tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/mexican-drug-wars-37657/articlesMexican drug wars – The Conversation2023-09-10T19:21:13Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2130142023-09-10T19:21:13Z2023-09-10T19:21:13ZHow disappearance became a global weapon of psychological control, 50 years on from Chile’s US-backed coup<p>For the few remaining <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/11/long-search-remains-pinochet-victims-chile-coup">women of Calama</a> in Chile’s Atacama desert, September 11 holds a terrifying meaning. They understand the pain of watching forensic investigators meticulously scour through particles of dust, seeking to retrieve the tiniest fragments of lives brutally taken from the world. They know what it means to face devastating absence, knowing the bodies of loved ones will never be returned.</p>
<p>But their loss has nothing to do with the attack on New York’s twin towers.</p>
<p>Fifty years ago, in the early morning of September 11 1973, a US-backed coup led by General Augusto Pinochet began with Chile’s military taking control of strategic locations in the capital city Santiago, including the main radio and television networks. At 8.30am, a declaration was broadcast that the military was now in control of the country.</p>
<p>While the elected president, Salvador Allende, refused to concede power in what turned out to be his farewell address, Pinochet’s undemocratic forces surrounded the presidential palace. A few hours later, the centre of Chilean democracy was bombed by a fighter jet and set ablaze. Allende <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Salvador_Allende">died from gunshot wounds</a> the same day.</p>
<p>Chile under Pinochet would become the experimenting ground for an economic project that inspired both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and went by the name of <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/neoliberalism-was-born-in-chile-now-it-will-die-there/">neoliberalism</a>. But it was also an experimenting laboratory for the torture and enforced disappearance of human beings.</p>
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<p>During the 16 years of Pinochet’s reign, 1,100 people were officially registered as “forcibly disappeared”. Only 104 bodies were ever found, although local communities put this figure much higher. Some were abducted due to their political associations and beliefs, others for sexual abuse. And some were just randomly selected to send the message that nobody was immune to the threat of vanishment.</p>
<p>Since 2017, I have co-directed the <a href="https://www.historiesofviolence.com/stateofdisappearance">State of Disappearance project</a>, which researches and promotes better understanding of this form of violence that haunts many societies when they seek a transition to peace. The 50th anniversary of Chile’s day of terror is a key date in the annals of human suffering, in part because Pinochet’s rise to power marked the start of the modern era of disappearance as a political and organised crime technique.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Brad Evans discusses the State of Disappearance project with co-director Chantal Meza.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Techniques honed in the US</h2>
<p>The strategy of disappearance is so shocking and difficult to comprehend because the violence is rationalised, professionalised and calculated. It is never random, even if its targets appear to have been arbitrarily selected. Its currency is emotional fear that infects the population like a virus, creating a climate of suspicion and betrayal.</p>
<p>While the modern era of state-led policies of disappearance developed through the countries of South and Central America, the techniques were honed at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_for_Security_Cooperation">School of the Americas</a> (now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation), a US Defense Department training facility at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.</p>
<p>For 21 years, South American countries were subject to a covert campaign of political repression and state terrorism coordinated by the CIA and characterised by frequent coups and assassinations. During the darker chapters of this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor">Operation Condor</a>, policies of violence against the US’s ideological leftwing enemies spread throughout the continent’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Cone">southern cone</a> like wildfire. Military generals and officers from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and later Brazil all trained at the infamous US facility, learning the most effective strategies to destroy opposition and govern their people by instilling a culture of everyday fear.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://bennorton.com/victims-of-operation-condor-by-country/">estimates</a> put the number of enforced disappearances directly linked to this operation at around 80,000, including a staggering 30,000 bodies <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/program/inside-story-america/2013/3/6/tracing-the-shadows-of-operation-condor">taken from the streets of Argentina</a>. While these included known activists and prominent spokespersons demanding social justice and reform, others who only had a very tentative opposition to the military junta and its neoliberal aspirations were among the victims.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The story of Operation Condor (Al Jazeera English)</span></figcaption>
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<p>Indeed, the terms “disappeared” and “disappearance” first entered the political lexicon during Argentina’s dictatorship of the mid-1970s, when the state – backed by the US in its so-called “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dirty-War">dirty war</a>” – kidnapped and killed those it perceived to be a threat to its operations and ideological foundations, literally disappearing their bodies.</p>
<p>Beyond the official remit of Condor, the same ideologically driven violence extended throughout the Americas, leaving no country untouched. In Colombia, the government’s <a href="https://www.unidadvictimas.gov.co/en/unit/units-review/28230">victims’ unit</a> has registered more than 45,000 victims dating back to the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2665910722000330">1970s</a>, although another <a href="https://www.abcolombia.org.uk/enforced-disappearances-in-colombia-still-an-ongoing-issue/">government database</a> puts the number of missing above 110,000. While, as in Argentina, many victims were disappeared by the Colombian state and associated right-wing paramilitary organisations, this was compounded by use of similar tactics by leftist guerrilla organisations and narcotrafficking cartels.</p>
<p>Operation Condor was thus at the heart of a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/18/us-military-usa">wider security project</a> through which the violence of disappearance became a normalised practice. While not part of the official programme, more Colombian military officials trained at the School of the Americas than any other nation.</p>
<p>In many cases, the disappeared would vanish without any witnesses to their abduction. People were swiftly taken from the streets and thrown into cars – in Argentina, Ford Falcons became a <a href="https://medium.com/history-on-wheels/the-curse-of-the-ford-falcon-36cda9a8f97f#:%7E:text=The%20Ford%20factory%20in%20General,tortured%20there%20by%20the%20military.">symbol of terror</a> – or stolen from their beds in the solitude of the night.</p>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>Often, this would be followed by blanket denials, even that a person had actually disappeared, by those in power. But as events in Colombia and (more recently) Mexico have shown, there is sometimes a need to return a mutilated body to “remind” people of the likely horror. In the infamous case of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/world/americas/Ayotzinapa-mexico-students-anniversary.html">43 student teachers</a> who went missing in the Mexican state of Guerrero in 2017, the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/12/americas/julio-cesar-mondragon-fontes-missing-students-mexico/index.html">brutally tortured body</a> of another student teacher, Julio César Mondragón Fontes, was discovered the next day. The whereabouts of his fellow students are still unknown.</p>
<p>As I have <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/remembering-43/">written elsewhere</a>, what especially marks out this violence is the way the fight for truth and memorialisation for the missing has become a key battleground. Yet even leftist leaders such as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/14/mexico-president-continues-attacks-on-opposition-despite-order">Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador</a>, Mexico’s president since 2018, show limits to what the state is willing to concede, as noted by his recent <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/27/amlo-defends-mexicos-military-after-report-on-missing-students-case">exoneration of the military</a> which, according to the victims’ families, had played an integral role in this forced abduction.</p>
<p>Beyond the spectacle of violence, there is a deeper reason why disappearance is so effective as a political and psychological strategy. Psychologically, it plays into the most primal of human fears: to vanish without a trace. It induces what the academic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/31/obituaries/jean-franco-dead.html">Jean Franco</a> <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/cruel-modernity">called</a> a “triple deprivation – of body, of mourning, of burial”.</p>
<p>In the act of disappearing life, not only is there a denial of justice that requires the reappearance of victims’ bodies for a crime to be proven. There is also a denial of the political process that demands negotiation with past tragedies so the future can be steered in a better direction. </p>
<p>This is what makes disappearance a true crime against humanity: it is a form of violence that makes it hard to restore something of the human condition. Not only does it deny a person the most basic right to belong to the world, it creates an economy of terror that lives on in the minds of relatives and friends – a form of “future violence”.</p>
<h2>Trained in psychological warfare</h2>
<p>Since the early 1990s in zones of conflict and crisis, the lines between state and non-state actors, along with regulated versus illicit economies, have become almost impossible to separate.</p>
<p>Organisations such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-a-reintegration-camp-for-colombias-ex-guerrilla-fighters-words-of-reconciliation-are-our-only-weapons-now-184074">the Farc in Colombia</a> illustrate the difficulties of distinguishing between ideological groups and mere criminal organisations. In Mexico, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/worse-than-any-horror-film-inside-a-los-zetas-cartel-kitchen-1.4225436">Los Zetas</a> – acknowledged to be the most violent of all the world’s drug cartels – reveal an even more fraught, state-sponsored past. This group’s origins can be dated to the early 1990s, when a group of commandos from the <a href="https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuerpo_de_Fuerzas_Especiales_de_M%C3%A9xico">Cuerpo de Fuerzas Especiales</a> (Mexican special forces) broke away from the state and used their knowledge and training to devastating effect.</p>
<p>Originally set up to provide a rapid security response during the 1986 World Cup held in the country, this special forces unit would soon be attacking the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/17/mexico-zapatistas-rebels-24-years-mountain-strongholds">Zapatistas</a>, an Indigenous movement in the southern state of Chiapas that itself became committed to non-violence. Los Zetas’ deployment into the remote jungle regions quickly resulted in a horrifying slaughter of 30 captured Indigenous “rebels”, who were found by the side of a river with their ears and noses cut off.</p>
<p>Later, the same unit – a number of whom were trained in the US School of the Americas – became a key element of Mexico’s <a href="https://www.elmundo.es/america/2013/07/16/mexico/1373982845.html">war on drugs</a>, triggering a notable acceleration in disappearances. What made Los Zetas especially notorious was the brutality and scale of the violence, including attempted mass killings such as the grenade attacks on <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2008/09/27/index.php?section=politica&article=003n1pol">Independence Day in Morena</a> in 2008, which injured more than 100. Another favoured tactic was to hang bodies from bridges and leave beheaded and dismembered bodies in discoverable locations.</p>
<p>That members of Los Zetas, like previous graduates from the School of the Americas, were trained in psychological warfare is not incidental. It is not enough to simply eliminate opposition. Fear works by having persons change their behaviour before they have even considered acting in a particular way. The threat of more violence stops agency and freedom dead in their tracks.</p>
<p>Today, this strategy appears largely immune to political change. While the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/18/silence-us-backed-coup-evo-morales-bolivia-american-states">US-supported ousting</a> of the democratically elected Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2019 showed it was still business as usual in the geopolitical displacement of Latin American populist leaders, in Mexico, despite a much-vaunted <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/democratizing-mexican-politics-1982-2012">process of democratisation</a>, cases of disappearance have increased exponentially.</p>
<p>Since 2006, the number of enforced disappearances in Mexico reported by Human Rights Watch <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/mexico.">exceeds 100,000</a>. Over the same period, more than <a href="https://adondevanlosdesaparecidos.org/2021/10/08/mexico-rebasa-las-4-mil-fosas-clandestinas-40-se-encontraron-en-este-sexenio/#:%7E:text=Compartir%3A,una%20tercera%20parte%20de%20esta">4,000 unmarked graves</a> have been discovered around the country. A significant number of these victims are young women and people from other vulnerable groups including children and migrants. But the disappearance of nearly 150 journalists highlights the policy of silencing that goes with it. Today, Mexico is <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/mexico#:%7E:text=Mexico%20is%20one%20of%20the%20most%20dangerous%20countries%20in%20the,Many%20journalists%20self%2Dcensor.">one of the most dangerous places in the world</a> to try to report the truth.</p>
