilla fighting and counterinsurgent violence, as I discuss below. The armed actors of the new violence are engaged not primarily in political violence but in economic and social violence.17 Gangs The most conspicuous armed actors within the new violence are the criminal gangs, mostly consisting of young males.18 The notorious maras (youth gangs) have recently attracted substantial scholarly, public, and media attention, but this essentially Central American phenomenon has a number of specific characteristics, such as its origins in gang life in metropolitan Los Angeles, the importance of symbolism, and the relatively low intensity of armed violence employed (as gangs go, that is to say).19 Gangs, however, seem to be everywhere, from Buenos Aires in the Southern Cone to Ciudad Juárez on the Mexican-U.S. border. Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Medellín, Caracas, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and Guatemala City are notorious, but gangs also seem to be on the rise in places like Guayaquil, Santo Domingo, and Mexico City. In the Caribbean, notorious gang violence (closely related to political power struggles) is found in Kingston, Jamaica, and Port-au-Prince/Cité Soleil, Haiti.20 Gangs seem to follow a similar overall logic.21 They are organized around criminal economic interests at the local level, mostly drugs and arms trade or even simple petty crime such as theft and mugging. Gangs need to establish territorial and social control in fractured urban spaces which offer them the opportunity to pursue their activities. At the same time and under the same token, gangs profess the desire, or just the discourse, to “protect” the neighborhood. Gangs are therefore highly territorial; they seek “micro-monopolies” of violence and coercion. They use violence against rival gangs, against the police, and against inhabitants of the neighborhood, especially slum residents and their organizations that do not conform to the unspoken, unwritten rules of the game that back up “extralegal law and order” in the slums. Against the background of poor prospects for upward social mobility for young, uneducated males who are part of the urban informal

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underclass, the material and social rewards that come with joining a gang are hard to resist. In the quadrilhas (neighborhood gangs) of the tráfico (drug trade) in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro even the most menial occupation held by an adolescent yields considerably more than the legal minimum wage. For Colombian youngsters, a job in one of the many urban armed groups is as good a career option as anything in the informal sector. Being a gang member also brings important nonmaterial benefits such as power and enhanced status, and sometimes a certain degree of prestige and popularity. Zaluar has drawn attention to the importance of masculinity and the lure of what she calls a “warrior ethos” attracting boys and young men.22 Gangs offer alternative or perverse spaces for social inclusion in the socially and spatially fractured cities of Latin America.23 Gangs are sometimes just a local phenomenon.24 However, they often have links with wider organizations or networks. In the case of the Central American maras, much has been made of the international linkages of the various factions (called clicas). Some observers even heralded the invasion of the American northeast by the Calle 18 and the Salvatrucha (MS 13) gangs.25 In fact, there is as yet little evidence of a real international extension of criminal networks by the maras; rather, they resemble “imagined communities” without a clear structure or purpose.26 In the case of Rio de Janeiro, most gangs are affiliated to still rather loosely articulated criminal networks (the factions or comandos, such as the Red Command, the Third Command, and the Friends of Friends).27 In the case of Colombia and Mexico, they often form (subordinated) parts of broader criminal/political violent organizations such as the present-day narcoparamilitary (Colombia) and the regional drug cartels (Mexico). In the Colombian scenario, gangs have a history of articulating with various parties within the armed conflict such as the drug cartels, the leftist militias, the guerrilla, and the paramilitary. Large Criminal Organizations: Cartels, Factions, and Mafias Organized and violent crime syndicates have a long history in Latin America, but in only a few cases do they appear as open perpetrators of economic and social violence, or as pseudo-political violence brokers that seek to pressure the state. In the routine of everyday mafia business, violence is one of the resources to back up criminal transactions, to ensure loyalty of employees, and to secure control over crucial logistical chains and territorial corridors of production and trade.28 Under “normal” circumstances, widespread open violence is avoided because it may hinder the flow of business and the secrecy and trust preferred by the big capos.

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In Latin America, large criminal organizations have appeared mainly in the field of drug-trafficking and related activities such as arms trade, money-laundering, and corruption and bribery. The rise during the 1980s of the Colombian Medellín cartel, led by Pablo Escobar, signified a break with the usual covert and secretive modus operandi of the mafias. Escobar, of lower middle-class origins, started his career as an ordinary drug runner in the 1970s.29 During the heydays of his cocaine empire, Escobar strived for social and political recognition: he developed extensive clientelistic networks in the poorer districts of Medellín, contributed lavishly to collective consumption, and even tried his luck as a substitute senator in the Colombian congress. Soon, however, the Colombian state began to exert pressure on Escobar and his cartel. This was the direct motive for the escalation of violence by the cartel that had as its main objective to coerce the government toward accepting the prerogatives and freedom of operation of the cartel, and especially to prevent extradition to the United States. This terror campaign inspired widespread fear in Colombian society, culminating in the blowing up of an Avianca airliner in 1989. The days of narcoterrorism in Colombia ended with the manhunt for Escobar and his violent death in December 1993.30 More recent cases of large criminal organizations have returned to the conventional hidden use of “persuasive violence” as part of the political economy of the drug trade. The successor of the Medellín cartel in Colombia, the Cali cartel, led by the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, was known much more for its covert, businesslike, and politically oriented strategies (until the cartel was dismantled and the brothers arrested in the mid1990s). These strategies were always backed up by violence, especially when the Cali cartel waged war against Pablo Escobar during the twilight years of the Medellín cartel. Since then, the Colombian drug trade has fragmented into several hundred minicartels (cartelitos). In Medellín these are known as oficinas (offices) that acquired notoriety due to their connections to sicario (paid assassin) groups and local gangs (an established pattern) as well as to paramilitary organizations (a novelty). The comandos in Rio de Janeiro are too loosely articulated to pursue any concerted, large-scale, violent operation. Most of their founding leaders are dead or in prison serving long-term sentences. However, often they manage to continue directing their affairs from prison; in the same vein, internecine warfare among the city’s gangs usually follows the fault lines of factional divisions. At the same time, rumors have it that the top cats of drug-trafficking in Brazil operate mostly in covert ways; hardly any systematic knowledge about their whereabouts and connections is available.31 In São Paulo, only one dominant faction exists: the PCC (Primeiro

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Comando da Capital—First Command of the Capital). In May 2006, its leaders managed to unleash a wave of violence in reaction to the announced transfer of some of its imprisoned leaders to a maximum security facility. During an entire week, the population of Brazil’s largest city was shocked by the capacity of the PCC to mount attacks on police stations, public offices, and buses. This escalation was a temporary break, however, with the normal procedures of the PCC that consisted of controlling poor neighborhoods in the city through affiliated local drug gangs.32 The Brazilian comandos benefit from hidden connections with state agents and politicians.33 A similar situation existed in Mexico at least until the early 1990s but arguably until today. I come back to this topic below. Police Latin American police forces have a worrisome reputation. One side of the problem is that many Latin American police forces are neglectful, incompetent, or ineffective. Often, entire forces, significant segments, or individual officers act in arbitrary and violent ways. The other side of the problem is that there are very few political incentives for good police performance and conduct. Although the majority of Latin American citizens and a good many governments subscribe to the necessity of good policing as an essential part of democratic law enforcement, efforts to improve or reform police forces over the past two decades have largely been unsuccessful.34 There are three interlocking reasons for this. In the first place, police violence is driven by mano dura or “zero tolerance” approaches of local or national governments. Secondly, police violence is embedded in the internal corporate structure and culture of the force, with a militaristic approach to law enforcement and with a view of criminals in particular and the urban poor in general as “social enemies,” not entitled to the rule of law or to human rights. Finally, police violence very often serves extralegal and criminal purposes as a backup to police cutting into profits of criminal armed actors through extortion or by carving out their own niches in the drug and arms trade. Recent studies of police reform efforts bring these fault lines to the fore. Glebbeek shows the limited achievements of the police reform in Guatemala following the peace agreements of 1996. The newly formed Policia Nacional Civil (PNC) replaced the Policia Nacional, a discredited force heavily implicated in the repression and violence of the previous three decades. The setup of the new PNC was done in very little time, at the cost of proper selection and training methods of new officers. In the field, the performance of the PNC soon fell short of the initial expecta-

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tions, despite solid financial and technical support from European donors. The new police force suffered from inaction and corruption as it was caught between human rights and citizen security agendas pushed by NGOs and the endemic fragility of the postconflict Guatemalan state.35 Hussain examined the human rights track record of the two police forces of Rio de Janeiro. Both the military and civil police forces have become notorious, not just because of incompetence or corruption, but because of systematic abuse of lethal force and structural involvement in criminal activities. With its roots in police involvement in state repression during the period of military rule (1964–85), it has been thoroughly boosted by the perverse dynamics of drug-trafficking and gang violence that dominate many of the city’s more than one thousand favelas. The problem has little to do with lacking awareness or know-how within the police forces themselves, or with a shortage of public attention. Nevertheless, efforts to improve policing in the city, such as modernized civil police stations or community policing projects of the military police, have been only partially successful or not sustained long enough. The principal reason appears to be political volatility in a city where most victims of police violence—the poor and black inhabitants of the favelas—are seen by many as at best second-class citizens.36 Vigilantes and “Protective” Militias Recent developments regarding violence and insecurity in Rio de Janeiro have brought to light another conspicuous and particularly worrisome feature of urban violence in Latin America: the privatization and criminalization of local security provision. I refer to the rise of so-called militias in a growing number of favelas. In its most benign form, the privatization of security by nonstate armed actors and violence brokers takes the shape of lightly armed neighborhood watches such as the serenazgos (patrols) in Lima.37 When they take the law into their own hands, as violent vigilantes, they contribute to the erosion of legitimate law enforcement and impose a de facto death penalty on the streets. These actions often take the form of social cleansing carried out by death squads. In Brazil, so-called justiceiros (vigilantes) have become notorious for persecuting and killing small-time offenders and petty criminals.38 These forms of vigilantism are often carried out by offduty or retired police officers who seek to add to their meager wages or pensions. Their fees are paid by local citizens, small entrepreneurs, or larger companies in the private sector. Affluent citizens and the business sector rely heavily on private security firms, some legal and regulated, most not. Very little research has so

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far been done on this branch in Latin America.39 The main problems related to these violence brokers have to do with the absence or limited effectiveness of legal regulation and oversight, resulting in the fragmentation of law enforcement, especially in the urban domain. The militias of Rio de Janeiro represent a further evolution of the privatization of security by transforming security itself into the stated objective of criminal violence and coercion. These groups are also called “paramilitary” because of their close ties with the military police and para-police units such as the fire department (part of the military police). The militias consist of seasoned (former) law enforcers who are organized to expel drug gangs from favelas.40 In doing so, they attempt to take over control, officially to restore security in the neighborhood but in practice to set up their own range of illegal activities. These activities are typical “rackets” of extortion or monopolized sale of goods and services. They include, besides protection, the sale of gas bottles, the distribution of (illegally tapped) cable television connections, and the control of local means of transportation such as vans and motorcycle taxis. The militias profess to fight the criminal violence of the drug gangs, but they employ the same violence to force their way into communities and to keep control over their “economic interests.” Those suspected of ties with the drug trade are dealt with in a swift and ruthless way. Until recently, the militias enjoyed a certain amount of institutional and political support. Police units cooperated with militias in certain areas, important local politicians praised the “patriotic” efforts of restoring security, and a few deputies in Rio de Janeiro’s state legislature allegedly had ties with militia organizations. However, after militia violence in the favela Batan against undercover reporters of the local newspaper O Dia in 2008, the state legislature started an official inquiry to unveil the nature and scope of the militia phenomenon. Following the publication of the inquiry, authorities started to denounce the militias while public opinion turned against them.41 The “paramilitary” forces of Rio de Janeiro bear certain similarities to their Colombian counterparts. Paramilitary units entered Colombia’s second largest city, Medellín, in the late 1990s to engage in what was already a protracted and complex scenario of urban violence.42 These units also claimed to restore order and security, especially against leftist militias and units of the FARC and ELN guerrillas in the comunas (slums) of the city’s periphery. There are two main points of difference, however, between the paramilitary forces of Medellín and Rio de Janeiro. The former are linked to broader paramilitary structures that were active in the Colombian armed conflict, at least until their formal demobilization in 2004–6. In addition, the paramilitary organization that eventually came

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to dominate large parts of Medellín’s comunas between 2002 and 2004, the Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN), did not expel either the drug trade or the local gangs, as was the case in Rio. BCN leaders were actively involved in the drug trade themselves, and local gangs were incorporated as “auxiliary forces” in their overall strategy of territorial control. What Rio de Janeiro and Medellín have in common is the tenacity of the paramilitary phenomenon that seems to defy efforts to disband them, either through a renewed strategy of police presence in favelas in Rio de Janeiro (operative since early 2009) or through negotiated disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) in Medellín. Both cities show, possibly as extreme case examples, the permanent nature of the fragmentation, privatization, and criminalization of armed actors in Latin America.

framing new violence in latin america The convergence of armed actors and the blurring of violence scenarios in concrete situations should not deter us from an effort to categorize present-day violence in Latin America. I will propose and briefly discuss three scenarios of violence, all set in formally democratic regimes: open armed conflict and counterinsurgency; arbitrary or repressive state and parastate violence; and urban and criminal violence. These types or “frames” are distinguished not only on the basis of the nature of the violence and the armed actors involved but also on the basis of their political rationale or impact. Guerrillas and Counterinsurgency in Democratic States At first sight, this scenario seems to be a “handover” or “leftover” of the old political-ideological violence during the cycle of authoritarian state repression and revolutionary insurgency of the 1960s–80s. Since the 1980s, formally democratic governments have been facing armed insurgency in three countries: Colombia, Peru, and Mexico. However, these three examples either have never been a typical authoritarian regime against which the guerrillas rose to arms (Colombia) or were confronted with armed rebellion during or after democratic transitions (Peru, Mexico). More importantly, the Colombian and Peruvian conflicts seem to have lost most (if not all) of their original political raison d’être. The 1994 Zapatista uprising in Mexico never really evolved in a prolonged armed struggle but quickly entered the arenas of (identity) politics in an effort to change the parameters of democratization. I discuss this case in a later section of this chapter.

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After it revitalized in the 1990s, the prolonged conflict in Colombia acquired some of the characteristics of Kaldor’s new wars: proliferation of irregular armed actors (as discussed in the previous section); the rise of economic, criminal, and territorial interests; the erosion of the initial political-ideological agenda; and the spread of violence and fear as endemic features of sociability and everyday life.43 Since 2002, the government of Álvaro Uribe has intensified the counterinsurgency offensive with the explicit aim to inflict military defeat to the FARC. This offensive has brought considerable financial and human costs, without guaranteeing the eventual collapse of the guerrilla forces. Simultaneous peace initiatives to demobilize the right-wing paramilitary have been controversial and at best partially successful. Several thousand former paramilitary have joined new armed groups that are even more closely linked to the drug trade and to violent crime than their predecessors were. In contrast, the Peruvian internal conflict between the state and the Shining Path guerrillas that started in 1980 was closest to the kind of political-ideological confrontations of the earlier period.44 Shining Path’s stated aim was to conquer the Peruvian state with the classical Maoist strategy of the “prolonged people’s war.” The Peruvian state responded in kind to the brutal acts of violence by militarizing large parts of the country and by unleashing a violent counterinsurgency against the guerrillas and the rural communities under their control. A notable element of the Peruvian conflict was the emergence of rural self-defense militias that explicitly rejected the guerrillas and eventually cooperated closely with the military.45 The Peruvian conflict faded away during the late 1990s when the state proclaimed a decisive victory. After the downfall of the Fujimori regime (the self-professed victor), a state-led process of truth and reconciliation was set up in an effort to bring the cycle of violence and the related political decomposition to a close. Nevertheless, some regions in Peru, such as the Upper Huallaga valley, have witnessed repeated cycles of violence despite the national postconflict agenda of reconciliation and reconstruction.46 Some of the characteristics of recent violence in the Upper Huallaga valley resemble the situation in Colombia: a mixture of drugrelated crime, radicalized social protest, petty crime, and vigilantism, against the backdrop of a state that gives priority to the repressive eradication of  coca plantations and the apparent reappearance of second- or thirdgeneration cells of Shining Path.47 Peru and Colombia show the problems that democratic regimes have in dealing with prolonged armed conflict. In facing the intertwining of drugs, crime, and politics, they have to address the trade-off between military confrontation and political negotiation. They are challenged by a complex set of questions of peace and justice: observing human rights standards within counterinsurgency warfare; meting out justice to perpe-

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trators and reparation to victims; and coming to terms with truth, memory, and reconciliation. Especially the latter are long-term issues that will continue to affect coming generations. In the short term, armed rebellion and counterinsurgency warfare are bound to erode the quality of democracy, as became clear with Fujimori in Peru (1990–2000) and the controversial political project of Uribe in Colombia.48 State and Parastate Violence in Illiberal Democracies This scenario may be considered as a clearer and more direct leftover from the recent authoritarian past. It entails formal democracies that preserve authoritarian and repressive reflexes against opponents from political and civil society. As a rule, these illiberal democracies build upon a legacy of authoritarianism and political militarism.49 Neopopulism and delegative democracy underscore a political regime that, albeit electoral, stresses the direct mandate of executive leadership and weakens accountability.50 In addition, illiberal states show many signs of institutional fragility that range from a weak capacity for peaceful incorporation of civic and political opposition to a failure to check “uncivil,” that is to say, coercive, repressive, and violent, actions within state institutions against political opponents and social outcasts alike. Endemic police violence, drawing on a long tradition of militarization of law enforcement and the denial of civil rights, and an established tradition of impunity add to this in creating “ugly” democracies, “democracies without citizenship,” with substantial “brown areas” where legitimate rule of law is absent.51 A number of postauthoritarian states have shown elements of this type, notably Peru and Argentina during the 1990s, but Guatemala comes closest to this scenario. Guatemala was the scene of the most brutal episode of state terrorism in recent Latin American history.52 Between 1978 and 1983, the consecutive military regimes of Lucas García and Rios Montt presided over massive, genocidal violence unleashed to defeat the guerrilla but mainly directed at rural indigenous communities. After 1983, gradual redemocratization paved the way for a process, hesitant at first, of peace negotiations between the government and the united guerrilla organizations that resulted in a comprehensive agreement in December 1996.53 But despite the return to electoral politics and the formulation of an ambitious reform agenda to deal with the many economic, social, cultural, and institutional problems (seen by many as the root causes of the 1960– 96 armed conflict), violence in Guatemala did not disappear. It did lose, however, its open political face and became more hidden. In the process, postauthoritarian political violence increasingly mixed with typical forms of new violence such as gang violence, organized crime, vigilantism, and police brutality.54

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Two key elements converge in the Guatemalan case. First, despite democratization, the military, supported by certain elites and hidden violent actors (intelligence service, paramilitary groups, death squads), preserved considerable backstage or tutelary power. This power was backed up by the right-wing party Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG), led by former junta leader Rios Montt. The outcome was a series of violent acts against political opponents, civil society, and church leaders and labor and human rights activists. Second, criminal violence increased rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s. Like neighboring El Salvador and Honduras, Guatemala became the scene of violent mara gangs in poor neighborhoods of Guatemala City and other urban areas. Also elsewhere in the country, fear of crime and a sense of insecurity augmented, giving rise to growing support for mano dura law enforcement policies and frequent outbursts of “popular justice” such as lynchings.55 The new PNC was unable to face the increase of crime and insecurity.56 Such is the distrust of the police among citizens that assaults on police stations—to vent anger or to bring out prisoners for lynching—is not uncommon, especially in rural areas and small towns. Urban and Criminal Violence As I noted above, a particular element of growing importance and concern is the expansion of urban violence in Latin America. Latin American cities comprise social-territorial spaces where formal or effective governance is by and large absent.57 In concrete terms this means that there is no effective presence of state power and public institutions in parts of cities that are seen as poor or marginal. In these spaces, an uncivil logic of coercion takes over and these zones become veritable urban battlegrounds, synonymous with violence and insecurity. The rise of organized crime and territorial gangs in the cities, in combination with violent responses by state security forces, has developed into the most salient manifestation of the new violence. Recent scholarship has moved beyond the superficial equation of poverty, marginality, and violence to unravel the connections between deprivation, exclusion, and contending forms of local-level power and control.58 The new patterns of urban violence in Latin America derive from three interlocked developments. First, the structures and social impact of poverty and exclusion block avenues toward decent livelihoods and social status, especially for youths, and lead to the ever-expanding domain of informality with its own laws of survival. Second, the fragmentation of the state means that considerable parts of the large urban agglomerations are bereft of effective state presence with respect to citizen security

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and law enforcement.59 Often, the presence of the state is fragmented, selective, and perverted, limited to the arbitrary and repressive violence of police crime-fighting tactics or the co-optation of criminal groups by politicians. As a result, the legitimate use of collective means of violence is disputed by a number of irregular armed actors or has collapsed altogether. Third, we see the ordering and integrating functions of extralegal violence and coercion. Armed actors are not merely criminal groups; they reshape peripheral urban communities to impose order and to offer alternative channels for social integration.60 Most armed actors and violence brokers play out their roles in this third scenario of violence in Latin America. The case of Rio de Janeiro has been analyzed by many scholars as typical of this scenario.61 The key ingredients are the rise of criminal organizational structures, the advent of the cocaine trade and consumption, the transformation of favelas into battlefields of socio-territorial rivalry and control, and finally the failure of policing as a strategy for citizen security. In this “undeclared” urban war, gangs, police, and militias confront each other in often rampant outbursts of violence; the resident population is victimized in a typical case of being “between a rock and a hard place.” Urban violence has perverse political consequences at the local, national, and transnational levels. At the local level, it erodes neighborhood civil and associational life and it obstructs or captures pro-poor urban governance. At the national level, it provokes zero tolerance policies of public security that do little or nothing to take out the real causes of urban violence and harm the security interests of the cities’ most vulnerable inhabitants. Transnationally, especially after 9/11, urban violence is increasingly seen as contributing to state failure, terrorism, and global instability.62 After September 2001, new security approaches within the Pentagon and elsewhere have focused on new urban theaters of asymmetric warfare.63 A convergence of the violence of urban armed actors, mano dura national governments, and the new international warriors against global terrorism spells danger for the Latin American and indeed the world’s poor who, in fact, will mostly be living in urban slums in the twenty-first century. In Brazil, urban drug gangs have already been compared to terrorists. In Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the maras have been identified as the “number one” threat to national and regional security, resulting in “super mano dura” anticrime legislation. These discourses contribute to the rapid militarization of law enforcement strategies throughout the region and to the further erosion of the limits for arbitrary and repressive policing.64 As always happens with typologies of this kind, the complex reality of contemporary violence in Latin America often blurs these scenarios in

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specific national or local cases. I have already mentioned the increasingly complex, “degenerated” violence scenario of Colombia, where armed rebellion, counterinsurgency, and urban and criminal violence are in many ways intertwined. Guatemala is a clear example of the convergence of illiberal (para)state violence and criminal violence. Even Rio de Janeiro, postcard emblem of the “success democracy” Brazil, invokes images of urban warfare, to the extent that its elite military police squad, the Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE), sees itself as the “best counterinsurgency force” in the world, “not trained to deal with citizens or to control offenders, but to invade enemy territory.”65 Even the International Red Cross now considers deploying its humanitarian activities in the favelas of the Cidade Maravilhosa.66

the end of exceptionality? mexico and latin american violence A key assertion of this book is that in many ways violence has become part and parcel of present-day social life in Mexico. Implicitly or explicitly, this is noted as a recent phenomenon and, as demonstrated by Pansters in the opening chapter of this volume, something that has been ignored too long by mainstream mexicanista scholarship. In this section, I look at contemporary violence in Mexico from a comparative perspective, using the notions of violence scenarios and armed actors proposed above. In doing so, I refer to previous chapters in this book. The Case for Exceptionality: Does It Stick? Why has Mexico for so long been seen as an exceptional case in terms of political and social violence? Until the late 1980s, the principal reason was the half century of political stability during which Mexico avoided military dictatorship and protracted internal armed conflict. In other words, two of the major components of “old” politico-ideological violence were missing. As a result, until the late 1980s the country was often seen as one of the more successful cases of state formation in Latin America. The ingredients for this are well known and have been canonized by mexicanista scholarship.67 They include the establishment of a hegemonic postrevolutionary “state party” that oversaw a complex hierarchical yet inclusionary corporatist edifice tying key organized social and political interests to the priísta state. Of particular importance was the incorporation of the military who abided, at least at the level of national politics, to the rule of civilian political elites. The incorporation of

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business, labor, and the peasantry in the system prevented macro-political challenges to the dominant party rule. Although by no means democratic in a conventional, liberal sense, the regime was able to manage a powerful discourse of legitimacy not only based on redistributive mechanisms but also fueled by powerful nationalist revolutionary symbolism that explicitly addressed the popular masses. Still, the PRI regime was authoritarian. Cardoso branded it a civil variety of O’Donnell’s bureaucratic authoritarianism, but this label underestimated the importance of corporatist inclusion, mobilizational symbolism, and the functioning of informal mechanisms of personalism and clientelism to grease the cogwheels of power and interest mediation.68 This clearly contributed to the apparent absence of systemic state and counterstate violence. Nevertheless, beneath this veil a complex pattern of regionalized and localized violence appeared throughout the entire postrevolutionary period.69 As Chapter 4 by Gillingham and Chapter 8 by Aguila and Bortz in this book have shown, violence was instrumental in controlling peasants, industrial workers, and local and regional political interests. Armed bands, gunmen, and informal militias, often armed by the state, pursued their own various interests but did this as part of a broader process of imposition and consolidation of power of the postrevolutionary state. Throughout the postrevolutionary period, the army and the police were also deployed to wield coercion against political opponents and social movements. Chapter 3 by Davis emphasizes the “political policing” of the official security forces that defied repeated attempts at control and reform by administrations more sensitive to popular sentiment. Repression reached its (symbolic) culmination point in October 1968 when the security forces massacred protesting students in Mexico City. In the 1960s, localized rural guerrillas in several states were dealt with through low-key and largely effective counterinsurgency campaigns. It is significant to note, as does Gillingham in Chapter 4 in this volume, that these manifestations of political violence were persistent between the 1920s and 1980s, and not just a temporary result of instability and fragility between the waning of revolutionary struggles around 1920 and the consolidation of the PRI state during the 1930s.70 After the 1950s, informal armed actors tended to be replaced by actions of the official security forces. This was an important reason, alongside the lack of effective political pluralism expressed through election-driven changes of government control, to characterize the priísta state as authoritarian. The exceptionality of Mexico prior to the 1980s therefore does not reside in the absence of political violence per se, or, for that matter, in the hidden nature of this violence. It has to do with the ability of the frontstage regime to continue to lay claims on legitimacy, on its inclusionary

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and national-popular quality, and on its institutional stability despite the endemic presence of political violence in its backstage corridors. Framing Violence in Mexico Since the start of the protracted breakdown of PRI hegemony in the 1980s, violence has not only surfaced more emphatically but also assumed a series of novel characteristics. Do these novelties fit the pattern of what I have called the “new” violence in Latin America? There is little doubt that nowadays public opinion and observers alike rank Mexico among the most violent countries of Latin America. As elsewhere in the region, these perceptions of increasing violence and insecurity coincide with a process of political transition.71 This transition does not only entail the breakdown of the PRI’s hold on power, and the emergence of a more pluralist and competitive arena of politics and elections. The transition also means a revaluation of the constitutional foundations of democracy and the enshrinement of human rights, citizenship, and accountable governance as normative guidelines for political actors, state institutions, and public policies. If this is indeed the current normative agenda in Mexico, does the apparent rise of violence then create similar paradoxes as elsewhere in Latin America? Let us look at the three scenarios of violence suggested earlier: “democratic” counterinsurgency; “illiberalism,” that is to say, the use of extralegal and often informal violence for political purposes; and urban and criminal violence. As far as counterinsurgency violence is concerned, the key case is of course the uprising of the armed rebellion of the EZLN in January 1994 and its aftermath. During the first weeks after the start of the uprising there was heavy fighting. But then a new pattern emerged in which the Zapatistas and the government explored hesitantly the possibilities for negotiation and dialogue. Although occasional bouts of state violence repeated themselves, as with the 1997 Acteal massacre that saw the involvement of extralegal paramilitary, the Zapatistas essentially became a social and political movement. It questioned the elitist and exclusionary nature of Mexican democracy, accusing it of betraying the popular revolution of 1910–17. At the same time, the EZLN tapped into the rising tide of identity politics establishing itself as a neoindigenous movement, embarking on local experiments in autonomy, communal resistance, and participatory governance.72 As a result, Colombian- or Peruvian-style proliferation of protracted violence has been avoided, not to mention the genocidal strategy of the Guatemalan army. Still, indigenous communities, among others, experienced “illiberal” forms of violence, as demonstrated by Gledhill in Chapter 10 of this

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volume. This violence can be seen as leftovers and handovers of the backstage violence during authoritarianism. Pretransition patterns by and large continued: violence as an instrument at the back stage of politics and state control. Possible exceptions to this pattern were the front-stage but singular assassinations of PRI kingpins Colosio and Ruiz Massieu in 1994, which most likely reflected the deepening fault lines of PRI power. Repression of social movements, the settlement of electoral outcomes, or the control of indigenous communities continued to be part and parcel of articulating the state with local power structures. Examples provided in Chapter 10 by Gledhill and Chapter 9 by Powell show that certain new elements came into play, however. In the case of indigenous communities, this was the discourse of multiculturalism that could underscore existing communal hierarchies and tie them to the state; in the case of local electoral politics, moving toward greater competitiveness, different parties resorted to fraud, manipulation, and cultural violence (meaning the stigmatization of leftist, popular, and indigenous actors as unruly and uncivil). New also is the greater attention to and denunciation of such affairs by national and international publics, and the sense of fragility of the democratic consolidation resulting from this. Mexico has come closer to the mainstream pattern of illiberalism in posttransition Latin America, but nowhere near the democratic decomposition of Peru under Fujimori (1990–2000) or the structural fragility of the democratic regime in Guatemala. Recent suggestions of Mexico being a fragile or even failed state are widely off the mark. Indeed, the main thrust of recent violence and insecurity in Mexico appears to be (urban) criminal and social violence, without an apparent political motivation. In other words, this is the quintessential new violence as suggested in this chapter, in which Mexico arguably has acquired a leading position in the course of the past decade and a half. In terms of its international reputation, Mexico even has surpassed Colombia as the paradigm of drug-related criminal violence that has gone out of control. Several chapters in this book have documented the contours of this new reputation. In Chapter 3, Davis analyzes the long-term and structural weaknesses of the police, at least from the vantage point of the Weberian state and of democratic policing as a key priority of transitional democracies. These problems have deepened precisely since democratic transition weakened central political control over the police forces (that are labyrinthic in Mexico to start with) and made the police part of political competition, policy shifts, and institutional infighting.73 In his case study in Chapter 7 of the San Juan de Dios market in Guadalajara, Aguiar shows that police forces are prone to arbitrary violence, corruption, and criminal involvement through so-called madrinas (godmothers) that broker

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between state and illegal networks. In Chapter 10, Gledhill documents the intrusion of drug-related violence into indigenous communities, whereas in Chapter 2 Shirk points at the upsurge of violence along the Mexican-U.S. border. He links this to the transformations brought about by neoliberalism in general, such as increasing social inequality and disruption, the flow of people across the border, and the expansion of trade in illegal commodities, more specifically the rise of the notorious Mexican cartels as key agents of the contemporary Mexican violence. Part of this violence is localized, and indeed markedly urban. Ciudad Juárez, for instance, has in recent years become the new paradigm of a “city of fear” in Latin America. Growing homicide rates, gang turf wars, clashes between the cartels and their armed henchmen, and of course the infamous femicide have placed the border city high in the ranking of violent cities. It therefore appears that core elements of the new (urban) social and criminal violence common to Latin America have made their appearance in Mexico as well. Pansters and Castillo Berthier have examined the issue in detail for the case of the metropolitan area of Mexico City, where since the early 1990s popular perception of insecurity has been on the rise, feeding into an intense public debate.74 Most ingredients of Latin American urban violence are present in Mexico City as well, but petty crime predominates. Gang and police violence, although growing, did not reach the levels of that in Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, or Caracas.75 Pansters and Castillo Berthier therefore note that it is necessary to look at violence and insecurity both as “facts” and as “phantoms.”76 However, the focus of the most prominent element of Mexican violence, that is, drug-related violence, can be found elsewhere in the country, especially the northern states. Does Mexican drug violence fit into the frame of overall urban criminal violence in Latin America?

violent crime, cartel warfare, and militarization: mexico as a fourth scenario of new violence This final section suggests that the violence unleashed by drug-trafficking has evolved beyond the recent Latin American pattern of localized violence with a specific urban focus. I argue that cartel violence in Mexico has grown into a novel fourth scenario of new violence. In this scenario, certain elements of counterinsurgency, illiberal state violence, and urban crime converge, but at the same time a quantum leap has been made with respect to the magnitude, the nature, the logic, and the impact of cartel warfare.77

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Knight’s Chapter 5 examines the key economic, political, and sociocultural mechanisms. Economic factors were the expansion of cocaine trade due to ever-rising demand from the United States and the elimination of competing routes hitherto dominated by the Colombians. Hence the stakes were raised and resources available to drug-trafficking organizations increased. Cartels started to operate on wider scales and acquired a clear sense of territoriality (plaza) that had to be defended. Therefore the cartels built up their own violence capacity, mostly in the form of hit squads and militias, of which the infamous Los Zetas formed by the Gulf cartel are the best-known example. Changing political conditions were brought about by the end of PRI rule and the collapse of the so-called elite exploitation model of central state extortion, protection, and control of the narco organizations. Increased political competition raised the demand for extralegal money supporting politicians. Increasing decentralization of political power opened regional and local states to narco interference, as did the fragmentation of the official security forces. Social and cultural mechanisms came from the demise of corporatist redistribution and the neoliberalization of the public domain. This opened spaces for new actors to dispute social legitimacy through redistribution and the performance of certain public functions. The cartels and their leadership were one example of such actors. Knight observes that “hence, narco power and violence must be seen, in part, as a function of state failure, as narco bosses evaded—or even supplanted—the impaired authority of the state.”78 In popular culture and imaginary, the narcos appear as social bandits, or rather as social patrons and national entrepreneurial champions, as well as icons of virtuous Mexican machismo. In addition, Serrano argues that the emergence of cocaine as a new transit commodity, the rise of new and more competitive and violent criminal organizations, and the rising costs of state protection have pushed Mexican cartels into more open violent struggle, and even into open warfare against the state and among themselves. At the same time, the Fox administration stepped up the militarization of the counternarcotic strategy. Serrano shows that this has produced not only a stronger presence of the military in domestic security affairs (contrary to its historical role) but also its enhancement in terms of institutional prerogatives and authority. This has created adverse conditions for civil and political liberties and human rights across the country. It is interesting to look at the nature of cartel violence and its implications for the role of the state. First is the apparent discrepancy between the actual magnitude of cartel violence and its visibility. Although growing, the magnitude of violence in Mexico, in terms of homicide rates and absolute numbers of victims, is still limited compared to that in countries

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such as Colombia, El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Brazil.79 The visibility and impact of that violence, however, are very high (in part because of its concentration in specific regions). Indeed, the performance or theatrical quality of drug violence in Mexico stands out: confrontations in public places, gruesome assassinations, et cetera. The spectacular visibility has contributed to the intensification of anxiety and debate on narco violence in Mexico. The second apparent contradiction can be found in the pattern of confrontations: the cartels fight each other and fight the state, but at the same time they make use of alliances that include parts of the official security forces, especially state police. While the cartels pressure the Mexican state, they also seek to reconfigure their once-symbiotic relationships with the state, in the context of political transformations and shifting state strategies of combating drug-trafficking and organized crime. The latter are pushed by growing public demands for security and rule of law, and by international (read U.S.) pressure to vigorously deal with the drug trade and to view the cartels as a “clear and manifest” (national) security threat. This has undoubtedly contributed to President Felipe Calderón’s decision to further militarize the antidrug strategy of the Mexican state, a decision also rooted in the president’s search for legitimacy and authority after his intensely disputed election in 2006. Various authors in this book have warned against the expectations that the military can actually achieve anything against the cartels and the drug trade as such. At the same time, there are the risks of military corruption and involvement in the business (which have historical antecedents) and the (already manifest) threats to human rights. Surely, military deployment also has its theatrical aspects, sending the message that the state is cleaning up its security act with a forceful and, by implication, effective approach. In the long run (see Serrano’s Chapter 6 in this volume) this may lead to a more marked role of the military in domestic politics, a trend that would run against the logic and expectations of regional democratic transitions during the past three decades. The distinctive characteristics of the Mexican violence scenario are exemplified by recent developments in the state of Michoacán and, more specifically, by the spectacular rise of the puzzling La Familia organization. The immediate background for Michoacán’s prominent role in today’s drug war and violence is the relationships between established agribusiness elites, international migrant networks to the United States, and narco entrepreneurs that consolidated during the 1980s and 1990s, when licit agricultural investments and employment opportunities were negatively affected by neoliberal adjustment policies. This coincided with political transforma-

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tions that turned the state into a stronghold of center-left oppositional politics and hence into an early object of political policing, militarization, and coercion. Moreover, with the emergence of the Pacific route of cocaine transshipment from the Andean region to the United States, controlling Michoacán’s strategic geography became worth fighting for. At the end of the 1990s, regional narcos formed the Milenio cartel, while rivaling drug-trafficking organizations from other parts of Mexico increasingly coveted the plazas of Michoacán.80 As a result, intercartel confrontations started to engulf Michoacán. The attempts of the Gulf cartel and its paramilitary branch (the Zetas) to control the Pacific corridor brought large-scale drug warfare to Michoacán. In response, a new group emerged that called itself La Familia Michoacana and claimed to defend the state against foreign intruders, both drug-trafficking organizations and federal law enforcement forces. Michoacán also became the first operational theater of President Calderón’s new militarized antinarcotic strategy. La Familia defends its turf violently, and has played its role in the employment of spectacular and gruesome violence, all under the banner of a syncretic ideology drawn from deeply rooted Catholic and regionalist identities. La Familia Michoacana became a crime syndicate with interests in cocaine, synthetic drugs, and extortion. But it also displays the capacity for social mobilization and media strategies directed against the Zetas and/or federal security forces. Politically it has encroached upon state institutions and established its own forms of “law and order.”81 Indicators abound that La Familia controls a considerable part of local officialdom and law enforcement. The intensification of the federal offensive against drugtrafficking in Michoacán has prompted La Familia to use offensive attacks on the army and federal police. To conclude, it may be possible to consider the cartel-cum-stateviolence in present-day Mexico as a fourth scenario of new violence in Latin America: low-intensity warfare involving organized criminal, extralegal, and official armed actors driven by a political economic rationale, involving institutions and geographical spaces for the sake of logistical and territorial control, and with a high content of symbolism, to send messages of prowess and fear to conquer the popular imaginary. This violence scenario has had some antecedents in Colombia in the 1980s, although the Medellín cartel’s violence was basically terrorist (and short lived) while the Cali cartel chose an entrepreneurial and political strategy. Both cartels have been effectively dismantled by the state. The Mexican scenario may yet find emulators in the region, particularly in Guatemala, although the fragility of the Guatemalan state and its security forces may make it more likely that a full-fledged narco state will be installed as a consequence

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of yet another rerouting of the cocaine trade. For the time being, this scenario of cartel violence once again may have created a state of exceptionality for Mexico, this time not as a rare regional paradigm of nonviolent front-stage legitimacy and institutional stability but as a trailblazer of Latin American violence of the twenty-first century.