<p>Journalists such as <a href="https://courier.unesco.org/en/articles/lydia-cacho-ribeiro-international-visibility-shield-threatened-journalists">Lydia Cacho</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/anabel-h%C3%A9rnandez-condemns-murder-of-journalist-mar%C3%ADa-elena-ferral-in-veracruz/a-52972126">Anabel Hernandez</a> continue to risk their lives to expose the role that corruption plays in the organisation of disappearances. In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/nyregion/garcia-luna-trial-mexico-court.html">February 2023</a>, Mexico’s secretary of public security, Genaro García Luna – once the highest-ranking law officer in the fight against the country’s drug gangs – was convicted for being on the payroll of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaloa_Cartel">Sinaloa cartel</a>. More recently, this cartel has brought its violence to the state of Zacatecas, making it the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/13/mexico-city-fresnillo-cartel-kidnappings-violence">global epicentre for disappearance</a>, with one person vanishing every day there in 2023.</p>
<h2>The impact of disappearance on loved ones</h2>
<p>Throughout history, state-sponsored disappearance has proved extremely effective in quietening resistance and governing through fear. But the organisation of disappearance takes a great deal of political and financial investment – requiring considerable organisation, planning and the provision of alibis. It also takes significant effort to prevent bodies from being found, especially in a digital age when details of such crimes can be more easily shared.</p>
<p>However, digital technology also presents a significant challenge for the families searching for their loved ones, and those trying to deal with the legacies of disappearance.</p>
<p>While groups working on behalf of the disappeared use the internet and social media to disseminate information and maintain visibility, our interviews reveal strong suspicion of communication devices and the growing “surveillance state”. The digital revolution has given more power to those who master the technology. Disappearance has taken new forms, enabled by <a href="https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-02-01/drones-the-latest-weapon-of-mexicos-cartels.html">tracking systems</a> such as drones that can be subsequently erased. </p>
<p>Despite these dangers, we monitor many courageous attempts by communities who continue to demand answers to what happened to their disappeared. In Mexico alone, there are some 130 “<a href="https://www.reforma.com/fallan-busquedas-arman-colectivos/ar2084682">search collectives</a>” tasked with trying to recover the remains of the missing. As one family member told us: “The whole country is a clandestine grave.”</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-04/the-seeking-mothers-of-latin-america-without-fear-and-with-memory.html">Ceci Flores</a>, leader of the <a href="https://www.laprensalatina.com/human-remains-found-by-searching-mother-in-mexico-do-not-belong-to-missing-son/#:%7E:text=Currently%2C%20the%20searching%20mothers%20of,found%20dead%20in%20clandestine%20graves.">searching mothers of Sonora</a> in northern Mexico:</p>
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<p>We have the idea that we know where they pick up [kidnap] our children, but we do not know where they are going to leave them. So, if we have to tour the entire Mexican republic, we are going to do it. And if I don’t find my son, maybe I will find another mother’s son.</p>
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<p>Theirs is a labour of care which, in the act of searching, refuses to accept the absence. But this work is laborious and financially burdening, not to mention emotionally exhausting. The collectives depend on tip-offs, though often they simply search abandoned places, disused wells, jungled forests and open fields.</p>
<p>There are certain clues they look for, including traces of the lime that is frequently used to cover bodies and accelerate their decomposition. Their tools are rudimentary – they often rely on the harrowing insertion of a thin metal pole, a <em>varilla</em>, into the ground to release the potential stench of death. Many testimonies from these searching collectives speak of how the decomposing remains of a person gives off its own unique odour.</p>
<p>Aside from the fact that those searching for the disappeared often end up being violently threatened and even disappearing themselves, the psychological impact demands a more expansive appreciation of the suffering they endure. <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/state-of-disappearance-products-9780228018964.php?page_id=46&*">Our research</a> has repeatedly found that living with disappearance can be truly unbearable, for the violence it passes on to others offers no kind of resolution and no prospect of recovery. The memory of loss places a perverse kind of guilt on the shoulders of family members.</p>
<p>Psychological studies of <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7408511/">families dealing with missing persons</a> have spoken of a “vortex of grief”. Dealing with what the International Red Cross identifies as “<a href="https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/irrc_99_905_4.pdf">ambiguous loss</a>” demands new therapeutic responses that appreciate the lasting effects of this absence. Close relatives are often deeply traumatised and <a href="https://www.interventionjournal.org/article.asp?issn=1571-8883;year=2020;volume=18;issue=2;spage=139;epage=149;aulast=Smid">haunted by “intrusive memories”</a>. Studies of those living in the aftermath of the Holocaust have shown how trauma can also be <a href="https://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(15)00652-6/fulltext">transmitted across generations</a>.</p>
<p>Yet despite all this evidence, not enough attention is paid to the lasting psychological and social impacts on communities living with disappearance. Part of the problem is that many of these communities are desperately poor and already disenfranchised. In life they are often forgotten, so is it any wonder that in death they are denied?</p>
<h2>The struggle for justice</h2>
<p>Arguably, the most challenging obstacle to overcome when dealing with the crime of disappearance is the pervading culture of impunity that exists in many countries. As the <a href="https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/SessionDetails1.aspx?SessionID=2531&Lang=en">UN Committee on Enforced Disappearance noted</a> in Mexico in 2022, where as few as 2% of all criminal cases result in a prosecution:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Impunity in Mexico is a structural feature that favours the reproduction and cover-up of enforced disappearances. It creates threats and anxiety to the victims, those defending and promoting their rights, public servants searching for the disappeared and investigating their cases, and society as a whole.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are, however, notable exceptions. In Argentina, as a result of a campaign by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_of_the_Plaza_de_Mayo">Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo</a> (the first major group to organise against the 1970s military regime’s human rights violations), the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-convention-protection-all-persons-enforced">International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance</a> was established in 2010. Since then, some of those involved in the organisation and enactment of the country’s notorious “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/argentina-death-flight-plane-dictatorship-returned-home-florida/#:%7E:text=Human%20rights%20groups%20estimate%2030%2C000,took%20place%20at%20least%20weekly.">death flights</a>” have been brought to justice. So has <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-oct-10-fg-priest10-story.html">Christian von Wernich</a>, a former chaplain in Buenos Aires who supplied details of the confessions he took to the authorities, who then used the information to target new victims.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most high-profile example of justice achieved was the (initial) conviction of Guatemala’s former dictator, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/02/gen-efrain-rios-montt-obituary">Efraín Ríos Montt</a>, for genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013. Montt was yet another graduate of the School of the Americas, alongside the likes of Salvadorian death squad leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D%27Aubuisson">Roberto D’Aubuisson</a> and Argentine junta leader <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldo_Galtieri">Leopoldo Galtieri</a>.</p>
<p>Montt came to power following another US-backed coup in 1982, and would oversee the disappearance of an estimated 40,000 Guatemalans, largely from the nation’s Indigenous Maya population. Roddy Brett from the University of Bristol was a director of the team that prepared the legal investigation against Guatemala’s former dictator. Commenting on his conviction, Brett explains:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Montt’s imprisonment in 2013 was the first time a domestic court of law in Latin America had convicted a former head of state for genocide. Through their successful search for justice, Indigenous survivors of Guatemala’s genocide obliterated the military’s wall of denial and wrote themselves into history. However, opposition to the verdict and its subsequent reversal ten days later was a major, if not unexpected, set-back for those seeking legal recourse for the disappeared.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The power of art to represent loss</h2>
<p>In June 2023, Argentina <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/5/the-proof-we-were-missing-death-flight-returns-toargentina">repatriated a plane from the US</a> that had been used in the campaign of death flights, in which victims were thrown from the air while still conscious. The extent of this strategy was only properly understood when <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2023/06/05/argentinian-death-flight-plane-to-be-displayed-at-buenos-aires-museum_6029141_4.html#:%7E:text=On%20December%2014%2C%201977%2C%20at,bodies%20of%2012%20political%20opponents.">bodies started washing up</a> on the shores of the Rio de la Plata in December 1977 as a result of a freak weather pattern. </p>
<p>The repatriated plane will soon go on display at the former navy and mechanics school in Buenos Aires (now the <a href="https://www.argentina.gob.ar/derechoshumanos/museo-sitio-de-memoria-esma/en">ESMA Museum and Site of Memory</a>), a clandestine detention facility in which many of the disappeared were held before their disposal.</p>
<p>The re-emergence of such items, which also includes a fleet of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/argentina-dictatorship-falcon-idUSL2E8QR0OQ20120327">Ford Falcons</a> used by the death squads, highlights the importance of material objects that give at least some visible form to the violence of absence. In the same way, it is understandable why we see so many families and campaigners harnessing the power of art to represent their loss.</p>
<p>There can be no peace at a macro level if individuals and communities remain traumatised by wounds that cannot heal because of a gaping absence. Josefina Echavarria Alvarez, director of the <a href="https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/">Peace Accords Matrix</a> at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, offered this perspective in relation to the work of the <a href="https://www.abcolombia.org.uk/truth-commission-of-colombia-executive-summary/">Colombia Truth Commission</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What I have seen in my work as peace educator over decades in various post-war contexts has been the importance of art-based responses … Arts-based practices are central – not peripheral – to peace building, to rebuilding relationships after war and changing the dynamics of human interaction, especially with those who have been historically separated from us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Art reveals better than anything the spirit of freedom. It is no coincidence that the Nazis put the so-called “<a href="https://heni.com/talks/degenerate-art">degenerate artists</a>” on trial, nor that the Pinochet regime disappeared the musician <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200812-vctor-jara-the-folk-singer-murdered-for-his-music">Víctor Jara</a>, whose tortured and bullet-ridden body was <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/ABC_Univision/murdered-chilean-singers-family-seeks-justice-us/story?id=20202252">discovered</a> days after his abduction.</p>
<p>Jara’s creative sensibility marked him as a prime enemy of the Chilean state. There is nothing an authoritarian personality despises more than free expression and creation, for it is the essence of resistance. Moreover, through art, difficult conversations become possible. A door is opened that may allow something of the human to be recovered.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0VEIeAa6DiM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Patricio Guzmán’s Nostalgia for the Light.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notable here is Chilean film director Patricio Guzmán’s documentary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jul/12/nostalgia-for-the-light-review">Nostalgia for the Light</a> (2010), which brings us back to the barren emptiness of the Atacama plains and the <a href="https://returnatacama.hemi.press/chapter/labours-made-visible-the-women-of-calama-and-everyone-has-fallen-except-us-fallen/">women of Calama</a>. What begins as an astronomical mediation on the telescoping search of distant galaxies and stars, slowly turns the lens on to the uninhabitable desert and the appearance of distant figures: the women still searching amongst the dust for the remains for their husbands.</p>
<p>Decades of searching mean they can easily tell the difference between white stones and human fragments. Theirs is a story of defiance in a place where rains have refused to fall for more than a millennia. But it is also a story revealing the chasm of power that reaches across time. “I wish telescopes didn’t just look at the sky, but could go through the earth to be able to locate [the bodies],” one of the women laments as she goes through the impossible motions of another day.</p>
<p>The first stage of our <a href="https://www.historiesofviolence.com/artistaswitness">State of Disappearance project</a> culminates with an exhibition by the Mexican abstract artist <a href="https://www.chantal-meza.com/biography">Chantal Meza</a>. Our project, which she co-directs, began as a result of the artistic demand to respond to the horrors of enforced disappearance in Meza’s country, and has since instigated a series of international collaborations.</p>
<p>Bringing together many respected academics, dancers, musicians and advocacy groups, the challenge we all confronted was largely the same: what can art, politics and society do when the body of the human is denied? The project doesn’t claim to resolve this, nor has it sought to impose any political doctrine, but tries to open up new conversations on what disappearance means, the forms it takes, and how to better imagine our response.</p>
<p>Meza confronts these questions in 75 works that explore themes of obscurity, mental anguish, ghosting, the fragmentation of life, and the voiding of existence. The heart of this work, she explains, is making visible what has been forgotten so that we might rethink what humanity means:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Disappearance constitutes a form of violence that rips open a wound in time. It weaponises the visual, as the terror it induces becomes prey to what is no longer seen. Part of the demand for justice, then, has to concern memory. This means to humbly consider the role of visual testimony, which the arts can help with.</p>
<p>As artists, we can only venture to wonder the meaning of disappearance – whether in brushstrokes, dancing movements, musical compositions or the written word. But our lost worlds and the limits of our straight answers can be fiercely poured into those creations. Maybe through our encounters with artists and other collaborations, we find it easier to appear and disappear – to be never found, but just to leave a trace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><a href="https://www.historiesofviolence.com/stateofdisappearance">The State of Disappearance exhibition</a>, featuring the works of Chantal Meza, is at Bristol’s Centrespace art gallery from October 28 to November 8 2023</em></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brad Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>State-sponsored disappearance plays into the most primal of human fears – to vanish without a trace. The modern era started with Chile’s US-backed coup on September 11 1973Brad Evans, Professor in Political Violence, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487602020-10-28T19:50:41Z2020-10-28T19:50:41ZTrump and Biden ignore how the war on drugs fuels violence in Latin America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365847/original/file-20201027-24-7k5mqg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C443%2C4000%2C2215&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this July 2020 photo, a woman is comforted in her home during a wake for her son who was killed along with at least 26 others in an attack by drug cartels on a drug rehabilitation centre where he was being treated in Irapuato, Mexico. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the final presidential debate before the United States election, Democrat Joe Biden acknowledged the harmful effects of the war on drugs on racial minorities in the U.S. due to incarceration and police violence, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/talk2020/candidates/joe-biden/quotes/FXLV000020201023egam00001_Q419_SP91719_EP92571">and even suggested decriminalizing cocaine consumption</a>. </p>
<p>But the immigration debate centred on familiar issues. Biden focused on the innocent children who got separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump focused on the “coyotes” — <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/immigration/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-coyote-smuggling-migrants-from-mexico-to-the-united-states">someone paid by migrants to illegally guide or assist them across the border</a> — and drug cartels.</p>
<p>But neither made the link between immigration and the drug war, despite the substantial impact the U.S.-led war on drugs has had on the lives of people in Latin America.</p>
<p>Increasingly, people are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to escape a cycle of violence to which the United States continues to contribute. Immigration is just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Murder rates in Latin America have <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet2.pdf">skyrocketed since the 1980s</a> and are <a href="https://www.latinamerica.undp.org/content/rblac/en/home/presscenter/director-s-graph-for-thought/killing-development---the-devastating-epidemic-of-crime-and-inse.html">still among the highest in the world</a>. This is because Latin America became the battleground for the war on drugs. </p>
<h2>American crackdown</h2>
<p>Over the last 50 years, the U.S. government has pushed for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-2456.2012.00146.x">increasingly restrictive international treaties on drugs, which paradoxically increased the profitability of cocaine</a>. </p>
<p>In the 1980s, while Americans were locking up their fellow citizens for drug offences, the U.S. government decided to eradicate the production of coca plants and the sale of cocaine abroad. The U.S. provided political, military and financial support for Latin American governments to eradicate coca production, spraying the lands of peasant coca farmers, supporting police and militia violence against guerrilla movements and cracking down on drug businesses in urban centres. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Soldiers uproot green coca shrubs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365853/original/file-20201027-21-a7nlus.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soldiers uproot coca shrubs as part of a manual eradication operation in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia, in March 2019. The amount of Colombian land where peasants and drug traffickers harvest the plant used to make cocaine has been steadily rising since 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The U.S. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1606635021000021377">made foreign loans to Latin American countries conditional</a> upon enforcing tough anti-drug policies. These tough-on-crime measures disproportionately affected marginalized populations: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2012.01.007">Peruvian peasant farmers</a>, <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-anti-black-city">Black Brazilian favela dwellers</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09614520701628121">Salvadorean youth sporting tattoos</a>. </p>
<p>American support for violence in Latin America is not new. During the Cold War, the U.S. supported military coups and civil wars in the region. But with the end of the Cold War and the democratization of Latin American countries, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">war on drugs became a legitimate excuse for continued state violence</a> as the illicit drug economy fuelled criminality.</p>
<h2>Unsuccessful policies</h2>
<p>These policies did not work. Drug prohibition, combined with continued consumption, has <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/spp/1010">shifted but not dismantled</a> the drug business. The largest consumer market is still the United States.</p>
<p>When Peruvian coca production was reduced, production shifted to Colombia. When Colombian drug cartels were dismantled, Mexican cartels became stronger. Weakened large cartels allowed smaller organizations to fill the void. Brazil’s overcrowded, underfunded, violent and corrupt <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055418000928">prisons became headquarters and training grounds for drug traffickers</a>. </p>
<p>The war on drugs generates criminal and police violence in Latin America, and blurs the boundary between the two. Drug businesses <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520285712/the-killing-consensus">create their own justice systems</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The hands of prisoners are seen grasping the bars of a jail cell." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365852/original/file-20201027-13-1k9oytc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Imprisoned gang members stand behind bars during a media tour of the prison in Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, in September 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There’s no point calling the police to help you resolve an illegal business transaction. Drug dealers would rather act as the police than have someone else call the police into their neighbourhoods.</p>
<p>Drug profits create <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002715587100">opportunities for corruption</a>, involving police officers, government bureaucrats and high-level politicians, and all sides create violence when these private-public partnerships go wrong. </p>
<p>Politicians often enlist drug dealers, militia and police officers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-016-9631-9">to eliminate their opponents or to generate societal drama for political gain</a>. </p>
<h2>A vicious cycle</h2>
<p>Combined with the war on drugs, domestic tough-on-crime and restrictive immigration policies in the U.S. generate a vicious cycle of displacement and violence on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers repair the facade of a government building riddled with bullet holes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/365849/original/file-20201027-14-nd1e05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Workers repair the facade of City Hall riddled with bullet holes in Villa Union, Mexico, in December 2019. The small town was the site of violence after 22 people were killed in a weekend gun battle between a heavily armed drug cartel assault group and security forces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Greater border enforcement means that more immigrants have to depend on <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1076720">human smuggling organizations</a>, and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2804692">pass through territories controlled by drug traffickers</a>, to make the crossing. But these relationships go deeper. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/space-of-detention">As the book <em>Space of Detention</em></a> by American cultural anthropologist Elana Zilberg explains, the first wave of Salvadorean refugees to the U.S. were escaping the American-backed civil war and political repression of the 1980s. </p>
<p>Some of these refugees’ adult children joined youth gangs, and were imprisoned and deported from the U.S. due to toughening anti-drug and immigration policies. As they arrived in their parents’ country, one they barely knew, they influenced local youth culture, symbols and gang affiliations, creating transnational youth gangs known as <em>maras</em>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/central-american-gangs-like-ms-13-were-born-out-of-failed-anti-crime-policies-76554">Central American gangs like MS-13 were born out of failed anti-crime policies</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Maras were then violently repressed by Salvadorean policies that were modelled on U.S. drug/gang measures, including persecuting young adults if they had tattoos.</p>
<p>Police and criminal violence has generated more insecurity, leading some Salvadorean youth to seek refuge in Mexico and the United States. </p>
<p>U.S. conservatives cite criminal violence in Latin America to deny migrants fleeing that violence the right to asylum, and as an excuse to enforce draconian immigration, policing and deportation policies, which in turn exacerbate the same problems that they’re ostensibly aimed at solving.</p>
<p>Whether these immigrants are members of gangs, are carrying drugs, have learned how to be violent or are innocent victims is beside the point. The point is that the American public should no longer pretend that the United States hasn’t played a critical role in creating and fuelling this violence. The violence doesn’t only go in a south-north direction.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luisa Farah Schwartzman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.Luisa Farah Schwartzman, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1298652020-02-03T13:52:41Z2020-02-03T13:52:41ZInside Mexico’s war on drugs: Conversations with ‘el narco’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310622/original/file-20200117-118315-z81n0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5997%2C4007&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 35,000 people were killed in Mexico in 2019, the deadliest year on record. Violence has spiked as a result of the government's ongoing assault on drug cartels.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/es/image-photo/mexico-city07-october-2019-various-weapons-1525889897">Leonardo Emiliozzi Ph / Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I am from northern Mexico, one of the regions most affected by the global <a href="https://theconversation.com/rising-suicides-in-mexico-expose-the-mental-health-toll-of-living-with-extreme-chronic-violence-99131">war on drugs</a>. </p>
<p>From 2008 to 2012 my hometown – which I’m not naming here for safety reasons – went through one of the most violent times in its history. Shootings between cartels and the military became frequent events, which could happen at any time of the day anywhere in the city. I personally witnessed a shooting just across from the university where I used to teach.</p>
<p>My friends and family had similar experiences. Some of them witnessed shootings from their cars, others from their home. </p>
<p>In addition to the growing violence, the Zetas cartel started to bribe the local businesses. If owners did not pay, the cartel would either destroy their businesses or kidnap a family member. As a result, many businesses had to close their doors. The cartels fueled paranoia on social media. “Do not come out tonight,” a tweet would warn, “because there will be a shooting.” Sometimes, these threats proved to be true.</p>