Notes

chapter one I appreciate the useful comments on earlier drafts of this chapter by Henk van Rinsum and Kees Koonings. 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (London, 1999), 56. 2. Arthur Schmidt, “Making It Real Compared to What? Reconceptualizing Mexican History Since 1940,” in Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubinstein, and Eric Zolov (eds.), Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham, 2001), 24. 3. La Jornada, July 13, 2006; July 14, 2006; and July 5, 2006. 4. Ibid., July 25, 2006. The first spectacular decapitations occurred in September 2006 but their numbers increased considerably during 2008 and 2009. 5. Ibid., September 6, 2006; September 7, 2006. 6. See Amnesty International, “Mexico: Oaxaca—Clamour for Justice,” accessed January 15, 2009, available at www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR41/ 031/2007/en. 7. La Jornada, March 15, 2008. 8. Ibid., May 5, 2008. For the link to the Digna Ochoa case, see Linda Diebel, Betrayed: The Assassination of Digna Ochoa (New York, 2007), 379–81. Later it turned out that Alva Álvarez had survived the attack and escaped. 9. For the first year, see La Jornada, April 12, 2007, citing information from the Procuraduría General de la República (PGR). The number for 2009 is from El Universal, December 31, 2009, available at www.eluniversal.com.mx. The information on the remaining years comes from Trans-Border Institute, Justice in Mexico: News Report December 2008 (San Diego: USD), 2, available at www .justiceinmexico.org. Other sources speak of even higher numbers. For example, a recent report from the Mexican Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH) has considerably higher numbers for each of the years mentioned here, adding up to over 17,000 executions between 2001 and 2008, with the last three years alone at 10,500 killings. See Segundo Informe Especial de la CNDH sobre el Ejercicio Efectivo del Derecho Fundamental a la Seguridad Pública en Nuestro País, accessed December 18, 2008, available at www.cndh.org.mx?lacndh /informes/espec/2infSegPublica08.

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10. The figures were made public by the attorney general’s office. Trans-Border Institute, Justice in Mexico, December 2010 News Report, 2, accessed December 31, 2010, available at www.justiceinmexico.org. 11. Coordinación Alemana por los Derechos Humanos en México, Violaciones de derechos humanos en los estados de Chiapas, Oaxaca y Guerrero (Stuttgart, 2009), available at www.mexiko-koordination.de. James F. Rochlin calls Guerrero the most “Colombianized” state in the Mexican federation, Social Forces and the Revolution in Military Affairs: The Cases of Colombia and Mexico (London, 2007), 3. 12. The Observatorio Ciudadano del Feminicidio, a Mexican NGO, counted almost 2,000 murders of women from the beginning of January 2006 to August 2008 in fifteen states. See La Jornada, August 3, 2008. 13. For a book-length account of the conflict in Oaxaca, see Diego Enrique Osorno, Oaxaca sitiada: La primera insurrección del siglo XXI (Mexico City, 2007). 14. In hindsight, it seems astonishing that the 2006 postelectoral conflict never got out of control, considering the huge political and social interests at stake, the visible presence of the repressive arm of the federal state, and the political intensity and solidarity of López Obrador’s followers. The nonviolent evolution of the postelectoral conflict was mainly due to the political cautiousness of López Obrador, who consistently emphasized the movement’s nonviolent character and warned against provocations, despite the media’s incessant attempts to portray him and his followers as impetuous. 15. I say “ending” because the conflict was resolved legally, not politically. A similar conclusion is reached by Alejandro Álvarez Béjar, “Mexico After the Elections: The Crisis of Legitimacy and the Exhaustion of Predatory Neoliberalism,” Monthly Review, vol. 59, no. 3, 15–16. 16. The question becomes all the more urgent when ballots are caught in the crossfire of narco-bullets. The most recent dramatic expression is the assassination of Rodolfo Torre Cantú, the PRI candidate for governor of the state of Tamaulipas, shortly before the elections on June 28, 2010. 17. See Kees Koonings’ contribution to this volume in Chapter 11 on the roots and manifestations of Latin America’s “new violence”; also Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel M. Goldstein (eds.), Violent Democracies in Latin America (Durham, 2010). See also Roberto Briceño-León and Verónica Zubillaga, “Violence and Globalization in Latin America,” Current Sociology, vol. 50, no. 1, 11–29. 18. See, respectively, the edited volumes by Susana Rotker, Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America (New Brunswick, 2002); Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America (London, 2007); Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez, When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror (Austin, 2005); Hugo Frühling, Joseph S. Tulchin, and Heather A. Golding, Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy and the State (Washington, DC; Baltimore, 2003); John Bailey and Lucía Dammert, Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas (Pittsburgh, 2006); Niels Uildriks, Policing Insecu-

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rity: Police Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America (Lanham, 2009); Menno Vellinga, The Political Economy of the Drug Industry: Latin America and the International System (Gainesville, 2004); Coletta Youngers and Eileen Rosin, Drugs and Democracy in Latin America: The Impact of U.S. Policy (Boulder, 2004); Will Fowler and Peter Lambert, Political Violence and the Construction of National Identity in Latin America (New York, 2006); and Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, Armed Actors: Organised Violence and State Failure in Latin America (London, 2004). 19. A good example is Jorge G. Castañeda and Marco A. Morales, “The Mexican Standoff: Looking to the Future,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 18, no. 1, 2007, 103–12. In general, it is worth noting that work published on the 2006 crisis appears to be as polarized as the conflict itself. Estrada and Poiré make the astonishing suggestion that the operation of the federal electoral tribunal in 2006 was so trustworthy that it “strengthened the basis for the settlement of electoral disputes peacefully through the rule of law, an achievement that is now a hallmark of Mexico’s democracy.” Has the fact that Poiré works directly for president Calderón influenced his interpretation? Klesner is of the opinion that the electoral institutions functioned just as they were designed to, and that the damage to the integrity of the electoral process has been caused by the actions of López Obrador’s supporters! In contrast, Sabia and Kohler conclude that 2006 has shown that “Mexico failed to establish the institutional conditions necessary for deepening its democracy.” Alvarez Béjar speaks of the lack of credibility in electoral institutions, “Mexico After the Elections,” 16. Schedler’s more sophisticated and nuanced view of the postelectoral conflict and in particular the role of the electoral tribunal concludes that “the system of electoral governance and dispute settlement worked reasonably well,” but also concedes that the final evaluation of the elections by the tribunal was “an openly contradictory ruling that reflected profound differences of judgment . . . [that] added to the feeling of betrayal and bitterness among López Obrador’s followers.” Moreover, the magistrates were inconsistent and “at a loss.” See Luis Estrada and Alejandro Poiré, “The Mexican Standoff: Taught to Protest, Learning to Lose,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 18, no. 1, 2007, 73; Debra Sabia and Vincent Kohler, “The 2006 Mexican Presidential Election: Democratic Development or Democratic Debacle?” Journal of Third World Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2008, 162; Joseph L. Klesner, “The July 2006 Presidential and Congressional Elections in Mexico,” Electoral Studies, 26, 2007, 808; Andreas Schedler, “The Mexican Standoff: The Mobilization of Distrust,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 18, no. 1, 2007, 97–98. 20. See, for example, Jorge I. Dominguez and Alejandro Poiré (eds.), Toward Mexico’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections, and Public Opinion (New York; London, 1999); Carolina C. Beer, Electoral Competition and Institutional Change in Mexico (Notre Dame, 2003); Russell Crandall, Guadalupe Paz, and Riordan Roett (eds.), Mexico’s Democracy at Work: Political and Economic Dynamics (Boulder, 2005); Kevin J. Middlebrook (ed.), Dilemmas of Political Change in Mexico (London; San Diego, 2004); Mauricio Merino, La transición votada: Crítica a la interpretación del cambio político en México (Mexico City, 2003); Daniel C. Levy and Kathleen Bruhn with Emilio Zabadúa, Mexico: The

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Struggle for Democratic Development (Berkeley, 2006, second edition); David A. Shirk, Mexico’s New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change (Boulder, 2005); Sallie Hughes, Newsrooms in Conflict: Journalism and the Democratization of Mexico (Pittsburgh, 2006). 21. In a rather extreme version of this perspective, a prominent Mexican political scientist argued that the entire postelectoral crisis could be explained by omissions and mistakes in the electoral legislation (pers. comm./meeting Puebla, August 2006). 22. Andreas Schedler, “From Electoral Authoritarianism to Democratic Consolidation,” in Crandall et al., Mexico’s Democracy at Work, 26. 23. They note: “The rise of political competition, the increasingly broad preferences for democracy, the exercise of political freedom, the growth of independent civil society, and the acceptance of alternation in power point most strongly to a democratic political system in the near term.” Levy and Bruhn, Mexico, 267. 24. See Beatriz Magaloni and Guillermo Zepeda, “Democratization, Judicial and Law Enforcement Institutions, and the Rule of Law in Mexico,” in Middlebrook, Dilemmas of Political Change, 168–97. 25. Raquel Sosa Elízaga, “Terror and Violence in Mexican Political Culture at the End of the Twentieth Century,” in Rotker, Citizens of Fear, 72–86. 26. It is remarkable that the majority of existing publications on drugtrafficking in Mexico have been written by research journalists. See the works of Jorge Fernández Menéndez, Ricardo Ravelo, and Jesús Blancornelas. 27. Levy and Bruhn, Mexico, 59. 28. Wayne A. Cornelius, Judith Gentleman, and Peter H. Smith, “Overview: The Dynamics of Political Change in Mexico,” in Wayne A. Cornelius et al. (eds.), Mexico’s Alternative Political Futures (San Diego, 1989), 8. 29. The idea of Mexico’s nineteenth century as a “marathon of violence” comes from David W. Walker, Kinship, Business and Politics: The Martínez del Río Family in Mexico, 1824–1867 (Austin, 1986), 5, quoted in Alan Knight, “The Peculiarities of Mexican History: Mexico Compared to Latin America, 1821– 1992,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 24, 102; Levy and Bruhn, Mexico, 53–55. 30. See Paul Gillingham, Chapter 4 in this volume. 31. Tanalís Padilla, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Priísta, 1940–1962 (Durham, 2008), 7. Excellent recent research on violence and coercion surrounding elections in midtwentieth-century Mexico is rapidly gaining influence in scholarly thinking about state-making and politics. See Aaron Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938–1952 (University Park, 2010); Benjamin T. Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements: The Politics of State Formation in Postrevolutionary Oaxaca (Lincoln; London, 2009); Paul Gillingham, Force and Consent in Mexican Provincial Politics: Guerrero and Veracruz, 1945–1953, PhD diss. (Oxford, 2005), chapter 5; and Elisa Servín, Ruptura y oposición: El movimiento henriquista, 1945–1954 (Mexico City, 2001). 32. Padilla, Rural Resistance, 12.

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33. See note 31 and Gladys McCormick, “The Political Economy of Desire in Rural Mexico: Authoritarianism and Revolutionary Change, 1935–1965,” PhD diss. (Wisconsin-Madison, 2009). 34. Schmidt, “Making It Real,” 24. 35. It is unclear how many homicides go unreported for fear of reprisals or because victims disappear. See also Gillingham, Chapter 4 in this volume for similar observations for the 1940s and 1950s. 36. See Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, Estadísticas Vitales, accessed April 26, 2007, downloaded and adapted from www.seguridadpublicaen mexico.org.mx/Homicidio/HomicidioBM.xls. Throughout this period, the absolute differences between the states are huge, but most conform to the overall trend. Around half of Mexico’s thirty-two states, among them the most populous ones, account for around 85 percent of all homicides. Upon looking more carefully, it is clear that there is a group of states traditionally characterized by high levels of rural violence, namely, Guerrero, Michoacán, Oaxaca, Puebla, and Veracruz. Then there is the violence in the greater metropolitan area of Mexico City. All of these states have witnessed a decrease in the amount of homicides (at least until 2003), which sets them apart from the states that, since the 1980s, have become home to notorious drug syndicates. Baja California and Chihuahua but also Sonora and Quintana Roo have seen a steady increase in the number of homicides. In recent years, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, and Michoacán have joined this club. 37. Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo has recently debunked the opinions of intellectuals and journalists regarding the explosion of violence in Mexico by pointing at the lack of statistical evidence that sustains their claims. An example of such an unsubstantiated claim comes from Raúl Benítez Manaut, who states that the 5,300 narco-killings in 2008 constitute “approximately one-fourth of total homicides” in Mexico, which means that the total number would be around 21,000, while Escalante and INEGI data indicate half that number. On the other hand, Escalante’s analysis fails to raise questions about the trustworthiness of government statistics. See “Homicidios, 1990–2007,” NEXOS, September 1, 2009, available at www.nexos.com.mx. For Benítez, see his “La nueva seguridad regional: Amenazas irregulares, crimen organizado y narcotráfico en México y América Central,” FRIDE Comentario, March 2009, available at www.fride.org. 38. Luis de la Barreda Solórzano, “El espejo de la violencia,” NEXOS, October 1, 2009, available at www.nexos.com.mx. The figure for Chihuahua for 2009 is based on my own calculation using the 2009 population number obtained from CONAPO (www.conapo.gob.mx) and Transborder Institute, Justice in Mexico, December 2009 News Report, 2, available at www.justiceinmexico.org, which mentions almost 2,000 killings in Chihuahua alone. 39. “IP de Juárez pide a cascos azules para abatir crímenes,” El Universal, November 12, 2009. In 2010, the security situation in Ciudad Juárez worsened considerably. 40. This argument, which mistakenly leaves out the social roots of many of the so-called cultural peculiarities of indigenous communities, is from De la Barreda, “El espejo.” 41. “Homicidios.”

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42. Sara Schatz, “A Difficult Birth: Dissent, Opposition, and Murder in the Rise of Mexico’s Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD),” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, vol. 23, appeared as Patrick G. Coy (ed.), Political Opportunities, Social Movements and Democratisation (Oxford, 2001), 256. For (post)electoral violence at the end of the 1980s in Michoacán and Guerrero, see the informative study by Marco Calderón Mólgora, Violencia política y elecciones municipales (Zamora, 1994). 43. Wil Pansters, “The Transition Under Fire: Rethinking Contemporary Mexican Politics,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America (London; New York, 1999), 253–59. 44. For the case of Oaxaca, see Kristin Norget, “Caught in the Crossfire: Militarization, Paramilitarization, and State Violence in Oaxaca, Mexico,” in Menjívar and Rodríguez, When States Kill, 115–42. 45. See Paul Chevigny, “The Populism of Fear: Politics of Crime in the Americas,” Punishment and Society, vol. 5, no. 1, 2003, 77–96. For an analysis of the development of crime and insecurity in Mexico City, see Wil Pansters and Hector Castillo Berthier, “Mexico City,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities, 36–56. 46. The virulent popular hatred of the Salinas clan in 1995–96 comes to mind. For a comprehensive analysis of the major problems of Mexico’s law enforcement system, see Arturo Alvarado (ed.), La reforma de la justicia en México (Mexico City, 2008). 47. The links between illegal migration and drug-trafficking were dramatically exposed in August 2010, when the seventy-two dead bodies of mainly Central American immigrants were discovered in a ranch in Tamaulipas. They had been killed by the Zetas. 48. See, for example, the work of Cathy McIlwaine and Caroline Moser on Colombia and Guatemala, “Violence and Social Capital in Urban Poor Communities: Perspectives from Colombia and Guatemala,” Journal of International Development, vol. 13, no. 7, 2001, 973. 49. Arturo Arango, “Indicadores de seguridad pública en México: La construcción de un sistema de estadísticas delectivas,” USMEX 2003–2004 Working Papers Series, http://usmex.ucsd.edu/justice; René Jiménez Ornelas, “La cifra negra de la delincuencia en México: Sistema de encuestas sobre victimización,” in S. García Ramírez and L. A. Vargas Casillas (eds.), Proyectos legislativas y otros temas penales: Segundas jornadas sobre justicia penal (Mexico City, 2003); Arturo Alvarado, “Violence and Crime in Mexico City: An Analysis of Reforma’s Newspaper Crime Surveys,” paper presented at 6th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Control, Montreal, May 12–14, 2002. 50. This does not apply equally to all types of crime. For example, official statistics on crimes against property, especially car theft, are much more reliable, since reporting these crimes is a requisite for insurance reimbursement. As a result of intense public debates about insecurity and crime and the generalized skepticism about official numbers, several independent surveys have been undertaken in recent years. The most important have been conducted by the newspaper

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Reforma (yearly since 1997), the Unidad de Análisis sobre Violencia Social of the UNAM, and the Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad A.C. 51. The same publication calculated that instead of the almost 10,000 kidnappings officially registered, more than 16,000 actually occurred between 1986 and 2007. See José Antonio Ortega, El secuestro en México (Mexico City, 2008), 72. 52. A key publication on these issues is Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo: Procuración de justicia penal y ministerio público en México (Mexico City, 2004). 53. Benjamin Nelson Reames, “A Profile of Police Forces in Mexico,” in Wayne A. Cornelius and David A. Shirk (eds.), Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico (Notre Dame; La Jolla, 2007), 126. 54. Beatriz Magaloni and Guillermo Zepeda, “Democratization, Judicial and Law Enforcement Institutions, and the Rule of Law in Mexico,” in Middlebrook, Dilemmas of Political Change, 177. 55. For an interesting review of police reform and other security policies, see Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, “Public Security and Police Reform in Mexico,” in John Bailey and Lucía Dammert (eds.), Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas (Pittsburgh, 2006), 169–86. 56. For a preliminary analysis of this latest initiative, see Diane Davis, Chapter 3 in this volume, and Niels Uildriks with Nelia Tello, Mexico’s Unrule of Law: Human Rights and Police Reform Under Democratization (Washington, DC, 2010). 57. The military is not only involved in the struggle against organized crime with approximately 45,000 troops, but now also controls 38,000 police officers belonging to the Ministry of Public Security after the appointment of General Javier del Real Magallanes to a key position in the ministry in late 2008. In terms of forces under his command and budget, this general is the de facto strongman of the ministry above civilian Minister García Luna. See Jorge Carrasco Araizaga, “El poder de los generales,” Proceso, no.1675, December 7, 2008, 6–10. 58. For example, the budget of the Ministry of Public Security rose from almost twenty billion pesos in 2008 to thirty-three billion pesos in 2009; see Carrasco Araizaga, “El poder,” 10. 59. For an early analysis of this development, see Kate Doyle, “The Militarization of the Drug War in Mexico,” Current History, no. 92, February 1993, 83–88. Sigrid Artz has examined the militarization of the federal attorney general’s office; see “The Militarization of the Procuraduría General de la República: Risks for Mexican Democracy,” in Cornelius and Shirk, Reforming, 153–74. See also Jorge Luis Sierra Guzmán, El enemigo interno: Contrainsurgencia y fuerzas armadas en México (Mexico City, 2003) and José Alfredo Zavaleta Betancourt, La militarización de la seguridad pública en Mexico, 1994–1998 (Puebla, 2006). 60. For a critical review of the SPP, see Laura Carlsen, “ ‘Deep Integration’: The Anti-Democratic Expansion of NAFTA” (CIP Americas Policy Program, Washington, DC, May 30, 2007), available at http://americas.irc-online.org/am /4611. 61. See the website of the SPP, www.spp.gov/index.asp.

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62. See United States Joint Forces Command, “Joint Operating Environment 2008: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force,” 36, available at https://us.jfcom.mil/sites/J5/j59/default.aspx, accessed January 11, 2009. An oftcited memorandum written by retired U.S. general and former drug czar during the Clinton administration Barry R. McCaffrey about a meeting of the International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists, an advisory body to the Mexican federal law enforcement leadership, at the beginning of December 2008 is equally revealing when it comes to U.S. perceptions of the security problems posed by drug-trafficking and violence in Mexico. Despite the fact that it is full of praise for the Mexican administration’s efforts to combat the problem, the author argues that “Mexico is fundamentally at risk from drug-fuelled crime which is so powerful that it could threaten the viability of the state . . . [and] become a narco-state in the coming decade.” See McCaffrey, “After Action Report,” available at www.mccaffreyassociates.com/pages/publications.htm, accessed May 16, 2009. The quotation is on page 5. 63. Arias and Goldstein, Violent Democracies. 64. The widely accepted agreement on the intimate connections between power and violence echoes Foucault’s work on power, discipline, and violence, and stands in sharp contrast to Hannah Arendt’s distinction and even opposition between the two concepts: for her, power is based on the capacity of people to act together, whereas violence is a threat to that capacity and eventually destroys (legitimate) power. See Arendt, On Violence (New York, 1969). 65. See Johan Galtung’s influential article “Violence, Peace and Peace Research,” in Journal of Peace Research, vol. 6, no. 3, 1969, 167–91. Conceived in the context of theorizing about imperialism, dependency, and internal colonialism, Galtung’s approach suggested that the notion of structural violence was equal to that of social injustice (1969: 171). Twenty years later Galtung elaborated his theory by introducing the notion of cultural violence; see Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” in Journal of Peace Research, vol. 27, no. 3, 1990, 291–305. For an analysis of the relationship between structural violence and theories of imperialism and dependency, see, for example, Dieter Senghaas (ed.), Imperialismus und strukturelle Gewalt: Analysen über abhängige Reproduktion (Frankfurt am Main, 1973). 66. See, for example, Tomasini Bassols, “Violencia, ética, legalidad y racionalidad,” in Witold Jacorzynski (ed.), Estudios sobre la violencia: Teoría y práctica (Mexico City, 2002), 21–37. His ultimate moral yardstick is the rationality and quality of the outcome of noninstitutionalized violence. 67. Elusive in the sense of difficult (or impossible?) to pin down empirically. Tomasini Bassols, for example, finds the anti-apartheid struggles and violence in South Africa justifiable, but the zapatista uprising in Chiapas not so, because the violence in the latter case was incoherent, badly managed, “una violencia a medias,” which instead of bringing about a solution to legitimate problems and grievances provoked more violence and repression. Zapatista violence was unjustifiable because it was unproductive, perhaps even counterproductive and hence irrational. The problem is how and when to measure or assess “outcomes.” How would the author have judged anti-apartheid struggles eight years after Sharpeville?

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68. This is based on the work of Moser, Concha-Eastman, and the World Health Organization (WHO). See Caroline Moser, “Urban Violence and Insecurity: An Introductory Roadmap,” Environment and Urbanization, vol. 16, no. 2, 2004, esp. 4–6; Alberto Concha-Eastman, “Urban Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions,” in Rotker, Citizens of Fear, esp. 46–50. The WHO also identifies these three subcategories within the broader classification of collective violence that, in turn, is distinguished from self-directed and interpersonal violence. The category of interpersonal violence is divided between “family and intimate partner violence” and “community violence” which encompasses youth violence and violence in schools and workplaces. In my view, the latter concerns a domain that can be subsumed at least partially under the category of collective violence; see World Report on Violence and Health (Geneva, 2002), 5–6, available at http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2002/9241545615 _eng.pdf. From the perspective of the WHO’s definition, this volume deals with collective violence. 69. I am arguing for this conceptual distinction from a position that Alan Knight, in his discussion of populism, called “ruthlessly instrumental and nominalist.” A conceptual distinction is “useful inasmuch as it helps us order, compare, and understand the vast complexity of history.” See “Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 1998, 225. 70. Carole Nagengast, “Violence, Terror, and the Crisis of the State,” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 23, 1994, 115. 71. See, for example, Menjívar and Rodríguez, When States Kill. An important book about the police is Martha Huggings, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (Durham, 1998). 72. The use of force in the presidential elections of 1940 (against Almazán) and 1952 (against Henriquez Guzmán) is well documented. On 1940, see Luis Medina, Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, 1940–1952, Vol. 18: Del cardenismo al avilacamachismo (Mexico City, 1978), 13–131; and for 1952, Servín, Ruptura y oposición; also Navarro, Political Intelligence, chapters 1, 3, and 5. Less known are the bloody incidents surrounding local elections, such as the ones in León (Guanajuato), Tapachula (Chiapas), both in 1946, and Honey (Puebla), in 1947. For León, see Daniel Newcomer, Reconciling Modernity: Urban State Formation in 1940s León, Mexico (Lincoln, 2004), 143–76 and Stephen R. Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (Wilmington, 1999), 152–56; for Tapachula and Honey, see Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s, 218–19 and 230–31. With respect to rural counterinsurgency, see, for example, Guzmán, El enemigo interno. On students and violence, see Elaine Carey, Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power and Terror in 1968 Mexico (Albuquerque, 2005) and Sergio Aguayo, La charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México (Mexico City, 2001), 145–225. 73. During one particular operation, in September 1997, things went terribly wrong. Extrajudicial killings happened after a television station broadcasted how delinquents threatened a driver, violently stole his car, and then walked toward a bypassing police patrol to pay off a bribe, after which the robberies continued.

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The media report caused indignation and increased pressure on the police to take immediate action. Shortly afterward, the police and special forces violently raided the Buenos Aires neighborhood, leading to a shootout in which one officer was killed. The police then arrested six suspects, who were, however, never taken to the attorney general. The following day, three of the men were found tortured and murdered. Two weeks later, the dismembered bodies of the three remaining suspects were found elsewhere. When top-ranking police officials later visited the neighborhood and promised to prosecute those responsible for the atrocities, they were chased out fearing for their lives. Several police officers and the military heads of the units were indeed arrested and charged with murder. See Angel Gustavo López-Montiel, “The Military, Political Power, and Police Relations in Mexico City,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 2, 2000, 70–94. For police abuse in Mexico City, see also Carlos Silva, “Abuso policial en la ciudad de México,” in Martin Gabriel Barrón Cruz et al., Guardia Nacional y Policía Preventiva: Dos problemas de seguridad en México (Mexico City, 2004), 135–55. 74. Nagengast, “Violence, Terror,” 114. 75. Hence, Schatz considers it a form of “state violence”; see “Difficult Birth,” 259. In order to distinguish this from open state violence, I would prefer to speak of covert state violence. 76. For Oaxaca, see Norget, “Caught in the Crossfire.” The most notorious incident involving paramilitaries in Chiapas was the 1997 Acteal massacre. For an analysis of the paramilitarization of Chiapas after the zapatista uprising, see Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy (Durham, 1998), 232–36; Lynn Stephen, Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico (Berkeley, 2002), 172–73; R. Aída Hernández Castillo, Histories and Stories from Chiapas: Border Identities in Southern Mexico (Austin, 2001), 228–32. See also Hernández Castillo’s analysis of the paramilitarization of Chiapas and the case of Acteal: “¿Guerra fratricida o estrategia etnocida? Las mujeres frente a la violencia política en Chiapas,” in Jacorzynski, Estudios, 97–122. A more general text that deals with this issue is John Gledhill, “Official Masks and Shadow Powers: Towards an Anthropology of the Dark Side of the State,” Urban Anthropology, vol. 28, no. 3–4, 1999, 199–251. 77. James B. Greenberg, Blood Ties: Life and Violence in Rural Mexico (Tucson, 1989) and Frans J. Schryer, Ethnicity and Class in Rural Mexico (Princeton, 1990), 217–24. On elections, see Gillingham, Force and Consent; Schatz, “Difficult Birth”; and Calderón Mólgora, Violencia política. 78. Mary Kay Vaughan details the case of the assassination of three teachers in Teziutlán, Puebla, in 1935, while schools, supplies, and archives were being destroyed and burned; see Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930–1940 (Tucson, 1997), 116–24. 79. Recently, Verónica Oikión Solano and Marta Eugenia Garcia Ugarte (2006) edited an impressive three-volume book on armed movements in twentiethcentury Mexico: Movimientos armadas en México, siglo XX (Zamora/Mexico City, 2006). See also Laura Castellanos, México armado, 1943–1981 (Mexico City, 2007) and two older and more apologetic publications, Jaime López, 10 años de

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guerrillas en México, 1964–1974 (Mexico City, 1974) and Fernando Medina Ruiz, El terror en México (Mexico City, 1974). For an interesting personal account of guerrilla experiences, see Alberto Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir (Philadelphia, 2007). 80. Oscar Flores, “Del movimiento universitario a la guerrilla: El caso de Monterrey (1968–1973),” in Oikión Solano and Garcia Ugarte, Movimientos armadas, vol. 2, 461–94; Ramón Gil Olivo, “Orígenes de la guerrilla en Guadalajara en la década de los setenta,” in Oikión Solano and Garcia Ugarte, Movimientos armadas, vol. 2, 549–66; see also Jorge Balderas Domínguez and Guadalupe Santiago Quijada, “La formación de la guerrilla urbana en Ciudad Juárez,” in Oikión Solano and Garcia Ugarte, Movimientos armadas, vol. 2, 567–76. 81. Aguayo, La charola, 313–34. 82. See, for example, Álvarez Béjar, “Mexico After the Elections,” 19–20. 83. This figure comes from Comité Cerezo, an NGO with a special interest in the violation of citizens’ political rights, La Jornada, May 5, 2007. 84. On piracy, see Aguiar, Chapter 7 in this volume. 85. Ortega, El secuestro. 86. See the report of the Netherlands-based NGO IKV Pax Christi, Ontvoering is explosieve handel (Utrecht, 2008), 19–20. An English version is available at www.ikvpaxchristi.nl/UK/above_publications.htm. See also Council of the Americas, Fostering Regional Development by Securing the Hemispheric Investment Climate (Washington, DC, 2004), 8. 87. See Chapter 10 by John Gledhill in this volume. 88. The communal and family levels are those that the WHO lumped together in the category of interpersonal violence; see n.68. For the connections between gender and ethnic violence, see Hernández Castillo, “Guerra fratricida.” 89. Adriana Beltrán and Laurie Freeman, Hidden in Plain Sight: Violence Against Women in Mexico and Guatemala, WOLA Special Report 2007, available at www.wola.org. 90. As developments in Ciudad Juárez have never been convincingly resolved, publications tend to concentrate on failing law enforcement and corruption and speculations about the underlying causes. See, for example, Human Rights Watch, Lost in Transition: Bold Ambitions, Limited Results for Human Rights in Mexico (New York, 2006), 143–50; INACIPE, Homicidios y desapariciones de mujeres en Ciudad Juárez (Mexico City, 2004); Teresa Rodriguez, The Daughters of Juárez: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border (New York, 2007); Diana Washington Valdez, Cosecha de Mujeres: Safari en el desierto mexicano (Mexico City, 2005); Julia Monárrez Fragoso, “Feminicidio sexual serial en Ciudad Juárez: 1993–2001,” Debate Feminista, vol. 25, 2002, 279–305. 91. States with major problems were Chihuahua, Chiapas, Veracruz, Estado de México, and the Distrito Federal. See http://www.isis.cl/Feminicidio/doc/doc /2205fem_mex.doc. In November 2010, the Organization of American States announced that more than 1,200 women are killed in Mexico every year; see http:// www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/723252.html. 92. Moser, “Urban Violence,” 4.

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93. For the definition of fear, see Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, “Introduction: Violence and Fear in Latin America,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 15. 94. Francisco Gutierrez Sanin and Ana María Jaramillo, “Crime, (Counter-) Insurgency and the Privatization of Security: The Case of Medellín, Colombia,” Environment and Urbanization, vol. 16, no. 2, 29. 95. Luis González Placencia makes this point for the case of Mexico City in Percepción ciudadana de la inseguridad (Mexico City, 2002), 114. 96. González Placencia’s book contains many clues to the slippery and ambiguous nature of the concept of (in)security as it is applied in victimization studies and develops a new conceptual and methodological framework. 97. Caroline Moser and Cathy McIlwain, Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor and Perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala (New York/ London, 2004), 6. 98. Paul Chevigny makes a comparative analysis of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States in “Populism of Fear”; Nelson Arteaga Botello studies this phenomenon for Mexico alone in En busca de la legitimidad: Seguridad pública y populismo punitivo en México, 1990–2000 (Alicante, 2004). For the case of El Salvador, see Mo Hume, The Politics of Violence: Gender, Conflict and Community in El Salvador (Chichester, 2009). 99. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, “When ‘Justice’ Is Criminal: Lynchings in Contemporary Latin America,” Theory and Society, vol. 33, 2004, 637. See also her excellent book-length study on Guatemala, Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America (Stanford, 2006). For Bolivia, see Daniel Goldstein, The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia (Durham, 2004), 179–214. 100. Antonio Fuentes Díaz, Linchamientos: Fragmentación y respuesta en el México neoliberal (Puebla, 2006); figures are on 82. See also the work of Carlos Vilas, “(In)justicia por mano propia: Linchamientos en el México contemporáneo,” Revista Mexicana de Sociología, vol. 53, no. 1, 2001, 131–60 and “Linchamiento: Venganza, castigo e injusticia en escenarios de inseguridad,” El Cotidiano, vol. 20, no. 131, May–June 2005, 20–26. 101. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in William Connolly (ed.), Legitimacy and the State (Oxford, 1984), 37. 102. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford, 2000 [1937]). 103. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, ad 990–1990 (Cambridge, 1990), 1, 14. 104. Charles Tilly, “War and State-Making as Organized Crime,” in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985), 169–91. 105. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, 20. 106. Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, “Introduction: Violence and Fear in Latin America,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 12. 107. Miguel Angel Centeno, “The Centre Did Not Hold: War in Latin America and the Monopolisation of Violence,” in James Dunkerley (ed.), Studies in the Formation of the Nation State in Latin America (London, 2002), 54–76.

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108. See Alan Knight, “The Modern Mexican State: Theory and Practice,” in Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando López-Alves (eds.), The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton, 2001), 182–83. Knight further extends this argument by saying that Mexico’s geopolitical logic also worked as a brake on developing a strong version of state autonomy in defense of national sovereignty. See also his chapter “The Weight of the State in Modern Mexico,” in Dunkerley, Studies in the Formation, 239–43. 109. Centeno, “The Centre Did Not Hold,” 67. 110. According to Koonings and Kruijt, gaps in state coercive capacities are either the result of the decentralization of coercive resources for privatized economic, political, or criminal ends or due to a partial breakdown of state structures. See “Armed Actors, Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America: A Survey of Issues and Arguments,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Armed Actors: Organised Violence and State Failure in Latin America (London, 2004), 7. When looking at the current geography of the Latin American drug business, the history of the vast Mexican north comes to mind, as does that of the eastern tropical plains of Andean countries. 111. James Dunkerley, “Preface,” in Dunkerley, Studies in the Formation, 3. To be fair, Dunkerley rightfully goes on to say that at the same time, “such ideals were often recognised and sometimes embraced through the Americas as a whole from the time of their emergence.” With respect to the latter, there is ample evidence that republicanism, liberalism, popular sovereignty, citizenship rights, and national identity have deep roots in Latin American social and political practice. See several contributions to Dunkerley, Studies in the Formation, and the interesting work of Guy P. C. Thomson (with David LaFrance) on Mexico, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Juan Francisco Lucas and the Puebla Sierra (Wilmington, 1999), and the comparative work of Florencia Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley,1995). Having said this, I believe that the most promising challenge for historians, sociologists, and anthropologists lies not so much in either trying to excavate and isolate Latin America’s Weberian modernity from archives and sociocultural practices or to do the opposite in order to support Huntington’s view of Latin America’s essentially non-Western “corporatist, authoritarian culture,” but rather in seeking to understand and document the concrete workings, expressions, and ramifications of how and why distinct cultural and political sources have formed streams that have long since flowed together as Latin American rivers, properly speaking. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the New World Order (New York, 1996), 46. 112. James Cockcroft, Mexico: Class Formation, Capital Accumulation and the State (New York, 1983), 239. 113. Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London, 1978); Ralph Miliband, The State in a Capitalist Society (London, 1969). Perhaps the most radical attempt to enlarge the space and contingency of the political and the state from a post-Marxist perspective is Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London, 1985).

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114. Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton, 1982). 115. Knight, “Modern Mexican State”; the summarized version of the argument is on 202–3; see also the figures on 182 and 183 that graphically make the point. 116. Here, violence is the capacity to impose where that imposition is held to be illegitimate, while force is the capacity to impose where it is held to be legitimate. See Leslie Macfarlane, Violence and the State (London, 1974), 45–47. 117. Knight, “Modern Mexican State,” 188; see also Knight, “Weight of the State,” 214–15. 118. Holden, Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America, 1821–1961 (Oxford, 2004), 10. Holden writes: “If we include the agents of extra-state violence within the field of state power, the state itself is no longer seen as a failed monopolizer or as a strong player or weak player, constitutional or illegitimate, popular or oligarchic. Instead, the agents of the state are trapped in the same cycle of fear that also characterizes activity by others who are contending in the wider field of state power”; see Holden, Armies Without Nations, 14. 119. Revisionist interpretations of (post)revolutionary Mexico suggest that the revolution had generated an “all-powerful, single-party state that promoted capitalist growth at the expense of social welfare”; see Vaughan, Cultural Politics, 8. Hence, it paid particular attention to postrevolutionary state-formation, but relegated “popular participation to a subordinated, almost inconsequential role”; see Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, “Popular Culture and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico,” in Joseph and Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation (Durham, 1994), 7. A postrevisionist response questioned the statecenteredness and the alleged capacity of the central state to impose a homogeneous project on a complex and highly differentiated society. In the words of Vaughan, “the Mexican state in the 1920s and 1930s was no Leviathan capable of steamrolling society in the interest of its singular project”; Vaughan, Cultural Politics, 8. Smith’s compelling critique of the revisionist position extends this view to the 1940s and early 1950s; see Smith, Pistoleros. Postrevisionist work thus shifted attention to popular agency and processes of negotiation. An important postrevisionist current moved into the study of popular culture and state-formation as a cultural process, often inspired by the concept of hegemony (Vaughan is an important exponent) and evolved into New Cultural History. Other postrevisionists maintained a critical position toward New Cultural History (e.g., Alan Knight and Ben Smith); see Smith, Pistoleros, 7–8 and Alan, Knight, “Subalterns, Signifiers, and Statistics: Perspectives on Mexican Historiography,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 37, no. 2, 2002, 136–58. At the end of the 1990s, Stephen Haber strongly criticized the work of New Cultural History for its conceptual vagueness, epistemological flaws, and methodological weaknesses, which resulted in a special issue of the Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 79, no. 2, 1999. 120. These forms are similar to, respectively, the first, fourth, and second varieties in my first broad category of political and institutional violence, developed in the previous section. 121. Holden, Armies Without Nations, 14–15.

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122. Gledhill, “Official Masks”; Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries,” World Development 21, 1355–69; Javier Auyero, Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina: The Gray Zone of State Power (New York, 2007); Christian Lund, “Twilight Institutions: An Introduction,” Development and Change, vol. 37, no. 4, 2006, 673–84. 123. Auyero, Routine Politics, 26. 124. Ibid., 32, emphasis in the original. 125. Holden, Armies Without Nations, 20. 126. Ibid., 24. 127. See the contributions in Alan Knight and Wil Pansters (eds.), Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico (London, 2005). It is no coincidence that Holden cites work on Mexican caciquismo to make his case for the hard patrimonial core of politics. 128. Holden, Armies Without Nations, 26, 27, emphasis added. 129. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, 1982), 263. 130. Christine Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci and the State (London, 1980), 92. 131. Gramsci, Selections, 12, 80. 132. Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,” The American Historical Review, vol. 90, no. 3, 1985, 567. During the 1980s, a large number of books were published on Gramsci. The best is probably Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford, 1981), but others include Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci; John Hoffman, The Gramscian Challenge: Coercion and Consent in Marxist Political Theory (Oxford, 1984); Anne Showstack Sassoon, Gramsci’s Politics (London, 1980); Roger Simon, Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction (London, 1982); and Chantal Mouffe (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London, 1979). Later, Gramscian concepts found their way into different branches of social science research and the humanities, especially through the work of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Stuart Hall), which was one of the breeding grounds of what became the flourishing field of cultural studies. For anthropology, see, for example, David D. Laitin, Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba (Chicago, 1986); William Roseberry, “Hegemony and the Language of Contention,” in Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, 1994), 355–66; and, more recently, Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (Berkeley, 2002). For a brief analysis of hegemony by historians of Mexico, see Vaughan, Cultural Politics, 20–24. 133. The first quotation is from Miguel Basañez, La lucha por la hegemonía en México, 1968–1980 (Mexico City, 1985, fourth edition), the second from Crehan, Gramsci, 99, and the third from Roseberry, “Hegemony,” 361. 134. Crehan, Gramsci, 103. 135. Vaughan, Cultural Politics, 19–20. 136. Helga Baitenmann, “Counting on State Subjects: State Formation and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Mexico,” in Christian Krohn-Hansen and Knut G. Nustad, State Formation: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 2005), 171.