<p>Similar <a href="http://theconversation.com/mexican-mennonites-combat-fears-of-violence-with-a-new-christmas-tradition-127982">terror</a> is occurring <a href="https://www.milenio.com/mileniotv/policia/cierran-negocios-por-violencia-en-cordoba-veracruz">across Mexico</a> as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">result of the war on cartels launched by former President Felipe Calderón</a> in 2006. The violence unleashed by the government’s assault on drug-trafficking groups <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">has wracked a nation</a>.</p>
<h2>Life stories of former drug traffickers</h2>
<p>Not wanting to stay in a country where I felt so vulnerable, I decided to continue my postgraduate studies abroad, in England. There, I channeled my frustration with Mexico’s war on cartels into my <a href="https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/193726176/Final_Copy_2018_11_06_Garcia_K_G_PhD_Redacted.pdf">doctoral dissertation</a>, which analyzes drug-related violence through the lens of those who committed the crimes. </p>
<p>Between October 2014 and January 2015, I interviewed 33 men who used to work in the drug trade to understand how their experiences relate to their involvement in drug trafficking. From street drug dealers to hitmen and bodyguards, I found, they all share similar life stories. </p>
<p>These firsthand interviews with former drug traffickers, widely known as “narcos” in Mexico, bring a new perspective to <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/mexican-drug-wars-37657">political science research on Mexico’s drug war</a>: that of the perpetrators. </p>
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<p>This analysis of the narcos’ narratives sheds light on the possible causes of these men’s involvement in the drug trade and elucidates the logic through which they understand the world. </p>
<p>This view is almost entirely neglected by researchers and politicians. To date, Mexican policies to <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-jailbreak-is-both-a-mexican-and-an-american-story-44679">curb drug trafficking</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/amnesty-for-drug-traffickers-thats-one-mexican-presidential-candidates-pitch-to-voters-96063">reduce violence</a> have been designed using solely the logic of policymakers. </p>
<p>Is it any surprise they’ve failed?</p>
<h2>Neither monsters nor victims</h2>
<p>My research begins with the premise that the narcos are part of Mexican society, just like anyone else. They are exposed to the same messages, values and traditions. </p>
<p>Yet the Mexican government has systematically rejected this notion, preferring to invoke the same binaries present in U.S. policies like the war on drugs and the war on terror. It’s “us” against “them,” this framing goes: the “good guys” versus the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0094582X13509069">bad people</a>.” </p>
<p>In the movies, the narcos are portrayed as <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/traffic-2001">bloodthirsty criminals</a>. More compassionate views, especially in academia, suggest the drug trade is the “only option” for poor kids in <a href="http://mexicanadesociologia.unam.mx/docs/vol74/num1/v74n1a1.pdf">cartel-infested parts of the country</a>.</p>
<p>Beyond being simplistic, such framing conceals nuances that may actually help to explain the root causes of Mexico’s drug violence. </p>
<p>The narcos I spoke with do not see themselves as victims or monsters. They do not justify their involvement in the drug trade as a survival strategy. They acknowledge that they chose this illegal industry – even when work in the informal economy would have allowed them to support their families – because, they told me, they wanted “more.” </p>
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<p>Despite seeing themselves as free agents who decided to work in the drug trade, the men I interviewed also see themselves as disposable. They shared feelings of social exclusion and a lack of a life purpose, making them feel that their lives are worthless. </p>
<p>“I knew I was alone,” one man, Rigoleto, told me. “If I wanted something, I had to get it myself.” </p>
<p>My research also reveals that these narcos embrace the government’s binary discourse. They identified as “they” – the people excluded from “our” civil society. The former drug traffickers I spoke with also reproduce the individualistic, every-man-for-himself ethos that has permeated Mexican society since the introduction of a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3993429">neoliberal, U.S.-style economic system</a> in the late 1980s. </p>
<p>This ethos is a double-edged sword. Mexico’s narcos may not blame the state or society for their condition of poverty – each is, after all, his own man – but they don’t feel remorse for their crimes, either. They had the “bad luck” of being born in poverty, they told me, and their victims had the “bad luck” to be in their way. </p>
<p>The narco’s logic is simple, according to Yuca, one of the men I interviewed: We are, all of us, bound to the “law of the fittest.” </p>
<p>As Cristian said: “In my neighborhood we all knew the rules: You snooze, you lose. That was the law. You have to be tough, you have to be violent, you have to take care of yourself, because nobody will do it for you.”</p>
<h2>Poverty: A fixed and inevitable condition</h2>
<p>This is one of several shared values I identified in my interviews, which together form what I refer to in my dissertation as “the narco discourse.” </p>
<p>The narco discourse puts poverty in sharp relief. The men I spoke with believe poor people have no future and, therefore, have nothing to lose. </p>
<p>“I knew I would grow up and die in poverty,” said one of my interviewees, Wilson. “I just asked God: Why me?”</p>
<p>Poverty is understood as an inevitable condition. “Somebody has to be poor,” said one man, Lamberto. </p>
<p>“There is nothing you can do to avoid it,” said another, Tabo. </p>
<p>The narco discourse also assumes that poor children will, like them, inevitably become involved with drugs and gangs. It is taken for granted that poor children have no future, that they are disposable. </p>
<p>“When you grow up in a poor neighborhood you know that at some point you will become a drug addict,” said Palomo. “When you are a drug addict you see yourself as rubbish. Who would care about the life of a poor drug addict?”</p>
<p>In this crowd, I learned, an early death is also seen as inevitable. </p>
<p>“When you see so many of your peers dying in street fights, from an overdose, shot by the police, you think that that is your future as well,” a man I’ll call Tigre told me. </p>
<p>The possibility of being killed or killing, then, isn’t necessarily a drawback of the drug trade. The kids who grow up to be drug traffickers assume that death is their destiny. </p>
<p>“I always thought that my destiny was to die from an overdose or by a bullet,” said Pancho.</p>
<h2>Consumerism</h2>
<p>One of the few ways poor kids with this worldview could imagine enjoying life, they told me, is by buying stuff – nice stuff, luxury items, things they couldn’t afford. </p>
<p>The only way to achieve that is with the “easy money” that an “easy life” in the drug business would give them. </p>
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<p>They understood the happiness brought on by easy money to be momentary. But still, they said, it was worth it. My interview subjects assume that “in this world you’re a nobody without money,” as Canastas put it. </p>
<p>Crucially, the narcos recognize that the flip side of the “easy life” is either death or jail.</p>
<p>“One day you are in a nice restaurant, surrounded by beautiful women and important people,” Ponciano told me. “The next day you may wake up in a dungeon.”</p>
<p>That’s why the easy life has to be so fast, so hedonistic – to maximize the benefits of that easy money. </p>
<p>As Jaime told me, “My goal was to live every day as if was the last. I did not pinch pennies when it came to enjoy[ing] myself. [I bought] the best trucks, the best wines [and had] the most beautiful women.”</p>
<h2>‘A real man’</h2>
<p>In the narco discourse, physical violence is essential to survive, literally, in poor neighborhoods which participants referred as “the jungle.”</p>
<p>Violence, I was informed, is learned. Men are not born violent, but they must become violent. As Jorge explained: </p>
<p>“When I was a child, older children hit me, they took advantage of me because I was alone. I was not violent, but I had to become even more violent than them. You must do it if you want to survive in the streets.”</p>
<p>In “the jungle,” men also had to keep a certain reputation as a “real man.” As they see it, that means being an aggressive, heterosexual, violent womanizer. A true man is “good for the party, drugs and alcohol,” said Dávila. </p>
<p>The real man cannot show his fears – no emotions, no weaknesses. The best way to hide them, the narcos I interviewed said, is by proving their strength. This can be done in different ways: within your own gangs, fighting rival gangs or at home, with their family. </p>
<p>A recurrent theme in my interviews was the anger that participants felt against their fathers, most of whom were domestic abusers. </p>
<p>Twenty-eight out of the 33 men admitted that at some point in their lives their greatest aspiration had been to kill their fathers. All said their biggest frustration had been watching their fathers beat their mothers. They wanted revenge not for themselves, but for their mothers.</p>
<p>The men invoked the trauma of witnessing gender violence not only when we spoke about their childhood but also when we discussed their reasons for illegal acts like drug use, vandalism and drug trafficking.</p>
<p>To some participants, a fantasy of making their fathers suffer was their main motivation to work in the drug trade. </p>
<p>“My only thought was to kill my father when I grew up,” Rorro explained. “I wanted to cut him into little pieces.” Being a narco gave him that power. </p>
<p>A man named Ponciano told me that he thought of his father when he was torturing his victims. </p>
<p>“And I made them suffer even more, like he made us suffer.”</p>
<p>Not everyone who had the opportunity to kill their fathers could follow through. Facundo, wishing his father to suffer but unable to kill him, told his dad to leave town. </p>
<p>“If I see you again, I will kill you,” he said. </p>
<h2>What can we learn in Latin America?</h2>
<p>Poverty and toxic masculinity. These are, my research finds, two common themes driving the men who commit <a href="https://theconversation.com/murder-and-the-mexican-state-34286">so much violence not only in Mexico</a> but across Latin America, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-fix-latin-americas-homicide-problem-79731">world’s most violent region</a>.</p>
<p>The everyday life of these narcos are a breeding ground for all sorts of violence, from domestic abuse to gang rivalry. When policymakers focus on “ending drug violence,” this is the view so often missing.</p>
<p>Even when poverty is <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/desacatos/n40/n40a2.pdf">acknowledged</a> as the root of other major social problems in Mexico, as some <a href="https://revistas.uam.es/index.php/relacionesinternacionales/article/viewFile/5115/5568">researchers have done</a>, there is insufficient knowledge of what living in poverty actually means for these people. While many experiences of poverty where shared by my interviewees, each person in each region and each neighborhood had their own problems and specific needs. </p>
<p>Understanding how that background leads to violence would mean listening – really listening – to men like those I interviewed. And it means asking questions that don’t fit within the “us versus them” mentality of presidents, policymakers and police chiefs. To design more effective policies for ending violence, one must understand the logic, the worldview, of its perpetrators. </p>
<p>Where does all this violence come from? Who justifies its use, and how? How is violence reproduced within Mexican families, and echoed within communities? When the government responds to this violence with more violence – by <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">sending soldiers out to fight crime</a>, as Mexico has done for 12 years – what message does that send? </p>
<p>As long as governments maintain their discourse about “good people” versus “bad men,” my research suggests, it will only feed “their” indifference to “us.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was adapted from the <a href="https://ciperchile.cl/2020/01/03/por-que-fracasa-la-guerra-contra-el-narcotrafico-entrevista-a-33-ex-narcos-mexicanos-para-quienes-morir-es-un-alivio/">original version</a>, published on The Conversation España as part of a collaboration with the Centro de Investigación Periodística (<a href="https://ciperchile.cl/">CIPER</a>) in Chile.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129865/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karina Garcia Reyes' PhD dissertation received funding from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and additional support from the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) in Mexico.</span></em></p>A researcher who fled crime-beset Mexico returns to interview the drug cartels behind so much of the violence, asking 33 ‘narcos’ everything about their lives, from birth to their latest murder.Karina G. Garcia Reyes, Profesora de la Escuela de Sociología, Política y Relaciones Internacionales y del departamento de Estudios Latinoamericanos, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1269862019-11-22T13:41:08Z2019-11-22T13:41:08ZCartel sieges leave Mexicans wondering if criminals run the country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302677/original/file-20191120-524-p89iev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C9%2C6006%2C3998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clouds of smoke from burning cars mark the skyline of Culiacan, Mexico, during a 12-hour siege by the Sinaloa Cartel, Oct. 17, 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Government-On-The-Run/c3bf2e9efad0497cb1aeb7c54d159bc9/20/0">AP Photo/Hector Parra</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recent deadly attacks by criminal organizations have instilled fear across Mexico.</p>
<p>In mid-October, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexico-shaken-second-mass-shooting-two-days-n1067296">shootouts between cartels and police</a> in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán killed over 30 people. And a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/americas/mexico-cartel-chapo-son-guzman.html">12-hour criminal assault on Culiacán</a>, Sinaloa, after Mexican security forces <a href="https://riodoce.mx/categoria/operacion-ovidio/">captured the son of drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán</a> left 13 people dead, including at least three civilians. </p>
<p>On Nov. 4 the massacre of nine <a href="https://theconversation.com/mormons-in-mexico-a-brief-history-of-polygamy-cartel-violence-and-faith-126493">Mexican-American Mormon women and children in northern Mexico</a> shocked both sides of the border.</p>
<p>The attacks, some carefully planned and executed, have made the Mexican government appear weak on organized crime. By early November, the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MexicoNoTienePresidente&src=typed_query">#MexicoNoTienePresidente</a> – Mexico has no president – was trending on Twitter.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s violent cycles</h2>
<p>Security was a focus of <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/">Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s winning campaign for the presidency</a> last year. </p>
<p>He proposed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">novel strategies</a> to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-is-bleeding-can-its-new-president-stop-the-violence-109490">pacify</a>” Mexico, including giving <a href="https://theconversation.com/amnesty-for-drug-traffickers-thats-one-mexican-presidential-candidates-pitch-to-voters-96063">amnesty to low-level drug traffickers</a> who leave the business, and <a href="https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/marihuana-olga-sanchez-legalizacion-cannabis-propuesta-iniciativa-vo-perspectivas-mexico/">legalizing marijuana</a> to turn a <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/ideas/Assets/Documents/reports/LSE-IDEAS-Ending-the-Drug-Wars.pdf">lucrative criminal market into a regulated, commercial one</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador also promised to punish police and soldiers for human rights violations committed when battling cartels. </p>
<p>But 18 months into his six-year term, López Obrador’s only concrete security policy was the creation in June 2019 of a controversial <a href="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/54ff874b5ab8ff86ab68f4f15/files/a1d0d906-3ad6-415c-881b-d0dacdce9863/Observaciones_finales_del_Comit%C3%A9_de_Derechos_Humanos_de_la_ONU_sobre_M%C3%A9xico_2019.pdf">new military-style police force</a>, the National Guard. So far, however, Mexico’s 70,000 National Guardsmen have mostly been tasked with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/06/24/guardia-nacional-migrantes-mexico/">stopping Central American migration</a>. </p>
<p>One initiative that looked promising – an independent commission of forensic experts and prosecutors established to investigate the <a href="http://www.comisionayotzinapa.segob.gob.mx/en/Comision_para_la_Verdad/Informes_y_otros_documentos">unsolved 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero state</a> – has had setbacks. In September, 24 police officers implicated in the students’ disappearances <a href="https://www.dw.com/es/gobierno-mexicano-revisar%C3%A1-caso-ayotzinapa-junto-al-poder-judicial-y-fiscal%C3%ADa/a-50462513">were freed from jail</a> for insufficient evidence, compelling López Obrador’s government to file a judicial appeal.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, with <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQYGfTWPsKghiMNi7BjDwRRTPkIEIvSX/view">25,890 murders reported through September</a>, 2019 looks to be another record-shatteringly violent year for Mexico.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302683/original/file-20191120-542-k34qno.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An attack on the LeBaron family killed three Mormon women and six of their children near the U.S.-Mexico border, Nov. 6, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Border-Killings/f2bcdb2f2d5e423d84c3c648d2e7baeb/47/0">AP Photo/Christian Chavez</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No new drug war</h2>
<p>My research on <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?lang=en&cc=us">Mexico’s chronic criminal violence</a> finds that sudden upticks in violence usually signal increased conflict between criminal cartels, like the current <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/180319-Policy_Brief-CJNG.pdf">clashes between the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and the Sinaloa Cartel</a>. </p>
<p>I also find that showy, coordinated attacks like those seen recently typically occur during political transitions or because of intense electoral competition – times when the government cannot effectively coordinate law enforcement or maintain corrupt criminal arrangements.</p>
<p>Some in Mexico argue that the recent cartel offensives demand an extreme military response. President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/trump-says-us-is-ready-to-help-mexico-wage-war-on-drug-cartels.html">has even offered</a> a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cartelization-of-mexico-11572999461?emailToken=201492b9d90b381bc434a74aced6c67bjK7QQkqaCsSp7EIVLelJdDcoaQZaXFk44cVEQeHIeBHThmCFimccMV9ua8rFSt1ZVIlATBMADphDMTyyK77luw%3D%3D&reflink=article_copyURL_share&fbclid=IwAR1u7CRQUmP_0qbhvbVYP9w_E3hg8N4gWmFP4zdwstQ-1EYYqgSPIrB_XN8%22%22">U.S. intervention</a>. </p>
<p>But President López Obrador insists that <a href="https://news.culturacolectiva.com/mexico/no-se-cambiara-estrategia-anticrimen-pues-no-es-una-ocurrencia-amlo/">he will not restart</a> the Mexican government’s all-out war on cartels. Sending soldiers to fight crime, as consecutive governments have done since 2006, actually <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">drove up violence</a> in Mexico by creating <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022002715587053?casa_token=iTT_CyLGjkQAAAAA:DI_ihrHhmSUhSxdQSVeJPEwyMCykMwSBPPan672sdkyn82zsficdLeFWa0ls2rK_Mi8adCPS9LhF">more competition between organized crime groups</a> and thus more retaliation. Thousands of civilians have also been killed in the cross-fire between cartels and soldiers.</p>
<p>The president’s aversion to militarized security didn’t stop him from creating the Mexican National Guard. But it was on display in Culiacán last month when Mexican soldiers were outpowered by <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43jz9m/what-happens-to-the-sinaloa-cartel-after-el-chapo-game-of-thrones">cartel members</a>. Rather than fight to keep El Chapo’s son in custody, they released him.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2019/10/19/politica/004n1pol">The capture of a criminal is not worth more than people’s lives</a>,” López Obrador said.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302681/original/file-20191120-547-16orwum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Andrés Manuel López Obrador faced scrutiny after security forces released the son of drug kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman, Oct. 18, 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Violence/93aa6f5c8ba644b7b0c6c1a704fdf126/44/0">Mexico Presidential Press Office via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The incident was widely seen as an embarrassment for the Mexican government. López Obrador’s approval rating, while still high, has <a href="http://consulta.mx/index.php/estudios-e-investigaciones/evaluacion-de-gobierno/item/1183-aprobacion-lopez-obrador-en-octubre-2019%22%22">declined since the recent violence</a>. </p>
<p>But in times of war, deescalation is sometimes the only way to prevent more bloodshed. There is no easy fix for entrenched criminal violence. Every decision, every policy, has trade-offs.</p>
<h2>Indigenous resistance</h2>
<p>That doesn’t mean the cartels should be left alone. </p>
<p>The researchers Sandra Ley, Guillermo Trejo and Shannan Mattiace have studied how <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.377/">some indigenous communities in the dangerous southern state of Guerrero</a> have managed to prevent criminal infiltration of the police and local judiciary. One strategy, they found, was quickly identifying and shaming officers and judges who collude with cartels. </p>
<p>Having trustworthy institutions has, in turn, enabled these communities to resist cartel pressures from within and react powerfully when cartels attack. </p>
<p>Because it draws on Mexican indigenous communities’ unique, <a href="https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.377/">long tradition of social mobilization</a>, this strategy is not easily replicable.</p>
<p>But that, too, is a lesson: All violence is local. The many illegal markets that fuel the criminal business in Mexico – from <a href="https://theconversation.com/cartel-kingpin-el-chapo-is-jailed-for-life-but-the-us-mexico-drug-trade-is-booming-120556">drugs</a> and <a href="https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/may/03/university-san-diego-mexicos-violence-grows-new-he/">oil theft to extortion and avocado distribution</a> – may be national and international, but the cartels’ specific crime dynamics are not. </p>
<p>The way crime groups establish territorial control, gain power and carry out attacks <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/criminal-enterprises-and-governance-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/9010435C967FFD890CF1EDF40D99DA47">varies from place to place</a>. So do the criminals’ political relationships and the ways different communities respond to violence.</p>
<h2>A temporary turnaround</h2>
<p>Take Ciudad Juárez, for example – just across the border from El Paso, Texas. </p>
<p>In 2010, Juárez was <a href="http://www.seguridadjusticiaypaz.org.mx/sala-de-prensa/58-cd-juarez-por-segundo-ano-consecutivo-la-ciudad-mas-violenta-del-mundolink">the most violent city in the world</a>. By 2012, violence had dropped by 60%. </p>
<p>Some analysts and politicians credited <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/todos-somos-juarez-program-explained/">Todos Somos Juárez</a> – “We Are All Juarez” – a federal program that funded 160 short-term social improvement projects like new housing, sports programs and improved public security infrastructure.</p>
<p>But violence also decreased in Juárez, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695958?cc=us&lang=en&">my research shows</a>, because the federal security forces occupying the city, who were <a href="https://www.wola.org/sites/default/files/downloadable/Mexico/2010/WOLA_RPT-SPANISH_Juarez_FNL-color.pdf">responsible for many abuses of power</a>, largely withdrew in 2011. Plus, the Sinaloa Cartel eventually <a href="https://es.insightcrime.org/investigaciones/de-como-la-policia-el-ejercito-politicos-y-fiscales-determinaron-quien-gano-la-plaza-de-juarez">prevailed in its turf war with the Juárez Cartel</a>.</p>
<p>Ciudad Juárez’s turnaround was temporary. As a result of increased competition between cartels, new armed factions and local gangs, <a href="https://ficosec.org/homicidios-dolosos-2019/">homicides in the city increased 700%</a> last year.</p>
<p>U.S. immigration policy is hurting Ciudad Juárez, too. The thousands of migrants forced to <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/news/2019/01/24/migrant-protection-protocols">await their U.S. asylum hearings in Mexico</a> – many of them homeless – have become easy prey for organized crime, <a href="https://usipc.ucsd.edu/publications/usipc-seeking-asylum-part-2-final.pdf">according to the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of San Diego</a>. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/world/americas/mexico-migrants.html">Kidnapping and robbery are way up</a> along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<h2>All crime is local</h2>
<p>The Juárez and Guerrero examples suggest that Mexico may have to tackle crime not only federally, with its new National Guard, but also city by city. </p>
<p>That may mean federal financing and training of elite, reliable local civilian police forces, learning from indigenous towns in Guerrero. It could mean funding social programs like Juárez’s, to get at the root causes of violence. </p>
<p>It will certainly require partnering with local political and civilian allies who understand how criminal gangs exert their power.</p>
<p>City-specific security strategies won’t show immediate results. But they can help restore the Mexican government’s legitimacy and control in a country besieged by cartels. </p>
<p>[ <em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council. In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program partially funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>A series of brazen, highly visible attacks by Mexican drug cartels have killed at least 50 people in the past month, terrorizing citizens and making the government look weak on crime.Angélica Durán-Martínez, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1112022019-02-18T15:18:23Z2019-02-18T15:18:23ZMexican war on drugs has, in places, decreased life expectancy<p>Most countries in the world have experienced sizeable improvements in health, living standards and life expectancy since the second half of the 20th century. In Mexico, life expectancy increased for more than six decades – but as we found in our <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304878">new research</a>, this rate slowed down between 2005 and 2015, and in some states even reversed.</p>
<p>This slow-down coincides with an unprecedented rise in violence. The number of homicides for men increased by more than 50% between 2005 and 2015, from <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304878">20.4 to 31.2</a> per 100,000 men. There were 262,459 registered murders in that period. As a result, gains in life expectancy for young men due to reductions in other causes of death, such as infectious and respiratory diseases, floundered.</p>
<p>Life expectancy is generally used to monitor population health. But this indicator doesn’t tell the whole story, as it masks substantial variation in length of life. Inequality in length of life is the <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6418/1002">most fundamental of all inequalities</a>: after all, every other type of inequality depends on being alive. </p>
<p>Greater uncertainty about life expectancy obviously impacts negatively on quality of life. Since 2005, this question has become more difficult to answer for Mexican males, such as ourselves, and current conditions do not suggest that this will get better. From a public health perspective, a larger lifespan inequality implies a vulnerable society.</p>