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137. Hoffman, Gramscian Challenge, 124. 138. In a major study of corporatism in Mexico, Aziz Nassif grappled with this problem as well and resolved it by proposing a distinction between two types of hegemony: “la hegemonía entendida en sentido activo y no vertical no se impone sino que se conquista, a través de alianzas y dirección. Por el contrario, la hegemonía pasiva o vertical se impone ante el consenso y se asegura con estructuras de dominación.” In this manner, coercive and violent mechanisms become part of hegemony, which seems to undermine the concept’s basic objective. See El estado mexicano y la CTM (Mexico City, 1989), 35–36. 139. There are, for example, no Mexican equivalents of the work of ScheperHughes, Caldeira, Arias, and Leeds on violence, gated communities, insecurity, and drug-trafficking in urban Brazil. Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, 1993); Teresa P. R. Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo (Berkeley, 2000); Enrique Desmond Arias, Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security (Chapel Hill, 2004); Elizabeth Leeds, “Cocaine and Parallel Politics in the Brazilian Urban Periphery: Constraints on Local-Level Democratization,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 31, no. 3, 1996, 47–82. 140. Schmidt, “Making It Real,” 28–29. 141. Ibid., 29. 142. Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago/London, 1997), 4. 143. Schmidt, “Making It Real,” 25. Regionally and theoretically rich studies that have influenced this debate substantially are Claudio Lomnitz-Adler, Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space (Berkeley, 1992) and Jeffrey W. Rubin, Decentering the Regime: Ethnicity, Radicalism and Democracy in Juchitán, Mexico (Durham, 1997). 144. Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation. 145. Take for example, the successful and influential collection of El Colegio de México on the Historia de la Revolución Mexicana, which is almost entirely based on secondary sources and national newspaper accounts. 146. Interesting exceptions exist, for example, Wayne A. Cornelius, Todd A. Eisenstadt, and Jane Hindley (eds.), Subnational Politics and Democratization in Mexico (La Jolla, 1999) and David A. Shirk, Mexico’s New Politics, which examines the regional roots of the rise to power of the PAN. 147. Academic interest in the regional history of the period immediately after the revolution has not waned. See, for example, Nicolás Cárdenas García and Enrique Guerra Manzo (eds.), Integrados y marginados en el México posrevolucionario: Los juegos del poder local y sus nexos con la política nacional (Mexico City, 2009). Much remains to be done on the period after 1940, but my impression is that the stage has been set for a new generation of insightful work regarding this crucial period. The papers presented at a particularly interesting workshop, entitled “Authoritarianism and Resistance in Mexico, 1940–1955,” held at Michigan State University, March 2–3, 2009, on the army, student movements, elections, caciques, and crime, among other topics, point to the coming to fruition of this work.

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148. A key publication in 1994 was, of course, Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms of State-Formation. See also Mary Kay Vaughan and Stephen Lewis (eds.), The Eagle and the Virgin: Nation and Cultural Revolution in Mexico, 1920– 1940 (Durham, 2006); Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubinstein, and Eric Zolov (eds.), Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (Durham, 2001); Anne Rubinstein, Bad Language, Naked Bodies, and Other Threats to the Nation (Durham, 1998). 149. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, “Popular Culture and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico,” in Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation, 7. 150. Alan Knight, “Habitus and Homicide: Political Culture in Revolutionary Mexico,” in Wil G. Pansters, Citizens of the Pyramid: Essays on Mexican Political Culture (Amsterdam, 1997), 108. 151. The first quotation is also from Alan Knight, “Political Violence in PostRevolutionary Mexico,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 107, my emphasis, and the second from Knight, “Habitus,” 123. 152. Knight, “Political Violence,” 119. 153. Hansen and Stepputat speak of the practical languages of governance and the symbolic languages of authority as languages of stateness, which are invoked in processes of state-making. The language of governance involves, among other things, the assertion of territorial sovereignty and the monopolization of violence, whereas the language of authority involves, among other items, the institutionalization of legal discourse and the materialization of national identity. See Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, “Introduction: State of Imagination,” in Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (eds.), States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Durham, 2001), 1–38. 154. See also Sebastian Rotella, Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border (New York, 1998); Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca, 2000); and Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis, No One Is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.Mexico Border (Chicago, 2006). 155. Pablo Piccato, “A Historical Perspective on Crime in Twentieth-Century Mexico City,” USMEX 2003–4 Working Papers Series, available at http://usmex .ucsd.edu/justice, 6–7. 156. Tom Rath, “Civilianism and Its Discontents: The Army, Politics and State Formation, 1940–1955,” paper presented at the workshop “Authoritarianism and Resistance in Mexico, 1940–1955,” East Lansing, March 2–3, 2009, 36–38. 157. See the interesting work of Jaime Pensado, “The 1956 Student Protest,” paper presented at the workshop “Authoritarianism and Resistance in Mexico, 1940–1955,” East Lansing, March 2–3, 2009, 19. Larissa Lomnitz describes the porros as an informal police force that used coercion as a means of exhorting social control over the main public universities in Mexico until the mid-1970s; see “Los usos del miedo: Pandillas de porros en México,” in Francisco Ferrándiz and Carles Feiza (eds.), Jóvenes sin tregua: Culturas y política de violencia (Barcelona, 2005), 85.

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158. Aguayo, La charola, 205–13. For an interesting analysis of the dominance of Ramírez Ladewig in the university from 1951 to 1975, see Misael Gradilla Damy, El juego del poder y del saber (Mexico City, 1995), 142–52. 159. Evelyn P. Stevens, “Legality and Extra-Legality in Mexico,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 12, no. 1, 1970, 74. 160. Stevens also stresses that the government is keen on decentralizing violence to the local level and delegating it to unidentified assailants; Stevens, “Legality,” 72. 161. For a vivid description of life in the dungeons of the Campo Militar, see Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War, 119–31. 162. Sergio Aguayo recounts that the involvement of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) with drug-trafficking was so strong that drug traffickers even paid the rent of the offices of the DFS in Guadalajara; see Aguayo, La charola, 241. 163. An additional factor in this process was the effective U.S. policy of closing off the Caribbean-Florida drug route, which pushed traffickers toward the Pacific and Mexican corridor. 164. Instead, Alan Knight speaks of “diffuse,” “thin,” and “focused” legitimacy; see Knight, “Modern Mexican State,” 190, 194, 195. 165. This is not to refute the fact that in the case of Mexico, and Latin America in general, unions clearly fall within the sphere of influence of the state; hence, Philippe C. Schmitter’s definition of state corporatism, a concept that was widely adopted for describing Latin American corporatism. See “Still the Century of Corporatism?” in Fredrick B. Pike and Thomas Stritch (eds.), The New Corporatism: Social-Political Structures in the Iberian World (Notre Dame, 1974), 85–131. 166. For a recent collection of studies on caciquismo, see Knight and Pansters, Caciquismo, especially the chapters by Maldonado, Fernández Aceves, and Pansters on union cacicazgos. See also Powell, Chapter 9 in this volume, on rural unions. 167. Knight, “Modern Mexican State,” 190. 168. Ibid., 190–91. chapter two 1. Weber’s definition responded to and elaborated on earlier Marxist conceptions of the state. Marxists took a critical perspective toward the conventional Western liberal conceptualization of the state developed by Enlightenment thinkers (such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau), who portrayed the state as the result of a social contract or bargain and a tool for achieving compromise and even the greater good within a given polity. Hans H. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York, 1946). 2. Bislev (2004) provides a useful discussion of both interpretations. Sven Bislev, “Globalization, State Transformation, and Public Security,” International Political Science Review, vol. 25, no. 3, 2004, 281–96. 3. In its first major report on violence in 2002, the World Health Organization defined violence as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or

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actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” The same report develops a typology of three types of violence—self-directed (suicide behavior, self abuse), interpersonal (child abuse, intimate partner abuse, elderly abuse, community violence), and collective (social, political, economic)—and various manifestations (physical, sexual, psychological, and deprivation/neglect). Etienne G. Krug, Linda L. Dahlberg, James A. Mercy, Anthony B. Zwi, and Rafael Lozano (eds.), World Report on Violence and Health (Geneva, 2002). 4. From Mexico’s perspective, for example, the history of U.S.-Mexican relations is replete with violations of its sovereignty through cross-border intrusion by agents of its neighboring state. From a U.S. perspective, incursions by Mexican outlaws, criminal organizations, and unauthorized migrants represent a different kind of intrusion not specifically sanctioned by the Mexican state, but not adequately controlled to protect U.S. sovereignty from violation. Certainly, such incursions are not limited to the U.S.-Mexican context. Recent cross-border incursions into Ecuador by Colombia provide another example. 5. Measurements of a state’s “power” or “capacity” tend to focus mainly on its military and economic might, or the organizational functioning of a state. An emphasis on summitry, treaties, and dealings between capitals tends to take priority over the day-to-day reality of international relations in borderlands. 6. David E. Lorey, The U.S.-Mexican Border in the Twentieth Century: A History of Economic and Social Transformation (Wilmington, 1999). 7. Expanding on this same model in a subsequent anthology, Ganster and Lorey (2005) expand upon this paradigm for general application in the comparison of different borders contexts, identifying yet another phase of border evolution that they describe as “dissolution,” in which borders are gradually eliminated. Paul Ganster and David E. Lorey (eds.), Borders and Border Politics in a Globalizing World (Boulder, 2005). 8. Specifically, Payan describes a “frontier” era (1848–1910) corresponding to the period of settlement and consolidation that followed the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico border; a “customs” era (1910–1970s) corresponding to the period of changing regulatory regimes for managing immigration and domestic consumption; a “law enforcement” era (1980s–2001) in which the regulation and militarization of the border intensified; and a new “security” era emergent since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Tony Payan, The Three U.S.-Mexico Border Wars: Drugs, Immigration, and Homeland Security (Westport, 2006). 9. Oscar J. Martinez, Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Tucson, 1994). 10. For example, when there is relative parity between neighboring states, a kind of “security community” may develop. This opens the possibility of strategic cooperation in mutual defense, and reduces the need to mobilize the state’s coercive forces at its borders. Emanuel Adler and Michael N. Barnett, Security Communities (Cambridge; New York, 1998); Alex J. Bellamy, Security Communities and Their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, 2004).

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11. For Martinez, the integration of borderlands tends to occur over a prolonged period of adjustment and accommodation, and in the later stages is largely driven by economic processes, especially the evolution of trade relationships. 12. Indeed, according to Martinez, as relationships between nation-states mature, “the prevalent pattern in binational regions has been one of asymmetrical interdependence, in which one nation is stronger than its neighbor and consequently dominates it.” Martinez, Border People, 9. 13. Such regime changes may include a sudden democratic transition, a military coup, a violent social revolution, or any event that changes or dramatically strengthens the political order within a given state. For example, regime change in one state may result in a regression to a more hostile border relationship with another, as appears to be the case with Venezuela under an increasingly autocratic Hugo Chavez. Likewise, regime change can equally provide an impulse toward greater harmony and integration with neighboring states, as was the case for formerly autocratic Central and Eastern countries integrated into the European Union in 2004 and 2007; processes of democratic regime change over the preceding two decades fundamentally changed the nature of political and border relationships with and among these states. 14. Particularly relevant were the collapse of the Bretton Woods system that upheld the gold standard from 1945 to 1971, the deregulation of international banking by the United States in 1981, the liberalization of Japanese investment in 1984, and the opening of the London stock market to foreign securities in 1986. 15. According to Ohmae, “as the workings of genuinely global capital markets dwarf their ability to control exchange rates or protect their currency, nation states have become inescapably vulnerable to the discipline imposed by economic choices made elsewhere by people and institutions over which they have no control.” Kenichi Ohmae, The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies (New York, 1995). 16. Chantal Ammi, Innovative Technology and Globalization (Newcastle, 2007); Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York, 2007); Brian Kahin and Charles R. Nesson, Borders in Cyberspace: Information Policy and the Global Information Infrastructure (Cambridge; London, 1997). 17. As with financial markets, technological innovation encouraged foreign investment by allowing multinational corporations to move production across borders and oceans to reduce costs and take advantage of different producers’ areas of comparative advantage. In effect, the new mobility offered by the liberation of capital and accelerated technological innovation empowered individuals and organizations enabled them to significantly ignore the confines and constraints traditionally imposed by nation-states. John Naisbitt, Global Paradox: The Bigger the World Economy, the More Powerful Its Smallest Players (New York, 1994). 18. H. Richard Friman and Peter Andreas, The Illicit Global Economy and State Power (Lanham, 1999); Moisés Naím, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy (London, 2006). 19. Misha Glenny, McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (New York, 2008); Willem Van Schendel and Itty Abraham, Illicit Flows and

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Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization (Bloomington, 2005); Naím, Illicit. 20. For example, recent work by Bartilow and Eom (2007) suggests that the liberalization of commercial trade is accompanied by an increase in drugtrafficking and other transnational crime. According to their findings, increasing interdependence between neighboring states—especially highly asymmetrical states—results in increased illicit flows. Horace A. Bartilow and Kihong Eom, “Free Traders and Drug Smugglers: Does Trade Openness Weaken or Strengthen States’ Ability to Combat Drug Trafficking?” paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association (San Diego, 2006). 21. See, for example, Timothy J. Dunn, The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992: Low-Intensity Conflict Doctrine Comes Home (Austin, 1996). 22. For Andreas, nation-states’ heightened border security measures are primarily the result of efforts by political entrepreneurs and self-interested government agencies to capitalize on public anxieties about certain aspects of globalization, such as international migration, transnational organized crime, and terrorism. Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca, 2001). See also Peter Andreas and Thomas J. Biersteker, The Rebordering of North America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context (New York, 2003); Peter Andreas and Timothy Snyder, The Wall Around the West: State Borders and Immigration Controls in North America and Europe (Lanham, 2000); Pravin N. Sheth, Global Terrorism: Melting Borders, Hardened Walls (Jaipur, 2005); Ian Townsend Gault and Heather N. Nicol, Holding the Line: Borders in a Global World (Vancouver, 2005); Elia Zureik and Mark B. Salter, Global Surveillance and Policing: Borders, Security, Identity (Cullompton, 2005). 23. For contrasting explorations of these trends, see Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York, 2001) and International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook: Globalization and Inequality (Washington, DC, 2007). 24. Robert J. Flanagan, Globalization and Labor Conditions: Working Conditions and Worker Rights in a Global Economy (Oxford, 2006); Timothy J. Hatton and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Global Migration and the World Economy: Two Centuries of Policy and Performance (Cambridge, 2008). 25. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York, 1998); Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World (New York, 1996). 26. While all societies experience the “social costs” of industrial development, the tearing and reweaving of the social fabric are especially intense in the borderlands between states with significant economic asymmetries. See, for example, Katherine Kopinak (ed.), The Social Costs of Industrial Growth in Northern Mexico (La Jolla, 2004). 27. These groups included the Shasta, Miwok, Chumash, and Yuman tribes that inhabited the west coast; the Pima, Hopi, Zuñi, and Papago tribes that populated the Navajo region (present-day Arizona and New Mexico); the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Pueblo people of the Ute territories (in present-day Utah and Colorado); and the Kiowa, Apache, Kickapoo, and Tonkawa of Comanche territory (in present-day Texas). Some indigenous groups, like the Cherokee, were

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driven westward into Spanish- or Mexican-held territories, leading to clashes with preestablished native people and settlers alike. Martinez, Border People. 28. In 1836 Texas captured Mexican general Santa Anna, winning its independence from Mexico. In order to secure his release, Santa Anna agreed to withdraw his troops south of the Rio Grande—a move that would encourage the United States to greatly expand the boundaries and add to Mexico’s territorial losses ten years later. K. Jack Bauer, The Mexican War, 1846–1848 (Lincoln, 1992); John S. D. Eishenhower, So Far from God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (Norman, 2000); Timothy J. Henderson, A Glorious Defeat: Mexico and Its War with the United States (New York, 2007). 29. Santa Anna’s poor strategic decisions and inability to command the loyalty of regional leaders or ordinary Mexican citizens made the task of defeating Mexico relatively easy, despite fierce final shows of resistance in Mexico City. The losses sustained by U.S. forces are remembered by the Marines to this day, who memorialize the Mexico City campaign in their military anthem (through the verse “from the halls of Montezuma . . .”) and wear a red strip on their dress uniforms. Gabrielle M. Neufeld Santelli, Marines in the Mexican War (Washington, DC: History and Museums Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1991). 30. Eishenhower, So Far from God, 363, 369–70. 31. Mexico ceded more territory to the United States in the Gadsden Purchase, an agreement that sold much of what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona to the United States in exchange for $10 million. Carol and Thomas Christensen, The U.S.-Mexican War (San Francisco, 1998), 210. 32. John Kenneth Turner, Barbarous Mexico (Austin, 1969). 33. For example, one tool of repression was the notorious “escape law” (ley fuga), which posed authorities could execute any prisoner who attempted to flee and led to numerous extrajudicial killings. 34. Most of the Yaqui prisoners died within a year. See Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Yaqui Resistance and Survival: The Struggle for Land and Autonomy, 1821– 1920 (Madison, 1984). 35. José F. Godoy, Porfirio Díaz: President of Mexico, the Master Builder of a Great Commonwealth (New York; London, 1910), 200; Carleton Beals, Porfirio Diaz: Dictator of Mexico (Philadelphia; London, 1932), 29. 36. Kevin J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in Mexico (Baltimore; London, 1995). 37. Daniel P. Mears, “The Immigration-Crime Nexus: Toward an Analytic Framework for Assessing and Guiding Theory, Research, and Policy,” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 44, no. 1, 2001, 1–19; Rubén G. Rumbaut and Walter A. Ewing, The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates Among Native and Foreign-Born Men, Special Report (Washington, DC, 2007). 38. McDonald insists that entry to the United States without proper documentation also constitutes a serious form of criminal activity in borderlands. However, since such violations are typically civil offenses, this claim is technically inaccurate. Moreover, McDonald’s claim that undocumented immigration “constitutes

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an act of contempt for the rule of law and for democratic governance” raises serious questions about other types of civil offenses committed daily by millions of U.S. citizens (such as moving violations like speeding and running stop signs). William F. McDonald, “Mexico, the United States, and the Migration-Crime Nexus,” in John Bailey and Jorge Chabat (eds.), Transnational Crime and Public Security: Challenges to Mexico and the United States (La Jolla, 2002), 398. 39. Joan B. Anderson and James Gerber, Fifty Years of Change on the U.S.Mexico Border: Growth, Development, and Quality of Life (Austin, 2008), 9. 40. John Bailey and Lucía Dammert, Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas (Pittsburgh, 2006); Pablo Fajnzylber, Daniel Lederman, and Norman Loayza, Crimen y Violencia en América Latina, Economía de América Latina (Washington, DC; Bogotá; Alfaomega, 2001, 1st edition); Niels Uildriks, Policing Insecurity: Police Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America (Lanham, 2009); Ricardo Donato Salvatore, Carlos Aguirre, and Gilbert M. Joseph, Crime and Punishment in Latin America: Law and Society Since Late Colonial Times (Durham, 2001); Carlos Aguirre and Robert Buffington, Reconstructing Criminality in Latin America (Wilmington, 2000); Juan E. Méndez, Guillermo A. O’Donnell, and Paulo Sérgio de M. S. Pinheiro, The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1999). 41. Presentation by sociologist Marcelo Bergman at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in April 2010. See also José Brambila Macias, Modeling the Informal Economy in Mexico: A Structural Equation Approach (Munich, 2008), available at http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/8504/ . 42. U.S. government estimates of the total profits from these activities are between $19 billion and $39 billion, while the Mexican government has long estimated drug profits to be around $11 billion to $12 billion annually; these range from 1 to 3 percent of Mexico’s $1.4 trillion GDP. A recent Rand study provides the most careful estimate available to date, placing annual Mexican drug profits from the United States, not including other revenues, at around $6–7 billion or half a percent of GDP. See Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone (Austin, 2009) and Beau Kilmer, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Brittany M. Bond, and Peter H. Reuter, Reducing Drug Trafficking Revenues and Violence in Mexico: Would Legalizing Marijuana in California Help? (Santa Monica, 2010). 43. Several scholars noted earlier, notably Glenny, McMafia, and Naím, Illicit, have documented the empowerment of organized crime networks thanks to technological advances and global trade flows. Bartilow and Eom find that drug interdiction efforts are undermined by the forces of free trade. Bartilow and Eom, Free Traders and Drug Smugglers. 44. Ted Conover, “Border Vigilantes,” New York Times, May 11, 1997. 45. In modern commercial usage, the term cartel draws from the German word Kartell, which has earlier uses derived from Latin, French, and Italian. In the conventional sense, a cartel refers to formal agreements among business associations, or firms, to control production, fix prices, limit competition, and/or segment markets (by product, clientele, or territory). The term drug cartel is frequently used to describe organized crime syndicates involved in the production,

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distribution, and sale of psychotropic substances. While these organizations never actively conspired to fix prices, they often engage in other behaviors typically identified by economists with cartels. However, usage of the term cartel is sometimes considered controversial because of the widespread view of cartels as only price-fixing arrangements. 46. Believing that he had been betrayed by his associate Héctor Luis “El Güero” Palma Salazar, in 1989, Félix Gallardo’s agent, Rafael Clavel Moreno, infiltrated the Sinaloa cartel and murdered Palma’s wife Guadalupe Laija Serrano, along with Palma’s children, Natali (age 4) and Hector (age 5). Clavel Moreno, a Venezuelan nicknamed “El Bueno Mozo,” reportedly dated Palma’s sister Minerva to gain the drug lord’s confidence. However, within months, Clavel Moreno seduced Laija Serrano, who escaped with him to Los Angeles and later Caracas. There Clavel Moreno killed all three and allegedly sent Laija Serrano’s severed head to Palma. 47. Sam Dillon, “Santa Catarina Journal; Drug Gangs’ Deadly Toll: Indian Villagers in Baja,” New York Times, September 26, 1998. 48. Dudley Althaus, Ioan Grillo, James Pinkerton, and Patty Reinert, “Border Travelers Warned of Violence,” Houston Chronicle, 1, 2005; Reuters News Service, “Mexico Scolds U.S. Ambassador for ‘Punish’ Boast,” Houston Chronicle, 15, 2005. 49. The Mérida Initiative specifies that no funds be allocated to the Mexican Public Security Secretariat until the government’s National Registry of Police Personnel is fully operational, and emphasizes the need for comprehensive ruleof-law reform in Mexico. 50. Clare Ribando Seelke and Kristin M. Finklea, U.S.-Mexican Security Cooperation: The Mérida Initiative and Beyond (Washington, DC, 2011). 51. Indeed, from October 2003 to April 2008, the Department of Homeland Security identified serious breaches of its integrity in hundreds of cases along the border, illustrating the vulnerability of U.S. law enforcement agencies to corruption as they take on ever-greater numbers of inexperienced agents. Ralph Vartabedian, Richard A. Serrano, and Richard Marosi, “The Long Crooked Line: Rise in Bribery Tests Integrity of U.S. Border,” Los Angeles Times, October 23, 2006; Pauline Arrillaga, “Feds Struggle with Border Patrol Corruption,” Associated Press, September 22, 2006; Randal C. Archibold and Andrew Becker, “Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side,” New York Times, May 27, 2008. 52. Hercules E. Haralambides and Maria P. Londono-Kent, “Supply Chain Bottlenecks: Border Crossing Inefficiencies Between Mexico and the United States,” International Journal of Transport Economics, vol. 31, no. 2, 2004. 53. Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, “New Hemispheric Drug Strategy,” Organization of American States, available at www.cicad.oas.org/en /basicdocuments/Hemispheric%20Drug%20Strategy100603.pdf, accessed on March 1, 2011.

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chapter three 1. Of the few serious historical works in which police are discussed, three of the best are Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects (Durham, 2001); Katherine Elaine Bliss, Compromised Positions: Prostitution, Public Health, and Gender Politics in Revolutionary Mexico (University Park, 2001); and Ariel Rodríguez Kuri, La Experiencia Olvidada: El Ayuntamiento de Mèxico: Política y gobierno, 1876– 1912 (Mexico City, 1996). 2. Materials used for this project were encountered during archival research at the following: Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Archivo Calles-Torreblanca (ACT), Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de México (AHCM), archive of the Secretaría de Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), Vicente Lombardo Toledano archives, the Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (Condumex), and the U.S. National Archives (mainly housing FBI reports and consular documents). Primary materials included copies of police files (personnel files, secret service reports); military files (mainly personnel related); internal government reports to the Secretaria de Gobernación, the Departamento del Distrito Federal (DDF), and the Inspección General de Policía, as well as miscellaneous letters to public officials from individuals and citizen organizations. Materials considered on the borderline of primary and secondary accounts include newspaper articles and text drawn from the Diario de Debates (México City). 3. Because the old regime of Porfirio Díaz had privileged Mexico City at the expense of many rural areas, by pouring investments and building modern amenities in the capital (one of the many gripes of the revolutionaries in the first place), and because many of the fruits of the Porfirian economic model’s largesse were concentrated in the public- and private-sector employment opportunities in Mexico City, many residents were quite unsympathetic to the revolution, which was likely to be seen as a rural-based scramble for national political power. Among capital city residents, it was mainly industrial laborers who led the ranks of revolutionary protagonists. For more systematic treatment of the revolution and its aftermath in the nation generally and in Mexico City in particular, see, respectively, Alan Knight, The Mexican Revolution, vols. 1 and 2 (Lincoln, 1986) and my own Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (University Park, 1994). 4. Piccato, City of Suspects. 5. As of March–April 1919, Mexico City hosted 685 work-based militias and 1,579 neighborhood-based militias; Rodríguez Kuri, La Experiencia Olvidada, 237, 241. Neighborhood-based militias formed on the basis of the eight existent police precincts, or demarcaciones. 6. Ibid., 238. 7. For more on the conflicts between pro- and anti-Maderista militias on the streets of the capital city, see ibid., 232–48. 8. Initially, such militias in Mexico City were used primarily for fighting against contending peasant factions in the revolutionary coalition who approached the capital, leaving the military to fight the counterrevolutionary forces in the provincial battlefields.

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9. In his groundbreaking book, City of Suspects, Piccato shows that before the revolution, policing in Mexico was composed mainly of community-level vigilance directed toward health, sanitation, and public servicing concerns (street maintenance, traffic flows, and so on), built on the Spanish colonial tradition of Buen Gobierno, or good governance. This was very much the model Hegel had in mind when he identified policing as central to the integration of society and the establishment of connections between citizens and rulers. 10. It is noteworthy that the first two police chiefs after 1912 were civilians, but starting in 1913 (at the point of Madero’s assassination), it was primarily military personnel—usually colonels or generals—who dominated. With the exception of a short-lived period during 1915 when one civilian headed the force for two weeks (and a year in which the chief of police in Mexico City actually changed five times), all subsequent police chiefs from 1916 to 1929 were military personnel. After 1931 this pattern continued, with a civilian police chief appointed only once thereafter (Arturo Durazo in 1976) until 1988. Data on police are drawn from Dirección General de Historia, Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (SEDENA), and the Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal, serie Policía, No. 4432. For a complete listing of police chiefs from 1910 to 1988, see Diane E. Davis, “Policing and Populism in the Cárdenas and Echeverría Administrations,” in Amelia Kiddle and Maria O. L. Muñoz (eds.), Populism in Twentieth Century Mexico: The Presidencies of Lázaro Cárdenas and Luis Echeverría (Tucson, 2010), 135–58. 11. Material on conflicts between police and military, and the decrees and organizational reforms to centralize municipal policing into a single Federal District police force, come from the municipality of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in the Mexico City metropolitan area. Section: Policía (Box 228–35) of the Mexico City Historical Archives. 12. Sergio Miranda Pacheco, Historia de la desaparición del municipio en el Distrito Federal (Mexico City, 1998), 134. Active members of the military were also denied the rights to vote in municipal elections, perhaps in a nod to citizens’ concerns about army personnel behavior. 13. Growing mistrust between citizens and the governing regime over the issue of policing was clearly situated within an ongoing conflict between the revolutionary leadership and long-standing defenders of municipal democracy, who for over a decade fought the Carranza government’s repeated, and for years failed, efforts to exempt the municipality of Mexico (i.e., the central areas of Mexico City eventually known as the Federal District, where the main economic and social infrastructure and almost all national offices of government were located) from the constitutional guarantees of the municipio libre. 14. Miranda Pacheco, Historia de la desaparición del municipio, 134. 15. In theory, the 1857 constitution also provided for the establishment of a so-called judicial police, a designation drawn from French police practice. But in the immediate postrevolutionary context, the preventative police were considered only “decorative,” and during both congressional and constitutional debates on the reform all sides agreed that Carranza’s proposal to separate the tasks and legal responsibilities of preventative and judicial police was an entirely “novel”

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innovation. See Diario de los Debates, December 1916 (nos. 12, 19, 29, 30) and January 1917 (nos. 43, 44, 52). 16. In practice, this distinction was somewhat problematic, since even after the constitutional reforms were enacted, “preventative” police still retained the authority to detain citizens on potential violations of the law, but only for a certain number of hours (no more than thirty-six) if they did not pay an initial minimum fine, and because they were expected to actively help judicial police with the criminal end of the investigation by gathering evidence for subsequent arrest and prosecution. Nonetheless, the law stipulated that judicial police were empowered in the criminal prosecution process, such that with this constitutional reform it was “judicial” police who were granted the greatest authority to prosecute and legally uphold the law. 17. It is worth noting here that the 1917 constitutional reform also was intended to “remedy” several interrelated constraints on Carranza and the revolutionary leadership posed by the country’s court system. During the initial period of postrevolutionary instability, and before, the courts had been no friend of the revolutionary government. Most of the nation’s judges and trial lawyers were social and economic elites who supported the Porfirian government and frequently used their authority to quell revolutionary reforms. Until the time of the Carranza police reform, moreover, judges and lawyers had the singular authority to seek, try, and convict “criminals,” or those citizens charged with serious offenses or violations of the law as laid out in the 1857 constitution. The creation of the “judicial” police, who would serve in some sort of intermediary capacity between judges or lawyers of the court system on one hand and street police on the other, was conceived as a way to counter the Porfirian biases in the legal and police system. 18. Unable to outvote the revolutionary forces in congress and in the Constitutional Convention, police and judges could not fully avoid the 1917 reform. But their influence was seen in several compromises that worked themselves into the text after much extended debate, including reserving the capacities for preventative police to impose fines, detain suspects for up to thirty-six hours, and work with judicial police in the gathering of evidence. This in turn meant that they, too, maintained some power to extract bribes or kickback payments. See Diario de los Debates, January 12, 1917, no. 52. 19. Not only did the separation of arrest from prosecution make it possible for rent-seeking and corruption to occur at all levels, preventative police and citizens themselves had great incentive to engage in small-scale bribery right at the level of the street, since this exchange could prevent a case from even getting to court (where bribery “costs” were much greater, given what was at stake in the judicial proceedings). Making matters worse, judicial police themselves were quite aware of this, and thus they too frequently crossed the legal bounds of their job by usurping preventative police duties. 20. As early as 1918 we see high-level military officers requesting posting in the Mexico City police, precisely because of the money assumed to be circulating through this office via corrupt practices. The involvement of higher police officials in corruption helped regularize the practice throughout the entire system, in

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part because higher officials (police chiefs, military generals, and higher) expected citizen payoffs to rank-and-file officers to be channeled upward. These practices helped establish a clear set of “prices” or rates for mordidas, or bribes (two pesos for vending pulque on Sunday, etc.), which in turn helped institutionalize citizens’ expectations that such bribes were the officially sanctioned price for doing business. 21. For more on the role of police in harassing lay people and clerics during the Cristero Rebellion, see Matthew Butler’s chapter in his edited volume Faith and Impiety in Revolutionary Mexico (Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). 22. The fame of this group was such that a 1919 silent film made about this gang was re-released in the 1930s with sound. Its status as cultural myth produced many rumors, many undocumented, about the involvement of the great revolutionary general Pablo González, and the gang’s reported ties with actress María Conesa. Valente Quintana was a former “private detective” and only the second civilian appointed police chief since the Revolution. Perhaps because of his involvement with criminal gangs, Quintana was also the last civilian police chief in Mexico City until 1976. In addition to serving as a conduit to large sources of money that could be redistributed among revolutionary leaders, he was known to have been involved in dirty tricks against revolutionary competitors. 23. Crooks like Quintana did not last long in their posts, and he was recycled out of his position because of undeniable corruption, the wrong political allegiances, or both. But recycled police chiefs rarely disappeared entirely. Most found other lucrative positions elsewhere in the administration—in another police agency, in the military, or in other, higher levels of the state (a favored posting was in Customs, where rent-seeking potential was great and corruption also flowered). 24. This state worker reform for police was a very popular idea, and many police wrote Cárdenas with the request for full inclusion into state work legislation so as to guarantee job stability and access to social security. AGN, Ramo Presidentes (Cárdenas); 544.211 (Empleados Públicos). 25. AGN, Ramo Gobernación, 812.105/16, letter from Pierre de L. Boal, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim, to the Honorable Secretary of State, Washington, DC, October 17, 1939. 26. Indeed, we first see major concerns about joint military and police involvement in drug-smuggling starting in the 1940s, on the heels of the militarization of police. The expansion of drug-trafficking and other border irregularities were well monitored by the U.S. State Department and clearly known to high-level officials. For more material on this, see U.S. National Archives, LM130 (roll #23); period 1940–1950; 812.105. 27. In Mexico City the conservative Mayor Ernesto Uruchurtu, known as the “iron mayor,” counted on local police to “clean” the streets of vendors or to bulldoze squatter settlements in violation of his hard-line urban regulations. 28. Only three Mexico City police chiefs lasted six years, or an entire term, including Cueto Ramírez, his predecessor Miguel Molinar Simondy, and Arturo (“el Negro”) Durazo Moreno. All three were notoriously corrupt, suggesting a correlation between time in office and control over corruption networks.

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29. His quasi-militaristic hard line was clear in a December 13, 1968, public announcement printed in El Universal and other leading dailies, which shared the following statement by Luis Cueto Ramírez: “Based on the rationale of benefitting the city’s residents, given by the Directorate General of Government of the Federal District Department and leading to denial of the permission to celebrate a Workers’ Demonstration, it is made known to all inhabitants that the Federal District Police will neither permit massive rallies nor tumultuous or scandalous meetings. Although some people have been invited to march from the University to the Center of Santo Tomás on Friday the 13th of this month, we give fair warning that this act will not be permitted since it lacks the necessary permit, and because of breaches that have occurred when other similar activities violated the 9th Article of the Constitution. If there is any disorder, the organizers of the planned protest will be held responsible.” 30. As early as 1959, citizens began organizing themselves as advocates for police reform, writing letters to the authorities with extensive documentation of police corruption and abuses of power. One of the most high-profile organizations of this sort was the “Coalición Defensora de los Derechos Ciudadanos,” located in the Colonia Moctezuma in the Distrito Federal, which started a massive campaign lasting from 1959 until 1962 to inform the president and the local citizenry about the corruption, extortion, and “sickness” among the police of all ranks. Yet they hardly made a dent. After 1959, practically every police chief who came to office identified himself as beginning a new—and “final”—campaign for the “moralization” of the police, only to have the banner taken up by the next official in the post. See AGN, Galería de Presidentes (Adolfo López Mateos), vol. 652, exp. 542.1/104. 31. This in fact was part of the rationale behind the development of the city’s secret police (Policía Secreta), which was established in the 1920s with the aim of watching over wayward preventative and judicial police as much as criminals. The same logic manifests itself again in the 1930s, with the formation of the Dirección de Investigación y Seguridad Política in the Distrito Federal, a new organizational force for investigating corrupted police as much as political enemies; and finally, it was seen in the creation of a new force of federal police in 1946, called the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), who worked directly for the president (and thereby bypassing the corrupted Mexico City police department) and took over the job of investigating corrupted city police. With both city and secret police so involved in corruption, the DFS soon became the principal arm of political policing for the entire party-state, a function well represented by the role the DFS played in investigating and attacking student leaders and political dissidents involved in the 1968 student movement, among other movements of later decades. 32. By late 1960, one newspaper listed the following combination of local and federal police forces as active in the capital: “Today, in addition to the preventative and repressive police—uniformed and judicial, respectively—the following ‘security’ forces exist in the country: Federal Security Directorate, Federal Judiciary, for Narcotics, Secret Service, for Hydraulic Resources, Military Judicial, for Civil Aeronautics, Federal Highways, Forestry, the Federal Prosecutor for Political

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Investigations, for Migration, for War, of Mexican Petroleum, for Railways, Postal, of the Bank of Mexico, of banks and industry . . . etcetera, without counting private law enforcement.” Carlos Ravelo, “Policia represiva y preventativa,” Excélsior, October 31, 1968. 33. Ravelo (ibid.) argued: “When a competent authority delegates powers to other bodies, like the Auxiliary Police, the Secret Service, the Federal Security  Directorate, or the Bank Police, amongst others, it proves its inefficiency and ineptitude.” 34. The role of the federal government in local policing matters was very much debated in wider political circles. The president of one of the few opposition parties loyal to the PRI, the PARM, weighed in on the matter by suggesting, that “federal agency would terminate the diversity of police with all kinds of specialization that have caused confusion and citizen unrest,” in “Piden una secretaria de seguridad publica,” El Universal, December 1, 1965. 35. Two months after the massacre, Mexico City Mayor Alfonso Corona del Rosal created a subcommittee with students, professors, and other citizen representatives charged with planning a major restructuring of the police. Among the options to be considered were (a) making all police federal; (b) fusing preventative and judicial police (now being called preventative and repressive, with the latter a nod to conservative politics of the time); and (c) a new fusion of all different preventative police. 36. Part of the problem was of course Echeverría himself. Because he was implicated in the political policing of the late 1960s period, much of which came at the hands of federal forces answering to him in his capacity as Secretario de Gobernación, he lacked the moral authority and genuine personal resolve to fundamentally reform the policing apparatus. But as a complicit actor embedded within these coercive institutions, Echeverría was also limited by the sheer enormity and complexity of the policing apparatus, by its strong institutional connections to the military, by the huge sums of money generated by the corrupt policing system, and by the fact that after years of institutional entrenchment, the state’s coercive apparatus was more powerful than either the president or the party. 37. This was made clear early on, with the Halcones event in 1971, when a special paramilitary police force attacked students in Mexico City a mere six months after Echeverría came to office, as well as by the ongoing use of special police forces to root out opposition in the countryside throughout his term in office. While some of the most repressive police actions during his term no doubt owed to Echeverría’s own commitments to rooting out political enemies on the left, so as to keep the ever-more-dissatisfied right-wing forces from complete abandon, an equally consequential driving force behind the political policing was the extent, power, and impunity of the state’s coercive forces. Sometimes the search for political enemies was merely an excuse for extortion, power grabbing, or expansion into illegal activities, with the distinction not always clear. 38. For a good discussion of the ways that public safety concerns and problems with police have negatively affected the PRI’s capacity to govern, especially

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in the context of democratic transition, see John Bailey and Arturo Valenzuela, “The Shape of the Future,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 8, no. 4, 1997, 43–57. 39. In fact, almost every new police agency that has been established or that the government has tried to reform since Fox came to office has been found riddled by corrupt elements, ranging from the Fiscalía de Especialización para la Atención a Delitos Contra la Salud, or FEADS, to the Agencia Federal de Investigación (Milenio, January 19, 2003). For more on corruption in each of these organizations, see, respectively, Alfredo Joyner, “Ordenan captura a Wilfredo Robledo,” Reforma, January 21, 2003, 12; Vicente Hernandez and Alfredo Joyner, “Limpia a toda la PGR, advierte el produrador,” Milenio, January 17, 2003, 14; and “Las cifras de corrupción,” Milenio, January 19, 2003, 12. 40. Mexico is not alone in this. For more on the use of military to take on policing duties across Latin America, not just in Mexico, see Lucia Dammert and John Bailey, “Reforma policial y participación militar en el combate a la delincuencia,” in Revista de Fuerzas Armadas, vol. 19, no. 1, 2005, 133–52. 41. On December 13, 2007, the Calderón government introduced legislation to expand police powers to arrest suspects for up to forty days merely on the basis of “suspicion.” See Roberto Garduño and Enrique Méndez, “PRI y PAN imponen su fuerza para aprobar la reforma en material judicial,” La Jornada, December 13, 2007. This move was decried by human rights activists, keeping the bill in congressional discussion for a year before the clause for warrantless searches was removed in December 2008, leading to the bill’s passage. 42. The quote, c.f. from an article posted by Franc Contreras (Mexicomonitor. blogspot.com/2007_12_07), is attributed to Ernesto Portillo, head of the Institute for Security and Democracy in Mexico City, MacArthur Grant recipient, and author of several publications on Mexican security policies. But even the standard Mexico City press has cited similar concerns. See “Luz Verde a la Cámara a crear Estado policiaco,” La Jornada, December 13, 2006. 43. For more on these relationships, see Angel Gustavo López-Montiel, “The Military, Political Power, and Police Relations in Mexico City,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 2, March 2000, 79–94. 44. See La Jornada, August 25, 1999. 45. The level of calculated impunity in the first several weeks after the reform was introduced was so extreme that Police Chief Gertz Manero was compelled to publicly acknowledge that Mexico City’s “40,000 member force [wa]s out of control.” Joseph R. Gregory, “A Call to Fight Crime,” New York Times, February 27, 1999, A4. 46. “Aplica la SPP plan de emergencia de control de 37 mil policías,” La Jornada, March 9, 1999. 47. The move toward police centralization was first seen in Fox’s initial decision to create an entirely new national police force, called the Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP), built around a new authority and personnel structure, within a year of coming to office. As with most reforms previously tried by his predecessors, the responses of the police themselves soon required a tandem institutional reform a year later, in 2001, that would enable more clandestine investigative activities directed against police themselves. Given the structure of legal authority

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in Mexico, this entailed the creation of yet another new structure for judicial police (i.e., those empowered to bring criminals to justice) that would replace the old Federal Judicial Police (PJF). This new, more powerful, and more centralized agency for criminal investigation, called the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI), operated along the lines of the American FBI. For more on the centralizing efforts by the Fox administration, and how they nonetheless failed to stem police and military corruption, see Diane E. Davis, “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico,” Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 48, no. 1, 2006, 55–86. 48. For more on community policing, see Miguel Sarré, “Seguridad ciudadana y justicia penal frente a la democracia, la división de poderes y el federalismo,” in Arturo Alvarado Mendoza and Sigrid Artz, El desafío democrático de México: Seguridad y estado de derecho (Mexico City, 2001), 3–14. 49. Because of problems of corruption in the AFI and the other organizations created in his first two years in office, by June 2003 Fox felt compelled to create yet another new federal agency, called the Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), a separate agency to replace the AFI and directly empowered with investigating those crimes in which corrupted military and police were most implicated: narco-trafficking, arms trade, robbery, child prostitution, human slavery, kidnappings, money-laundering, and terrorism. 50. Vicente Hernández, “El ejército desmanteló las instalaciones de la FEADS,” Milenio, January 17, 2003, 14. The logical progression of this vicious cycle of failed police reform followed by a more centralized, quasi-authoritarian response was seen in April 2004 when President Fox created what Mexico’s papers have called a superfiscalía and a superpolicía, or two new highly centralized and powerful national offices for a “super” attorney general and “super” police. “Busca Fox crear superfiscalía y superpolicía,” La Jornada, March 26, 2004, 1. 51. One example was a major purging of local police in the wake of a heavily equipped military operation. For more, see James C. McKinley Jr., “Mexico Purges 284 Police Commanders in Anti-Drug Effort,” New York Times, June 26, 2007. 52. Pressures for military and police collusion in drug-trafficking accelerated in the 1990s, especially when the Drug Enforcement Agency of the United States achieved considerable success in cutting off direct supplies between Colombia and the United States. This inadvertently shifted much of the drug trade operations into Mexico. For more on this, see Peter Andreas, “The Political Economy of Narco-Corruption in Mexico,” Current History, vol. 97, April 1998, 160–70. For a more theorized discussion of the impact of crime, corruption, and drug trade on governability in Mexico, see John Bailey and Roy Godson (eds.), Organized Crime and Democratic Governability: Mexico and the US-Mexican Borderlands (Pittsburgh, 2000) and John Bailey and Jorge Chabat (eds.), Transnational Crime and Public Security: Challenges to Mexico and the US (Boulder, 2002). 53. For more on Ebrard’s current policing strategies, see Diane E. Davis, “Urban Violence, Quality of Life, and the Future of Latin American Cities: The Dismal Record So Far, and the Search for New Analytical Frameworks to Sustain a

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Bias Towards Hope,” in Allison Garland (ed.), Approaches to Global Urban Poverty: Setting the Research Agenda (Washington, DC, 2008). chapter four 1. “Lista incompleta de crímenes cometidos . . . por Crispín Aguilar,” AGN/ DGIPS-787/2-1/45/282, Diario de Xalapa, January 1 and April 14, 1950. 2. Processes David Skerritt and Antonio Santoyo have analyzed for the same region during the 1930s. David Skerritt, Rancheros sobre tierra fértil (Xalapa, 1993); David Skerritt, “¿Qué es la mano negra?” in Anuario del Centro de Estudios Históricos de la Universidad Veracruzana III (Xalapa, 1980); Antonio Santoyo, La mano negra: Poder regional y Estado en México (Veracruz, 1928–1943) (Mexico City, 1995). 3. Roberto Blanco Moheno, Memorias de un reportero (Mexico City, 1965), 89, Migoni to Gobernación, July 26, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-787/2-1/45/282, PS-1 & PS-18 to Gobernación, May 2, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-88/Carlos Saavedra. 4. Representations that clash with Aguilar’s self-presentation as a maligned peasant leader, reluctantly lured, Cincinnatus-like, into local politics by the will of the pueblo. Felipe Moreno Irazabal, “Los señores feudales del estado de Veracruz,” Excélsior, November 1, 1947, letter, Crispín Aguilar to President Avila Camacho, August 23, 1942, AGN/DGG 2/317.4 (26)/24/64. 5. Diario de Xalapa April 9, April 11, April 13, and April 14, 1950. 6. Ricardo Corzo Ramírez, José González Sierra, and David Skerritt, . . . Nunca un desleal: Cándido Aguilar (1889–1960) (Mexico City, 1986), 293–94. 7. PS-1 & PS-18 to Gobernación, May 2, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-88/Carlos Saavedra, Diario de Xalapa July 1, July 2, and July 3, 1945, January 20, 1948. 8. Nicolás Parra to Cárdenas, February 16, 1940, AGN/LCR-555.1/149, Tejeda to Cárdenas, April 30, 1940, AGN/LCR-542.1/211, comisariado ejidal Axochio to Avila Camacho, November 9, 1942, AGN/MAC-540.1/2, Pánuco Unión de Comerciantes y Industriales en Pequeño to Avila Camacho, July 8, 1942, SDN-1-356/VII. 9. In terms of total deaths. Libro de defunciones, 1950, Ometepec Registro Civil (henceforth ORC), Mary Roldán, Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946–1953 (Durham, 2002), 5, 299. 10. Gonzalo Sánchez, “The Violence: An Interpretative Synthesis,” in Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez (eds.), Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective (Wilmington, 1992), 76. 11. Mary Roldán attacks the essentialization of Colombia as inherently violent, and stresses how “selective and concentrated” acts of violence were in Antioquia during the Violencia. Malcolm Deas compares the weight of “violent traditions” in Western Europe and Colombia to counter the same canard; Noel Malcolm directs a similar critique against the “ancient ethnic hatreds” interpretation of the Bosnian wars of the 1990s. Roldán, Blood and Fire, 5, 9–10; Malcolm Deas, Intercambios violentos (Bogotá, 1999), 15, 21, 26–29, 44–46; Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (London, 2002).

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12. The recent work of Tanalís Padilla is a notable exception. Tanalís Padilla, Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax PRIísta (Durham, 2008). See also a bibliography of studies on caciquismo in Alan Knight and Wil Pansters (eds.), Caciquismo in Twentieth-Century Mexico (London, 2005). 13. Although several journalists were on the DGIPS payroll, most notably Jesús González Valencia, editor of the sensationalist magazine Todo. JGV to Gobernación, September 30, 1951, AGN/DGIPS-24/10/“Partido Constitucionalista Mexicano.” 14. Excélsior, September 23 and September 24, 1947. Compare this to the detailed coverage of Iguala’s El Suriano. 15. Causing once-excellent local coverage to give way to stories on the rift between Stalin and Tito and the latest achievements of British engineering. 16. To the outrage of the Partido Accional Nacional, of which he was a member. Bateman to Bevin, April 11, 1947, FO371/60940/AN1478. 17. Laurence Whitehead, “State Organization in Latin America since 1930,” in Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 6 (Cambridge, 1994), 46–48. 18. Between 1943 and 1948. Departmental budgets in AGN/DGIPS-44/2. For the expansion of the Mexican intelligence services in the period see Aaron W. Navarro, Political Intelligence and the Creation of Modern Mexico, 1938–1954 (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2010), 150–86. 19. Manuel Rios Thivol to DGIPS, March 26, 1947, AGN/DGIPS-84/2-1/131 /655/vol. III. 20. Personnel files various, AGN/DGIPS-45 through105; “Relación de los inspectores de la DGIPS comisionados . . . para observar el desarrollo de las elecciones,” June 1952, AGN/DGIPS-814/2-1/52/70. 21. Leyva Mancilla report 1950, Archivo Paucic, Chipancingo (henceforth AP), 175/352.072.073ETN, ORC “libro de defunciones 1950,” INEGI, Censo del estado de Guerrero 1950 (Mexico City, 1953). 22. Such problems were not confined to Mexico. Colombians were unaware of the scale of the Violencia until it was almost over because “so much of the killing took place in remote rural areas that it was impossible to gain a clear picture of what was going on there.” James D. Henderson, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima (Tuscaloosa, 1985), 2. 23. Military reticence has endured sweeping political change elsewhere in Latin America: the Bolivian military, for example, successfully resisted President Evo Morales’s order to declassify its archives. Latin American Weekly Report, February 25, 2010, 3. 24. SDN preliminary catalogue of documents for release, Thom Rath, pers. com., 2002. 25. See, for example, General Raúl Garate, 19a zona militar, Tuxpan, Veracruz, to SEDENA, March 31, 1946, AHEV/1360/166/1(179). 26. Samuel Schmidt, The Deterioration of the Mexican Presidency: The Years of Luis Echeverría (Tucson, 1991), 9–12.

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27. Ginger Thompson, “Report on Mexican “Dirty War” Details Abuse by Military,” New York Times, February 27, 2006. 28. Sleeping in Parra’s deserted hacienda, Santoyo was awakened in the dead of night by Parra’s ghostly boots on the veranda. Antonio Santoyo, La mano negra: Poder regional y Estado en México (Veracruz, 1928–1943) (Mexico City, 1995), introduction. 29. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán, Cuijla: Esbozo etnográfico de un pueblo negro (Mexico City, 1995 [1958]); Paul Friedrich, The Princes of Naranja: An Essay in Anthrohistorical Method (Austin, 1987), 194; Marcos Muñoz, “Mixteca-NahuaTlapaneca” in Memorias del Instituto Nacional Indigenista, vol. 9 (Mexico City, 1963). 30. Pablo Piccato, “Estadísticas del crimen en México: Series históricas, 1901– 2001,” available at www.columbia.edu/estadisticascrimen/EstadisticasSigloXX.htm. 31. Aguirre Beltrán, Cuijla, 85–87; Véronique Flanet, Viviré si Dios quiere (Mexico City, 1990), 126–31. 32. Anonymous to editor La Verdad, 1948, AGN/DGIPS-799/2-1/48/431. 33. Acting presidente municipal Tepetlán to Cárdenas, August 11, 1939, AGN/ LCR 541/2152. 34. Leyva Mancilla report 1950, AP-175/352.072.073ETN. 35. As the probability of reprisal increased and trust in the police decreased. Such was the case in Jamiltepec, Oaxaca. Flanet, Viviré si Dios quiere, 126–31. 36. Moisés de la Peña, Guerrero Económico, vol. 1 (Mexico City, 1949), 358. 37. John Brewer, Bill Lockhart, and Paula Rodgers, “Crime in Ireland Since the Second World War,” in Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, vol. 27, no. 3, 1996, 136–37. For a skeptical look at contemporary Nicaraguan homicide rates, see Dennis Rodgers, “Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002,” in Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, May 2006, 270. 38. Twenty-nine per 100,000 compared to 61 per 100,000. Mary Roldán stresses the problems of accurate quantification of violence in Colombia, pointing out that there are motives for both under- and overreporting. Cited in Henderson, When Colombia Bled, 254; Roldán, Blood and Fire, 299, 315. 39. Donald Campbell in E. S. Overman (ed.), Methodology and Epistemology for Social Sciences: Selected Papers (Chicago, 1988), 360. 40. Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, “Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, vol. 364, no. 9448, 2006, 1857–1864. 41. Variable degrees of “stateness” is J. P. Nettl’s concept, cited in Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, 1988), 18. 42. Although qualitative and quantitative accounts of trends in violence since the 1990s are complicated by the increase in absolute violence in some regions, such as San Luis Potosí, and by the perception of steadily increasing violence and insecurity in Mexico City. 43. Namely, Caldas, Huila, Santander, Norte Santander, Tolima, and Valle.

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44. Muñoz, “Mixteca-Nahua-Tlapaneca,” 34, 146; Rick A. López, Crafting Mexico: Intellectuals, Artisans, and the State After the Revolution (Durham, 2010), 264–66. As Marcelo Bergman points out, homicide rates per 100,000 are easily distorted in small communities, making single-year snapshots less informative than a long-term, “grassroots statistics” approach to multiple sites. Pers. Com. Marcelo Bergman, 2007. 45. Emilia Vázquez, “De la intermediación política a la construcción local del Estado: Distintos abordajes teóricos en el análisis de procesos políticos en una región del Istmo veracruzano,” paper presented at the Coloquio internacional CIESAS-IRD (Xalapa, 2006), 50. 46. General Ramos Santos, “Informe sobre la situación que prevalece en esta Entidad,” September 30, 1945, SDN-1-228/VIII, Martínez to SEDENA, June 13, 1950, SDN-1-398/IX, Migoni to Gobernación, August 4, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-787 /2-1/45/282. 47. A conclusion that connects with recent regional studies of cardenismo, which stress the absence of a stabilizing social compact between peasants and state. John Gledhill, Casi Nada: A Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo (Austin, 1991), chapters 2 and 4; Ben Fallaw, Cárdenas Compromised: The Failure of Reform in Postrevolutionary Yucatán (Durham, 2001), 163–64; Adrian Bantjes, As If Jesus Walked on Earth: Cardenismo, Sonora and the Mexican Revolution (Wilmington, 1998), 219–24. 48. Paul Gillingham, Force and Consent in Mexican Provincial Politics: Guerrero and Veracruz, 1945–1953 (Oxford, 2005), 56–61; Elisa Servín, “Hacia el levantamiento armado: Del henriquismo a los federacionistas leales en los años cincuenta,” in Verónica Oikión Solano and Marta Eugenia García Ugarte, Movimientos armados en México, siglo XX, vol. 1 (Zamora, 2008), 321–24. 49. Morales Camacho and Rios Thivol to Gobernación, September 4, 1947, AGN/DGIPS-84/2-1/131/655. That lynching was marked by performative violence and mutilation. This chapter does not examine the cultural norms of violence so much as its incidence, structure, function, and evolution between 1940 and 1955. It is worth noting, though, that (a) at a general level Mexican violence seems less routinely performative than that of Colombia; (b) this does not mean that torture and mutilation were wholly absent; (c) modes of violence were regionally determined; thus in Naranja, Michoacán, opponents were generally shot without fuss, whereas in central Veracruz burying alive was reported. Friedrich, Princes of Naranja, 146, 271–75; Liga to Avila Camacho, August 31, 1942; AGN/MAC/540.1/2; Diario de Xalapa April 15, 1950. For Colombian modes of violence, see Gerard Martin, “The ‘Tradition of Violence’ in Colombia,” in Göran Aijmer and Jon Abbink, Meanings of Violence (Oxford, 2000), 171. 50. Ellen Brennan-Galvin, “Crime and Violence in an Urbanizing World,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 56, no. 1, Fall 2002, 123–45. 51. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1977), 178–81. 52. Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism (Ithaca, 2002), 27.

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53. Moisés De la Peña, Veracruz Económico (Mexico City, 1946, 2 volumes), vol. 2, 503–7; De la Peña, Guerrero Económico, vol. 2, 622. 54. Leyva Mancilla report 1946, AP-175/352.072.073ETN. 55. PS-7 to Gobernación, May 10, 1940, AGN/DGIPS-140/9. 56. Cited in Bettina E. Schmidt and Ingo W. Schröder (eds.), Anthropology of Violence and Conflict (London, 1995), 5. 57. La Verdad, March 13, 1949. 58. PS-12 to Gobernación, February 16, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-788/2-1/45/374. 59. Gillingham, Force and Consent, 34–35. 60. “Relación de las Grandes Unidades del Ejército,” September 1, 1948, AGN/MAV-550/19, reports on the Mexican Army, 1951, 1953, FO-371/97547 & FO-371/109037. 61. And development programs, such as providing drinking water. Carvajal report 1949, in Carmen Blázquez Domínguez, Estado de Veracruz: Informes de sus gobernadores, 1826–1986, vol. 14 (Xalapa, 1986), 7743, Garate to SEDENA, March 31, 1946, AHEV/1360/166/1(179). 62. La Verdad, May 7, 1949, Alvarado to Martínez, May 15, 1941, AGN/ MAC-542.1/269, PS-31, 34, 43 to Gobernación, April 28, 1949, AGN/DGIPS-84/ MRT, Presidente municipal Acapulco to SEDENA, June 21, 1950, SDN-1-398/ XVI, Flores to Gobernación, December 6, 1952, AGN/DGG-2.311M(9)155/2B. 63. Carvajal to Mange, August 4, 1949, AHEV-1640/166/1, Coquet to Gobernación, June 22, 1950, AGN/DGIPS-800/2-1/49/444. 64. Under the terms of the 1943 ley de portación de armas de fuego (the law on bearing firearms) firearms could be carried by the army, reserves, police, teachers, and bureaucrats; all others needed permits from the Secretaría de Defensa Nacional or became liable to on-the-spot confiscation and arrest. Circular, Ramos to defensas rurales, November 5, 1943, AGN/MAC 542.1/579. 65. Ramos to Avila Camacho, September 28, 1944, AGN/MAC-542.1/579, Trópico, semanario independiente de información (Acapulco) October 1, 1944, Excélsior September 28, 1948. 66. Author’s interview, Vicente Ramírez Sandoval, Ometepec, April 9, 2003, Guzmán Carriles to Avila Camacho, December 12, 1942, AGN/DGG2/311P(26)2/107, La Verdad, March 25, 1949. 67. Coquet to Gobernación, June 22, 1950, AGN/DGIPS-800/2-1/49/444. 68. Mónica Serrano, “The Armed Branch of the State: Civil-Military Relations in Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, May 1995, 431–32. 69. Mange to Ruiz Cortines, February 25, 1946, AHEV-1360/166/2. 70. Antonio Peñafiel, Anuario Estadística de la República Mexicana 1907 (Mexico City, 1912); Departamento de la Estadística Nacional, Anuario Estadístico 1923–1924 (Mexico City, 1925); Secretaría de la Economia Nacional Departamento de la Estadística Nacional, Anuario Estadístico de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 1940 (Mexico City, 1942). 71. Santoyo, La mano negra; María Cristina Núñez Madrazo, “Entre patrones, caciques y líderes: Procesos políticos locales en una comunidad cañera del centro del estado de Veracruz,” Sotavento, vol. 5, 2000, 67–105.

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72. Arriola to Crescenciano Campos Gómez, June 11, 1940, PS-50 to Gobernación, June 26, 1940, AGN/DGIPS-87/2, Maldonado to Cárdenas, December 4, 1934, AGN/DGG/2/012.2(26)143/68/41; Santoyo, La mano negra, 152. 73. Blanco Moheno, Memorias, 93, 242. 74. Georgina Trigos, El corrido veracruzano (una antología) (Xalapa, 1990), 65–67. 75. Interview with Estanislau Arroyo Zapata, in Skerritt, “¿Qué es la mano negra?” 134–35. 76. David A. Skerritt, “Peasant Organisation in Veracruz, Mexico: 1920 to the Present,” D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1996), 289–90, PS-50 to Gobernación, June 26, 1940, AGN/DGIPS-87/2. 77. Blanco Moheno, Memorias, 89, “Actividades reaccionarias en el estado de Veracruz,” October 4, 1939, AGN/DGIPS-140/9. 78. Skerritt, “¿Qué es la mano negra?” 134. 79. “Lista incompleta de crímenes cometidos . . . por Crispín Aguilar,” AGN/ DGIPS-787/2-1/45/282, Diario de Xalapa December 29, 1947. 80. “Lista incompleta de crímenes cometidos . . . por Crispín Aguilar,” AGN/ DGIPS-787/2-1/45/282, Aguilar to Avila Camacho, August 23, 1942, AGN/DGG -2/317.4 (26)/24/64, Excélsior November 1, 1947, Liga Villa Cardel to CNC, December 1, 1947, AGN/MAV-541/218. 81. Mange to Rodrigo de Llano, Excélsior, November 3, 1947. 82. PS-1 & PS-18 to Gobernación, May 2, 1945, AGN/DGIPS-88/Carlos Saavedra. 83. The Diario de Xalapa, March–July 1945 is rich in details, as are Migoni’s Gobernación reports, AGN/DGIPS-787/2-1/45/282. 84. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1987), chapter 11. 85. Trigos, El corrido veracruzano, 36. 86. Diario de Xalapa, December 24, 1947, May 9, 1950; Excélsior, November 2, 1947; Mange to de Llano, Excélsior, November 3, 1947, SDN-1-356 v X. 87. Diario de Xalapa, May 11, May 14, and August 13, 1947; Ruiz Cortines 1947 report, in Blázquez Domínguez, Estado de Veracruz, vol. 13, 7529. 88. Diario de Xalapa, September 23, 1949, April 9, 1950. 89. Ibid., March 23 and March 25, 1949. 90. Pablo Piccato, “Pistoleros, Ley Fuga and Uncertainty in Public Debates About Murder in Twentieth-Century Mexico,” in Paul Gillingham and Ben Smith (eds.), Soft Authoritarianism in Mexico, 1938–1968 (Durham, forthcoming), chapter 14; Diario de Xalapa, September 1, 1949. 91. Diario de Xalapa, April 9–15, 1950. 92. Ibid., April 9 and April 14, 1950. 93. Ibid., April 15, May 13, and May 22, 1950. 94. Ibid., July 1–4 and July 16–23, 1952. 95. By decentralization I mean that executive figures (governors and presidents) had less overt, direct involvement in acts of informal state violence than their predecessors had. 96. Shawn C. Smallman, Fear and Memory in the Brazilian Army and Society, 1889–1954 (Chapel Hill, 2002), 3–5.

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97. Pablo González Casanova, Democracy in Mexico (New York, 1970), 36–39; Edwin Lieuwen, Mexican Militarism (Albuquerque, 1968), 145. 98. Thurston to State Department, August 20, 1948, NARG-812.00/8-2048. 99. PS-19 to Gobernación,August 3, 1945,AGN/DGIPS-132/2-1/302.4(0.11)/2; Diario Oficial, January 20, 1949; El Universal, June 19, 1951; Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s, 169; Navarro, Political Intelligence, 106–7; La Verdad, June 2, 1949; El Nacional, June 19, 1951; Diario de Xalapa, June 21, 1952. 100. Servín, “Hacia el levantamiento,” 314–17. 101. PS-31 to DGIPS, October 7 and November 1, 1943, AGN/DGIPS-94 /2-1/131/802. 102. Petition to ayuntamiento Ixcateopan, December 10, 1948, Archivo Municipal de Ixcateopan-1948; Flanet, Viviré si Dios quiere, 42. 103. Gómez Maganda report 1952, AP-173/352.072.073ETN. 104. Governors’ reports Veracruz 1945–1953, Blázquez Domínguez, Estado de Veracruz, vols. 13–15, 7529, 7613, 7744, 7750, 8017–8019, 8200. 105. De la Peña, Veracruz Económico, vol. 1, 252. 106. Muñoz report 1950–1953, Blázquez Domínguez, Estado de Veracruz, vol. 15, 8018. 107. Torres to de la Selva, October 2, 1952, AGN/MAV-742/39535. 108. Thomas Rath, “Army, State and Nation in Mexico, 1920–1958,” PhD diss. (Columbia, 2009), 95. 109. Finley to State, December 21, 1942, NARG-812.00/32086, Diario de Xalapa, June 5, 1950. 110. Torres to de la Selva, September 24 and September 25, 1952, AGN/MAV -742/39535. 111. La Verdad, March 31, 1949, Suarez Ruano to DFS, March 9, 1962, AGN/DFS-Guerrero/100-10-1-1962/H229L10. 112. “To deal with the Jaral bulls/the horses from the same place.” Trigos, El corrido veracruzano, 76. 113. Speaks to ambassador, August 3, 1948, NARG-812.00/8-548, Estado Mayor Presidencial to Gobernación, December 24, 1952, AGN/DGG2.311M(9)155/2, Diario de Xalapa, August 15, 1948. 114. De la Peña, Guerrero Económico, vol. 2, 622, Paucic notes on Leyva Mancilla, AP-108/320.32PER; Blanco Moheno, Memorias, 242. 115. Ojeda to Avila Camacho, July 10, 1941, AGN/MAC-541/269, La Verdad, February 23, 1949. 116. Such as the deaths of the Hacienda bureaucrat Inigo Noriega and the journalist Natalio Burnstein. Excélsior, December 9, 1949, April 6, 1950. 117. Bateman to Bevin, April 11, 1947, FO371/60940/AN1478. 118. Benjamin T. Smith, Pistoleros and Popular Movements: The Politics of State Formation in Postrevolutionary Oaxaca (Lincoln, 2009), 184–92, 405. 119. Octavio Aguilar y de la Parra, Mi tío, el cacique . . . ensayo político anecdótico (Mexico City, 1985), 92; Vicente Fuentes Díaz, Guerrero: Un pasado aciago, un porvenir promisorio (Mexico City, 2000), 32–33; Sam Quinones, True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino, and the Bronx (Albuquerque, 2001), 249–67.

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120. George Arthur Genz, “Entrepreneurship and Caciquismo: A Study of Community Power in a Mexican Gulf Coast Village,” PhD diss. (East Lansing, 1975), 291–94. 121. CIA report, “Mexico: The Problems of Progress,” October 20, 1967, 2, available at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB92/mexelect_1.pdf. 122. Richard Craig, “Operation Condor: Mexico’s Anti-Drug Campaign Enters a New Era,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, vol. 22, no. 3, August 1980, 348, 352. 123. Sánchez, “Violence,” 79–91; Roldán, Blood and Fire, 41–43. 124. Padilla, Rural Resistance, 12, 139–60. 125. Servín charts the secretive, often nighttime deployments of substantial army forces in the repression of henriquismo. Servín, “Hacia el levantamiento,” 311–14. 126. Cited in Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Writing (London, 1916), 1. 127. Though the latter statistic is markedly more accurate. Piccato, “Estadísticas del crimen en México”; INEGI, Estadísticas históricas de México CD-ROM (Mexico City, 2000); “The Concentration of Mexico’s Violence,” Latin American Regional Report: Mexico and NAFTA, December 2010, 1. chapter five 1. Guardian, June 14, 2007. Needless to say, the Mexican media are saturated with such reports: representative examples would include Jesús Esquivel and Marco Appel, “Narcoterrorismo,” Proceso, vol. 1564, October 22, 2006; Ricardo Ravelo, “Reynosa: Narcogolpe de Estado,” Proceso, vol. 1573, December 24, 2006; Vicente Alfonso, “La narcocultura echa raíces,” Proceso, vol. 1577, January 21, 2007. As these dates suggests, this chapter was originally written in 2007–8; it has been lightly updated in 2010–11. Since the focus is chiefly historical, not contemporary, recent events—however dramatic and dynamic—do not, I think, subvert the basic arguments. 2. Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution: Potentials and Consequences,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, 66, 69; Ted Galen Carpenter, “Mexico Is Becoming the Next Colombia,” Cato Institute, Foreign Policy Briefing, no. 87, November 15, 2005; Luis Astorga, Seguridad, traficantes, y militares (Mexico City, 2007), 78, 191; Gerardo Albarrán de Alba, “El narco es ya un poder político y un desafío abierto,” Proceso, vol. 1883, October 24, 2010, 10, 12. 3. On the difficulties of research and the fallibility of “experts” in this fogbound field, note Sebastian Rotella, Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the Mexican Border (New York, 1997), 112–13; and Howard Campbell, Drug War Zone (Austin, 2009), 2, 14, 37. 4. I derive the 120-a-month figure from Ricardo Ravelo, “Los cárteles se recomponen y se fortalecen,” Proceso, vol. 1590, April 22, 2007, 16, 20, which is roughly in line with other sources. It seems unlikely that narco-deaths—which include security force casualties as well as the victims of narco feuds—are systematically exaggerated. By way of comparison with Colombia, see Bunker and Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution,” 60. Two points regarding recent narco-mortality: (i)

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given that Mexico has a fairly high homicide rate anyway, pre-2007 narco-killings probably added only about 10–15 percent to the national homicide rate (of around seventeen per 100,000 in 1995; compare eighty for Colombia); however (ii) narco homicides rapidly increased—they may even have tripled—between 2005 and 2007: Jesús Cantú, “La solución errada,” Proceso, vol. 1590, April 22, 2007, 20. If we go back to 1989, we encounter a figure of only 115 “mafioso” assassinations: thus, what was an annual total has now become a monthly one: Alberto Aguirre et al., El asesinato del cardenal (Mexico City, 1994), 146. Furthermore, since 2007, the figures have risen again, though with big regional disparities (see n.6 below). 5. Tijuana appears to have experienced a decline in narco-violence during 2009–10: William Finnegan, “Letter from Tijuana: ‘In the Name of the Law,’ ” The New Yorker, January 18, 2010, 62–70; pers. comm., April 2010. Nuevo Laredo, too, after a spate of violence in 2005–6, experienced a so-called Pax Mafiosa—“a hideous, precarious . . . calm”—in 2008–9: Ed Vulliamy, Amexica: War Along the Borderline (London, 2010), 225–27. 6. For negative reactions to Calderón’s initiatives, see Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, “Cien días que parecen diez años,” Proceso, vol. 1584, March 11, 2007, 12–13; Larry Birns and Alex Sánchez, “The Government and the Drug Lords,” available at www.coha.org/2007/04/10. Recent figures suggest a sharp increase in narco-violence since Calderón began his military initiative: nationally, the “gang murder rate” may have reached 12,000 in 2010, which is eight times the  2006–7 figure. Chihuahua alone experienced over 3,000 such killings, giving the state a homicide rate of 97 per 100,000; Sinaloa’s rate was similar. In contrast, the Estado de México and Distrito Federal had a murder rate of just 3 per 100,000. Total “gang-related” deaths since Calderón took office are thus reckoned to be over 24,000: Latin American Regional Report: Mexico and NAFTA, December 2010, 1, 6. 7. María Celia Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs: Causes and Consequences (Boulder, 1995), 17; Roderic Ai Camp, Mexico’s Military on the Democratic Stage (Westport, 2005), 110–11. 8. Sergio Venegas, “La mafia en el poder,” Excélsior, January 13, 2007, 8; Luciano Campos and Arturo Rodríguez, “Desesperado,” Proceso, vol. 1589, April 15, 2007, 48–50; Astorga, Seguridad, 231–44. 9. “To get out of the way when the hammer fell”: quoted in Luis Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras (Mexico City, 2003), 87–88. 10. Astorga, Seguridad, 296. 11. Aguirre, El asesinato del cardenal; Rotella, Twilight on the Line, chapter 4. Once upon a time, high-level narco-violence tended to remain relatively specific, limited, and targeted; ordinary “civilians” could go about their business with relatively little fear of becoming collateral victims, even in zones of known narco power: see, for example, Terrence E. Poppa, Drug Lord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin (Seattle, 1998), 71, on the quiet life of Ojinaga when Victor Sierra controlled the drug trade in the late 1970s. Elijah Wald, Narcocorrido (New York, 2001), 56, similarly describes a rather relaxed view of local “gangsters and gomeros” in Sinaloa in the late 1990s. In recent years, however, for reasons I

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explore later, violence appears to have become more extensive, indiscriminate, and alarming. 12. John Bailey and Roy Godson, “Introduction,” in John Bailey and Roy Godson (eds.), Organized Crime and Democratic Governability: Mexico and the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands (Pittsburgh, 2000), 6–7, define organized crime in terms of four criteria: durability, a hierarchical structure, profit-seeking, and the use of violence and corruption. Dilip K. Das, “Organized Crime: A World Perspective,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 3, no. 3, 1997, 127–29, concurs that “organized crime” has to be serious, planned, profit-seeking, and hierarchical; endowed with “internal sanctions and discipline”; capable of “actual or implied violence”; and exercising “influence over, or the corruption of, various elected and appointed pillars of social control and opinion leaders within the society.” 13. Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London, 1930), 4. 14. Jorge Chabat, “Mexico’s War on Drugs: No Margin for Maneuver,” CIDE documento de trabajo, no. 88, 2001, 1. However, domestic drug consumption has increased in recent years, and with it related violence: the extraordinarily high levels of homicide in Ciudad Juárez, said to be the highest in the world, derive in part from street-level competition between rival gangs, who are linked to—but not controlled by—the major cartels: Vulliamy, Amexica, 103, which gives the Ciudad Juárez murder rate as 191 per 100,000 in 2009–10 (compare Medellín, 62, and Cape Town, 60). 15. Fear of crime, including drug-related street crime, was a staple of Mexican politics, rumor, and gossip in the mid-1990s: see, for example, “El país, sin seguridad y a merced de la delincuencia,” Época, vol. 199, March 27, 1995, 16–27. 16. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 72–73, gives figures illustrating the markup of marijuana in the 1980s, as it left Oaxaca (at $25 a lb), crossed the border ($75), reached San Antonio ($150), and was finally retailed in Philadelphia ($3,000). 17. See the illustrative diagram in Peter A. Lupsha, “Transnational Organized Crime versus the Nation-State,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 2, no. 1, 1996, 39. For an interesting analysis of an earlier drug (cocaine) boom, located within a comparative “commodity-chain” context, see Paul Gootenberg, “Cocaine in Chains: The Rise and Demise of a Global Commodity,” in Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank (eds.), From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000 (Durham, 2006), 321–51. 18. Chabat, “Mexico’s War on Drugs,” 1. 19. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (London, 2002), 56–67, 306–36. 20. Paul Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures and the Human Prospect (New York, 2002), 206; Helena Cronin, The Ant and the Peacock: Altruism and Sexual Selection from Darwin to Today (Cambridge, 1991), 332. For an interesting (California) case study, see Hans Toch, Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence (Harmondsworth, 1972). There is abundant evidence of Mexican narco-gang recruits being “en su mayoría jovenes de menos de 30

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años”: Astorga, Seguridad, 125; Patricia Dávila, “ ‘El Chapo’ vs. ‘El Viceroy,’ ” Proceso, vol. 1773, October 24, 2010, 17. 21. Poppa, Drug Lord, 157–59, describes the “swift, irreversible brutality” of Marco Antonio Haro Portillo, who sometimes killed “on the spur of the moment,” especially if he felt “slighted.” Some recent research suggests that the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud, which blew up in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky after the American Civil War and lasted until 1914, was exacerbated by the McCoy family’s genetic predisposition to Von Hippel-Landau disease, which affects the adrenal gland and can provoke rage and violence (see Marilynn Marchione, “Disease Underlines Hatfield-McCoy Feud,” Washington Post, April 15, 2007). I stress “exacerbate,” not “cause,” since, after all, family feuds were hardly unusual in this time and (approximate) place. 22. Jorge Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder: Las redes del narcotráfico, la política y la violencia en México (Mexico City, 2001), 79–80. 23. By “noninstrumental,” I mean violence that seems to go beyond any “reasonable” or rational calculation—calculation based on “the utility of inspiring fear” (Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 22)—and that appears to carry an expressive, affective, even psychopathological charge. Of course, it may not be easy to draw this line, since even extreme violence could be “justified” on the grounds of hard-headed realism: “Nothing personal, it’s just business.” But there are enough examples of what appears to be extreme, self-gratifying violence to warrant the distinction. Needless to say, such examples are not confined to the “criminal class”: repressive states also attract, recruit, and rely on such people. On the deleterious consequences of overconsuming the product, see Poppa, Drug Lord, 197–98, 246, 259, narrating the decline and fall of Ojinaga’s Pablo Acosta. 24. I discuss the broad question of violence in Mexican history in Alan Knight, “Violence and Mass Murder in Twentieth-Century Mexico,” a paper given at the conference on “Violence and Genocide in Latin American History” (Michigan, 2007); publication forthcoming in volume edited by Eric Johnson and Pieter Spierenburg. 25. High-level violence declined, but endemic low-level, usually rural, violence continued; some recent drug feuds in fact rode on the back of earlier conflicts, involving disputes over land, contraband, and caciquismo: for example, Miguel Angel López Velasco, Masacre en el Llano de la Víbora (Mexico City, 1993), 22–23, 87–88. 26. Pablo Piccato, City of Suspects: Crime in Mexico City, 1900–1931 (Durham, 2001), 79, 100, 229, and—more directly relevant to homicide—the same author’s paper, “The Historical Significance of Homicide in Contemporary Mexico,” given at the conference on “Violence and Genocide in Latin American History” (see n.24 above). Apart from the usual problem of underreporting, the interpretation of trends over time is vitiated by the fact that the data often concern not actual homicides or other violent acts, but formal judicial accusations or sentences (which may, of course, reflect less any criminal trends than more effective policing, a more rigorous judiciary, or a more delatory civil society). 27. It could, of course, be argued that certain ingrained characteristics provide a bedrock, upon which violent behavior can be swiftly built, when circumstances

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are favorable; then the question becomes one of weighing the relative causal importance of the “bedrock” as against the “circumstances,” or, once again, the “disposition” against the “situation.” While such calibration is difficult, I would argue that the fluctuations in levels of violent crime and homicide (including armed protest, rebellion, and repression) point to situational over dispositional causes. Regional patterns reinforce the argument: during the armed revolution, the people of Jalisco and Michoacán appeared relatively peaceful; during the Cristero rebellion, a decade later, they seemed noticeably warlike. More recently, Mexico City suffered increased crime, including violent crime, as a result of the 1994–95 recession, while relatively tranquil cities like Monterrey have seen a surge in narco-violence in recent years. In each case, circumstances—churchstate conflict, economic downturn, and heightened state/narco (as well as narco/ narco) conflict—offer more robust explanations of change than any “dispositional” assumptions. 28. Federico Varese, The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy (Oxford, 2001), 21, citing UN figures for 1995. 29. The link between largely rural violence and commodity booms is suggested (though not systematically developed) in Alan Knight, “Political Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America (London, 1999), 114. 30. Louis R. Sadler, “The Historic Dynamics of Smuggling in the U.S.-Mexican Border Region, 1550–1998: Reflections on Markets, Cultures and Bureaucracies,” in Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability, 161–76. 31. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 17–19. On Cantú’s “revolutionary” role, see also Joseph R. Werne, “Cantú y la soberanía mexicana en Baja California,” Historia Mexicana, vol. 30, 1980, 1–32. 32. Wald, Narcocorrido, 2, 13–14; for the lyrics, see Mark Cameron Edberg, El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos and the Construction of a Cultural Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border (Austin, 2004), 37–42. 33. Jeffery Scott McIlwain, “An Equal Opportunity Employer: Opium Smuggling Networks in and Around San Diego During the Early Twentieth Century,” Transnational and Organized Crime, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, 31–54. 34. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 34. 35. Astorga, ibid., gives abundant examples. See also Campbell, Drug War Zone, 50, for a résumé of the several illegal operations run by “La Nacha” in Juárez in the 1930s. 36. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 31. 37. For a good overview, see Linda B. Hall and Don M. Coerver, Revolution on the Border: The United States and Mexico, 1910–20 (Albuquerque, 1988). 38. The extremely high value/weight ratio of drugs, compared to that of other products, especially primary goods, is obvious and relatively constant: even today, marijuana—the least valuable of the four main drug categories (after coca/cocaine, opium/heroin, and amphetamines)—is 1,000 times more valuable than corn; thus, “growers [in Mexico] can make as much money with 1 kilo of marijuana . . . as they can by producing one ton of corn”: Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs, 39.