<p>At the state level, the strongest effect occurred in Guerrero, a state in the south of the country, where <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/world/americas/mexico-43-missing-students-investigation.html">43 students disappeared</a> in 2014. Here, life expectancy was reduced by two years over the period and lifespan inequality increased substantially. </p>
<p>Chihuahua and Sinaloa, in the north, also experienced reversed life expectancy trends, with losses of one year each. To put these figures in perspective, in 2010, men aged 15 to 50 years in Chihuahua (which borders the US state of Texas) had a mortality rate that was three times higher than the US troops in Iraq between <a href="https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0068">2003 and 2006</a>.</p>
<h2>The war on drugs</h2>
<p>The sudden increase of violence in Mexico is associated with military interventions to decrease illicit drug operations and organised crime since 2006, when president Felipe Calderón launched a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-drugs-cost-achievements-us-billions">war</a>” against drugs and criminals. This, along with the so-called kingpin strategy of apprehending or killing the most prominent leaders in organised crime, increased competition and violence within criminal organisations. The persistent dispute led to the fragmentation of criminal organisations, which fed the violent cycle.</p>
<p>At the same time, drug trade flows changed with a boom in the contraband of opiates and opioids to make up for a reduction in the price of cocaine and the decrease of marijuana exports due to its legalisation in parts of the US. But criminals also engaged in other illicit activities, such as protection rackets, migrant kidnappings, oil theft, extortion, and the illegal trade of weapons and persons. The so-called war on drugs has become an unfinished violent cycle that has decimated the country’s social fabric.</p>
<p>Mexico has also systematically failed to recognise and correct the detrimental consequences for health and human rights that drug prohibition policies have had on the population. </p>
<p>Now, the new government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/149508/radical-amnesty-plan-mexicos-next-president">has promised</a> to take care of the deep causes of violence. New social programs focused on creating job and education opportunities for the young and other vulnerable groups are at the heart of his strategy. Nevertheless, he insists on asking Congress to reform the Constitution to legalise the use of the armed forces for public security and investigative tasks against crime. And this despite the fact that it was their intervention that contributed to the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17440572.2017.1354520?journalCode=fglc20">violent competition</a> among organised criminals in the first place.</p>
<p>The Mexican government’s new focus on improving social and human capital through education, community support and employment programs should of course be celebrated. Whereas the state used to see drugs mainly as a national security problem, it has begun to recognise its violent consequences as a social justice challenge.</p>
<p>But there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that inequality is the main cause of violent behaviour, even though it is a <a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/25920/210664ov.pdf">great factor of vulnerability</a>. So this new approach may be shortsighted. Meanwhile, the evidence that punitive and prohibitionist drug policies have helped trigger the current <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002715587048">violence</a>, as well as <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/56706/">economic</a>, <a href="http://www.politicadedrogas.org/PPD/index.php/site/documento/id/100.html">human rights</a> and <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00619-X/fulltext">health crises</a> piles up.</p>
<p>The Mexican government’s new policy of combating poverty and inequality is well-intended, but drug policy reform really needs to be the top priority. The new president has promised to end to the “war” on drugs. Substantiating this promise by regulating marijuana and poppy is a step towards ending the cycle of violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111202/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Froylan Enciso is Executive Secretary of the Mechanism of Evaluation and Monitoring of the Program of Human Rights in Mexico City. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>José Manuel Aburto does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Mexican slow-down in life expectancy improvements coincides with an unprecedented rise in violence.José Manuel Aburto, PhD Candidate, Interdisciplinary Center on Population Dynamics, University of Southern DenmarkFroylan Enciso, Faculty Member, Centro de Investigación y Docencia EconómicasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1094902019-01-29T11:45:31Z2019-01-29T11:45:31ZMexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255618/original/file-20190125-108345-1q1a7y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pictures.reuters.com/CS.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816#/SearchResult&VBID=2C0FCIH2PB307&SMLS=1&RW=1440&RH=816&POPUPPN=36&POPUPIID=2C0FQEQJOYWTP">Reuters/Edgard Garrido</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly 34,000 people were murdered in <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/docs/pdfs/nueva-metodologia/CNSP-V%C3%ADctimas-2018_dic18.pdf%22">Mexico last year</a>, according to new government statistics — the deadliest year since modern record-keeping began.</p>
<p>Of all the challenges facing Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, curbing violence may be the biggest. </p>
<p>Mexico has seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">ever-growing bloodshed</a> since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon deployed <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">the Mexican armed forces to fight drug cartels</a>. </p>
<p>Rather than reduce violence, the government’s crackdown actually increased conflicts between and among cartels, according to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-politics-of-drug-violence-9780190695965?q=the%20politics%20of%20drug%20violence&lang=en&cc=us">my research on criminal violence</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">numerous other studies</a>. It also led to widespread military abuses of power against civilians.</p>
<p>More than 250,000 people have been murdered and <a href="http://secretariadoejecutivo.gob.mx/rnped/estadisticas-fuerocomun.php">35,000 have disappeared</a> since the beginning of Mexico’s drug war. </p>
<p>López Obrador said on the campaign trail that Mexico must “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/06/que-dijeron-los-candidatos-presidenciales-en-sus-cierres-de-campana-estos-son-sus-discursos/%22">consider multiple alternatives to achieve the pacification of the country</a>.” </p>
<p>He pitched several possibilities to reduce crime without using law enforcement, including <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/12/lopez-obrador-precandidato-amnistia/%22">granting amnesty to low-level criminals</a>, negotiating with <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">crime bosses to dismantle their syndicates</a> and confronting the human rights violations <a href="https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice%22">committed by soldiers, police and public officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Finding the truth</h2>
<p>Some of those ideas – particularly the controversial notion of negotiating with organized crime – have faded away since López Obrador took office on Dec. 1. </p>
<p>So far, his administration has put more emphasis on traditional law-and-order policies. </p>
<p>In December, he ordered the creation of a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-politics/mexican-president-elects-party-presents-national-guard-plan-idUSKCN1NP2MZ">Mexican national guard</a> to fight organized crime. Though human rights advocates and security experts <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">fear</a> this approach will repeat past fatal mistakes of militarizing Mexican law enforcement, the lower house of Congress recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-security/mexicos-new-crime-fighting-national-guard-easily-wins-lower-house-approval-idUSKCN1PB060">approved the measure</a>. It will likely be approved in the Senate. </p>
<p>López Obrador has followed through on one of his campaign proposals for “pacifying” Mexico, though. </p>
<p>Days after being sworn in, the president <a href="http://www.alejandroencinas.mx/home/decreto-presidencial-para-el-acceso-a-la-verdad-en-el-caso-ayotzinapa/">established a truth commission</a> to investigate the unsolved disappearance of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers college in the southern Mexican town of Iguala in 2014. </p>
<p>Five years after their disappearance, the truth of this infamous case remains elusive. </p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">government</a> of former president Enrique Peña Nieto, the crime was a local affair. Students en route to a protest march in Mexico City were detained by the Iguala police, and, at the mayor’s order, handed over to a local gang, which killed them and burned their bodies. </p>
<p>Investigators <a href="http://www.oas.org/en/iachr/activities/giei.asp">from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights</a> could not corroborate this story. In the burn pit identified in 2016, they found no physical evidence of the missing students. </p>
<p>In a scathing <a href="http://centroprodh.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/giei-informeayotzinapa2.pdf%22%22">final report</a>, investigators said that authorities had ignored crucial evidence that the army and federal police were involved in the students’ disappearance.</p>
<p>A truth commission will help Mexicans “understand the truth and do justice to the young people of Ayotzinapa,” López Obrador <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/mexico-president-forms-truth-commission-missing-students-181204060357515.html">said on Twitter</a> in announcing its creation.</p>
<p>The Ayotzinapa truth commission will put extraordinary resources and personnel on the case and give the victims’ families and perpetrators a voice in the process – neither of which police investigations in Mexico typically do. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255617/original/file-20190125-108348-180pk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexicans have marched every year since 2014 to demand the truth about what happened to the 43 college students who went missing in Guerrero state in September 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://ustv-mrs-prod.ap.org/9298dcd7a7a54689a889c09efdfb4542/components/secured/main.jpg?response-cache-control=No-cache&response-content-disposition=attachment%3Bfilename%3DAP_638350409083.jpg&Expires=1538757901&Signature=T1uh0Bfk~MZmcCCL5QXiVcubCD1aAmf~mQvcUkUD3~olkGsqGsm2E~eOFGO0nbaigBDhBkWXLxAm6nhQ07jiy8lLvlfPMz0cxIga~HnNrDhq1vuxJ6S1hJqDTxhX05cP5HGgXOdIsA1mig8t1uqftJtUl9OoTDo~IANEQp~QncA_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJ2U2YQ4Z3WBFV6TA,%20http://www.apimages.com/Search?query=ayotzinapa+investigation&ss=10&st=kw&entitysearch=&toItem=24&">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Transitional justice</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ictj.org/gallery-items/truth-commissions">Truth commissions</a> aim to create a collective, participatory narrative of human rights atrocities that not only exposes the perpetrators but also identifies the conditions that facilitated violence. They are a central component of transitional justice, an approach to helping countries recover after civil war or dictatorship.</p>
<p>Countries like Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil and Peru all used truth commissions to reckon with the toll of their bloody dictatorships and wars and give reparations to victims. <a href="https://transitionaljusticedata.com/browse/index/Browse.mechanism:truthCommissions/Browse.countryid:all!">South Africa</a> famously used a truth commission to document the horrific human rights violations committed under apartheid.</p>
<p>Mexico’s situation is different: It has a criminal violence problem, not a civil war. </p>
<p>But my research indicates this pacification strategy may have some promise. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343318793480%22">studies suggest</a> that truth commissions can actually help prevent future violence. Because they identify perpetrators, who then face punishment for their crimes, truth commissions can both take criminals off the street and deter others from committing crime.</p>
<p>Holding public officials responsible for their <a href="https://www.hrw.org/blog-feed/mexico-lessons-human-rights-catastrophe%22">corruption</a> would be a major achievement in Mexico. </p>
<p>As the U.S. federal <a href="https://theconversation.com/el-chapo-trial-shows-why-a-wall-wont-stop-drugs-from-crossing-the-us-mexico-border-110001">trial of drug trafficker Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán</a> illustrates, corruption penetrates the highest levels of Mexican government. </p>
<p>Since the beginning of its drug war, in 2006, Mexican citizens have filed <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2018/country-chapters/mexico#043288%22">10,000 complaints of abuse against soldiers</a>, including accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture. The government has done little to look into those allegations. Nor has it actively investigated most of the <a href="https://articulo19.org/periodistasasesinados/%22">murders of 97 Mexican journalists</a> since then.</p>
<p>If an Ayotzinapa truth commission enjoys the full support of federal authorities – which is not a guarantee, given the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/28/nyregion/el-chapo-trial-mexico-corruption.html">corruption it will almost certainly uncover</a> – it could restore some faith in Mexico’s justice system. Currently, 97 percent of all crimes <a href="https://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/2018/igimex2018_ESP.pdf">go unpunished</a>. </p>