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39. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 58. 40. Ibid., 27, 28, 33; compare today: Campbell, Drug War Zone, 7. 41. Knight, “Violence and Mass Murder.” 42. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 59. 43. Ibid., 56–57, 59, 60. 44. Ibid., 79. In the 1970s, “Tijuana police and San Diego officers of the antibandit unit shot at each other in the badlands” along the border: Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 114. 45. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 47; Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 40, 66–75. Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 94–102, 123–24, describes ambivalent police/ narco relations in Tijuana since the 1970s, when initially successful police measures were eventually compromised. Yet more recently, Tijuana’s swaggering police chief Julián Leyzaola Pérez successfully bore down on criminal violence (in part by deploying his own brand of violence): Finnegan, “Letter from Tijuana.” However, at the end of 2010 Leyzaola was transferred out of Tijuana to a (higher) Baja California state security post. 46. Of course, this “imbrication” goes beyond narco-crime; the police/criminal boundary is often blurred; and, we could recall, Porfirio Díaz’s famous rural police were partly recruited from bandits and, as policemen, were involved in quite a few shady dealings: Paul Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police and Mexican Development (Lincoln, 1981), especially chapter 5. 47. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 43, 55. 48. Ibid., 44, 89; Campbell, Drug War Zone, 40–52. 49. Needless to say, the same is true, to a degree, of most states; it is the degree of “rule of law” versus patrimonialism and corruption which counts. I have attempted a general interpretation of the modern Mexican state in Alan Knight, “The Modern Mexican State: Theory and Practice,” in Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando Lopez-Alves (eds.), The Other Mirror: Grand Theory Through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton, 2001), 177–218. 50. Hence, in part, the success of civil service reform in relatively rich nineteenth-century Britain. Britain could be contrasted with Mexico, where, at the same time, the “politics of penury” prevailed: Barbara Tenenbaum, The Politics of Penury: Debt and Taxes in Mexico, 1821–56 (Albuquerque, 1986). 51. On the early (1916–29) evolution of Mexican drug policy, see Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs, 7–8; Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 30. 52. The abuse of state power took many forms; one useful distinction is between state sins of commission (the exercise of state power for illicit purposes) and, less obviously, state sins of omission (the failure of the state to act, whether in matters of policing, judicial process, or social reform, where it should have done). These can be summed up under the notion of state discretionality. A further distinction, introduced below, concerns the exercise of state power for private enrichment, compared with the (illicit, discretionary) disbursement of state resources for political gain: thus, government in the service of graft in the first case, graft in the service of government in the second. 53. Alan Riding, Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans (New York, 1986), 164.

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54. Stephen Haber, Armando Razo, and Noel Maurer, The Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876–1929 (Cambridge, 2003), offer a suggestive analysis of the relationship between asset-holders and the state in Porfirian and revolutionary Mexico; however, the specific question of illicit asset-holders is not addressed. 55. Raimondo Castanzaro, Men of Respect: A Social History of the Sicilian Mafia (New York, 1992), 28–31. 56. Perhaps, in recent years, something resembling highly unstable “narcomini-states” has come into existence: certainly there are large chunks of the country where the rule of law and the power of the state are absent and, if any pax prevails, it is a kind of pax mafiosa; on this process of “feudalización galopante,” see Ricardo Ravelo, “Los cárteles imponen su ley,” Proceso, vol. 1773, October 2010, 7–9. 57. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 82–84; Mark Wasserman, Persistent Oligarchs: Elites and Politics in Chihuahua, Mexico, 1910–40 (Durham, 1993), 100–103, 133–34; Nicole Mottier, “Organized Crime and Political Corruption in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, 1928–37,” master’s thesis (Oxford, 2004). 58. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York, 1976), 9–10. 59. Wasserman, Persistent Oligarchs, 59–60, 136–37. 60. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, gives numerous examples: for example, pp. 93–95. See also McIlwain, “Equal Opportunity Employer.” 61. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 22–23, 103; José Jorge Gómez Izquierdo, El movimiento antichino en México (1871–1934): Problemas del racismo y del nacionalismo durante la Revolución Mexicana (Mexico City: INAH, 1991), part 3. 62. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 39. In Juárez, for example, La Nacha successfully “muscled out the Chinese” in the 1930s: Campbell, Drug Zone War, 46. 63. Roger D. Hansen, The Politics of Mexican Development (Baltimore, 1980), chapter 5. Compare Peter Lupsha, “Introduction,” in Poppa, Drug Lord, xvii. 64. Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 58, 65, 74, 279; Kenneth F. Johnson, Mexican Democracy: A Critical View (New York, 1978), 180–81. 65. Alan Knight, “México bronco, México manso: Reflexiones sobre la cultura cívica mexicana,” Política y gobierno, vol. 3, no. 1, 1996, 5–30. 66. For example, Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 62–63. 67. Ibid., 68. 68. Ibid., 36, 72. 69. The quote is from Lupsha, “Introduction,” xiv. 70. See, for example, Poppa, Drug Lord, 119–20. 71. Stanley A. Pimentel, “The Nexus of Organized Crime and Politics in Mexico,” in Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability, 48; Poppa, Drug Lord, xii, 44ff. 72. A rough indication is given by contrasting two snapshots of Mexico, provided by well-informed journalists, some twenty years apart: Riding, Distant Neighbors (1986), 546, devotes half a page to the drug question, while Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon, Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy (New York, 2004), in a book of similar size, devote twenty-five pages.

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73. Peter Lupsha, cited by Pimentel, “Nexus of Organized Crime,” 40, 56. 74. Needless to say, there are overlaps between these three categories; however, few—if any—social-scientific categories are discrete and watertight; the choice is usually not between watertight and leaky categories, but leaky categories and no categories at all. 75. It was no coincidence that the current narco-corrido boom got started in the early 1970s: Wald, Narcocorrido, 3, 12–13. 76. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 41; Astorga, Seguridad, 288. 77. Bunker and Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution,” 67; Proceso, vol. 1589, April 15, 2007, 41, estimates $22 billion a year. See also Astorga, Seguridad, 264–65, 284, 288, 290, for more recent (somewhat lower) estimates and breakdowns by commodity. 78. Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 161. 79. Poppa, Drug Lord, 128–31, and Campbell, Drug War Zone, 14–15, give graphic close-to-the-ground examples of the Darwinian struggle between contrabandists and border authorities—the latest chapter in a very old story. 80. Bunker and Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution,” 68. 81. The “cuerno del chivo,” goat’s horn, is so called because of its “curved forward grip”: Wald, Narcocorrido, 114. Being relatively cheap, accessible, sturdy, and reliable, the AK-47 became the preferred weapon of guerrillas and insurgents throughout the world. But the narcos have moved onward and upward: we might compare the modest arsenal of Telésforo Parra López, arrested by police in Tijuana in 1961 (Astorga, Drogas sin fronteras, 67), with the extensive and sophisticated weaponry of today. A similar technological evolution is evident in respect of both aerial and ground transport—Grand Marquises, Cheyennes, Ramchargers, and now Hummers—all of which figure prominently in narco ballads: for example, Wald, Narcocorrido, 272–73. 82. For example, in Nuevo León: Astorga, Seguridad, 233. 83. Bunker and Sullivan, “Cartel Evolution,” 68; Ravelo, “Los cárteles imponen su ley.” 84. Camp, Mexico’s Military, 110–17. Thus far, the evidence is not encouraging. The administration can, of course, argue that the recent spike in violence is an inevitable response to the government crackdown (thus, a sign that the crackdown is working) and is also the necessary prelude to future progress. However, many experts find this argument unconvincing. 85. All are high-powered pistolero groups, of relatively recent origin, and known for their extreme violence; however, they differ by origin, los Zetas being former soldiers in the Mexican army, los kaibiles, veterans of Guatemalan military repression, and los maras (from mara salvatrucha-13), members of a gang network spanning Central America, Mexico, and the United States: see Astorga, Seguridad, 163–77, 308; Jesús Aranda and Andrea Becerril, “Teme Sedena vínculos entre Kaibiles guatemaltecos y sicaros del narco,” La Jornada, September 28, 2005; and Alberto Najar, “Otra guerra de narcos,” La Jornada, January 8, 2006. Clearly, recruitment of this kind and on this scale partly explains the recent upsurge in narco-violence. But it is a symptom as much as a cause.

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86. Alan Knight, “Habitus and Homicide: Political Culture in Revolutionary Mexico,” in Wil Pansters (ed.), Citizens of the Pyramid: Essays on Mexican Political Culture (Amsterdam, 1997), 120–21. 87. Leonarda Reyes, “Los ‘narco-blogs,’ ” Proceso, vol. 1573, December 24, 2006, 14–17. On “narco-semiotics,” see also Campbell, Drug War Zone, 2–4, 27–30. 88. Lucian Campos and Arturo Rodríguez, “Desesperado,” Proceso, vol. 1589, April 15, 2007, 48–53. 89. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 53; Vulliamy, Amexica, chapter 4, offers both graphic detail and journalistic hype. 90. Poppa, Drug Lord, ch. 8, describes one such succession struggle, beginning in 1982; see also Aguirre, El asesinato del cardenal, 76–77, on the 1988–89 battle between the Arrellano Félix and Palma gangs (an example, it seems, of calculating, instrumental violence soon giving way to vengeful affective violence: see n.23 above. Recent battles between the forces of “Chapo” Guzmán and Osiel Cárdenas have a similar quality: Astorga, Seguridad, 121, 128, 131). A useful synopsis of early (1970s) narco battles is given by Patricia B. MacRae, “Reconceptualizing the Illegal Narcotics Trade: Its Effect on the Colombian and Mexican State,” SECOLAS conference paper (Savannah, 1998). 91. Peter A. Lupsha, “Transnational Narco-Corruption and Narco Investment: A Focus on Mexico,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 1, no. 1, 1995, 90. 92. Given both the fluidity and the clandestinity of narco cartels, any head count is bound to be approximate rather than precise; hence versions differ. However, the notion of the Big 4 seems to be generally accepted: compare Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 70–71; Lupsha, “Transnational Narco-Corruption,” 92; and Eduardo Díaz González, “Breve reseña del narcopoder en México,” available at http://ossante.blogspot.com—which, citing FBI sources, mentions nineteen cartels, circa 1995 (these no doubt overlap and interrelate). On the Sinaloa diaspora, Wald, Narcocorrido, 52, and Astorga, Seguridad, 259. 93. Compare Pimentel, “Nexus of Organized Crime,” 39, 56–57. 94. Indeed, both Campbell, Drug War Zone, 19, and Astorga, Seguridad, 27, 38, 51–52, question whether “cartel”—with its connotations of organization, permanence, and hierarchy—is the right term for today’s narco enterprises. Their view commands respect, but I have chosen to keep to common usage. 95. Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 42, 136–37; Luis Astorga, “Organized Crime and the Organization of Crime,” in Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability, 77. 96. Leonardo Curzio, “Organized Crime and Political Campaign Finance in Mexico,” in Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability, 83–102. Note also the comments of Governor Cárdenas Batel of Michoacán in Astorga, Seguridad, 187–88. 97. Denise Dresser, “Voz de alarma,” Proceso, vol. 1589, April 15, 2007, 52–53. 98. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge, 1991), 10. 99. A number of PRI governors united against the presidential ambitions of party leader Roberto Madrazo in 2005 in what became known as TUCOM,

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Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo; in 2001, all state governors formed the Conferencia Nacional de Gobernadores, CONAGO. 100. Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 43, 60, 235–79; New York Times, March 20, 1998, A10. 101. Lupsha,”Transnational Narco-Corruption,” 96; Curzio, “Organized Crime and Political Campaign Finance,” 88; Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 164. 102. As Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 15, 146, puts it, rather bluntly, the business of organized crime and corruption being “a structural matter which does not appear to distinguish between parties in power,” the PAN faced a difficult dilemma when taking power in Baja California, namely, “is it riskier to do business with the bad guys or to stand up to them”? As the power of the PAN spread, so similar dilemmas and dangers arose elsewhere: for example, in Guerrero, Sinaloa, and the Estado de México: Sergio Venegas, “La Mafia en el poder,” Excélsior, January 13, 2007, 8. 103. López Velasco, Masacre en el Llano de la Víbora, narrates a notorious case; evidence of police/narco and somewhat less salient army-narco collusion is abundant, although rarely clear-cut: Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 24–25, 78, 176; Aguirre et al., El asesinato del cardenal, 83, 152, 156; Raúl Benítez Manaut, “Containing Armed Groups, Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime in Mexico: The Role of the Military,” in Bailey and Godson, Organized Crime and Democratic Governability, 146–47. Astorga, Seguridad, also gives numerous examples. 104. The point well summed up by Astorga, Seguridad, 45. 105. Vigilantism, violent local self-help, is beyond the scope of this chapter, although it clearly relates to its central themes: first, because it offers further evidence of the dereliction of the state, and second, because some vigilantism is directed against the drug trade (low-level street distribution rather than high-level production and export). For an example, see Rosa Rojas, “Reducen hasta 95% la delincuencia en 6 municipios de Guerrero,” La Jornada, September 27, 2005. 106. Astorga, “Organized Crime,” 80–81, offers a succinct analysis. José Alfredo Andrade Bojorges, La historia secreta del narco: Desde Navolato vengo (Mexico, 1999), 25, baldly declares that, in his home town of Guamuchilito (Sinaloa), Amado Carrillo Fuentes “tomó a su cargo las tareas del Estado” (some examples are given below, n.111). Nor is this just a smart, ex post, academic argument: Pablo Acosta, the “drug lord” of Ojinaga, sought to promote his image as “a champion of the poor, a man of honor who filled in for a rapacious government that was only interested in perpetuating and enriching itself at the expense of the people” (Poppa, Drug Lord, 260), in which respect Acosta, like other narco bosses, such as Carrillo Fuentes, was at least partially successful. 107. For example, the good works of “La Nacha” in Juárez in the 1930s: Campbell, Drug War Zone, 40, 46–47. 108. Having reached this conclusion, I encountered the persuasive article of  Mark Edberg, “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, vol. 17, no. 3, August 2001, 258–77; see also Edberg, El narcotraficante. 109. Hence the decline of Janos, Ascensión, and Nuevas Casas Grandes (Chihuahua), when the Cali cartel shifted its export route into the United States and,

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a local police chief reported, “people . . . [began] complaining that there is no money because the traffickers have stopped circulating their cash”; jewelers, bars, discos, and restaurants were, it seems, especially hard hit: Lupsha, “Transnational Narco-Corruption,” 96–97. Again, this phenomenon recalls previous commodity booms and busts, an egregious example being the famous Manaus opera house, built a thousand miles up the Amazon during the brief rubber boom of the 1900s: John Hemming, Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians (London, 1995), 264–65. 110. For example, the “miraculous” development of Ensenada after the slump of 1995, applauded by the city Chamber of Commerce: Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 84–85. Note, too, the alleged comments of the (PAN) mayor of Ojinaga, circa 1975: “We have to recognize that drug trafficking is a good business and also that there is nothing that can really be done about it. And anyway, all of the drugs are going to the United States”: Poppa, Drug Lord, 16. Wald, Narcocorrido, 117, quotes a song to the same effect (I have slightly changed his translation): “If any mafioso hears me, I send him a big hello / Because those guys spend money and have made us strong. / If there’s no money in town, things are a lot more dangerous.” 111. Poppa, Drug Lord, 116. See also Edberg, El narcotraficante, 78. 112. Poppa, Drug Lord, 290. The Badiraguato and Babunica public works came courtesy of Rafael Caro Quintero and Emilio Quintero Payán, respectively; the latter was finally laid to rest in a mausoleum in the latter pueblo: Proceso, vol. 1590, April 22, 2007, 24–25. Compare the roles of Amado Carrillo Fuentes in his home town of Guamuchilito, Sinaloa (more lighting, benches, and church renovation): Andrade Bojorges, La historia secreta, 25; of Ismael El Mayo Zambada in El Salado, also Sinaloa: Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 190–91; of Caro Quintero in El Cochiloco: Edberg, El narcotraficante, 83; and of Gilberto El Zurdo Bermúdez, a “supposed narcotraficante” (and son-in-law of the local mayor), “known as a man who commanded great power and respect among the people” of Huétamo and Zirándaro in the hot country of the Balsas Valley, on the Guerrero/Michoacán borders: Marco Antonio Durán, Cambio de Michoacán, August 18, 2005. 113. Poppa, Drug Lord, 117. Note, too the picaresque gesture of “Chapo” Guzmán, who, as the Gulf and Sinaloan cartels battled for control of Nuevo Laredo in May 2005, took over a fancy city restaurant at gunpoint and paid for all the diners to eat for free: www.narconews.com/story/2005/5/10/45352/497. Guzmán’s wedding, in July 2007, was said to be “more ostentatious than that of a Mexican president”: Campbell, Drug War Zone, 1. 114. Poppa, Drug Lord, 280 (with picture of a blind girl about to receive a cornea transplant, thanks to Pablo Acosta). On the good works of Osiel Cárdenas and the Zetas, see Astorga, Seguridad, 154. 115. Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 160, 167; Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 86–87. Carrillo Fuentes was reputedly “extremely religious” and in one piece of narco-art (“la ascensión del Señor de los Cielos”) was depicted crucified on a bed of marijuana leaves, with airplanes flying overhead: Andrade Bojorges, La historia secreta, 78; Wald, Narcocorrido, 58–59.

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116. Paul J. Vanderwood, Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Martyr, Saint (Durham, 2004), 211–16; Proceso, vol. 1577, January 21, 2007, 36; Wald, Narcocorrido, 62–68; Edberg, El narcotraficante, 84–85. An alternative narco-related “saint,” more recent and even more heretical, is La Sant(ísim)a Muerte: Vulliamy, Amexica, 40–42, 216–17, 276–78, combines graphic examples and some questionable analysis. 117. Campbell, Drug War Zone, 25, draws a parallel with the potlatch system, whereby Native American and Polynesian chiefs engaged in conspicuous consumption, dispensing largesse, rewarding their followers, and flaunting their material resources. 118. Edberg, “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits,” 264, and El Narcotraficante, 83, plausibly suggests that narco-violence is more extreme; hence pro-narco sympathies are less apparent, in the border cities, such as Juárez or Tijuana, where the “dirty end of the business” can be seen, compared to the more remote, rural, producing/exporting communities to the south. Social banditry is more a small-town than a big-city phenomenon. 119. Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs, 57–58, stresses, perhaps overmuch, fear and intimidation. 120. Eric J. Hobsbawm, Bandits (New York, 1981); Anton Blok, “The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 14, no. 4, 1972, 494–503. 121. Alan Knight, “Eric Hobsbawm, la historia mexicana y el bandolerismo social,” in Gumersindo Vera Hernández et al. (eds.), Los historiadores y la historia para el siglo XXI: Homenaje a Eric J. Hobsbawm (Mexico City, 2007), 436–37. 122. The Arellano Félix brothers “started out hungry and humble,” according to “The Ballad of Ramón Arellano Félix”; “Chapo” Guzmán, at his trial, claimed that he was “just a simple farmer”: www.narconews/narcocorrido1.html; Rotella, Twilight on the Line, 156. Over time, of course, second-generation narco bosses have arisen, the beneficiaries of parental success; these—like the so-called narco “juniors” of Tijuana—cannot claim to be self-made men and, indeed, seem keen to flaunt their ill-gotten inherited wealth and status: Vulliamy, Amexica, 9, 27. However, the Darwinian quality of the drugs business means that there is a brisk turnover of leaders; native cunning and competence count; and hereditary privilege matters less than it would in legal corporate enterprise. 123. Cf. Castanzaro, Men of Respect. There have also been some “women of respect”: Campbell, Drug War Zone, 60–75. Affirmations of narco machismo are common. According to local legend, Carrillo Fuentes “was born standing up” (literally); “they cut my umbilical cord with a bullet,” he said himself, “and I still smell of powder”; his baptism involved a kidnapped mariachi band, who played on while the celebratory bullets whistled past their heads: Andrade Bojorges, La historia secreta, 30–31. The whole account may be embellished, but the embellishment suggests a form of myth-making which has clearly captured parts of the popular imagination. See also Edberg, “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits,” 274. 124. Leonarda Reyes, “Los narcoblogs,” Proceso, vol. 1573, December 24, 2006, 14–17; Campbell, Drug War Zone, 17, provides a compendious list of

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narco-phenomena, including narco-houses, -castles, -art, -shops, -lawyers, -tombs, -summits, -beer and—perhaps the choicest—“narco-menonitas,” that is, Mennonite farmers from Chihuahua who have dabbled in the drug trade. 125. Wald, Narcocorrido, 6. Though, as Edberg, “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits,” 262, suggests, on the basis of an actual case, while a band may be commissioned by a known narco boss, they may still regard him as a “humble man with a good heart, loved by the community.” 126. In that the chief narco-corrido radio station in Juárez “was unapologetically categorized as lower class” in audience: Edberg, “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits,” 268. See also Edberg, El Narcotraficante, 65–71, on narco-corrido audiences. 127. Poppa, Drug Lord, 94. 128. Knight, “Eric Hobsbawm,” 440–41. My crime and banditry model is circular (wheels within wheels); for alternative geometries, involving rectangles and pyramids, see Campbell, Drug War Zone, 19. 129. Najar, “Otra guerra de narcos” (n.85 above). 130. Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs, 58. 131. Fernández Menéndez, El otro poder, 84. 132. Mexico’s secretary of defense, Gerardo Clemente Vega García, commented on the lure of the narco lifestyle, with its “drink, women, music and pickup trucks”: Aranda and Becerril, “Teme Sedena vínculos” (n.85 above). See also Campbell, Drug War Zone, 1, 17, 24–25. 133. One example among many is “The Ballad of Ramón Arellano Félix” (see n.122 above), in which U.S. Ambassador Davidoff is twitted, along with the whole panoply of U.S. security agencies: “FBI, CIA, Customs, Interpol, DEA, they live to steal another day, but Ramón he’s gone away.” Mexican nationalism often conspires with a robust local or regional patriotism (what Luis González has referred to as “matriotismo”): for example, in the cases of Sinaloa and Michoacán: Wald, Narcocorrido, 56–57, 116; Edberg, El Narcotraficante, 49–53, 67, 79–80. 134. Wald, Narcocorrido, 62. 135. Lupsha, “Transnational Narco-Corruption,” 87 (although the author, writing in 1995, foresees a revival of Colombian narco-power in Mexico, which has not happened). 136. Richard Craig, “US Narcotics Policy Towards Mexico: Consequences for the Bilateral Relationship,” in Guadalupe González and Marta Tienda (eds.), The Drugs Connection in US-Mexican Relations (San Diego, 1989), 81–82. 137. Wald, Narcocorrido, 27. chapter six 1. John Kiszely, “Learning About Counterinsurgency,” RUSI Journal, vol. 151, no. 6, October 2006, 16–21. 2. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds.), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985). 3. Leslie Green, The Authority of the State (Oxford, 1988), 1, 75.

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4. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: The Rise of Classes and Nation-States, 1769–1914, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1993). 5. Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975). See also Chapter 5 by Alan Knight in this volume. 6. See Mónica Serrano, “Transnational Organized Crime and International Security: Business as Usual?” in Mats Berdal and Mónica Serrano, Transnational Organized Crime and International Security: Business as Usual? (Boulder, 2002), 15–20. 7. Luis Astorga, El siglo de las drogas (Mexico City, 2005), 19–28. 8. See Luis Astorga, “Mexico: Drugs and Politics,” in Menno Vellinga (ed.), The Political Economy of the Drug Industry: Latin America and the International System (Gainesville, 2004), 8. 9. Peter A. Lupsha and Stanley Pimentel, Political-Criminal Nexus (Washington, DC, 1997). 10. Astorga, El siglo de las drogas, 43, 50–51. 11. By 1943 U.S. authorities estimated that Mexico’s opium production had tripled. William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque, 1989), 163–66. 12. See “Appendix: Opium Poppy Destruction in Mexico from the American Consulate in Durango to the Secretary of State,” in Walker, Drug Control, 225–29. 13. This practice remained in place for decades. In 1937 José Siurob, head of the Ministry of Public Health, reported some of the “problems” encountered with state governors who confiscated opium and then financed the payroll of security agents with income derived from seized drugs. In confidential interviews an officer of the army reported how eradication operations in Guerrero in the early 1960s—Operación Pulpo—were deployed with little or no funding, thus forcing officers to resort to “extreme measures.” See Luis Astorga, “Viaje al país de las drogas,” Nexos, no. 211, 1995; Astorga, El siglo de las drogas, 39. See also the testimonies gathered in Stanley A. Pimentel, “Mexico’s Legacy of Corruption,” in Roy Godson (ed.), Menace to Society: Political-Criminal Collaboration Around the World (Piscataway, 2004 [2003]), 182–83; and in Carlos Antonio Flores Pérez, “El Estado en crisis: Crimen organizado y política: Desafíos para la Consolidación Democrática,” PhD diss. (Mexico City, 2005), 111–15. 14. For a vivid description of such a system in the case of Sinaloa, see the paragraph extracted from the memoirs of the attorney general of Sinaloa, Manuel Lazcano, quoted in Astorga, El siglo de las drogas, 81, 101. See also Luis Astorga, Mitología del “narcotraficante” en México (Mexico City, 1995), 60–62. 15. According to Walker, illicit opium shipments from Mexico were then competing with the combined shipments from India, Turkey, and Iran. Reports about rising drug cultivation in Mexico coincided with a steady rise in drug consumption in the United States. See Walker, Drug Control, 171, 178. 16. Although the U.S. Embassy in Mexico very early on reported the links between the DFS and drug traffickers, as would be the case again in the 1980s in Central America, Cold War priorities led Washington to downplay the drug problem. These reports are quoted in Astorga, “Mexico,” 88 and footnote 9.

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17. Regulation is the mechanism that makes possible the coordination and interaction among actors, the allocation of resources, and the prevention of conflict. Peter Lange and Mario Regini, “Introduction: Interests and Institutions: Forms of Social Regulation and Public Policy Making,” in Peter Lange and Marino Regini (eds.), State, Markets and Social Regulations (Cambridge, 1989), 4. 18. Peter A. Lupsha, “Drug-Lords and Narco Corruption: The Players Change but the Game Continues,” in Al McCoy and Alan Block (eds.), War on Drugs (Boulder, 1992). 19. The centralized system of corruption built around the PRI rule provided the foundations for the model. As Lupsha put it, organized crime in Mexico operated “with the ‘con permiso’ and franchise of the state and national institutions, and their representatives.” See Peter A. Lupsha, “Transnational NarcoCorruption and Narco Investment: A Focus for Mexico,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 1, no. 1, 87. These arguments are also developed in M. Serrano, “DrugTrafficking and the State in Mexico,” in Richard Friman (ed.), International Political Economy Yearbook (Boulder, 2009), 139–57. 20. Peter Reuter, “Eternal Hope: America’s Quest for Narcotics Control,” The Public Interest no. 79, Spring 1985, 90; Paul B. Stares, Global Habit: The Drug Problem in a Borderless World (Washington, DC, 1996), 28. 21. By 1974 half a dozen Mexican organizations had swiftly seized the market opportunity provided by the Turkish ban and were supplying 80 percent of the U.S. market for heroin. Reuter, “Eternal Hope,” 90; Peter Smith, “Semiorganised International Crime: Drug Trafficking in Mexico,” in Tom Farer, Transnational Crime in the Western Hemisphere (New York; London, 1999), 193–217. 22. See Bruce Bagley, “The Myths of Militarization: The Armed Forces in the War Against Drugs,” in Peter Smith (ed.), Drug Policy in the Americas (Boulder, 1992). 23. Enrique Camarena Salazar, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in charge of the operation that led to the seizure of six tons of marijuana in the northern state of Chihuahua, was kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated on February 7, 1985, under the orders of Rafael Caro Quintero. Mass production of marijuana had enabled Caro Quintero to secure a leading position in the criminal marketplace. Ownership over a large rural property in Chihuahua and “protection” by members of the army enabled the trafficker to recruit an army of 4,000 to 7,000 peasants and to engage in large-scale production of marijuana. Julio Scherer Garcia, La Reina del Pacífico: Es la hora de contar (Mexico City, 2008), 161; Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, “Caro Quintero y Zorrilla Pérez,” Reforma, June 5, 2009. 24. The investigations underlying the assassination of Camarena exposed a veritable metastasis within the DFS and into other spheres of power. At the point of arrest, Caro Quintero not only identified himself as an agent of the DFS but also managed to escape. Allegedly, the DFS commander in charge was generously compensated for his services. Under the unyielding pressure of the United States, the then head of the DFS, Zorrilla Pérez, resigned to receive the political protection of his party, which briefly nominated him as a deputy candidate for Hidalgo, but he was soon forced into criminal exile until he was finally arrested in Spain in

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1989. Zorrilla Pérez was bafflingly released from prison in February 2009. Granados Chapa, “Caro Quintero y Zorrilla Pérez,” Reforma, June 5, 2009. 25. Smith, “Semiorganised International Crime,” 204. A case that came to the surface during the trial of Benjamín Arellano Felix plainly illustrates the scale of cocaine-driven corruption. Among the offenses charged against Benjamín Arellano Félix, the attempt to corrupt General Jose Luis Chavez García via another officer, General Navarro, who had been the PGR delegate to Baja California in 1997, with a bribe worth $1 million figured prominently. Reforma, December 5, 2002. 26. Corruption and predatory practices by incumbents has long been a topic in debates about the state in developing and southern contexts. For the original discussion on predatory practices, see Peter Evans, “The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change,” in Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman (eds.), The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State (Princeton, 1992). For a recent analysis of the colonization of the Colombian state by criminal actors, see Luis Jorge Garay, Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, and Isaac de León Beltran, “De la captura del Estado a la reconfiguración cooptada del Estado,” Método (Grupo Transdisciplinario de Investigación en Ciencias Sociales), no. 60, May 1, 2009, available at www.grupometodo.org. The study of the favelas by Enrique Desmond Arias follows a similar logic. See his Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks and Public Security (Chapel Hill, 2006). 27. In the summer of 2003 the media reported the crash of a helicopter of the General Division of Crop Eradication in the Sierra of Chihuahua. Four months later, traffickers opened fire against another helicopter of the Attorney General Office during fumigation operations. El Universal, June 6, 2003 and October 29, 2003. 28. In the underworld of the booming illicit drug trade, trust became a scarce commodity. The propensity for suspicion intensified, and with it, the demand for armed protection. As one participant put it, “in the narco-world hatred does not stop to ask, it’s always in a hurry,” “treachery outstrips loyalty,” and the ascendancy of the drug lords is measured in terms of the time span in which they manage to operate. See the quotations obtained from Sandra Ávila in Scherer García, La Reina del Pacífico, 36, 83, 99. 29. Peter Reuter has identified four factors that drove the violence in the U.S. crack market in the 1980s: the youth, and I would add, the gender of participants in the market; the high market value of cocaine; the intensity of law enforcement policies; and the violent effects of drug use itself. Peter Reuter, “Systemic Violence in Drug Markets,” Crime, Law and Social Change, vol. 52, 2009, 275–84. 30. As a member of the “narco-society” has vividly put it, this society is brutal; there is no code or law that can, by itself, prevail in the relentless struggle for power. Scherer, La Reina del Pacífico, 99. 31. Josiah McC. Heyman and Alan Smart, “States and Illegal Practices: An Overview,” in Josiah McC. Heyman (ed.), States and Illegal Practices (Oxford; New York, 1999), 5; Annelise Anderson, “Organised Crime, Mafia and Governments,”

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in Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Petlzman (eds.), The Economics of Organised Crime (Cambridge, 1997), 46; Tom R. Naylor, “Mafias, Myths and Markets: On the Theory and Practice of Enterprise Crime,” Transnational Organised Crime, vol. 1, no. 4, 1997. 32. Vicenzo Ruggiero, Crime and Markets (Oxford, 2000), 18–19. 33. This trend is by no means exclusive to Mexico. In Europe, the costs of expanding armies forced authorities to rely on the services of military entrepreneurs and military contractors. The role played by such actors during the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) has some resemblance to that performed by contemporary warlords. Mats Berdal, “How ‘New’ Are ‘New Wars’? Global Economic Change and the Study of Civil War,” Global Governance, vol. 9, 2003, 493. 34. For a more detailed analysis, see Mónica Serrano, “Narcotráfico y Gobernabilidad,” in Pensamiento Iberoamericano, Segunda Época, vol. 1, 2007, 251–78. 35. The Dirección Federal de Seguridad was the backbone of the regulatory system. Its brutality has been most often linked to the vicious repression of leftist groups. But its violent reputation was also associated with the relations to drugtrafficking organizations. Corruption and cooperation in counterinsurgency operations would enable traffickers to “peacefully” run their business. See Peter A. Lupsha, “Drug-Lords and Narco Corruption: The Players Change but the Game Continues,” in Al McCoy and Alan Block (eds.), War on Drugs (Boulder, 1992); Peter A. Lupsha, “Transnational Narco-Corruption and Narco Investment: A Focus for Mexico,” Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 1, no. 1, 87; Peter Reuter and David Ronfeldt, “Quest for Integrity: The Mexican-U.S. Drug Issue in the 1980s,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs,” vol. 34, no. 3, 1992; Sergio Aguayo Quezada, “Los usos, abusos y retos de la seguridad nacional: 1946–1990,” in Sergio Aguayo and Bruce Bagley (eds.), En busca de la seguridad perdida: Aproximaciones a la seguridad nacional mexicana (Mexico City, 1990). 36. Although closely linked to the notion of deterrence, strategic coercion seeks not only to deter other actors from acting when they want to but also to compel them to act when they do not want to do so. It has been defined as “the deliberate and purposive use of overt threats to influence another’s strategic choices, and as such it is a “much more challenging strategic endeavour.” The credibility of such a strategy depends on both a capability and a willingness to use force, and this being effectively communicated to the adversary. See Lawrence Freedman, “Introduction,” in Lawrence Freedman (ed.), Strategic Coercion (Oxford, 1998), 5, and by the same author and in the same volume, “Strategic Coercion,” 15. 37. Both the appointment of General Gutiérrez Rebollo to the highest position in Mexico’s antinarcotic architecture and his subsequent prosecution have offered substantial ground for speculation. Having been transferred from Sinaloa to Guadalajara, General Gutiérrez Rebollo at one point commanded a significant force which could have challenged the authority of the minister of defense. See among others Letter of Antonio Lozano Gracia, published in Reforma, May 1, 1997; Agustin Ambriz, “Informe militar sobre el general Gutiérrez Rebollo: Otros oficiales del Ejército, agentes y comandantes del INCD y de la PGR, cómplices de Amado Carrillo,” Proceso, no. 1060, February 23, 1997.

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38. In the autumn of 2008 the head of SIEDO, Noé Ramírez Mandujano, was arrested on suspicion of passing critical intelligence to the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for payments amounting to US$450,000. In November of that year, Medina Mora acknowledged that thirty-five SIEDO officials and agents had been arrested or fired and that Mexico’s liaison to Interpol had also been detained. Ken Ellingwood, “Mexico Traffickers Bribed Former Anti-Drug Chief, Officials Say,” Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2008, available at www.latimes.com/news /nationworld/world/latinamerica/la-fg-bribe22-2008nov22,0,5384359.story. 39. Six high-ranking law enforcement officials, including Noé Ramírez, were arrested and some of them charged in November 2008 with taking huge bribes in exchange for leaking information to traffickers. “México: El cartel de drogas penetra a la Fiscalía mexicana y fuerza su remodelación,” Infolatam, available at www.infolatam.com/entrada/mexico _cartel de drogas penetra la fiscal-10871 .html; Barry R. McCaffrey, “After Action Report,” available at www.mccaffrey associates.com/pdfs?Mexico_AAR__December_2008.pdf; “On the Trail of the Traffickers,” The Economist, March 7, 2009, 3–33. 40. See Federico Varese, “Is Sicily the Future of Russia? Private Protection and the Rise of the Russian Mafia,” European Journal of Sociology, vol. 35, no. 2, May 1994, 249. 41. The figures for reported kidnappings in the early 1970s range around 32. This figure increased by nearly 400 percent to 120 reported kidnappings in 1980. In 2007, the business organization Consejo Coordinador Empresarial reported a 20 percent increase in the total number of kidnappings among its members. See Carlos Seoane, “Secuestro, primeros auxilios y medidas preventivas,” paper presented at the seminar of the Mexico Security Study Group, Mexico City, April 22, 2009; See also IKV PAX Christi, El secuestro es un negocio explosivo (Utrecht, 2008), 20–21; Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, “Mexico: The Third War,” Stratfor, February 18, 2009; and Mónica Serrano, “Latin America: The Limits to the State’s Capacity to Enforce Law and Order,” in the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Institutional Reforms, Growth and Human Development in Latin America (New Haven, 2000), 461–82. 42. See Guillermo Zepeda Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo: Procuración de justicia penal y ministerio público en México (Mexico City, 2004), 66. 43. See the statements by Sandra Ávila in Scherer, La Reina del Pacífico, 150– 51. On the loosening of social standards and self-regulation in the conduct of violence and inhumane behavior, see Albert Bandura, “Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement,” in Walter Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (Washington, DC, 1998), 161–63. 44. The horrendous event in September 2006 in Uruapan, Michoacán, when a group of twenty men stormed into a bar, forced costumers to lie down, and threw down five heads, was no doubt a shockingly turning point. See “Human Heads Dumped in Mexico Bar,” BBC News, September 7, 2006, available at http://news .bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5322160.stm. 45. It is true that these horrific expressions of drug-related violence are by no means new to some vicinities, including Sinaloa, but their presence at the national level is undoubtedly a powerful feature of the present time.

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46. Nearly 50 percent of those federal offenses are directly linked to drugtrafficking, through drug possession or heavy weapon possession, while robbery represented close to 40 percent of common-local offenses. See Zepeda Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo, 52, 55. 47. The impunity rate can be estimated in various ways. The national rate mentioned above considers the average probability of arrest for a perpetrated crime, whether reported or not. An alternative formula only considers the average number of arrests in relation to reported crimes. According to the latter, the impunity rate in Mexico in 2000 was 11.4 percent per 100 reported crimes. According to some sources, only one out of every five crimes are reported and in only 5 percent of these is the alleged perpetrator brought before a court. See Zepedea Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo, 84, 218–20; see also Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad, “Quinta encuesta nacional sobre inseguridad,” available at www .icesi.org.mx/documentos/encuestas/encuestasNacionales/ENSI-5. 48. In Mexico the dark number has been estimated at 75 percent. The effectiveness of Mexico’s criminal justice system sharply contrasts with that of other countries. In Europe the average rate has been estimated at 45–55 percent and in Japan at 60 percent. Zepeda Lecuona, Crimen sin castigo, 195. 49. Reforma October 9, 1995; Oxford Analytica, Latin America Daily Brief, June 1, 1995. 50. The expansion of the scope of missions for the armed forces obviously multiplied the opportunities for corruption. While sporadic individual cases of corruption had long been part of military participation in counternarcotic operations, the change in the nature and magnitude of their contribution to the war on drugs was soon reflected in both the frequency and the nature of corruption scandals. Mónica Serrano, “Drug-Trafficking and Militarization: The Case of Mexico,” paper prepared for the conference “States of Violence: The Limits of National Sovereignty in Mexico,” London, November 1997. 51. In an attempt to widen the legal protections granted to the armed forces, in April 2009 President Calderón announced his intention to consider the enactment of states of emergency. Calderón’s statements were severely criticized by the opposition and by the 89th Plenary of the Mexican Episcopal Conference. See “Critican PRI y PRD blindar Ejército,” Reforma, April 24, 2009. 52. The trend in the number of complaints about human rights abuses perpetrated by members of the armed forces is truly alarming. In the first two years of the Calderón administration, these nearly doubled, from 182 in 2006 to 367 in 2007. One year later, in 2008, the total number of complaints filed against SEDENA before the National Human Rights Commission rocketed to 1,231. Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Informe de Actividades 2008; see also Human Rights Watch, México Impunidad Uniformada, April 2009. See respectively www.cndh.org.mx/node/120 and www.hrw.org/es/reports/2009/04/28 /impunidad-uniformada. 53. See Santiago Corcuera Cabezut, “Propuesta de una iniciativa para retirar a las fuerzas armadas de las funciones de seguridad pública,” in Jorge Luis Sierra Guzman (ed.), El Ejército y la Constitución Mexicana (Mexico City, 1999), 134.

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54. According to the office of the Attorney General, by that time, in Sinaloa alone about 480 people were killed annually for links with drug-trafficking. In that year a high-ranking PGR officer, Santiago Vasconcelos, identified the following states as concentrating the majority of the cases of drug-related murders: Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Federal District (DF), and Michoacán. Equally important was the open recognition of the increasing number of ex-municipal and state police agents killed in the rising drug war. El Universal, October 18, 2003; El Universal, October 29, 2003; Reforma, June 6, 2003 and October 18, 2003. 55. As the FARC-Tijuana connection was unveiled in 2000, some 1,500 troops and 2,000 federal police officers were first deployed to Baja California and subsequently to Nuevo Laredo and other northern cities, including Matamoros and Mazatlan. See http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/mexico_evolve/.html; Sam Logan, “Mexico’s Uppermost Threat Is Organized Crime,” May 1, 2006, available at International Relations and Security Network, www.mexidata.info/ id869.html. 56. The magnitude of licit transborder movements through Nuevo Laredo gives a clear idea of the strategic value of this transit point. Over 10,000 cargo trucks pass through Nuevo Laredo each day on their way to Interstate 35 and cities throughout the United States. Another 10,000 vehicles cross the border daily, totaling over 20,000 vehicle-crossings a day. With such volumes, it is virtually impossible for U.S. customs to stop, search, and process every vehicle. Sam Logan, “Mexico’s Uppermost Threat Is Organized Crime,” May 1, 2006. Available at International Relations and Security Network, www.mexidata.info/id869.html. 57. The conditions in Ciudad Juárez and Chihuahua would also and rapidly deteriorate. In the course of fifteen months, between January 2008 and March 2009, 2,750 drug-related killings took place and the governor, José Reyes Baeza, closely escaped an assassination attempt, forcing the Calderón administration to swiftly deploy 8,000 troops to Chihuahua, the northern state. Logan, “Mexico’s Uppermost Threat”; see also www.infolatam.com/entrada/mexico_calderon _ordena_sitiar_a_los_narc-12661.html. 58. Some observers have explained such capacity by the experience gained by some members of the Zetas in counterinsurgent operations that were deployed in the 1990s in the states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. Such experience enabled key members of the Zetas to gather crucial information and to learn from the political struggle of armed organizations, and in particular the EPR. From early on Osiel Cárdenas Guillén invested in social “policies” by sending to his native city Matamoros mountains of presents on Mother’s Day. More recently, in Tamaulipas, a number of social mobilizations demanding the end to the military siege of the city were orchestrated by the Zetas and their families. On one occasion Osiel Cárdenas telephoned a leading news program and introduced himself as a political prisoner. See Scherer, La Reina del Pacífico, 14–15; Jorge Fernández Menéndez, “Caos y atentado: Santiago Vasconcelos, un objetivo,” Excélsior, January 25, 2008. 59. The diversion of cocaine routes toward the Pacific increased the competition for the control of key entry points in Guerrero and Michoacán. Through 2006, following a violent exchange in January in Acapulco involving police officers

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and traffickers, competition for the control of “plazas” among the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels and possibly the Juárez cartel turned the state of Guerrero into a violent battleground. In mid-April 2006, the heads of two police officers were placed outside the municipal government of Acapulco beneath a sign that read: “So that you learn to respect.” See Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Drug Violence Soars Throughout Mexico,” Washington Post, May 1, 2006, available at www.washingtonpost .com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042901216_pf.html; see also “Five Men Executed on Mexico Drug War Pacific Coast,” available at www .alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30431486.htm; “The Spread of Mexico’s Drug Wars,” Stratfor, June 27, 2006, available at www.stratfor.com/spread_mexicos _drug_wars. 60. The victims were Eusebio Palacios Ortiz, chief of personal security for the mayor of Acapulco, and Marcelino Marcelo García, a navy lieutenant assigned to military intelligence. They were both abducted by men in black uniforms carrying high-powered weapons. See “Drug-Related Violence Moves into Acapulco,” Boston Globe, available at www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles /2006/07/30/drug_related_violence_moves_into_acapulco/. 61. In the summer of 2003, a few months after the arrest of Osiel Cárdenas in March of that year, the Zetas had violently clashed with the Negros of the rival cartel headed by El Chapo. Unprecedented levels of violence and rampant corruption forced Sedena to deploy troops to Nuevo Laredo. Nearly two hundred members of the local police were arrested and investigated. Milenio, August 17, 2003; Reforma and El Universal, 2, August 30, 2003. On Colombia’s threedimensional war, see Marc Chernick, “The Dynamics of Colombia’s Three Dimensional War,” Journal of Conflict, Security and Development, vol. 1, no. 1, 2001, 93–100. 62. Intensified enforcement strikes right at the center of trust that keeps criminal organizations afloat. Thus the arrest in mid-January 2008 of Alfredo Beltrán Leyva in Mexico City further escalated the war between the two powerful organizations. See Jorge Fernández Menéndez, “Caos y atentado: Santiago Vasconcelos, un objetivo,” Excélsior, January 25, 2008. 63. In September 2008 the preliminary results of the National Addictions Poll were released. According to preliminary results, between 2002 and 2008 the estimated total number of drug-dependent people in Mexico increased by 51 percent, from 307,000 to 465,000. The total number of Mexicans that have admitted drug consumption at some point in their lives went up from 3.5 million in 2002 to 4.5 million in 2008. Overall drug prevalence (12–65 years old) increased from 4.6 percent in 2002 to 5.5 percent in 2008. Marijuana remains the most favored drug. Reported in Reforma, September 19, 2008. 64. This was clearly the case in Italy in the early 1950s when the opening of the local heroin market transferred the distribution of drugs to amateurs and neophytes. Then as now, dealers and consumers are often one and the same. What is clear is that in such decentralized settings trust becomes a scarce commodity. See Ruggiero, Crime and Markets, 17–25. 65. The cities along the U.S.-Mexico border concentrated the bulk of the casualties. The total number of drug-related deaths in these cities has been accompanied

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by other equally distressing trends. Tijuana has been the scene of an exorbitant rate of kidnappings—more than two hundred economically motivated kidnappings in 2006. The dreadful trend of young women violently killed in Ciudad Juárez has become an issue of international concern. IKV PAX Christi, El secuestro, 20; “México: Nuevos mandos militares en Ciudad Juárez para acabar con los carteles,” Infolatam, March 19, 2009, available at www.infolatam.com/entrada/mexico _nuevos_mandos_militares_en_ciudad-12925.html, and “Mexico: Asesinatos del narcotráfico han crecido un 146%,” Infolatam, February 23, 2009, available at www.infolatam.com/entrada/mexico_asesinatos_del_narcotrafico_han_c-12566 .html. 66. The figures about drug-related casualties oscillate widely. The same is true of reports of police and soldiers killed. According to McCaffrey, in the first three years of the Calderón administration more than 475 police and soldiers have been killed. See his “After Action Report.” 67. For the period between late 2006 and early June 2008, the attorney general, Medina Mora, estimated 449 casualties within the police agencies and armed forces. This figure roughly coincides with that reported for the period January–September 2007 by El Universal, October 30, 2007. For the PGR figure, see Ralph Blumenthal, “What the Mexicans Might Learn from the Italians,” New York Times, June 1, 2008, available at www.nyt.com/2008/06/01/weekinreview /01blumenthal.html?ei=5070&en=97c; Duncan Kennedy, “On the Trail of Mexico’s Drugs Gangs,” BBC News, June 18, 2008, available at http://news.bbc.co.uk /2/hi/americas/7457153.stm. 68. “México: Asesinatos del narcotráfico han crecido un 146%.” 69. As mentioned earlier, direct and explicit messages challenging public authorities and public figures have been displayed in public places. But on a number of occasions, uncompromising demands have been put forward with unnerving messages, such as the dumping of decapitated heads of soldiers in the central plaza in Chilpancingo, Guerrero. “On the Trail of Traffickers,” The Economist, March 7, 2009. 70. For a broader analysis, see Martha Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Strategic Choice,” in Reich, Origins of Terrorism, 19, 21. 71. Celia Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs: Causes and Consequences (Boulder 1995), 13. 72. The Zetas were originally entrusted with the task of defending the plaza of Tamaulipas and in particular the city of Laredo on behalf of the Cartel del Golfo (Gulf cartel). They are known to be ruthless, to wear army uniforms, and to frequently operate with local police protection. Already in 2003, they were considered to be responsible for about 50 percent of the assassinations linked to drugtrafficking. See Silvia Otero, “ ‘Los Zetas,’ el grupo ejecutor del narco,” El Universal, August 3, 2003, and “Identifican a los Zetas,” Reforma, June 6, 2003. See also Max G. Manwaring, “A ‘New’ Dynamic in the Western Hemisphere Security Environment: The Mexican Zetas and Other Private Armies,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, available at www.strategicstudiesinstitute .army.mil/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=940.

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73. The participation of Guatemalan officers was confirmed in a joint investigation carried out by Mexican and Guatemalan authorities. At the request of the Mexican government, the Guatemalan government confirmed that of the three individuals screened, one had been positively identified as a former Kaibil. See “The Spread of Mexico’s Drug Wars,” Stratford Today, June 27, 2006, available at www.stratfor.com/spread_mexicos_drug_wars. 74. Since 2000, the rate of defection has been estimated between 12,000 and 17,000. In 2007, when the hearing took place, the average salary of a soldier was estimated at around US$350 a month. By then the monthly rate of desertion was estimated at 1,000 soldiers. On assuming power, the new Calderón administration sought to tackle the problem by increasing the salaries of members of the armed forces as well as revising the criminal charges for defection from the armed forces. See Jorge Fernández, “La pena de traición y las deserciones militares,” Excélsior, April 30, 2007. 75. Accumulation refers to the amount of means of violence readily available, whereas concentration refers to how widely control over the means of violence is distributed among state and nonstate actors. See Barnett R. Rubin, “The Politics of Security in Postconflict State-Building,” in Charles T. Call and Vanessa Wyeth (eds.), Building States to Build Peace (Boulder, 2008), 32. The levels of accumulation and distribution of violence may relate to the five “conflict ecologies” developed by Michael Doyle. This classification ranked conflicts according to their level of intractability on the basis of three main features: the number of actors involved, their relative mutual hostility, and their group coherence. On all three accounts it seems clear that the “ecology” of the drug crisis in Mexico had reached an important degree of difficulty. See William C. Durch and Tobias C. Berkman, “Restoring and Maintaining Peace: What We Know So Far,” in William J. Durch (ed.), Twenty-First-Century Peace Operations (Washington, DC, 2006), 14. 76. These include not only a massive flow of internally displaced persons (IDPs), but the equally alarming trend of extrajudicial executions carried out by members of the armed forces. Recent investigations carried out by the Fiscalía in Colombia have brought to light more than nine hundred cases perpetrated in only one year (between 2007 and 2008). “Las cuentas de los falsos positivos,” Semana, January 27, 2009, available at www.semana.com/noticias-justicia/cuentas -falsos-positivos/120116.aspx. Figures on IDPs can be found in U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Plan Colombia,” October 2008, GAO-09-71, 53. Other sources claim that between 25 and 40 percent of IDPs remain unaccounted for and that the total number could well have increased by as much as 41 percent. See “En 41% creció la cifra de desplazados en Colombia, una cifra record en 23 años,” El Tiempo, September 30, 2008, available at www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia /2008 -09 -30/ ARTICULO -PRINTER _FRIENDLY-PLANTILLA _PRINTER _FRIENDL-4575666.html. 77. I examine in detail the scope and limits of the Colombian experience in drug control policy in “US-Latin American Drug Relations: A Prognosis,” paper presented at the meeting of the Partnership for the Americas, The Brookings Institution, May 14, 2008. Vanda Felbab-Brown, “The Violent Drug Market in

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Mexico and Lessons from Colombia,” Brookings Institute Policy Paper no. 12 (Washington, DC, 2009), offers a prominent example of those arguments that have sought to advance the view that Mexico should draw lessons from Colombia. On the reemergence of paramilitary groups, see International Crisis Group, “Colombia’s New Armed Groups,” Latin America Report, no. 20, May 10, 2007, and International Crisis Group, “Ending Colombia’s FARC Conflict: Dealing the Right Card,” Latin American Report, no. 30, March 26, 2009. 78. “Desde enero, 5570 ejecuciones; en el sexenio, 15,400: PGR y Sedena,” La Jornada, October 11, 2009. 79. Rubin, “Politics of Security,” 30. 80. Such perceived difficulty has been consistent with some of the structural conditions that have been identified by a number of studies to assess the “situational difficulty” of a given conflict. Among these, the presence of natural or conflict resources has been identified as an important contributing variable. What such studies often omit is that the value of illicit drug commodities is not a given, but is determined by prohibition and the intensity of punitive enforcement. For “situational difficulty,” see George W. Downs and Stephen John Stedman in Durch and Berkman, “Restoring and Maintaining Peace,” 15. 81. The quote can be found in Marc Lacey, “In Drug War, Mexico Fights Cartel and Itself,” New York Times, March 30, 2009, available at www.nytimes.com /2009/03/30/world/america/30mexico.html?_r=1=&emc=th&. 82. Ironically, this conclusion reached in a recent analysis of international peace operations draws on a study developed within the Southern Command in the 1980s. See Durch and Berkman, “Restoring and Maintaining Peace,” 17–18. 83. Rubin, “Politics of Security,” 31. 84. U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual, 1940, available at www.au.af.mil /au/awc/awcgate/swm/index.htm and quoted in Kiszely, “Learning About Counter-Insurgency,” 7. Serrano, “Drug-Trafficking and the State.” chapter seven 1. See International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, “Music Piracy: Serious, Violent and Organised Crime,” February 1, 2011, available at www.ifpi .org/content/library/music-piracy-organised-crime.pdf/. 2. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (eds.), Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Chicago; London, 2006), 12. 3. “Es piratería delincuencia organizada,” Reforma, December 4, 2002. 4. Christopher May, Global Political Economy of Intellectual Property Rights: The New Enclosures? (London, 2000). 5. The informal economy comprises that domain where “private actors, commercial institutions and government suspend or infringe the law in a mutualprofit situation. This rearticulating of legal boundaries is indeed the distinctive character of the informal economy, since it allows negotiations, accommodations, arrangements or operations that are necessary to supply market needs. Informality is a mode of interaction between the state and economic actors who selectively apply or follow the rule of law. Clearly, the study of informality depends

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on the political context in which it takes place. Neither black nor white, the line between legality and illegality becomes blurred in the informal economy.” José Carlos G. Aguiar, “Dirty CDs: Piracy, Globalization, and the Emergence of New Illegalities in the San Juan de Dios Market, Mexico,” unpubl. PhD diss. (Amsterdam, 2007), 38–40. 6. John Cross, Informal Politics: Street Vendors and the State in Mexico City (Stanford, 1998); Matthew Gutmann, The Romance of Democracy: Compliant Defiance in Contemporary Mexico (Berkeley, 2002); Claudio Lomnitz (ed.), Vicios públicos, virtudes privadas: La corrupción en México (Mexico City, 2000). 7. Guillermo de la Peña, “Corrupción e informalidad,” in Lomnitz, Vicios públicos, virtudes privadas, 118–23. 8. Aguiar, “Dirty CDs.” 9. Ibid. 10. Fernando Rabossi, “Nas ruas de Ciudad del Este: Vidas e vendas num mercado de fronteira,” unpubl. PhD diss. (Rio de Janeiro, 2004); Gustavo Lins Ribeiro, “Globalização económica vinda de baixo,” Etnográfica, vol. 10, no. 2, 2006, 233– 49; José Carlos G. Aguiar and Maria Eugenia Suárez de Garay (eds.), Policía, seguridad y transición política: Acercamientos al Estado del México contemporáneo (Amsterdam, 2008). 11. Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge, 1995); Juan Cajas, El truquito y la maroma: Cocaína, traquetos y pistolocos en Nueva York (Mexico City, 2004); Ignacio Cano, “Violence in Rio de Janeiro,” conference paper, International Conference Safety Without Borders (Amsterdam, 2005); Moises Naim, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy (London, 2007). 12. Clifford Geertz and Lawrence Rosen, Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society (Cambridge, 1972); Bronislaw Malinowski and Julio de la Fuente, Malinowski in Mexico: The Economics of a Mexican Market System (London, 1982). 13. Robert Wade, “Showdown at the World Bank,” New Left Review, no. 7, 2001, 126. 14. May, Global Political Economy. 15. Yongmin Chen and Thitima Puttitanun, “Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation in Developing Countries,” Journal of Development Economics, no. 78, 2005, 474–93; Stephen Siwek, “Copyright Industries in the US Economy: The 2004 Report,” prepared for the International Intellectual Property Alliance (Washington, DC, 2004). 16. David Harvey, “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction,” ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 610, no. 1, 2006, 26. 17. David Harvey, The New Imperialism (New York, 2003). 18. Ibid. 19. Néstor García Canclini, La globalización imaginada (Buenos Aires, 1999); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, 2000); Bruce Lehman, “The Leadership of the US in the Field of the Intellectual Property,” Business Perspectives, Summer/Fall, 2001. 20. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (New York, 2004).

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21. Which is a debatable perspective. It does not consider that consumers may buy pirated goods just because they are inexpensive, and that in absence of pirated CDs, they would not buy an original disc. 22. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, “Piracy Report 2006,” June 10, 2006, available at www.ifpi.org/site-content/library/piracy-report 2006.pdf/. 23. International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, “Music Piracy.” 24. Siwek, “Copyright Industries.” 25. Willem van Schendel (ed.), Illicit Flows and Criminal Things: States, Borders, and the Other Side of Globalization (Bloomington, 2006), 4. 26. Vikram Chand, Mexico’s Political Awakening (Notre Dame, 2001); Gutmann, Romance of Democracy; Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon, Opening Mexico: The Making of a Democracy (New York, 2004). 27. Isidro Morales, “Postsovereign Governance in a Globalizing and Fragmenting World: The Case of Mexico,” Review of Policy Research, vol. 21, no. 1, 2004, 108. 28. Emir Sader, “The Weakest Link? Neoliberalism in Latin America,” New Left Review, no. 52, 2008, 5–31. 29. Aguiar and Suárez de Garay, Policía, seguridad y transición política. 30. Cross, Informal Politics; Gary Isaac Gordon, “Peddlers, Peso and Power: The Political Economy of Street Vending in Mexico City,” unpubl. PhD diss. (Chicago, 1997); Jorge Alberto Mendoza García, “The Characteristics and Behaviour of Street Vendors: A Case Study in Mexico City,” unpubl. PhD diss. (Monterrey, 1994); Orlandina de Oliveira and Bryan Roberts, “La informalidad urbana en años de expansion, crisis y restructuración económica,” Estudios Sociológicos, vol. 11, no. 31, 1993, 33–58. 31. “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” June 10, 2006, available at www.spp.gov/2005_launch.asp. 32. Local media aside, the news was reported in the national newspapers Reforma and La Jornada. There were also reports on national TV, the day of the action and the day after that. 33. Inefficient cooperation between the different police forces is an issue that explicates the shortcomings of this kind of raid, but it is also observable in the policing of many other offenses and crimes, like drug-trafficking. 34. “Hijo: Eso y robar es la misma cosa.” 35. At the beginning of the fieldwork a pirated CD would cost twenty or even twenty-five pesos. Four years later, in 2008, one could pay as low as ten pesos for one copy. 36. Jean-Francois Bayart and Mary Harper, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly (London 1993); Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham, 1997); Lomnitz, Vicios públicos; Comaroff and Comaroff, Law and Disorder. 37. Alan Knight, “Corruption in Twentieth Century Mexico,” in Walter Little and Eduardo Posada-Carbo, Political Corruption in Europe and Latin America (New York, 1996); Stephen Morris, Corruption and Politics in Contemporary Mexico (Tuscaloosa, 1991).

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38. For comparative studies on corruption and state formation, see Dieter Haller and Cris Shore (eds.), Corruption: Anthropological Perspectives (London, 2005). 39. Nelson Arteaga Botello and Adrián López Rivera, “ ‘Everything in This Job Is Money’: Inside the Mexican Police,” World Policy Journal, vol. 17, no. 3, Fall 2000, 61. 40. María Eugenia Suárez de Garay, Policía: Una averiguación antropológica (Guadalajara, 2006), 269. 41. See also Susana Rotker (ed.), Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America (New Brunswick, 2002). 42. María Eugenia Suárez de Garay, Marcos Pablo Moloeznik, and David Shirk (coords.), Justiciabarómetro: Estudio de la policía municipal preventiva de la Zona Metropolitana de Guadalajara (Guadalajara, 2010). 43. Beatriz Martínez de Murguía, La policía en México: Orden social o criminalidad? (Mexico City, 1999). 44. Andrés Oppenheimer, Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians and Mexico’s Road to Prosperity (New York, 1996), 303. 45. Betrayed or caught in serious cases of corruption, fired policemen become madrinas once their career within the institution has come to an end. As madrinas, officers sell information they still have access to through their former colleagues. 46. Carlos Resa, “El estado como maximizador de rentas del crimen organizado: El caso del tráfico de drogas en México,” Biblioteca de Ideas del Instituto Universitario de Gobernabilidad, Colección de Documentos, no. 88, 2001, 25–26. 47. Anton Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1850–1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs (New York, 1975); Josiah Heyman (ed.), States and Illegal Practices (New York, 1999); Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, Armed Actors: Organised Violence and State Failure in Latin America (London, 2004); Letizia Paoli, Mafia Brotherhoods: Organized Crime, Italian Style (Oxford, 2003). 48. See also Mauro Cerbino, “El (en)cubrimiento del la inseguridad o el «estado de hecho» mediático,” Nueva Sociedad, no. 208, 2007, 86–102. 49. IIPA, “International Intellectual Property Alliance 2006, Special 301 Report Mexico,” February 1, 2010, available at www.iipa.com/rbc/2006/2006SPEC 301MEXICO.pdf. 50. Comaroff and Comaroff, Law and Disorder, 7. chapter eight 1. The labor regime is the set of formal and informal rules, organizations, and expected behaviors that define the workplace and the social relationships of work. See, for example, David Gordon, Richard Edwards, and Michael Reich, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (Cambridge, 1985). 2. Scholars in recent years have been documenting workers’ activism during the revolution. See Jeffrey Bortz, Revolution Within the Revolution: Cotton Textile Workers and the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1923 (Stanford, 2008); John Lear, Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (Lincoln,

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2001); Susie Porter, Working Women in Mexico City: Public Discourses and Material Conditions, 1879–1931 (Tucson, 2003); Myrna Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor, and the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1938 (Cambridge, 2009); and Michael Snodgrass, Deference and Defiance in Monterrey: Workers, Paternalism, and Revolution in Mexico, 1890–1950 (Cambridge, 2006). 3. See Jeffrey Bortz and Marcos Aguila, “Earning a Living: A History of Real Wage Studies in Twentieth Century Mexico,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 41, no. 2, June 2006, 112–38. 4. Enrique Krauze, “Fidel Velázquez: Presidente de los obreros,” in Retratos personales (Mexico City, 2007), 170. During the railroad strikes of 1958 and 1959, Velázquez stated: “They invited us to violence, we answered them with violence. We were in the condition to do so” (ibid., 179). 5. This is not to suggest that the fight between the CROM and its rivals was limited to textiles, because it was not. Wherever there were unions, there were fights for control over them. For example, in 1925, the Mexico City newspaper Omega reported, “En la huelga de los tranviarios, se agitan manos ocultas.” AGN, IPS, Box 1986-a, exp. 15. There are reports of this nature in industries throughout the country. 6. Bortz, Revolution, chapter 8. 7. For the revolution in Puebla, David LaFrance, The Mexican Revolution in Puebla, 1908–1913 (Wilmington, 1989), and Revolution in Mexico’s Heartland: Politics, War, and State Building in Puebla, 1913–1920 (Wilmington, 2003). 8. AGN, IPS (Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales), file 7, Informe que Rinde el Subscrito con Relación al Estado de Puebla y a su Situación Política y Económica, 1924. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. AGN, IPS, Box 59, file 18, Rindiendo informe de la comisión conferida por la Superioridad, sobre la situación Politica, Social, Administrativa y Economica, que de conformidad con mis investigaciones y apreciación, prevalece en el Estado de Puebla, Puebla, 1927. 13. Ibid. 14. CROM Archive, pages without folders, Dionisio Hernández to Ricardo Treviño, June 2, 1926. 15. AGN, IPS, Box 59, file 18. 16. Ibid. 17. Agent Num 1 to Jefe del Departamento, May 9, 1930, AGN, IPS, Box 1986-a, exp. 14. 18. When he forgot that, in his showdown with Lombardo and Cárdenas, he lost. 19. See Elías Barrios, El Escuadrón de Hierro (Mexico City 1978), 87–93. In an interview with a group of mechanics, in his ministerial office, Morones expressed: “Nada de exigir, señores, La Secretaría de Industria ha fallado.” See also Marcelo Rodea, Historia del movimiento ferrocarrilero en México (1890–1943) (Mexico City, 1944), 473–91.

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20. Leticia Gamboa Ojeda, “Los obreros textiles de Puebla: El caso de Atlixco, 1899–1924,” PhD thesis (Saint-Denis, Paris, 1993), 401. 21. Samuel Malpica, “Anarcosindicalismo o sindicalismo revolucionario en México (1906–1938),” in Jaime Tamayo and Patricia Valles, Anarquismo, socialismo y sindicalismo en las regiones (Guadalajara, 1993), 96; Samuel Malpica, Atlixco: Historia de la clase obrera (Puebla, 1989), 66. The first leaders of the Atlixco CGT were Ernesto Cabrera, Máximo Vásquez, Saturnino Valdéz, Trinidad Munvie, and Juan Gutiérrez. Cabrera to Presidente Municipal, December 4, 1921, AMA, Presidencia, 1921, Box 11. 22. Código de Trabajo (Puebla, 1921), 38. 23. Leticia Gamboa Ojeda, “La CROM en Puebla y el movimiento obrero textil en los años 20,” in Memorias del encuentro sobre historia del movimiento obrero II (Puebla, 1984), 42–43. 24. El Presidente del Comité de Huelga to Presidente Municipal, January 3, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, 1922, Box B-10, no. 1 25. Bernardo Barrolo to Presidente Muncipal, September 30, 1921, AMA, Presidencia, Box 13. 26. Pedro López to Felipe Terron, October 10, 1921, AMA, Presidencia, 1921, Caja 13. 27. Ibid. 28. Comité Ejecutivo, Sindicato de la Fábrica El León to Felipe Terron, January 2, 1922; Bernardo Barrolo to Felipe Terron, January 4, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-10, no. 1. 29. Joaquín Salazar to Presidente Municipal, October 28, 1921; Ernesto Cabrera, Saturnino Valdéz, Máximo Vásquez to Felipe Terron, November 2, 1921; Joaquín Salazar to Presidente Municipal, November 2, 1921, AMA, Presidencia, Box 13; Samuel Malpica, Atlixco, 84. 30. Avelino Gutiérrez to Presidente Municipal, January 6, 1922; Comité Ejecutivo, Sindicato de la Fábrica El León to Felipe Terron, January 2, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-10 no. 1. 31. Antonio Huerta to Presidente Municipal, March 6, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, 1922, Box B-10, no. 1. 32. Administrador, Fábrica de Metepec, to Presidente del Ayuntamiento, January 5, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-11. 33. Administrador, Fábrica de Metepec, to Presidente del Ayuntamiento, January 5, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, 1922, Box B-11, exp. Huelgas. 34. Bernardo Barrolo to Felipe Terron, January 4, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, 1922, Box B-10, no. 1. 35. Bernardo Barrolo to Presidente Municipal, April 21, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, 1922, Box B-10, no. 1. 36. Juez de Paz to Presidente Municipal, December 15, 1921, AMA, Presidencia, Box 11. 37. Efrén Cardozo was elected president. Unión de Obreros Libres de Atlixco, Act, June 10, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B11, no. 167. 38. Manjarréz, Agreement, June 27, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-10, no. 117.

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39. Bernardo Barrolo to Presidente Municipal, August 7, 1922. 40. Ibid., Sebastián Vázquez to Presidente Municipal, August 8, 1922; Presidente Municipal to Juez de Primera Instancia, August 9, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-11, no. 142. 41. Obreros libres, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-11, no. 161bis. 42. Thome to Presidente Municipal, November 2, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-10, no. 115, D. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid.. 45. Ibid., Carlos Rojas to Remigio Hernández, October 31, 1922. 46. Remigio Hernández to Administrador de la Fábrica El León, November 5, 1922, AMA, Presidencia, Box B-10, no. 1. 47. Ibid., Fábrica El León to Presidente Municipal, November 7, 1922. 48. Facundo Pérez Linares, “Los años que fueron nuestros,” in Facundo Pérez Linares, Los días eran nuestros (Puebla, 1988), 166–69. 49. Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo, La industria, el comercio y el trabajo en México, T. III (Mexico City, 1928), 108. 50. Presidente Municipal Provisional to Secretario General de Gobierno, March 29, 1924, AMA, Presidencia, Box H-21, no. 39. 51. Facundo Pérez Linares, “Los años que fueron nuestros,” in Linares, Los días eran nuestros, 169. 52. Ibid. 53. AGN, DT, Box 810, exp. 4, Secretary of the Exterior (Confederación Sindical del Estado de Puebla) to Alberto Guerrero (Governor, Puebla), August 30, 1924. 54. AGN, DT, Box 810, exp. 4, Andrade et al. (many signatures) to President of the Republic, August 28, 1924. On sexual violence in Mexico at that time, Pablo Piccato, “El Chalequero or The Mexican Jack the Ripper: The Meaning of Sexual Violence in Turn-of-the-Century Mexico City,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 81, nos. 3–4, 2001, 621, 623–51; Gregory Swedberg, “Dangerous Women and Macho Men: Preserving Sexual Difference in Orizaba, Mexico, 1920–1940,” PhD diss. (New Brunswick, 2007). 55. AGN, DT, Box 810, file 4, Martín Paleta, September 23, 1924. 56. Ibid., Proposiciones presentadas por el Comité Ejecutivo de Obreros Sindicalizados y observaciones a las mismas formuladas por la Compañia Industrial de Atlixco, September 22, 1924. 57. Secretaría de Industria, Comercio y Trabajo, La industria, el comercio y el trabajo en México, T. III (Mexico City, 1928), 111. 58. Facundo Pérez Linares, Los días eran nuestros, 170. 59. Ibid., 171. 60. Marcos T. Aguila, Economía y trabajo en la minería mexicana: La emergencia de un Nuevo Pacto Laboral entre la Gran Depresión y el Cardenismo (Mexico City, 2004), chapter 1. 61. The shift from Morones to Lombardo, and from the CROM to the CTM, would lead to another round of “conflicto intergremial” in textiles in the 1930s.

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62. When Morones was simultaneously the CROM leader and the labor minister, his house in Tlalpan included a bullfight arena and a large swimming pool. Fidel Velázquez, interview cited above, “Fidel Velázquez: Presidente . . .,” 163. 63. Marcelo N. Rodea, Historia del movimiento, 628. For 1952 figures, AGN/ DFS, Agent 23, Romualdo Cházaro to Director of DFS, Business: Organizaciones obreras ferrocarrileras, November 24, 1952. 64. By the 1940s and 1950s, the comunistas were members of the illegal (for the most part) Mexican Communist Party. See Barry Carr, Marxism and Communism in 20th Century Mexico (Lincoln, 1992). One government secret agent noted: “Existe también una gran parte de socios que nunca asisten a las asambleas y que desconocen la marcha sindical, unos por apatía y otros por demoralización de los enjuagues sindicales, ésta clase de trabajadores ha aumentado en número considerable en las últimas etapas de la organización. . . . Hay además otro tipo de líderes, agitadores sin tendencias políticas que únicamente son amantes de sobresalir ante la opinión de los demás, con el fin de ocupar puestos” (AGN, IPS, Box 103, file 1, January 20, 1949). 65. Jesús Díaz de León was himself a proud charro. 66. For example, Max Ortega, Estado y movimiento ferrocarrilero en México: 1958–1959 (Mexico City, 1988), 13–18; Mario Gill, Los ferrocarrileros (Mexico City, 1971), 146; Antonio Alonso, El movimiento ferrocarrilero en México, 1958– 1959 (Mexico City, 1975); Fabio Barbosa, “Las luchas obreras de 1958–1959 y la izquierda mexicana,” Investigación Económica, no. 163, January–March, 1983, 89–119. 67. Ortega, Estado y movimento ferrocarrilero, 16. 68. AGN/DFS, exp. 26-3 1949, Legajo 4, Memorandum of Coronel Marcelino Inurreta de la DFS, November 18, 1949.Valentín Campa, Mi testimonio (Mexico City, 1978), 201–4. 69. AGN/DFS, exp. 26-3-1950, Legajo 6, foja 47, October 7, 1950. 70. AGN/DFS, exp. 26-3-50 Legajo 8, Memorandum of Coronel Marcelino Inurreta, Director de la DFS, 21 January 21, 1949. 71. Ibid. 72. AGN/DFS, 26-3-51, file 7, 206, September 13, 1951. 73. AGN/DFS, 26-1-58, file 12, Memo 4248, August 3, 1958 74. AGN/DFS, 26-3-53, file 2, foja 80, November 24, 1953. 75. AGN/DFS, 26-3-54, files 3, 4, several dates. 76. AGN/DFS, 26-1-55, file 1, 192, January 26, 1955. 77. Gill, Los ferrocarrileros, 156; Ortega, Estado y movimiento, 18–21. 78. AGN/DFS, 26-1-54, file 3, 227, September 11, 1954. 79. Ortega, Estado y movimiento, 20. 80. AGN/DFS, 26-1-54, file 3, 251, September 23, 1954. 81. AGN/DFS, 26-1-58, Legajo 10, foja 242, May 6, 1958. 82. Reproduced in Demetrio Vallejo, Las luchas ferrocarrileras que conmovieron a México, MLN (Mexico City, 1967), 10–12. 83. Mario Gill, Los ferrocarrileros, offers a description of this extreme dedication of women: “Over a thousand and five hundred women, some of them with

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their sons and daughters in their hands, lay over the bridge. The soldiers tried to move them away. They remained firm as rails themselves,” 173–80. 84. Ibid., 180–85. 85. Ibid., 193. 86. Luis Gómez Z., Sucesos y remembranzas (Mexico City, 1979), vol. 1, 464–66. 87. José G. Escobedo, Paros y huelgas: Caos ferrocarrilero (Mexico City, 1960). 88. A recent study of the 1959 strike is in Robert Alegre, “Contesting the ‘Mexican Miracle’: Railway Men and Women Struggle for Democracy, 1948– 1959,” PhD diss. (New Brunswick, 2007); “The Legal Strength of the Regime,” Hoy, March 7, 1959. 89. AGN/DFS, 26-1-59, file 14, 254, March 6, 1959. 90. For example, in Veracruz, where Jury Number 2 required a one million peso bail, and when workers offered the escritura (legal proof of ownership) of a unions’ building, it was rejected. AGN/DFS, file 16, 65, January 26, 1959. 91. The headings of El Nacional on March 27 through March 30 expressed the hostility of the state: “Presumably a Political Plan Behind the Railway Strike” with a bullet: “Workers Repudiate Vallejismo”; “All the Weight of the Law Against the Authors of Sabotage and Strikes Against the Railways”; “Government Warns That Nothing Against the Law Will Be Allowed.” The quotation from the attorney general is in Tiempo, April 6, 1959. The speech was reproduced in all the relevant newspapers. 92. For example, Alberto Lumbreras and Miguel Arroche Parra, from the Partido Obrero y Campesino de México (POCM), Dionisio Encinas, secretary general of the PCM, who was not even in Mexico while the state intervened in the rails; Gerardo Unzueta Lorenzana, responsible for the Communist La Voz de México. See Gill, Los ferrocarrileros, 203. The leader of the oil refinery of Azcapotzalco, Ignacio Hernández Alcalá, “El Chimal.” In Guadalajara several members of the PCM were jailed: J. Guadalupe Zuno; Martín Vidaurri, alias “El Teocaltiche”; the teachers Emilia Dorado and Josefina Ortiz Marrito; and the students Samuel Meléndez and Alfredo Sánchez Islas; among many others, El Nacional, March 30, 1959. 93. Ibid. 94. AGN/DFS, File100-12-1-1959, 4, 132, March 23, 1959. Also El Nacional, several dates. 95. Ibid. 96. El Nacional, March 30, 1959. “Two soldiers with automatic weapons travel in the conductors’ compartment, in order to offer guarantees both to workers and users of the rails.” 97. Ortega, Estado y movimiento, 123; Gill, Los ferrocarrileros, 205. 98. Barry Carr, Marxism and Communism, 153, cites a diplomatic source on this issue (a letter of Walter Washington to Secretary of State, January 6, 1947), saying: “Vicente Lombardo Toledano is not a dangerous man for the government. He is always ready to compromise with the government. Whenever he gets particularly rambunctious, the President merely has to call him in and Lombardo agrees to do whatever the president wants.”