<p>Focusing on truth may also help the country better understand – and therefore address – the root causes of violence in Mexico.</p>
<p>Truth commissions, however, will not immediately solve an incredibly complex security crisis. </p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.zocalo.com.mx/reforma/detail/imposible-comision-verdad-por-caso.-ai">Amnesty International has said</a>, the Mexican government cannot create a truth commission to investigate every mass atrocity of the drug war. Mexico also needs a functioning justice system.</p>
<h2>Pardoning low level crimes</h2>
<p>Another transitional justice tool the López Obrador government has proposed is <a href="https://seguridad.nexos.com.mx/?p=712">amnesty to non-violent, low-level drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>The president’s Secretary of Governance, Olga Sánchez Cordero, says that pardoning people convicted and jailed for growing, processing, transporting or using drugs – particularly women and offenders from <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">marginalized populations</a> – would <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/amnistia-ley-reduccion-penas-sanchez-cordero/">stop the cycle of violence in Mexico</a> and encourage petty criminals to disarm. </p>
<p>Mexico’s amnesty proposal is not unlike the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-signing-ceremony-s-756-first-step-act-2018-h-r-6964-juvenile-justice-reform-act-2018/">First Step Act</a> recently passed in the United States, which will result in the early release of about <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/16/what-s-really-in-the-first-step-act">2,600 prisoners, many of them drug offenders</a>.</p>
<p>Mexico’s prison population has been steadily rising for years. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2016, it increased 40 percent, from 154,765 inmates to 217,868 inmates, according to the <a href="http://www.prisonstudies.org/country/mexico%22">Institute of Criminal Policy Research</a>. The number of people jailed in Mexico for drug offenders has also increased <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf%22%22">markedly</a>.</p>
<p>As in the United States, most prisoners in Mexico come from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the <a href="http://www.drogasyderecho.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Irrational_Punishments_ok.pdf">Collective for the Study of Drugs and Law</a>, a nonprofit research group. </p>
<h2>What lies ahead</h2>
<p>Should López Obrador’s amnesty idea become policy, it would surely be controversial. </p>
<p>Victims of violence in Ciudad Juárez were outraged when, in August 2018, President-elect López Obrador said residents must be “<a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/08/momentos-foros-paz-juarez/">willing to forgive</a>.” </p>
<p>Many caught in the crossfire of Mexico’s drug war say justice and punishment should come before forgiveness. </p>
<p>But violence in Mexico is so pervasive that, in my opinion, the country must consider every option that might stanch the bleeding. </p>
<p>Truth commissions and amnesties to low level crimes will not pacify the country immediately – but they may bring some of the truth and justice Mexicans so desperately need. </p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect the correct title of Olga Sanchez-Cordero. She is the Secretary of Governance, not Chief-of-Staff.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Angélica Durán-Martínez has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). In 2011, she was an SSRC Drugs, Security and Democracy fellow, a program funded by Open Society Foundations.</span></em></p>President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.Angélica Durán-Martínez, Assistant Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1073202018-12-05T08:59:39Z2018-12-05T08:59:39ZMexico’s new president creates yet another national police force – but it will struggle to stem the bloody crimewave<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248743/original/file-20181204-34125-wuqesq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1469%2C1235%2C3239%2C1996&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Investiture of Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico City on December 1.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.epa.eu/politics-photos/gobierno-government-photos/investiture-of-mexican-president-elect-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-in-mexico-city-photos-54813047">EPA Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mexico’s new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO), was sworn in on December 1, after a five month transition period following his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/02/mexico-election-leftist-amlo-set-for-historic-landslide-victory">landslide electoral victory</a>. </p>
<p>Faced with an unassailable crime wave that has ravaged the country since 2007 – when then-president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/world/americas/27mexico.html">declared an all-out war on organised crime</a> – López Obrador outlined his security strategy shortly before taking office, after <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-new-president-has-plans-to-make-his-country-safer-but-will-they-work-100441">months of speculation</a>.</p>
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<p>Against a background of nearly 30,000 intentional homicides a year (the worst rate in recent history), the plan contains some sensible – though vague – proposals, such as an overhaul of the prison system, and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-in-mexico-how-to-legalise-it-effectively-fairly-and-safely-107856">rethink of drug prohibition</a>. But his plan has drawn <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/president-elect-amlo-pledges-new-military-force-fight-crime-mexico">intense criticism</a> for proposing the creation of a new national guard under military control as the main tool to fight crime across the entire country.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-in-mexico-how-to-legalise-it-effectively-fairly-and-safely-107856">Marijuana in Mexico: how to legalise it effectively, fairly and safely</a>
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<p>The national guard would combine battalions from the army and navy, as well as the civilian Federal Police, into a new security force under the control of the Ministry of Defence. Furthermore, a recruitment drive aims to grow the fledgling force to 150,000 troops within three years. Though the new force will be nominally under civilian control, its training, discipline, values, hierarchy and daily operations will be under military command. </p>
<h2>Boots on the ground</h2>
<p>During the campaign, López Obrador promised to send the military back to the barracks. A decade of troops on the frontline of the drug wars has left a string of human rights abuses and a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/americas/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html">piling body count</a>. So the announcement of a new national guard – which came shortly after the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.jurist.org/news/2018/11/mexico-supreme-court-rules-military-policing-law-unconstitutional/">struck down</a> a controversial law that permitted the use of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-the-cartels-grow-deadlier-should-the-mexican-military-be-involved-in-law-enforcement-89134">armed forces in policing duties</a> – left many of his supporters in shock.</p>
<p>As the security plan would in effect dissolve the Federal Police – a civilian agency – and eschews any mention of improving the country’s weak municipal and state police agencies, the national guard is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">seen by many</a> as a permanent step towards military control of the security sector.</p>
<p>This was extensively <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/president-elects-security-plan-disappoints-civil-society-mexico">condemned by Mexican civil society</a>, as well as by international organisations. <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/11/mexico-el-plan-del-nuevo-gobierno-debe-enfocarse-en-retirar-las-fuerzas-armadas-de-funciones-de-seguridad-publica/">Amnesty International</a> said the proposal “essentially imitates the failed militarised security model [that] has allowed serious human rights violations to be committed by the armed forces”, while <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/16/mexico-military-policing-threatens-rights-0">Human Rights Watch</a> called it a “colossal mistake”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Armed to the Teeth, a film about army brutality in Mexico.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In addition, the proposed force is unlikely to be a panacea. On the one hand, it simply perpetuates the current security strategy that has so far failed to curb violence in the country. On the other, the national guard would still be too small to police a country as large and complex as Mexico, even assuming that it reaches its overly optimistic recruitment targets.</p>
<h2>The great paradox of police reform</h2>
<p>Most worrying, however, is that the proposed national guard – the fourth new national police force to be created in as many presidencies – is a perfect example of what <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=21512">Daniel Sabet</a> called “one of the great paradoxes of police reform in Mexico”. That “seemingly dramatic changes, such as dissolving one police force and creating an entirely new one, might in practice amount to very little reform of how policing is done”.</p>
<p>To justify the national guard, López Obrador claims that there have been no improvements whatsoever in the quality of the police services in the past 12 years. This is not precisely true. While most police agencies are far from perfect, there have been notable improvements. The Federal Police has vastly improved its technical and human capabilities since 2006, and several state and municipal forces have become successful <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-43302244">case</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/world/americas/mexico-violence-police.html?ref=nyt-es&mcid=nyt-es&subid=article">studies</a> in their own right.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248805/original/file-20181204-34154-1c9o9ln.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=827&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Federal Police showcases its air capabilities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/D%C3%ADa_del_Polic%C3%ADa._88_Aniversario_de_la_Polic%C3%ADa_Federal_%2827677338193%29.jpg">Presidencia de la República Mexicana via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0]</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>It is true that such improvements are sparse and have not yet made a notable improvement in security conditions across the country. Yet this is due to the complex nature of the criminal phenomenon, and the underwhelming commitment to institutional building by incoming politicians, who prefer flashy new policies over sticking to a plan. </p>
<p>It is also true that corruption and abuse persist across police departments. But the armed forces are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/10/mexico-drug-cartels-soldiers-military">hardly immune to corruption</a>. Studies have shown that the armed forces are <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-blog-invitado/2018/11/15/ejercito-y-marina-bajo-la-lupa/">more prone to commit torture and human rights abuses</a>, and <a href="http://www.politicaygobierno.cide.edu/index.php/pyg/article/view/1161">more lethal</a> than the police. Thus, it is unlikely that militarisation itself will lead to a more effective, incorruptible police force.</p>
<p>Remaking the security institutions every time a president takes power is incredibly counterproductive. Creating new institutions is costly and slow. Everything from the legislation (creating the national guard requires <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/560409/morena-propone-modificar-13-articulos-de-la-constitucion-para-crear-la-guardia-nacional">13 constitutional ammendments</a> and a score of secondary rules) to the mundane (such as uniforms and the colours of patrol cars) must be defined and approved. This process tends to take much longer than anticipated, wasting resources at the expense of actual police work.</p>
<p>A better alternative would focus on a long-term commitment to improving Mexico’s fledgling civilian police agencies. Corruption is an inherent risk of all police agencies, yet there is evidence that corrupted police agencies <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/68126/1/Newburn_literature-review%201.pdf">can be successfully reformed</a>. By creating a new force, rather than solving Mexico’s security crisis, López Obrador will be setting the country back in its long and arduous road towards capable policing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricio R. Estévez-Soto has previously received a postgraduate studentship from Mexico's National Science and Technology Council and the Mexican Ministry of Education.</span></em></p>Andrés Manuel López Obrador plans to combine army, navy and Federal Police units in a new 150,000 strong national guard.Patricio R. Estévez-Soto, PhD Candidate in Security and Crime Science and Teaching Fellow in the UCL School of Public Policy, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/989792018-07-03T21:15:50Z2018-07-03T21:15:50ZWhy Mexico’s historic elections may bring about big change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225938/original/file-20180703-116135-1j38gtr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledges his supporters as he arrives to Mexico City's main square, the Zócalo, on July 1, 2018. The leftist López Obrador won the election and is calling for reconciliation. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Anthony Vazquez)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The election of a leftist party in Mexico for the first time in decades has the potential to transform the country as it dislodges its ruling elite, challenges the economic consensus and promises to eradicate violence and corruption. </p>
<p>In a country marked by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/28/world/americas/mexico-violence.html">extreme levels of violence</a> and deep social polarization, the July 1 elections were remarkable. </p>