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99. See, for instance, Victor Bulmer-Thomas, The Economic History of Latin America since Independence (Cambridge, 1994). 100. Though not enough to carry out truly free elections. See, for instance, Stephen Niblo, México en los cuarentas: Modernidad y corrupción (Mexico City, 2008). 101. Jesús Amaya Topete, Terror en el riel de “El Charro” a Vallejo (Mexico City, 1961), 291–93, mentions at least one suicide (a worker from Empalme, Sonora, who fired a pistol on his head), and a democratic leader who died out of police torture, Román Guerra Montemayor, from Monterrey. chapter nine 1. Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America (London; New York, 2007). 2. Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin (eds.), The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror (Berkeley, 1992), 7–8. 3. Ibid. 4. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Cambridge, 1998). 5. Patricia C. Márquez, The Street Is My Home: Youth and Violence in Caracas (Stanford, 1999). 6. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977 (New York, 1980). 7. Nordstrom and Martin, Paths to Domination. 8. Michael Gilsenan, “Against Patron-Client Relations,” in Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury (eds.), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (London, 1977). 9. Christopher L. Boyer, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity and Agrarian Struggle in Postrevolutionary Michoacán, 1920–1935 (Stanford, 2003), 227. 10. The cacique is variably defined in the literature: local usage refers to welloff people with political influence and a reputation for ruthlessness, including the use or threat of physical violence. Some union officials were described as caciques, a reference to their “way of operating” and informal accumulation of wealth, although their methods of coercion lay more in control over access to resources. 11. Javier Auyero, “The Logic of Clientelism in Argentina: An Ethnographic Account,” Latin American Research Review, vol. 35, no. 3, 2003, 55–81, 58. 12. Lucy Taylor, “Client-ship and Citizenship in Latin America,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 23, no. 2, 2004, 216–17. 13. Wil G. Pansters, “Valores, tradiciones y prácticas: Reflexiones sobre el concepto de cultura política (y el caso mexicano),” in Marco A. Calderón Mólgora, Willem Assies, and Ton Salman (eds.), Ciudadanía, cultura política y reforma del estado en América Latina (Zamora, 2002), 281–307. 14. Boyer, Becoming Campesinos. 15. Sian Lazar, “Personalistic Politics, Clientelism and Citizenship: Local Elections in El Alto, Bolivia,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 23, no. 2, 2004, 228–43.

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16. Ibid.; Auyero, “Logic of Clientelism.” 17. Guillermo de la Peña, “Poder local, poder regional: Perspectivas socioantropológicas,” in Jorge Padua N. and Alain Venneph (eds.), Poder local, poder regional (Mexico City, 1986). 18. Many, of course, refuse clientelist relations on ethical political grounds, including some union leaders, yet inevitably have occasion to confront or navigate them. 19. Auyero, “Logic of Clientelism.” 20. Gilsenan, “Against Patron-Client,” 178–79. 21. Akhil Gupta, “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 2, 1995, 389. 22. Taylor, “Client-ship and Citizenship,” 214–15. 23. Lazar, “Personalistic Politics.” 24. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith (eds.), Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London, 1971) 80, footnote 49. 25. Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton; Oxford, 2006), 4. 26. Teresa P. R. Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo (Berkeley, 2000), 141. 27. These included loss of subsidies and exposure to commercial rates in inputs, credit facilities, interest rates, and the loss of compensation for unharvested cane, while social gains such as loan facilities at the mill became much harder to access. 28. Shared costs included road maintenance and the recruitment and accommodation of cane-cutters. 29. Disquiet about the privileging of market relations was expressed in concern about reforms to Article 27, undermining of the workers’ collective contract and negotiations for the NAFTA in particular. 30. Many perredistas were harassed and jailed, and over six hundred were assassinated during the Salinas sexennial (Al Giordano, “Mexico’s Presidential Swindle,” New Left Review, no. 41, Sep/Oct [Second Series], 2006, 5–28), as were a number of journalists, while human rights organizations voiced concern about the justice system and the impunity of the police. 31. Foucault, Power/Knowledge. 32. Martha K. Huggins, Mika Haritos-Fatouros, and Philip G. Zimbardo, Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities (Berkeley, 2002), 19. 33. Lazar, “Personalistic Politics,” 234. 34. Michael Rowlands and Jean-Pierre Warnier, “Sorcery, Power and the Modern State in Cameroon,” Man, vol. 23, no. 1, 1988, 118–19. 35. That middle-class perredistas can make similar remarks suggests that nominal “left-wing” affiliation is no guarantee that hierarchic racial and class prejudices have been abandoned, even by those who count heavily on the indigenous vote. 36. Caldeira, City of Walls, 83–86.

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37. Caldeira also notes a view among the São Paulo middle classes that “the poor do not know how to vote” (ibid., 74). 38. Ibid., 33. 39. The coalition slogan says, “For the good of all, the poor first,” and the response of the PAN is “a danger for Mexico.” 40. Luis Hernández Navarro, “Images of the Dirty TV-War: The Hour of Mediacracy,” Latin American Perspectives, issue 147, vol. 33, no. 2, 2006, 70–77. 41. APPO members claim 350 imprisoned, some tortured, 60 killed (23 of which are documented), and 50 disappeared: José Luis Díaz Franco and Jaquelina López Almazán, APPO-Codep (Comité de Defensa de los Derechos del Pueblo), public lecture at Conradh na Gaeilge, Galway, March 7, 2007. 42. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for help in clarifying this point. 43. Irregularities included discrepancies between the numbers of ballots and voters and between ballots and tally sheets, valid votes annulled, and ballots found in garbage dumps. There were also allegations of vote-buying, concern about the integrity of polling station functionaries, and strong doubts about the impartiality of the IFE. See Proceso, nos. 1548 and 1549; and Giordano (2006). 44. Slavoj Žižek, “The Spectre of Ideology,” in Slavoj Žižek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (London; New York, 1994), 8. 45. Luis Hernández Navarro in La Jornada, July 11, 2006. 46. Wendy Brown, Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics (Princeton; Oxford, 2005), 33. 47. The quotation is from Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois (eds.), Violence in War and Peace (Malden, 2004), 1. 48. Ibid. chapter ten 1. Christopher Boyer, Becoming Campesinos: Politics, Identity and Agrarian Struggle in Revolutionary Michoacán, 1920–1935 (Stanford, 2003). 2. Robert Albro, “ “The Water Is Ours, Carajo!” Deep Citizenship in Bolivia’s Water War,” in June Nash (ed.), Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader (Oxford, 2005), 249–71; Kristin Norget, “A Cacophony of Autochthony: Representing Indigeneity in Oaxacan Popular Mobilization,” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 15, no. 1, 2010, 116–43. 3. Lynn Stephen, “The Construction of Indigenous Suspects: Militarization and the Gendered and Ethnic Dynamics of Human Rights Abuse in Southern Mexico,” American Ethnologist, vol. 26, no. 4, 1999, 822–42. 4. For more details on Las Abejas and their place among contending political and religious groups in their municipality, see Christine Eber, “Buscando una nueva vida: Liberation Through Autonomy in San Pedro Chenalhó, 1970–1998,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 28, no. 2, 2001, 45–72. 5. Stephen, “Construction of Indigenous Suspects,” 827. 6. John Stolle-McAllister, “What Does Democracy Look Like? Local Movements Challenge the Mexican Transition,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 32, no. 4, 2005, 15–35. 7. La Jornada, May 12, 2006.

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8. Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory, vol. 7, no. 1, 1989, 14–25. 9. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,” Public Culture, vol. 12, no. 2, 2000, 291–343. 10. Ibid., 306. 11. Ibid., 295–96. 12. Evelyn Hu-Dehart, “Development and Rural Rebellion: Pacification of the Yaquis in the Late Porfiriato,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 1, 1974, 72–93. 13. John Chance and William Taylor, “Cofradías and Cargos: An Historical Perspective on the Mesoamerican Civil-Religious Hierarchy,” American Ethnologist, vol. 12, no. 1, 1985, 1–26. 14. Juan Pedro Viqueira, Encrucijadas chiapanecas: economía, religión e identidades (Mexico City, 2002). 15. Friedrich Katz, “Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies,” Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 54, no. 1, 1974, 1–47. 16. William Roseberry, “El estricto apego a la ley: Ley liberal y derecho comunal en el Pátzcuaro porfiriano,” in Andrew Roth Seneff (ed.), Recursos contenciosos: Ruralidad y reformas liberales en México (Zamora, 2004), 43–84; John Gledhill, Cultura y desafío en Ostula: Cuatro siglos de autonomía indígena en la Costa-Sierra Nahua de Michoacán (Zamora, 2004). 17. David Robichaux, “Identidades cambiantes: “Indios” y “mestizos” en el suroeste de Tlaxcala,” Relaciones, vol. 26, no. 104, 2005, 59–104. 18. Margarita Zárate, En busca de la comunidad: Identidades recreadas y organización campesina en Michoacán (Zamora, 1998). 19. Lynn Stephen, “Redefined Nationalism in Building a Movement for Indigenous Autonomy in Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 3, no. 1, 1997, 72–101. 20. Peter Wade, “Images of Latin American Mestizaje and the Politics of Comparison,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 23, no. 3, 2004, 363. 21. Stolle-McAllister, “What Does Democracy Look Like?” 24. 22. George Collier, “The New Politics of Exclusion: Antecedents to the Rebellion in Mexico,” Dialectical Anthropology, vol. 19, no. 1, 1994, 1–43. 23. Gary Gossen, Telling Maya Tales: Tzotzil Identities in Modern Mexico (New York; London, 1999); Toomas Gross, “Protestantism and Modernity: The Implications of Religious Change in Contemporary Rural Oaxaca,” Sociology of Religion, vol. 64, no. 4, 2003, 479–98. 24. Carolyn Gallaher, “The Role of Protestant Missionaries in Mexico’s Indigenous Awakening,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 26, no. 1, 2007, 88–111. 25. Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, “Entre el etnocentrismo feminista y el esencialismo étnico: Las mujeres indígenas y sus demandas de género,” Debates Feministas, vol. 24, October 2001, 206–30. 26. June Nash, Mayan Visions: The Quest for Autonomy in an Age of Globalization (New York; London, 2001), 61. 27. Ibid., 73.

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28. See Jan Rus, “The “Comunidad Revolucionaria Institucional”: The Subversion of Native Government in Highland Chiapas, 1936–1968,” in Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham; London, 1994), 265–300; Gossen, Telling Maya Tales. 29. Nash, Mayan Visions, 63. 30. Ibid., 73. 31. Carlos Vilas, “By Their Own Hands: Lynchings in Contemporary Mexico,” Southwestern Journal of Law and Trade in the Americas, vol. 8, no. 2, 2002, 319–20. 32. Antonio Fuentes Díaz, “Linchamientos: Fragmentación y respuesta en el México neoliberal,” unpubl. master’s diss. (Puebla, 2002). 33. Daniel Goldstein, “Flexible Justice: Neoliberal Violence and ‘Self-Help’ Security in Bolivia,” Critique of Anthropology, vol. 25, no. 4, 2005, 389–411. 34. I gratefully acknowledge the support given to this research by the Mexican research council CONACYT, through its Cátedras Patrimoniales de Excelencia program, and by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. 35. Gledhill, Cultura y desafío, 220. 36. Ibid., 269. 37. Hubert Cochet, Alambradas en la Sierra: Un Sistema Agrario en México: La Sierra de Coalcomán (Mexico City, 1991), 132. 38. Ibid., 140. 39. Ibid., 204. 40. Higinio Ramírez García, La Agricultura Moderna y Tradicional en la Costa Nahua de Michoacán (Uruapan, 1982), 6. 41. See Gledhill, Cultura y desafío. 42. Registro Agrario Nacional, Santa María Ostula, Bienes Comunales: exp. 1525, Box 2 of 2, sheets 214–16. 43. For a detailed account of this period in Pómaro, see Alejandro Alarcón Olvera, “Pómaro: Identidad y cambio social,” unpubl. master’s diss. (Zamora, 1998). 44. John Hagedorn, A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture (Minneapolis, 2008). 45. Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey (Princeton, 2002). 46. Gledhill, Cultura y desafío, 323. 47. Aída Hernández Castillo, “National Law and Indigenous Customary Law: The Struggle for Justice of Indigenous Women in Chiapas, Mexico,” in Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi (eds.), Gender, Justice Development and Rights (Oxford, 2002), 384–413. 48. Shannon Speed and Jane Collier, “Limiting Indigenous Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico: The State Government’s Use of Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 22, no. 4, 2000, 877–905. 49. Ibid., 891. 50. Ibid., 893. 51. Ibid., 895.

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52. Pedro Pitarch Ramón, Chu’ulel: Una etnografía de las Almas tzeltales (Mexico City, 1996), 257. 53. Ibid., 258. 54. Ibid., 37. 55. Shannan Mattiace, “Regional Renegotiations of Space: Tojolabal Ethnic Identity in Las Margaritas, Chiapas,” in Jan Rus, Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannan Mattiace (eds.), Mayan Lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion (Lanham, 2003), 109–33. 56. Carmen Martínez Novo, “We Are Against the Government, Although We Are the Government: State Institutions and Indigenous Migrants in Baja California in the 1990s,” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 2, 2004, 352–81. chapter eleven I am grateful to Wil Pansters and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on a draft version of this chapter. 1. Caroline Moser and Cathy McIlwaine, Encounters with Violence: Urban Poor and Perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala (New York; London, 2004). 2. Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt, “Armed Actors, Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America: A Survey of Issues and Arguments,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Armed Actors: Organized Violence and State Failure in Latin America (London, 2004), 5–15. 3. Leigh A. Payne, Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right Wing and Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore, 2000). 4. Jo Beall, “Urban governance and the paradox of conflict,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Megacities: The Politics of Urban Exclusion and Violence in the Global South (London, 2009), 107–19; Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, “The Rise of Megacities and the Urbanization of Informality, Exclusion and Violence,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Megacities: The Politics of Urban Exclusion and Violence in the Global South (London, 2009), 8–26. 5. Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton, 2002). 6. Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, “Introduction: Violence and Fear in Latin America,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America (London, 1999), 6–11. 7. David Collier (ed.), The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, 1979); Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton, 1992). 8. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, 1986). 9. Paola Cesarini and Katherine Hite, “Introducing the Concept of Authoritarian Legacies,” in Katherine Hite and Paola Cesarini (eds.), Authoritarian Lega-

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cies and Democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe (Notre Dame, 2004), 1–24. 10. Anthony Pereira and Diane Davis, “New Patterns of Militarized Violence and Coercion in the Americas,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 27, no. 3, 2000, 4. 11. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford, 1999). 12. Sabine Kurtenbach, “El nuevo escenario de la (in)seguridad en América Latina: Amenaza para la democracia?” in Klaus Bodemer (ed.), El nuevo escenario de la (in)seguridad en América Latina (Caracas, 2003), 11–37; Roberto Briceño-León and Verónica Zubillaga, “Violence and Globalization in Latin America,” Current Sociology, vol. 50, no. 1, 2002, 19–38. 13. This scandal involved politicians having ties to or having received money from paramilitary groups. 14. Koonings and Kruijt, “Armed Actors,” 9. 15. Kees Koonings, “Armed Actors, Violence and Democracy in Latin America in the 1990s: Introductory Notes,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 20, no. 4, 2001, 401–8. 16. Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, “The Military and Their Shadowy Brothers in Arms,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Armed Actors, 16–30. 17. Moser and McIlwaine, Encounters with Violence; Caroline Moser and Cathy McIlwaine, “Living in Fear: How the Urban Poor Perceive Violence, Fear and Insecurity,” in Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Fractured Cities: Social Exclusion, Urban Violence and Contested Spaces in Latin America (London, 2007), 117–37; Alberto Concha-Eastman, “Urban Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Dimensions, Explanations, Actions,” in Susana Rotker (ed.), Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America (New Brunswick, 2002), 37–54. 18. Gareth A. Jones and Dennis Rodgers (eds.), Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective (New York, 2009). 19. Wim Savenije, “Las pandillas transnacionales o ‘maras’: Violencia urbana en Centroamérica,” Foro Internacional, vol. 47, no. 2, 2007, 637–59; Wim Savenije, Maras y barras: Pandillas y violencia juvenil en los barrios marginales de Centroamérica (San Salvador, 2009). 20. For Rio de Janeiro, see especially the work of Alba Zaluar, “Perverse Integration: Drug Trafficking and Youth in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of International Affairs, vol. 53, no. 2, 2000, 653–71; Alba Zaluar, “Violence in Rio de Janeiro: Styles of Leisure, Drug Use, and Trafficking,” International Social Science Journal, vol. 53, no. 169, 2001, 369–78. For Guayaquil, see Caroline Moser, Ordinary Families, Extraordinary Lives: Assets and Poverty Reduction in Guayaquil, 1978–2004 (Washington, DC, 2009), 231 ff.; Caroline Moser, “Coping with Urban Violence: State and Community Responses to Crime and Insecurity in Guayaquil, Ecuador,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Megacities, 69–81. For Kingston, Jamaica, see Colin Clarke, “Politics, Violence and Drugs in Kingston, Jamaica,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 25, no. 3, 2006, 420–40. 21. José Miguel Cruz (ed.), Street Gangs in Central America (San Salvador, 2007); Dennis Rodgers and Gareth A. Jones, “Youth Violence in Latin America:

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An Overview and Agenda for Research,” in Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence, 1–24; Dennis Rodgers, “Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence, and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2006, 267–92. 22. Alba Zaluar, “Urban Violence and Drug Warfare in Brazil,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Armed Actors, 139–54. 23. Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities. 24. Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence. 25. Ana Arana, “How the Street Gangs Took Central America,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 84, no. 3, 2005, 98–111. 26. Savenije, “Las pandillas transnacionales.” 27. Kees Koonings and Sjoerd Veenstra, “Exclusión social, actors armados y violencia urbana en Rio de Janeiro,” Foro Internacional, vol. 47, no. 3, 2007, 616–36. 28. Menno Vellinga, “The Political Economy of the Drug Industry: Its Structure and Functioning,” in Menno Vellinga (ed.), The Political Economy of the Drug Industry: Latin America and the International System (Gainesville, 2004), especially 13–15. See also Serrano, Chapter 6 in this volume. 29. Luis Cañón M., El Patrón: Vida y muerte de Pablo Escobar (Bogotá, 2003 [1994]). 30. Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw (New York, 2001). 31. Enrique Desmond Arias, Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security (Chapel Hill, 2006). 32. Carlos Amorim, CV PCC: A irmandade do crime (Rio de Janeiro, 2007); Graham Denyer Willis, “Deadly Symbiosis? The PCC, the State, and the Institutionalization of Violence in São Paulo, Brazil,” in Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence, 167–82. See for media reports triggered by the May 2006 uprising of the PCC: João de Barros, “A construção do PCC,” Caros Amigos, vol. 10 (special edition May 28, 2006), 3–13; “Terror em São Paulo,” Época, no. 418, 2006, 24–55. 33. Arias, Drugs and Democracy; Willis, “Deadly Symbiosis?” 34. Paul Chevigny, The Edge of the Knife: Police Violence in the Americas (New York, 1995); Paul Chevigny, “Defining the Role of the Police in Latin America,” in Juan E. Méndez, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (eds.), The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1999), 49–70; Mark Ungar, Elusive Reform: Democracy and the Rule of Law in Latin America (Boulder, 2002); Mark Ungar, “Policing Youth in Latin America,” in Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence, 203–24; Marie-Louise Glebbeek, In the Crossfire of Democracy: Police Reform and Police Practice in Post– Civil War Guatemala (Amsterdam, 2003); John Bailey and Lucia Dammert (eds.), Public Security and Police Reform in the Americas (Pittsburgh, 2006); Joseph S. Tulchin and Meg Ruthenberg (eds.), Toward a Society Under Law: Citizens and Their Police in Latin America (Baltimore, 2006); Niels Uildriks (ed.), Policing Insecurity: Police Reform, Security, and Human Rights in Latin America (Lanham, 2009).

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35. Glebbeek, In the Crossfire, especially 307 ff.; Marie-Louise Glebbeek, “Post-War Violence and Police Reform in Guatemala,” in Uildriks, Policing Insecurity, 79–94. 36. Saima Hussain, In War Those Who Die Are Not Innocent: Human Rights Implementation, Policing, and Public Security Reform in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (Amsterdam, 2007); Saima Hussain, “On the Long Road to Demilitarization and Professionalization of the Police in Brazil,” in Uildriks, Policing Insecurity, 47–78. 37. Dirk Kruijt and Carlos Iván Degregori, “Lima metropolitana,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities, 101–16; Jorg Plöger, Die nachtrag¨lich abgeschotteten Nachbarschaften in Lima (Peru): Eine Analyse sozialraümlicher Kontrollmassnahmen im Kontext zunehmender Unsicherheiten (Kiel, 2006). 38. Martha Huggins (ed.), Vigilantism and the State in Modern Latin America: Essays on Extralegal Violence (New York, 1991). 39. A cursory discussion can be found in Paulo de Mesquita Neto, “PublicPrivate Partnerships for Police Reform in Brazil,” in Bailey and Dammert, Public Security, 44–47; see also John Bailey and Lucia Dammert, “Assessing Responses to Public Insecurity in the Americas,” in Bailey and Dammert, Public Security, 256. 40. José Cláudio Souza Alves, “Milícias: Mudanças na economia política do crime no Rio de Janeiro,” in Justiça Global (ed.), Segurança, tráfico e milícia no Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 2008), 33–36; Ignâcio Cano and Carolina Iooty, “Seis por meia dúzia?: Um estudo exploratório do fenômeno das chamadas ‘milícias’ no Rio de Janeiro,” in Global, Seguança, 48–83. 41. Author’s interview with the chairman of the “CPI Milícias,” state deputy Marcelo Freixos (The Hague, September 21, 2009). For the report see Assembléia Legislativa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Relatório final da Commisão Parlamentar de Inquérito destinada a investigar a ação de milícias no âmbito do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, 2008). See for the subsequent introduction of permanent “pacification” policing in Batan (and a few other favelas) “Polícia para mil e uma utilidades,” O Globo, August 15, 2009, 12. 42. Francisco Gutiérrez Sanin and Maria Jaramillo, “Crime, (Counter-)Insurgency and the Privatization of Security: The Case of Medellín, Colombia,” Environment and Urbanization, vol. 16, no. 2, 17–30; Ralph Rozema, “Urban DDRProcesses: Paramilitaries and Criminal Networks in Medellín, Colombia,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, 2008, 423–52. 43. Kaldor, New and Old Wars; PNUD, El conflicto, callejón con salida: Informe nacional de desarrollo humano (Bogotá, 2003); Francisco Pizarro Leóngomez, Una democracia asediada: Balance y perspectivas del conflicto armado en Colombia (Bogotá, 2004); Luis Alberto Restrepo, “Violence and Fear in Colombia: Fragmentation of Space, Contraction of Time and Forms of Evasion,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Armed Actors, 172–85. 44. Dirk Kruijt, “Excercises in State Terrorism: The Counterinsurgency Campaigns in Guatemala and Peru,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 33–62. 45. Mario Fumerton, From Victims to Heroes: Peasant Counter-Rebellion and Civil War in Ayacucho, Peru, 1980–2000 (Amsterdam, 2002).

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46. Marieke Denissen, Mirella van Dun, and Kees Koonings, “Social Protest Against Repression and Violence in Present-Day Argentina and Peru,” European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, no. 77, October 2004, 91–101. 47. Mirella van Dun, Cocaleros: Violence, Drugs and Social Mobilization in the Post-Conflict Upper Huallaa Valley, Peru (Amsterdam, 2009). 48. Mauricio García Villegas and Javier Eduardo Revelo Rebolledo (eds.), Mayorías sin democracia: Desequilibrio de poderes y estado de derecho en Colombia, 2002–2009 (Bogotá, 2009). 49. Collier, New Authoritarianism; Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy: Towards Consolidation (Baltimore, 1999); Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (eds.), Political Armies: The Military and Nation Building in the Age of Democracy (London, 2002). 50. Alan Knight, “Populism and Neo-Populism in Latin America, Especially Mexico,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 1998, 223–48; Guillermo O’Donnell, “Delegative Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 5, no. 1, 1994, 55–69. 51. Anthony Pereira, “An Ugly Democracy? State Violence and the Rule of Law in Post-Authoritarian Brazil,” in Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power (eds.), Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions, and Processes (Pittsburgh, 2000), 217–35; Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, “Democracies Without Citizenship,” in NACLA Report on the Americas, vol. 30, no. 2, 1996, 17–23; Guillermo O’Donnell, “On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries,” World Development, vol. 21, no. 8, 1993, 1355–69; Juan E . Méndez, Guillermo O’Donnell, and Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro (eds.), The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1999). 52. Angela Delli Sante, Nightmare or Reality? Guatemala in the 1980s (Amsterdam, 1996). 53. Dinorah Azpuru, “Peace and Democratization in Guatemala: Two Parallel Processes,” in Cynthia Arnson (ed.), Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America (Washington, DC; Stanford, 1999), 97–125. 54. Glebbeek, In the Crossfire of Democracy; Glebbeek, “Post-War Violence.” 55. Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America (Stanford, 2006). 56. Glebbeek, “Post-War Violence.” 57. Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities. 58. Arias, Drugs and Democracy; Concha-Eastman, “Urban Violence”; Briceño-León and Zubillaga, “Violence and Globalization”; Moser and McIlwaine, Encounters with Violence. 59. Méndez et al., The (Un)Rule of Law; Koonings and Kruijt, Armed Actors. 60. Cruz, Street Gangs; Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence; Zaluar, “Urban Violence.” 61. Enrique Desmond Arias, “The Dynamics of Criminal Governance: Networks and Social Order in Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 38, no. 2, 2006, 293–326; Arias, Drugs and Democracy; Robert Gay, “From Popular Movements to Drug Gangs to Milicias: An Anatomy of Violence in Rio

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de Janeiro,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Megacities, 29–51; Koonings and Veenstra, “Exclusión social”; Janice Perlman, Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge (New York; London, 2009); Alba Zaluar and Marcos Alvito (eds.), Um século de Favela (Rio de Janeiro, 2006 [1998]). 62. Jo Beall, “Cities, Terrorism, and Development,” Journal of International Development, vol. 18, no. 1, 2006, 105–20. 63. Robert Warren, “Situating the City and September 11th: Military Urban Doctrine, ‘Pop-Up’ Armies and Spatial Chess,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 26, no. 3, 2002, 614–19. 64. Marie-Louise Glebbeek, “Mano Dura: Fighting Crime, Violence, and Insecurity with an Iron Fist in Central America,” in Joseph B. Kuhns and Johannes Knutsson (eds.), Police Use of Force: A Global Perspective (New York, 2010), 63–72. 65. Luiz Eduardo Soares, André Batista, and Rodrigo Pimentel, Elite da Tropa (Rio de Janeiro, 2005), 8 (my emphasis). 66. In 2008, volunteers of the Brazilian Red Cross, supported by the ICRC, started to train favela dwellers in emergency medical care of wounded victims of gunfights and street battles. The organization stressed the importance of impartiality and guaranteed access, just like, I add, under conventional warfare conditions. See www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/brasilia-news-300608?open document, accessed February 8, 2010. 67. Wil Pansters, “The Transition Under Fire: Rethinking Contemporary Mexican Politics,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 235–63; see also his opening chapter in this volume. 68. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “On the Characterization of Authoritarian Regimes in Latin America,” in Collier, New Authoritarianism, 33–57; Pansters, “Transition Under Fire”; Wil Pansters (ed.), Citizens of the Pyramid: Essays on Mexican Political Culture (Amsterdam, 1997). 69. Alan Knight, “Political Violence in Post-Revolutionary Mexico,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 105–24. 70. See also Knight, “Political Violence.” 71. Pansters, “Transition Under Fire.” 72. Shannan L. Mattiace, To See with Two Eyes: Peasant Activism and Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico (Albuquerque, 2003). See for a general account of neo-indigenist movements: Deborah Yashar, Contesting Ctizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge, 2005). See for an interpretation that links elements of Maya cosmology to the conventional repertoire of leftist militantism to explain the zapatista uprising: Arij Ouweneel, “ ‘Welcome to the Nightmare’: Thoughts on the Faceless Warriors of the Lacandona Revolt of 1994,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Societies of Fear, 88–102. 73. See also Diane Davis, “Undermining the Rule of Law: Democratization and the Dark Side of Police Reform in Mexico,” Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 48, no. 1, 55–86. 74. Wil Pansters and Héctor Castillo Berthier, “Mexico City,” in Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities, 36–56; see also Wil Pansters and Héctor Castillo Berthier,

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“Violencia y inseguridad en la ciudad de México: Entre la fragmentación y la politización,” Foro Internacional, vol. 47, no. 3, 2007, 577–615. 75. Héctor Castillo Berthier and Gareth Jones, “Mean Streets: Youth, Violence, and Daily Life in Mexico City,” in Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence, 183–202. For a comparative overview of (gang) violence in Latin American cities, see also Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities. 76. Pansters and Castillo Berthier, “Mexico City,” 36. 77. Cartel and drug-related violence in Mexico have claimed more than 30,000 lives during the first four years of the Calderón presidency, with the numbers increasing every year. See Pansters in the opening chapter of this volume. 78. Alan Knight, Chapter 5 in this volume, 5–24. 79. See for fairly recent comparative statistics on lethal, criminal, and youth violence in Latin America: Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, Mapa da violência: Os jovens da América Latina 2008 (Brasília; São Paulo, 2008), especially tables 2.2.1 and 2.2.2 on p. 24. For 2004, overall homicide rates given for Mexico are 8.8 (per 100,000), compared to 52.6 for Colombia, 39.6 for El Salvador, 35.8 for Venezuela, 28.5 for Guatemala, and 25.9 for Brazil; for the same year the following homicide rates of juveniles between fifteen and twenty-four years of age were given (per 100,000): Mexico, 10.0; Colombia, 88.1; El Salvador, 74.4; Venezuela, 64.2; Guatemala, 55.4; Brazil, 52.9. (These numbers are drawn from the WHOSIS database managed by the World Health Organization.) 80. See Salvador Maldonado Aranda, “Drugs, Violence and the Military in Rural Mexico: The Case of Michoacán,” paper presented at the XV Día de Mexicanistas, “The Mexican Connection: Drug Trafficking, the State and Society in Contemporary Mexico,” Groningen, November 19–20, 2009. 81. William Finnegan, “Silver or Lead,” The New Yorker, May 31, 2010, 39–51.

Index

Page numbers in italic indicate tables and figures. Accountability, to citizens, 79–80, 86, 87 Acosta, Pablo, 327n106 Acosta, Rodolfo, 201–2 Acteal massacre, 234, 248, 272 Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI), 13, 168, 310n47 Agrarian violence, 191–92 Agraristas, 102 Aguilar, Crispín, 91–92, 99–105, 109, 311n4 Aguilar, Gonzalo, 104 Aguilar, José, 104 Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo, 95 Alemán, Miguel, 93–94, 100, 103, 104, 108–9, 124 Alva Álvarez, Rogaciano, 4–5 Alvarez Farber, Rodolfo, 141 Amatenango del Valle, Chiapas, 240–41 Amorós, Roberto, 203–4 Anti-corruption efforts. See Police corruption; State corruption Anti-piracy efforts. See Piracy and bootlegging Aparicio, Miguel, 191 Arendt, Hannah, 286n64 Armed actors, Latin American, 258–59; cartels and organized crime, 260–62; gangs, 259–60; police forces, 262–63; private security forces and vigilantes, 263–65 Armenta, Marciano, 104 Article 123, Mexican Constitution, 185, 187, 192, 194 Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO), 4, 229–30, 233, 234

Assassinations, political, 12; drugrelated violence and, 141, 280n16; labor violence and, 190; neoliberal period, 224, 273; political-institutional violence and, 16; postrevolutionary period, 189; rural violence and, 108, 109 Assimilation, indigenous populations and, 247, 251 Atenco movement, 234–35 Authoritarian political structures: development of Mexican drug economy and, 139; illiberal democracies, 267–68; Latin America and “old violence,” 256–58; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and, 270–71 Authority, states and. See State power Auto theft, 76–77 Auxiliary Police. See Policia Auxiliar (Auxiliary Police) Barbarous Mexico (Turner), 54 Barrolo, Bernardo, 194–95 Berber, Alberto F., 109 Berger, Oscar, 62 Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN), 265 Border control measures, 64–65, 299n22 Border Industrialization Program (BIP), 55 Border regions: border dissolution and, 297n7; drug-trafficking and, 119–20; globalization and, 49–51; indigenous populations and, 299–300n27; industrialization and, 299n26; regime transitions and, 298n13; regional

364

Index

Border regions (continued) security agreements and, 297n10; state-making and, 32, 33, 43–45, 65–67; typology of border relationships, 45–46, 47–48, 49. See also U.S.-Mexican border Border violence, 49, 51 Bourdieu, Pierre, 98 Bracero Program, 55 Brazil: organized crime and, 261–62; police forces, 263; private security forces and, 264; urban crime and violence, 269, 270 Bribes, purchasing power of, 141 Bureaucratic fragmentation: coercive force and, 291n110; law enforcement reforms and, 85–86, 141, 309–10n47, 310n49; militarization of public safety functions and, 79; neoliberal politics and, 83; police forces and, 80–81, 307–8n32; urban crime and violence, 268–69 Bureaucratic structures, 84, 87 Bush, George W., 62–63 Cabrera, Alfonso, 189 Caciquismo: clientelism and, 215; “community” and, 239; defined, 350n10; indigenous populations and, 240–41, 242–43, 247; parainstitutional violence, 25; rural violence and, 102–3; state-making and, 37; zone of coercion and, 28 Calderón, Everardo, 196 Calderón, Felipe de Jesús: 2006 elections and, 231–32; anti-drug violence efforts, 116; counter-narcotic operations and, 153, 276, 319n6; drug-related violence and, 129, 133, 134; law enforcement reforms and, 13, 88, 89; militarization of public safety functions and, 83, 88–89; regional security agreements, 62–63 Cali cartel, 261, 327–28n109 Calles, Plutarco Elías, 187, 189, 193 Camarena Salazar, Enrique, 62, 128, 140, 332n23 Camela, Cándido, 196 Campa, Valentín, 200–201, 203, 206, 208 Campaign funding, 125, 129 Campbell’s Law, 96

Canada, regional security agreements and, 62 Cantú, Esteban, 119 Capital mobility, 49, 50 Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc, 84–86, 187–88, 224 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 76–80, 242 Cárdenas Guillén, Osiel, 337n58 Carillo Fuentes, Amado, 146, 328n115, 329n123 Cornejo Armenta, Rafael, 92, 105 Caro Quintero, Rafael, 332n23, 332n24 Carranza, Venustiano, 73–75, 185–86 Cartels and organized crime. See Drug cartels; Organized crime Castrejón, Adrián, 106 Catholic Church, 130–31, 193, 194 Censorship, 93 Central America, parainstitutional violence and, 25 Central Única de Trabajadores (CUT), 199, 201 Charrazo coup, 201–4 Charrismo (union bossism): Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and, 188–200; mid-twentieth century and, 208–11; postrevolutionary period and, 185–88; railroad unions and, 200–208 Chinese persons, drug-trafficking and, 124 Citizenship, 18, 216, 255 Ciudad Juárez, 56, 61, 133–34, 274, 320n14, 337n57 Civilian militias. See Private security forces Civil rights, 216, 218–22, 232 Civil society, hegemony and, 26–27, 29–30 Clavel Moreno, Rafael, 302n46 Clientelism: drug cartels and, 261; election fraud and, 224–25; indigenous populations and, 245; labor unions and, 351n18; neoliberal politics and, 223; parainstitutional violence, 25; political practice and, 213, 214–22; state-making and, 37–38; street vending and, 161; zone of coercion and, 28 Coalición Defensora de los Derechos Ciudadanos, 307n30

Index Cocaine markets: development of Mexican drug economy and, 139–40, 276–78; indigenous populations and, 244; militarization of public safety functions and, 155–56; state corruption and, 145–46; U.S.-Mexican border and, 58; violence against state agents and, 337–38n59 Coercion-capital model, state-making and, 19, 22, 23 Coercive force: anti-piracy efforts and, 160; border regions and, 46, 49, 65; clientelism and, 219–20, 221; illicit economy and, 142–43; law enforcement reforms and, 77; “regulation,” of illicit markets and, 144–45; state power and, 135–36; state repression and, 69–70; symbolic violence and, 212–13. See also Militarization, of public safety functions; State violence and repression Coexistent border relationships, 46, 47–48, 54–56, 66 Cold War period, U.S.-Mexican border and, 55 Collateral damage, drug-related violence and, 127, 319–20n11 Collective violence, 287n68, 296–97n3 Colombia: crime statistics and, 96–97, 311n11; drug cartels, 58, 261; drug cartels and, 277; guerrilla movements and, 265, 266; homicide rates, 92, 97, 98, 313n38; militarization of public safety functions and, 155–56; private security forces and, 264–65; rural violence and, 110, 312n22; urban crime and violence, 270 Colonial Mexico, indigenous populations and, 234, 236 Colonna, Mario, 109–10 Colosio, Luis Donaldo, 12, 141 Commodity chains, 162, 163 Commodity prices, drugs and, 322n38 Communal land tenure, 236–37, 241–42 “Community,” indigenous populations and, 239–41 Community policing, 87, 88, 244, 246, 263 Comunistas, 348n64; railroad unions, 200–208; textile industry unions and, 188–200 Confederación de Trabajadores de México (CTM), 187, 199, 202, 210, 225

365

Confederación General de Trabajadores (CGT), 187, 189, 193–96 Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC), 225 Confederación Nacional de Pequeños Propietarios (CNPP), 225 Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM): labor leaders and, 198–200, 209; labor violence and, 187, 192–98; Puebla politics and, 188–92; state-making and, 37 Conflict ecologies, 340n75 Conflict resolution, nonviolent, 31–32 Consent-building, 27, 37, 219–20 Constitution, of Mexico, 185, 187, 305n16, 305n17 Copyright legislation, 159–60, 166–68 Córdoba Lara, Alfredo, 108 Coronal del Rosal, Alfonso, 308n35 Corporatist institutions, 28, 36–37, 161, 222, 275, 294n138 Corruption. See Police corruption; State corruption Cortecabezas, indigenous populations and, 249 Counterinstitutional violence, 24 Counterinsurgency violence, 265–67, 272 Counterrevolutionaries, Mexico City police forces and, 71 Crime, 17, 56, 57, 84, 116–17. See also Urban crime and violence Crime-state relations, 135–36; drugrelated violence and, 142–48; illicit economy and, 136–42; privatization of violence, 149–58 Crime statistics: drug-related violence and, 115–16, 118, 279n9, 318–19n4; drug-trafficking and, 336n46; impunity and, 336n47; kidnappings, 335n41; Latin America, 311n11, 313n38, 361n79; measuring violence and, 93–99; reliability of, 12–13, 284–85n50; violence against women and, 280n12. See also Homicide rates Cristero Rebellion, 76 Cross-border commerce, 64–65 Cultural change, hegemony and, 29–30 Cultural identity: “community” and, 239–41; globalization and, 51; indigenous populations and, 235–36, 250; mestizaje identity and, 237–38 Cultural relativism, 248–49

366

Index

Cuota (protection payments), 177–78 Customary law, indigenous populations and, 247–49 De La Huerta rebellion, 190 Demand, for drugs, 119–20, 126–27, 136–37, 139 Democratic institutions: 2006 elections and, 281n19; development of Mexican drug economy and, 141–42; drug-related violence and, 128–29, 148; Latin America and, 291n111; Mexican political climate, 7–10; neoliberal politics and, 82–89; political change and, 68; violence and coercion, 5–6, 14. See also Neoliberal period Democratic states: guerrilla and counterinsurgency movements, 265–67; illiberal democracies, 267–68; urban crime and violence, 268–70 Depoliticization, military forces and, 102 Desertions, by military forces, 340n74 Deterrence, 101, 334n36 Díaz, Felix, 71 Díaz, Luis T., 202 Díaz, Porfirio, 54, 70–71, 303n3 Díaz de León, Jesús, 200–202 Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), 93, 94; drug-related violence and, 35; federal regulation, 138; law enforcement reforms and, 145; police corruption and, 296n162, 307n31, 332–33n24, 334n35 Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS), 93–94, 95 Disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR), 265 Dispute resolution, 220–21 Domestic violence, 12, 17–18, 248. See also Social and interpersonal violence Domínguez, Alejandro, 151 Drug cartels, 301–2n45; Colombian drug cartels, 58; drug-related violence and, 116, 117, 141, 151; economically-motivated violence and, 275–76; indigenous populations and, 246; internal violence and, 127–28, 277, 302n46, 326n90; Latin America, 260–62; Mexican drug cartels, 59, 60, 62; social ties and, 132–33; state corruption and, 327n102

Drug consumption, 320n14, 338n63 Drug control regulations, 137–39 Drug possession, decriminalization of, 152–53 Drug-related violence, 5, 115–16, 320n14; 2006 elections and, 230; collateral damage from, 319–20n11; Colombia and, 266; counter-narcotic operations and, 319n6; crime statistics and, 279n9, 318–19n4; drug cartels and, 302n46; economically-motivated violence, 17; economic uncertainty and, 143–44; historical patterns of, 119–21; homicide rates and, 10, 11, 337n54; indigenous populations and, 244–45, 246–47, 274; Latin America, 255; Mexican exceptionalism and, 273; Mexican political climate and, 7; modern Mexico and, 61, 126–34; motivations for, 116–19; national security and, 14; neoliberal period and, 126–34, 149–58; news media and, 318n1; “new” violence and, 274–78; political assassinations and, 280n16; private security forces and, 325n85; privatization of, 149–58; social banditry and, 329n118; state-crime relations and, 142–48, 323n45; state-making and, 35, 121–25; U.S.-Mexican border and, 56, 59–61, 338–39n65; U.S.-Mexican relations and, 286n62; violence against state agents and, 337–38n59, 338n60 Drug-trafficking: crime statistics and, 336n46; economic benefits and, 130–33, 157, 301n42, 327–28n109, 328n110; globalization and, 299n20; government regulation and, 137–42; historical patterns of, 119–21; illegal immigration and, 284n47; illicit economy of, 136–42; police corruption and, 306n26, 310n52; rural violence and, 110; social banditry and, 327n106, 328n112; state corruption and, 123–25; U.S.-Mexican border and, 58–65, 337n56; weapons and, 325n81 Durazo, Arturo, 81 Ebrard, Marcelo, 87, 88, 89, 90 Echeverría, Luis, 79–80, 81–82, 308n36

Index Economically-motivated violence, 15, 17, 20; cartels and organized crime, 260–62; drug-related violence and, 116–17, 275, 322n38; gangs, 259–60; mid-twentieth century and, 98; police forces, 262–63; private security forces and vigilantes, 263–65 Economic benefits: drug-trafficking and, 130–33, 157, 327–28n109, 328n110; labor unions and, 198, 199 Economic context, drug-related violence and, 126–28, 130 Economic growth, U.S.-Mexican border and, 54 Economic inequality: border regions and, 66; globalization and, 51; neoliberal politics and, 223, 227–28; piracy and bootlegging, 160; urban crime and violence, 268; U.S.-Mexican border and, 57 Economic integration, U.S./Mexico, 58–59, 126 Economic liberalization, 49, 50 Economic uncertainty, 18–19; clientelism and, 218; drug-related violence and, 129, 143–44; illicit economy and, 57–58, 141–42, 143; neoliberal politics and, 214; protection payments and, 178 Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR), 244 Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), 233, 234, 238, 272 Elections: 1988 elections and, 12, 222; 2006 elections and, 6–7, 228–32, 280n14, 281n19, 282n21, 352n43; campaign funding, 125, 129; fraud, 224–32; labor leaders and, 202; law enforcement reforms and, 83; Mexico City police forces and, 74; state corruption and, 224–28; violence, 4, 5, 12 Elias, Norbert, 19 “Elite-exploitation model,” 125, 137, 275 Employment, 123 Entitlements, clientelism and, 218–22 Eradication campaigns, 154 Escobar, Pablo, 261 Ethnic violence, 12, 17, 38, 237–38, 242–43 Extraditions, between Mexico and the U.S., 62, 63

367

Extra-legal violence: “escape law” and, 300n33; Latin American “new violence,” 258; military forces and, 101; police actions and, 287–88n73; rural violence and, 104–5; statemaking and, 34–35; urban crime and violence, 269 Fabela, Alfredo A., 208 Family feuds, 321n21 Family Reunification Act (U.S.), 55 FARC, 151, 266, 337n55 Fear and insecurity, 14–19, 320n15 Federación de Estudiantes de Guadalajara (FEG), 34–35 Federación Sindicalista de Atlixco (FSA), 193, 197 Federal District, 74, 241, 250 Federal Election Institute, 230 Federal Judicial Police, 145 Federal Labor Code, 187 Federal Police, 13 Federal Preventative Police, 13 Feminine archetypes, indigenous populations and, 234 Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FFCC), 203, 207 “Field of the state,” 24 Flores, Benito, 197, 198 Flores, Gerónimo, 191 Force, state legitimacy and, 23–24. See also Coercive force Foreign investment, U.S.-Mexican border and, 54 Fox, Vicente: 2006 elections and, 228; anti-piracy efforts and, 159, 167; drug-related violence and, 128, 150–51; law enforcement reforms, 13, 86, 87, 309–10n47, 310n49 Free market ideology, 163–64, 223–24 Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra, 234 Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG), 268 Friedrich, Paul, 95 Fujimori, Alberto, 266, 267 Gadsden Purchase, 300n31 Gallardo, Miguel Angel Felix, 59, 302n46 Galván Galván, Guillermo, 155 Gangs, 259–60, 268. See also Urban crime and violence

368

Index

García, Carlos, 189 García, Lucas, 267 García Colón, Rafael, 203 García Durán, Magdalena, 234 García Nava, Marcelo, 3–4 Garza, Tony, 62 Garza y Garza, Marcelo, 4 Gender roles, 56–57, 239, 250–51 Gender violence, social power relations and, 17–18. See also Domestic violence; women, violence against Globalization: border control measures and, 299n22; border regions and, 45, 49–51, 66, 298n14, 298n15; drug-trafficking and, 299n20; law enforcement reforms and, 89 Gómez Maganda, Alejandro, 106 Gómez Z., Luis, 200, 201, 206 Government employment, 77–78, 82–83 Government regulation: copyright legislation, 166–68; development of Mexican drug economy and, 136–42; piracy and bootlegging, 163–66; postrevolutionary period and, 122, 144; street vending and, 36, 306n27 Gramsci, Antonio, 26–27, 219–20 Gran Comisión Pro- Aumento de Salarios (GC), 204 Gray zones, 24–25, 32, 34–36 Guadalajara, 16–17, 161–62 Guardias blancas. See Private security forces Guardias municipales (civilian militias), 71–72 Guatemala: cocaine markets and, 277–78; drug-related violence and, 340n73; as illiberal democracy, 267–68; police forces and, 262–63; urban crime and violence, 270 Guerrero, 96, 97, 97, 106 Guerrero, Alberto, 190 Guerrero, Melquiades, 190 Guerrilla movements: Latin America and, 265–67; Latin American “old violence,” 258–59; mid-twentieth century populism and, 81–82; militarization of public safety functions and, 80; private security forces and, 264–65 Guillén, Gregorio, 242 Gulf cartel, 59, 60, 128, 151–52 Gutiérrez Rebollo, Jesús, 146, 334n37

Guzman, Joaquin “Chapo,” 151, 155, 328n113 Haro Portillo, Marco Antonio, 321n21 Hatfield-McCoy feud, 321n21 Hegemony, 26–32, 294n138 Henriquista campaign, 105–6 Hernández, Dionisio, 191 Heroin markets, 126, 139, 332n21 Hierarchical relationships, clientelism and, 214–18 Historical context, drug-related violence and, 117–21, 133–34 Historical records, rural violence and, 94–95 Homicide rates, 10–11; crime statistics and, 283n37, 321n26; drug-related violence and, 61, 118, 147, 153–54, 274, 275–76, 337n54; Latin America, 361n79; mid-twentieth century and, 92, 95, 96–97, 97, 98; rural violence and, 108, 110–11, 283n36; violence against state agents and, 339n66 Huerta, Antonio, 195 Human rights abuses: indigenous populations and, 248, 249; militarization of public safety functions and, 149–50, 155–56, 336n52; neoliberal period, 224; police forces and, 263 Ibarra, Jesús, 202 Illegal immigration, 284n47, 300–301n38 Illegal searches and seizures, 171–73 Illiberal democracies, 267–68, 272–73 Illicit economy, 341–42n5; globalization and, 50; state-crime relations, 136–42; U.S.-Mexican border and, 57–58. See also Drug-trafficking; piracy and bootlegging Immigration issues, 55–56, 57 Impunity: clientelism and, 220, 221; crime statistics and, 336n47; drugrelated violence and, 147–48; election fraud and, 225; Latin America and, 257 Indigenous populations: border regions and, 299–300n27; “community” and, 239–41; drug-related violence and, 274; homicide rates and, 11; internal violence, 247–49; mestizaje identity and, 236–38; modernization and,

Index 249–51; neoliberal politics and, 227–28, 272–73; state violence and repression, 233–36, 241–47; U.S.Mexican border and, 52–53; violence and coercion, 38 Industrialization: labor unions and, 198, 199, 208–10; social costs and, 299n26; U.S.-Mexican border and, 55–57 Informants, 174–76 Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), 59 Institutional violence, 24, 120. See also Political-institutional violence Insurgencies, 150, 154, 255, 257 Integrated border relationships, 46, 47–48, 51, 56–65, 66, 298n12 Intellectual property rights. See Copyright legislation Intelligence agencies, 93–94 Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission, 65 Inter-cartel violence, 141, 326n90, 338n61, 338n62; neoliberal period and, 152; private security forces and, 154–55, 325n85 Interdependent border relationships, 46, 47–48, 66 Intergenerational conflict, indigenous populations and, 240–41 Internally displaced persons (IDPs), 340n76 Internal violence: criminal organizations and, 103–4; drug cartels and, 127–28, 261, 277, 302n46; drug-related violence and, 120, 125; indigenous populations and, 240–41, 247–49; Mexico City police forces and, 73, 75–76; militarization of public safety functions and, 79 International Forum of Intelligence and Security Specialists, 286n62 International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), 164 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 164 International relations: anti-piracy efforts and, 159, 180–81; border regions and, 43, 66, 298n14; financial and trade regulations and, 163–65; Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), 14; state-making and, 22–23; typology of border relationships,

369

45–46, 47–48, 49; urban crime and violence, 269; U.S.-Mexican War and, 53–54. See also U.S.-Mexican relations Interpersonal violence, 296–97n3. See also Social and interpersonal violence Interstate violence, border regions and, 43 Juárez cartel, 59, 60, 128 Judicial police: federal regulation and, 138–39; law enforcement reforms and, 85, 145–46; postrevolutionary period, 74–75, 304–5n15, 305n16. See also Legal system Jurisdictions, overlapping, 80–81 Kidnappings, 13, 17, 147, 335n41 Knights Templar (Los Caballeros Templarios), 246 Labor leaders: clientelism and, 215–16; Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and, 198–200; corruption and, 219; labor unions and, 186; neoliberal politics and, 223; railroad unions and, 202, 205–7 Labor unions: clientelism and, 215–16, 217–18, 351n18; election fraud and, 225; industrialization and, 208–9; militarization of public safety functions and, 80; postrevolutionary period and, 122; state labor codes, 192–93; sugar industry and, 214 Labor violence: Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and, 188–200; mid-twentieth century and, 208–11; postrevolutionary period and, 185–88; railroad unions and, 200–208; state-making and, 36–37 La Familia Michoacana, 246, 276–77 Land ownership: indigenous populations and, 236–37, 240; labor violence and, 187–88; postrevolutionary period and, 122 Languages of stateness, 295n153 Lara Grajales, Rafael, 190 Lara Salazar, Antioco, 106 Las Abejas (The Bees) movement, 234 Latin America: democratic institutions and, 291n111; democratic states, 265–67; illiberal democracies, 267–68; Mexican exceptionalism and,

370

Index

Latin America (continued) 38–39, 270–74; “old” and “new” violence, 255–58; types of armed actors, 258–65; urban crime and violence, 268–70; violence and coercion, 6 Law enforcement: copyright violations and, 164; drug-trafficking and, 125; legality of anti-piracy efforts and, 171–73; Mérida Initiative and, 63; mid-twentieth century populism and, 76–82; military forces and, 101; national security and, 89–90; neoliberal politics and, 82–89; political change and, 68–70; postrevolutionary period, 70–76; Puebla politics and, 191–92. See also Militarization, of public safety functions; Police forces Law enforcement reforms: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and, 84–86; detention on suspicion and, 309n41; development of Mexican drug economy and, 141; Fox administration, 309–10n47, 310n49; Latin America and, 262–63; Lázaro Cárdenas and, 76–80; Luis Echeverría and, 82, 308n36; Mérida Initiative, 64, 302n49; Mexico City massacre and, 308n35; mid-twentieth century populism and, 307n30; neoliberal politics and, 82–83; police corruption and, 309n39; postrevolutionary period, 73–75, 305n16, 305n17, 305n18; rural areas and, 106–7; state corruption and, 145–47; Veracruz, 104; Zedillo administration and, 13 Law of social dissolution (1941), 34–35 Legality, of anti-piracy efforts, 171–73 Legal system: anti-piracy efforts and, 159; domestic violence and, 248; indigenous populations and, 240; labor unions and, 192–93; law enforcement reforms and, 85; rural violence and, 99 Legislation: copyright legislation, 166–68; electoral legislation and, 282n21; federal labor laws, 198; piracy and bootlegging, 163–66; state labor codes, 192–93 Legitimacy: Felipe de Jesús Calderón and, 153; Mexican exceptionalism and, 271–72; Mexico City police

forces and, 73–74, 75, 79–80; militarization of public safety functions and, 156–57; political change and, 68–69; postrevolutionary period and, 76, 199; Puebla politics and, 189–92; rural violence and, 100; state-making and, 23–24; state power and, 19, 135 León, Benito, 197 Leyzaola Pérez, Julián, 323n45 Liberal democracy, clientelism and, 216 Libres (unions), 193–97 Ligas de Comunidades Agrarias (LCA), 191 Local governments: anti-piracy efforts and, 168, 170; clientelism and, 220; Crispín Aguilar and, 103; development of Mexican drug economy and, 137; indigenous populations and, 247; law enforcement reforms and, 86–90, 87; Mexico City police forces and, 71–72, 74; militarization of public safety functions and, 79; Ostula, Mexico and, 243; police forces and, 304n13; state-making and, 34; zones of hegemony and coercion, 30–32, 31 Lombardo Toledano, Vicente, 186, 190, 194, 199, 349n98 López Arias, Fernando, 207 López de Santa Anna, Antonio, 300n28, 300n29 López Mateos, Adolfo, 186, 207, 208, 210 López Obrador, Andres Manuel, 86, 87, 229, 230, 231, 280n14 Lynchings, 18–19, 241 Macedo de la Concha, Rafael, 151 Madero, Francisco, 72 Madrazo, Roberto, 229, 230, 326–27n99 Madrid Hurtado, Miguel de la, 149, 166 Madrinas (middlemen) and pitazos (lookouts), 36, 161, 173–79, 273–74, 344n45 Malverde, Jesús, 133 Manero, Alejandro Gertz, 84, 85 Mange, Alejandro, 103, 106 Manjarréz, Froylán C., 190, 194 Maras (youth gangs), 259, 260, 268 Marijuana cultivation, 137, 139, 244 Marxism, 23, 296n1

Index Masculinity, gangs and, 260 McCaffrey, Barry, 146, 286n62 Medellín cartel, 261, 277 Medina Mora, Eduardo, 146 Mérida Initiative, 14, 63–64, 302n49 Mestizaje identity, 236–38, 242 Mexican exceptionalism, 8, 28, 29–32, 38–39, 256, 270–74 Mexican political climate: democratic institutions and, 7–8; election crisis (2006) and, 6–7; historical perspective on, 9–10; Partido Revolucionario Institucion (PRI), 9 Mexican Revolution, 30–31, 54–55, 303n8 Mexico City: perceptions of violence and, 274; Porfirio Díaz, José de la Cruz and, 303n3; student protests and, 79, 81, 271, 308n35 Mexico City police forces, 76–77; law enforcement reforms and, 76–80; Mexican Revolution and, 303n8; mid-twentieth century populism and, 76–82; military forces and, 304n10; neoliberal politics and, 82–89; police corruption and, 76–77; postrevolutionary period, 70–76; pre-revolutionary period, 304n9 Migrations: homicide rates and, 96–97; illegal immigration, 284n47, 300– 301n38; indigenous populations and, 243–44, 250; internally displaced persons (IDPs), 340n76 Militarization, of public safety functions: border regions and, 50–51; Felipe de Jesús Calderón and, 88–89, 155–58, 276; human rights abuses and, 336n52; illiberal democracies, 267; illicit economy and, 142; indigenous populations and, 233; mid-twentieth century populism and, 78–80, 307n29; neoliberal period and, 83, 84–86, 149–53; police corruption and, 336n50; public policy and, 13–14; states of emergency and, 336n51. See also Coercive force Military forces: anti-drug violence efforts, 116; desertion and, 340n74; Guatemala and, 267, 268; historical records and, 94; indigenous populations and, 245; labor violence and, 188, 195–96, 210; Latin America and, 257, 258–59; law enforcement

371

reforms and, 77; Mérida Initiative and, 63; Mexican exceptionalism and, 270–71; Mexico City police forces and, 73, 304n10; parainstitutional violence and, 25; political involvement of, 105–7; private security forces and, 154–55; rural violence and, 99, 100–102, 105–9, 110; state-making and, 32, 33, 34; U.S.-Mexican border, 53; zone of coercion and, 28. See also Police corruption; Police forces Militias. See Private security forces Mill owners, labor violence and, 193–98 Ministry of Public Security, 13, 285n57 Modernization, indigenous populations and, 249–51 Montt, Rios, 267, 268 Morones, Luis N., 186, 188–89, 193, 194, 199, 348n62 Motivations, for violence, 15, 20–21; drug-related violence and, 116–19, 154, 321–22n27; justifiable violence and, 286n67; Latin American “new violence,” 257–58; mid-twentieth century and, 98–99; psychopathology and, 321n23; rural violence and, 100 Multiculturalism, 247, 248, 273 Municipio libre (free municipality), 74 Nájera, Luis Carlos, 170, 178–79 Napolitano, Janet, 62 Narco-corridos, 131–32, 330n125, 330n133 “Narco-mini-states,” 324n56 Narcoterrorism, 261 Narco-violence. See Drug-related violence Nascent border relationships, 46, 47–48, 49, 52–53, 65 National identity, indigenous populations and, 237–38 National Institute to Combat Drugs (INCD), 145–46 Nationalism, 133, 216, 330n133 National Program for the Control of Drugs, 149 National Public Security System, 13 National security: border regions and, 43, 44, 50–51; counter-narcotic operations and, 149; drug cartels and, 276; drug-related violence and, 117; law enforcement and, 89–90; public safety and, 13–14; regional security

372

Index

National security (continued) agreements and, 62–65; U.S.-Mexican border and, 66–67 National traits, propensity for violence and, 118 Native peoples. See Indigenous populations Natural resources, 236, 237, 244 Navarrete, Alfredo, 202 Negotiation, hegemony and, 30 Neoliberalism: Latin American “new violence,” 257–58; Mexican exceptionalism and, 272–74 Neoliberal period: anti-piracy efforts and, 180–81; drug-related violence and, 126–34, 149–58; drug-trafficking and, 126–27; indigenous populations and, 235, 241; law enforcement and, 70, 82–89; piracy and bootlegging and, 160, 163–66; politicalinstitutional violence, 212–32 Neo-Pentecostalism, 250 Neri, Rodolfo, 99 New Cultural History, 24, 30–31, 292n119 “New Hemispheric Drug Strategy,” 65 News media: crime statistics and, 93; drug-related violence and, 318n1; police actions and, 343n32; railroad unions and, 349n91 “New” violence, 255–58, 274–78 “New wars,” 258, 266 Nonstate actors: coercive force and, 135–36; globalization and, 50; labor violence and, 188–200, 209; madrinas (middlemen) and pitazos (lookouts), 175–79; parainstitutional violence, 24–25; rural violence and, 104; state-making and, 32–33, 34–35; state power and, 292n118; violence by, 16. See also Specific individuals and organizations North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 89, 160, 166–67 Nuñez, José Manuel, 78 Obama, Barack, 63–64 Obregón, Álvaro, 76, 186, 189, 197 Ojeda, Nabor, 109 “Old” and “new” violence, 255–58 Olea, Jorge Carrillo, 129 Olivares, Aurelio, 196 Operation Safe Mexico, 151, 153

Opium cultivation, 137, 139, 331n15 Ordorica, Mariano, 202 Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur (OCSS), 233 Organized crime: defined, 320n12; drug-related violence and, 116–17; economically-motivated violence, 17; gangs and, 260; globalization and, 50; internal violence and, 103–4; police corruption and, 174–75; political connections and, 108–9; postrevolutionary government as, 122–25; technological advances and, 301n43; U.S.-Mexican border and, 58–59; violent entrepreneurship and, 99–105. See also Drug cartels; Illicit economy Ortega Hernández, Samuel, 204 Ostula, Mexico, 241–47 Palacios Ortiz, Eusebio, 3 Parainstitutional violence, 24–25 Paramilitary forces. See Private security forces Parapolítica, 258, 356n13 Parastate violence, illiberal democracies and, 267–68 Parra, Manuel, 92, 94–95, 102–3 Parra, Nicolás, 92 Partido Acción Nacional (PAN): 2006 elections and, 230, 231, 352n39; drug-related violence and, 129, 134, 151; election fraud and, 228–29; law enforcement reforms and, 86, 88, 89–90; state corruption and, 327n102 Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD): 1988 elections and, 222; 2006 elections and, 352n39; law enforcement reforms and, 85–86, 88; neoliberal politics and, 224, 225–27, 228; social and political violence, 12; social classes and, 351n35 Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI): clientelism and, 215, 217, 222; drug-related violence and, 128–29; drug-trafficking and, 124–25; election fraud and, 228; labor leaders and, 202–3; law enforcement reforms and, 85–86; Mexican exceptionalism and, 270–71; Mexican political climate, 7, 9; political assassinations and, 273; rural violence and, 94, 109, 110–11;

Index state corruption and, 332n19; street vending and, 160–61 Patrimonialism, 25, 37, 38, 256–57 Patronage. See Clientelism Patronage system, drug-related violence and, 130 Paxtián, Juan, 92 Performative violence, 276, 314n49, 339n69 Personalism, 38 Peru, 265, 266 Pimentel, Omar, 151 Piracy and bootlegging: anti-piracy efforts, 159–63, 169–71; copyright legislation and, 166–68; economic benefits of, 343n21; legality of law enforcement efforts and, 171–73; madrinas (middlemen) and pitazos (lookouts), 173–79; neoliberal politics and, 163–66; police corruption and, 177; state power and, 180–81 Pistoleros, 91–92, 99, 109–10, 120, 123 Pitazo (warning), 178–79 Plan del Sureste, 205–6 Plan Puebla-Panama, 229 Police actions: anti-piracy efforts and, 167, 169–71, 180; copyright legislation and, 166–68; legality of anti-piracy efforts and, 171–73; news media and, 343n32; state violence and repression, 287–88n73; against students, 308n37 Police corruption: anti-corruption efforts, 80–81; Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and, 296n162, 307n31, 334n35; drug-related violence and, 35; drug-trafficking and, 306n26, 310n52; Latin America, 262, 263; law enforcement reforms and, 13, 85, 146–47, 309n39; madrinas (middlemen) and pitazos (lookouts), 344n45; Mexican exceptionalism and, 273–74; mid-twentieth century and, 76–78; militarization of public safety functions and, 79, 80, 336n50; military forces and, 89, 102, 305– 6n20; piracy and bootlegging, 168, 173–79, 177; police chiefs and, 306n28; political-institutional violence and, 16; postrevolutionary period, 73, 75–76, 305n19; Special Office for Organized Crime (SIEDO), 335n38; state repression and, 69; U.S.

373

forces and, 302n51; violence against state agents and, 151–52. See also State corruption Police forces: Federal Preventative Police, 13; fragmentation of, 80–81, 307–8n32; indigenous populations and, 244, 245; Latin America and, 257, 262–63, 268; local governments and, 304n13; Mérida Initiative and, 63; motivations for joining police and, 174; popular opinion of, 133; retaliation for reform efforts and, 85; rural areas and, 72–73, 106; statemaking and, 32, 33–34; U.S.-Mexican border and, 57; violence against, 3–4; zone of coercion and, 28. See also Military forces Policia Auxiliar (Auxiliary Police), 77 Policia Federal Preventiva (PFP), 169, 309n47 Policia Nacional Civil (PNC) (Guatemala), 262–63 Political change, law enforcement and, 68–70; mid-twentieth century populism and, 76–82; national security and, 89–90; neoliberal politics and, 82–89; postrevolutionary period and, 70–76 Political connections, organized crime and. See State corruption; State-crime relations Political influence: Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), 194, 196, 198; labor unions and, 186 Political-institutional context: development of Mexican drug economy and, 136–42; drug-related violence and, 128–30 Political-institutional violence, 15–17, 20, 24, 120; 2006 elections and, 228–32; clientelism and symbolic violence, 214–22; historical patterns of, 117–18; labor violence and, 189–92, 200–208, 210–11; midtwentieth century and, 98; neoliberal politics and, 222–28; “regulation,” of illicit markets and, 144–45; types of, 212–14 Political opposition: clientelism and political practice, 213, 214; elections and, 224–28, 280n14; labor violence and, 187; Latin America and, 256; law enforcement reforms and, 74, 75;

374

Index

Political opposition (continued) mid-twentieth century populism and, 81–82; militarization of public safety functions and, 80–81, 307n29; neoliberal politics and, 225–27; political change and, 68–69; politicalinstitutional violence and, 16; state violence and repression, 229–30, 257 “Political policing,” 69, 76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 271 Political practice: 2006 elections and, 228–32; clientelism and symbolic violence, 214–22; neoliberal politics and, 222–28; types of violence and, 212–14 Political protection. See State-crime relations Political society, hegemony and, 26–27 “Political suspects,” 234 Polk, James, 53 Popular agency, 29–30, 121–22 Populism, 130–33; law enforcement and, 70, 76–82; law enforcement reforms and, 307n30; political change and, 68; state violence and repression and, 257 Porrisimo, 34–35 Posadas Ocampo, Juan Jesus, 141 Postrevolutionary period: clientelism and, 216–17; Crispín Aguilar and, 91–92; drug-related violence and, 121–25; indigenous populations and, 242; labor violence and, 185–211; law enforcement and, 70–76, 304–5n15; law enforcement reforms, 305n16, 305n17, 305n18; measuring violence and, 93–99; mestizaje identity and, 237–38; Mexican exceptionalism and, 270–71; police corruption, 305–6n20, 305n19; regional history and, 294n147; rural violence and, 91–111; state-making and, 292n119 Potlatch system, 329n117 Power, violence and, 15, 17–18 Powerlessness, of government authorities, 147–48 Power relationships, 26–27, 29 Preventative police, 74–75, 304–5n15, 305n16 PRI. See Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), 261–62

Private security forces: drug-related violence and, 325n85; guardias municipales (civilian militias), 71–72; Latin America and, 263–65, 266; law enforcement reforms and, 146–47; mid-twentieth century populism and, 77; neoliberal period, 154–55; political-institutional violence and, 16; rural violence and, 99 Procuraduría General de la República (PGR), 168, 279n9 Productivity, forms of violence and, 213 Professionalization, police forces and, 106, 174 Propaganda campaigns, 201, 207, 208, 230–31 Prosecutions, successful, 106–7 Protection, payments for, 123, 177, 177–78, 264 “Protection rackets,” states as, 22 Psychopathology, 117, 321n23 Public opinion: 2006 elections and, 230–32; anti-piracy efforts and, 171–73; Demetrio Vallejo and, 206–7; drug-related violence and, 275–76; of drug-trafficking, 130–33; intellectual property rights and, 165–66; militarization of public safety functions and, 157; police forces and, 304n13; private security forces and, 264; railroad unions and, 201–2 Public protests: 2006 elections and, 231; student protests and, 79–80, 81, 295n157, 308n35, 308n37; violence and, 4 Public safety, 13–14, 83. See also Drug-related violence; Police forces “Public violence,” 24 Puebla politics, 188–92 Quevedos, drug-trafficking and, 123–24 Quintana, Valente, 306n22, 306n23 Racial essentialism, 238 Racism, 227–28, 231–32, 243 Railroad unions: labor violence and, 200–208; Luis N. Morones and, 193; news media and, 349n91; Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana (STFRM), 199–200; strikes and, 193

Index Ramírez, Luis Cueto, 80, 307n29; militarization of public safety functions and, 80 Ramírez Ladewig, Carlos, 34–35 Ramírez Mandujano, Noé, 335n38, 335n39 Real Magallanes, Javier del, 285n57 Reconversión (conversion) policy, 176 Red Cross, 270, 360n66 Regime transitions, 298n13. See also Political change, law enforcement and Regional history, postrevolutionary period and, 294n147 Regionalism, 22–23 Regional security agreements, 62–65, 66–67, 297n10 “Regulation,” of illicit markets, 143–45 Religious identity, 239, 250, 251 Rent-seeking, 122, 144 Repression. See State violence and repression Retaliation, fear of, 95–96 Revolution-to-Evolution paradigm, 29 Rhon, Carlos Hank, 129 Richardson, Bill, 62 Riots, anti-piracy efforts and, 169–71 Rodríguez, Lorenzo, 197 Rojas, Octaviano, 191 Rojas, Rafael, 189 Rosales, Pillo, 108, 109 Ruiz, Ulises, 229–30 Ruíz Cortines, Adolfo, 104, 202, 205–6 Ruiz Massieu, Francisco, 141 Rural violence: Colombia and, 110, 312n22; crime statistics and, 93–99; Crispín Aguilar and, 99–105; historical records and, 94–95; homicide rates and, 283n36; law enforcement reforms and, 105–9; postrevolutionary period and, 91–93, 109–11 Saldaña, Eduardo, 175–78 Salinas de Gortari, Carlos: clientelism and, 221–22; counter-narcotic operations and, 149; drug-related violence and, 128; election violence and, 12; neoliberal politics and, 166 Sánchez, José María, 190, 192, 194 Sánchez Pontón, Luis, 189–90 San Juan de Dios market, 161–62, 168, 169–71, 175–78, 273–74 Santiago, Don Fortino, 16

375

Santos, Amador de los, 190 Santos, Gonzalo N., 106 Secret police, 307n31 Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), 14, 62, 167–68 Seizures, of pirated goods, 171–73 Sexuality, indigenous populations and, 250–51 Shining Path guerrillas, 266 Sindicalistas. See Labor unions Sindicato de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana (STFRM), 199–200 Sinaloa cartel, 59, 60, 128, 151, 245, 302n46 Siurob, José, 331n13 Sixth Lacandón Declaration, 246 “Smart Border” agreements, 62 Smuggling networks, 162. See also Drug-trafficking Social and interpersonal violence, 15, 17–18, 21; drug-related violence and, 130–33; indigenous populations and, 235–36; Latin America and, 257–58; mid-twentieth century and, 98. See also Labor violence Social and political violence: historical examples of, 9; homicide rates and, 11; mid-twentieth century and, 98; military forces and, 4, 5 Social banditry: drug-related violence and, 130–33, 275, 329n118; drugtrafficking and, 327n106, 328n110, 328n112; piracy and bootlegging, 173 Social classes: 2006 elections and, 229, 231–32; civil rights and, 221–22; clientelism and, 215; guardias municipales (civilian militias), 72; indigenous populations and, 237; neoliberal politics and, 226–28; Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) and, 351n35; police forces and, 77–78 Social cleansing, 258, 263 Social groups: hegemony and, 27; social elites, 19, 22, 24; state-making and, 24; state power and, 19; zone of hegemony and, 27 Social identity, 260. See also Cultural identity; Religious identity Social inequality, clientelism and, 214–18

376

Index

Social movements, 9, 233–34, 272–73, 277. See also Political opposition Social order: neoliberal politics and, 225–27; postrevolutionary period and, 70; state power and, 22, 44; U.S.-Mexican border and, 54 Social power relations, 17–18, 218–22, 247–49 Social welfare, 217–18, 222–23 South Africa, violence and, 286n67 Sovereignty, 44, 137 Special Office for Organized Crime (SIEDO), 146, 335n38 State agents, violence against: antipiracy efforts and, 169–71; drugrelated violence and, 150–51, 337–38n59, 338n60; Guatemala and, 268; homicide rates, 339n66; neoliberal period and, 151–52, 153–54 State corruption: clientelism and, 218–22; cocaine markets and, 140, 145–46; development of Mexican drug economy and, 137–38, 331n13; drug-related violence and, 120–21; drug-trafficking and, 59, 123–25, 276; elections and, 224–28; federal regulation and, 137–39; labor unions and, 217, 218, 219; military forces and, 105, 149; organized crime and, 108–9; Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and, 327n102; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and, 332n19; political practice and, 213, 214; postrevolutionary period and, 122–25; Puebla politics and, 189–92; purchasing power of bribes and, 141; “regulation,” of illicit markets and, 144–45. See also Police corruption State-crime relations, 135–36; drugrelated violence and, 142–48, 323n45; illicit economy and, 136–42; neoliberal period, 126–30, 149–58; Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and, 327n102; Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and, 332n19; postrevolutionary period, 121–25; street vending and, 161 State governors, 129, 326–27n99 State institutions, violence against, 16–17, 57 State labor codes, 192–93

State-making: drug-related violence and, 121–25; postrevolutionary period and, 292n119; violence and coercion, 6–10, 19, 22–25, 32–39; zones of hegemony and coercion, 28 State performance, anti-piracy efforts and, 179, 180–81 State police forces, 99, 106 State power: anti-piracy efforts and, 171; border regions and, 65–66; citizenship and, 18; federal regulation and, 137–39; guerrilla movements and, 266–67; labor unions and, 186–87, 208–11; neoliberal politics and, 166; nonstate actors and, 292n118; piracy and bootlegging and, 180–81; railroad unions and, 201, 207–8; “regulation,” of illicit markets and, 144–45; state discretionality and, 323n52; state-making and, 297n5. See also Coercive force; State violence and repression State-society relations, 19, 22–25, 26–32 State violence and repression, 15–16; 2006 elections and, 229–30; illiberal democracies, 267–68; indigenous populations and, 233–36, 241–47; Latin America and, 256–57; Mexican exceptionalism and, 271; midtwentieth century populism and, 76, 79–80; news media and, 93; police forces and, 69–70; postrevolutionary period, 74; rural violence and, 100–102, 110–11; social movements and, 9; state-making and, 34–35; symbolic violence and, 212–13; U.S.-Mexican border and, 56. See also Coercive force State workers, police forces and, 77–78, 306n24 Strategic coercion, 334n36 Street crime, 116–17 Street vending: anti-piracy efforts and, 169–71; government regulation and, 36, 306n27; piracy and bootlegging, 159–60; San Juan de Dios market, 161–63 Strikes and work stoppages: 2006 elections and, 230; labor unions and, 193, 195–96; by police, 85; railroad unions and, 205, 206, 207; textile industry and, 194–95; work slowdowns and, 203–4

Index Structural violence. See Politicalinstitutional violence Student protests, 295n157, 308n35, 308n37 Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada (SIEDO), 310n49 Sugar industry, 214, 217–18, 223, 224, 228, 351n27 Symbolic violence, 212–13, 214–22, 235, 237–38, 247 Tabares, Fidel, 201 Taboada, Sánchez, 108 Talavera, Eduardo, 116 Taxation, 237 Taylor, Zachary, 53 Technological advances, 49–50, 127, 298n17, 301n43 Tepoztlan, Mexico, 238 Territorial disputes: drug cartels and, 277; indigenous populations and, 242–43, 245–46 Terrorism, 50, 261, 269 Texas, 53–54, 300n28 Textile industry, 188–200, 209 Theft, of intellectual property. See Piracy and bootlegging Tijuana cartel/Arellano Felix Organization (AFO), 59, 60, 128, 141, 151, 337n55 Tijuana-Mexicali police feud, 120 Tirado, Claudio N., 190 Tlatelolco killings, 79, 81 Todos Unidos Contra Madrazo (TUCOM), 326–27n99 Torre Cantú, Rodolfo, 280n16 Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), 164, 165, 180 Traditional beliefs, indigenous populations and, 249–50 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 53 Trust, drug-related violence and, 147 Truth and reconciliation process, Peru, 266 Turner, John K., 54 “Twenty-First-Century Border,” 65 UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, 138 Underreporting, of crimes, 13, 95–96, 148, 283n35

377

Unión de Comuneros “Emiliano Zapata” (UCEZ), 238 Unión de Obreros Libres de Atlixco, 193–98 Urban crime and violence, 12, 17, 259–60, 268–70, 273–74 Uribe, Álvaro, 266, 267 Uruchurtu, Ernesto, 306n27 U.S.-Mexican border, 297n4; alienated border relationships and, 53–54; border violence and, 43–44; coexistent border relationships and, 54–56; drug-related violence and, 126–27, 274, 338–39n65; drug-trafficking and, 119–20, 337n56; integrated border relationships and, 56–65, 66–67; nascent border relationships and, 52–53; state-making and, 33; typology of border relationships, 45–46, 297n8; violations of sovereignty and, 297n4 U.S.-Mexican relations: anti-piracy efforts and, 159, 167; cocaine markets and, 140; development of Mexican drug economy and, 136–38; drugrelated violence and, 62–65, 133, 148, 276, 286n62; free market ideology and, 163–64; militarization of public safety functions and, 142; regional security agreements and, 62–65 U.S.-Mexican War, 53–54, 300n29 U.S. officials, corruption and, 146 Vallejo, Demetrio, 204, 205–7, 208 Vargas Bravo, David, 202, 203 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 233 Velázquez, Fidel, 186, 187, 199, 202, 208 Velázquez Mora, Mames Eusebio, 244–45 Velázquez Vázquez, Ricardo, 203, 204 Veracruz, 91–92, 102–5, 106, 109 Verdía, Trinidad, 247 Victimization, 18 Vigilantes, 263–65, 327n105 Villanueva, Mario, 129 Villar, Samuel del, 84 Villareal Martha, Armando, 4 Villasana, Vicente, 93, 109 Violence: defined, 14–15; examples of, 97–98; types of, 296–97n3 Violence and coercion: anti-piracy efforts and, 160; examples of, 3–6,

378

Index

Violence and coercion (continued) 143; hegemony and, 26–32; insecurity and, 14–19; political practice and, 212–14; state-making and, 6–10, 19, 22–25, 32–39; statistics on, 10–14. See also Drug-related violence; state violence and repression Violent entrepreneurship, 99–105 Von Hippel-Landau disease, 321n21 Vote-buying, 224–25, 352n43 Wages, 204, 205–6, 260 Weapons, 127, 315n64, 325n81 Weber, Max, 23, 44, 135–36, 296n1 Women, violence against, 5, 12, 17–18, 56, 248, 280n12 Working conditions, labor unions and, 209, 210–11 Work slowdowns, railroad unions and, 203–4

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), 164 World Trade Organization (WTO), 164 World War II, 55 Yaqui rebellion, 54 Zapatista movement, 265, 272 Zedillo, Ernesto, 13, 149 Zero tolerance policies, 18, 262, 269 Zetas: counterinsurgency violence and, 337n58; drug-related violence and, 339n72; indigenous populations and, 245, 246; military forces and, 152, 154–55 Zone of coercion, 10, 27–28, 28, 30–32, 31, 258 Zone of hegemony, 10, 27, 28, 30–32, 31, 258 Zorrilla Pérez, Jose Antonio, 332–33n24