<p>With the <a href="https://www.ine.mx/">second-highest voter turnout level</a> in recent memory (63 per cent), no allegations of fraud nor any reported incidents of violence, the leaders of the two parties (the right-of-center PAN and the pragmatic ruling PRI) that have dominated the country’s politics and economy for the last 40 years <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44677829">conceded defeat</a> by 8:30 p.m. to the leftist candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (widely known as AMLO), even before official results were announced. </p>
<p>The prompt concessions attest to the magnitude of López Obrador’s landslide victory on his third attempt at reaching the presidency: Early returns gave the folksy southerner <a href="https://www.ine.mx/">53 per cent of the vote</a>, the highest for a presidential candidate in democratic Mexico, and <a href="http://www.parametria.com.mx/">projections</a> on election night showed his coalition winning a congressional majority. </p>
<p>López Obrador was thus elected with ample political capital and the institutional levers required to transform the country. </p>
<h2>The gamble</h2>
<p>Despite strong opposition from the country’s elite, for a plurality of Mexicans, López Obrador represented the best choice to tackle the country’s problems. <a href="https://www.reforma.com/libre/players/mmplayer.aspx?idm=101099&te=100&ap=1">Polling leading up to the election</a> showed that he was considered by 43 per cent of Mexicans to be the best candidate to reduce corruption; by 41 per cent to improve the country’s economy; by 37 per cent to deal with public insecurity; and by 36 per cent to combat drug cartels and organized crime. These were numbers twice as high as any of his rivals’. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/225943/original/file-20180703-116120-jfwlu8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Tens of thousands pack Mexico City’s main square, the Zócalo, as Andrés Manuel López Obrador delivers his victory speech on July 1, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Moises Castillo)</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.reforma.com/libre/players/mmplayer.aspx?idm=101099&te=100&ap=1">Polling also showed</a>, however, that, among his contenders, he was seen as the most likely to destabilize the country if elected. </p>
<p>The desire for change was such that Mexicans appear to have taken a gamble at the ballot box by voting for the riskier choice. </p>
<h2>How transformative a change?</h2>
<p>Yet, despite his <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/mexico-s-victor-pledges-to-reach-understanding-with-trump-1.3996810">portrayal as a leftist firebrand</a> and the risk some see in his election, the more likely outcome is a gradual shift to a more redistributive economic model. Here are some highlights:</p>
<p><strong>1) NAFTA</strong></p>
<p>While a frequent <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/amlo-ve-pocos-resultados-con-tlcan-y-se-lanza-contra-naim/1229806">critic of NAFTA</a>, López Obrador is unlikely to seek major changes to the agreement, let alone try to annul it. During his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxxmmoNucNY#action=share">victory speech</a>, he repeated his idea that boosting economic growth, reducing poverty and preventing illegal migration to the United States required self-sufficiency in agricultural production. </p>
<p>Agricultural policy is therefore likely to be central to his administration, and — Mexico’s surplus with the U.S. and Canada in agriculture notwithstanding — he is likely to deepen discussions on farm subsidies should a renegotiated NAFTA not happen soon.</p>
<p>But a radical approach to the agreement is unlikely. Indeed, his point man on renegotiations, a former IMF official, <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/economia/que-piensa-el-negociador-de-amlo-en-tlcan-sobre-el-acuerdo">has suggested</a> that López Obrador’s team agrees with the “central positions” of the country’s negotiating team.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-negotiates-nafta-with-painful-history-in-mind-and-elections-on-the-way-90643">Mexico negotiates NAFTA with painful history in mind – and elections on the way</a>
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<p><strong>2) The economy</strong></p>
<p>López Obrador seeks to maintain macroeconomic stability with a focus on socio-economic redistribution. In a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R77Sa2srGUg&feature=youtu.be">short speech</a> on election night, which came across as non-socialist manifesto, he explicitly mentioned that his government will not become authoritarian (overtly or covertly), guaranteed the continued independence of the Central Bank and declared that private property would be respected and that any nationalization was completely off the table. </p>
<p>On the important energy sector, which was recently liberalized, he assured investors that all agreements made by the state would be respected, unless investigations unveiled signs of corruption in their making.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mexican-energy-reform-may-be-a-bridge-to-a-low-carbon-economy-or-a-fossil-fuel-past-31129">Mexican energy reform may be a bridge to a low carbon economy – or a fossil fuel past</a>
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<p><strong>3) Taxation, poverty and corruption</strong></p>
<p>The left’s stunning election is largely explained by persistent poverty and the unequal distribution of the benefits of economic liberalization. Mexico is among a handful of countries in Latin America that has not seen a reduction in poverty despite the commodities boom of the 2000s (its rate has stubbornly sat <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC?locations=MX">at around 53 per cent</a>) and has seen a continued loss of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mexico-wages-incomes-poverty-2017-2">purchasing power</a>. </p>
<p>In effect, <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2018/01/15/poder-adquisitivo-de-los-mexicanos-cae-80-en-30-anos-revela-la-unam_a_23333915/">some studies</a> point to a decrease of a staggering 80 per cent of Mexicans’ purchasing power over the last 30 years.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-a-living-wage-look-like-in-mexico-67826">What does a living wage look like in Mexico?</a>
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<p>To reduce poverty, López Obrador has vowed to overhaul current taxation levels and to increase social spending through the resources saved by clamping down on the country’s grotesque corruption. This is an area in which we are likely to see the most significant change should he succeed at taming corruption. </p>
<p><strong>4) The drug cartels and insecurity</strong></p>
<p>López Obrador has called for a new approach to fighting the drug cartels, although details are scant. Violence has reached unprecedented levels: <a href="https://justiceinmexico.org/2018-drug-violence-mexico-report/">116,000 people have been murdered</a> since 2012. Invoking a process of national reconciliation, his proposals involve some amnesty to lower-level criminals who he views as victims of structural poverty.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">A decade of murder and grief: Mexico's drug war turns ten</a>
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<p>The most important change, however, is likely to be in the role the military plays in national security: There <a href="https://www.elsiglodedurango.com.mx/noticia/973239.en-3-anos-se-sacaria-al-ejercito-de-las-calles-dice-asesor-de-amlo.html">are indications</a> that his team intends to centralize the country’s police forces and withdraw the military from fighting organized crime.</p>
<p>López Obrador has been a polarizing figure, and portrayed as either a dangerous populist or a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bonapartist">Bonapartist</a> saviour. What we’re likely to see instead from López Obrador is transformative yet stable change in Mexico.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordi Díez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico could bring about stable change in a country marked by violence and social polarization.Jordi Díez, Professor, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/960632018-05-22T10:47:47Z2018-05-22T10:47:47ZAmnesty for drug traffickers? That’s one Mexican presidential candidate’s pitch to voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219595/original/file-20180518-42230-o8y9p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Can Mexico become a 'loving republic' built on forgiveness rather than punishment?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/original-illustration-drawing-convicted-prisoners-jail-547276720">Shutterstock/Nalidsa</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/amnistia-para-traficantes-eso-propone-este-candidato-presidencial-mexicano-98800"><em>Leer en español</em></a>.</p>
<p>With over <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-violence/mexico-suffers-deadliest-month-on-record-2017-set-to-be-worst-year-idUSKBN1DL2Z6">29,000 murders</a>, 2017 was the deadliest year in Mexico since modern record-keeping began. Nearly two-thirds of Mexicans <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-04/www-march-2018.pdf">say</a> crime and violence are the biggest problems facing their country. </p>
<p>A main cause of the bloodshed, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">studies show</a>, is the Mexican government’s violent crackdown on drug trafficking. <a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2006/12/anuncio-sobre-la-operacion-conjunta-michoacan/">Launched in 2006</a> under President Felipe Calderón, this military assault on cartels has left <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2017/11/23/pena-y-calderon-suman-234-mil-muertos-y-2017-es-oficialmente-el-ano-mas-violento-en-la-historia-reciente-de-mexico_a_23285694/">234,966 people dead</a> in 11 years. </p>
<p>While numerous drug kingpins have been jailed, cartels <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/dec/08/mexico-war-on-drugs-cost-achievements-us-billions">fractured under law enforcement pressure</a>, competing for territory and diversifying their business. Kidnapping and extortion have surged. Mexico is now <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">one of the world’s most violent places</a>.</p>
<p>Now one presidential candidate in Mexico is hoping to win over voters with a novel response to the country’s security crisis: <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/catalina-perez-correa/nacion/amnistia">amnesty for criminals</a>.</p>
<h2>Justice not revenge</h2>
<p>The idea, first floated by leftist front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador in <a href="https://www.proceso.com.mx/450727/ofrece-amlo-amnistia-anticipada-los-grupos-poder">August 2016</a>, is undeveloped and quite likely quixotic. López Obrador has yet to even indicate precisely what benefit the Mexican government would get in exchange for pardoning felons. </p>
<p>Still, as a <a href="https://lha.uow.edu.au/law/contacts/UOW155522.html">law professor</a> who studies drug policy, I must give López Obrador some credit for originality. His three competitors have mostly <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2018/04/22/asi-reaccionaron-los-mexicanos-al-primer-debate-presidencial_a_23417628/">frustrated voters</a> this campaign season by suggesting the same <a href="https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mexico-next-president-rising-criminal-violence-how-to-tackle-it/">tried-and-failed law enforcement-based strategies</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador, founder and leader of Mexico’s MORENA Party, is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-mexico-a-firebrand-leftist-provokes-the-powers-that-be-including-donald-trump-78918">rabble-rousing politician</a> who delights in challenging the status quo. In this, his third presidential bid, he has on several occasions <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/amlo-plantea-analizar-amnistia-lideres-del-narco-para-garantizar-la-paz">suggested</a> that <a href="https://aristeguinoticias.com/0312/mexico/que-amnistias-propone-amlo-videos/">both members of organized crime groups</a> and corrupt politicians could be pardoned for their crimes. </p>
<p>When pressed for details on the amnesty plan, López Obrador has simply responded that “amnesty is not impunity” or that Mexico needs “justice,” not “revenge.” </p>
<p>Former Supreme Court Justice Olga Sánchez Cordero, López Obrador’s pick for secretary of the interior, has offered a few additional hints about the plan. She <a href="https://www.reforma.com/libre/players/mmplayer.aspx?idm=97601&te=100&ap=1">says that voters should think of amnesty</a> not as a security policy but as a kind of transitional justice. It would be an instrument used to pacify Mexico. </p>
<p>The opportunity would be time-limited. Criminals would lose their immunity after a specific date if they have not met certain conditions – though these conditions remain undefined. It would also exclude serious crimes such as torture, rape or homicide. </p>
<p>All presidential pardons would need to be approved by Congress, in accordance with the <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_150917.pdf">Mexican Constitution</a>. </p>
<h2>Amnesty in Colombia</h2>
<p>Sound vague? That’s because it is.</p>
<p>López Obrador says that his amnesty idea is still in development, and <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2018/05/08/participa-amlo-en-el-dialogo-por-la-paz-y-justicia-la-agenda-fundamental/">that his team will work</a> with religious organizations, Pope Francis, United Nations General Secretary António Guterres, Mexican civil society groups and human rights experts to develop “a plan to achieve peace for the country, with justice and dignity.” </p>
<p>Colombia offers one example of how amnesty can be used <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombian-guerrillas-disarm-starting-their-risky-return-to-civilian-life-73947">as an instrument for peace</a>. </p>
<p>In 2016 the Colombian government signed an accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, ending the Marxist group’s violent 52-year rebellion. In exchange for laying down their weapons, <a href="http://es.presidencia.gov.co/normativa/normativa/LEY%201820%20DEL%2030%20DE%20DICIEMBRE%20DE%202016.pdf">FARC fighters were offered protection</a> from prosecution for political crimes committed during the conflict.</p>
<p>The amnesty law is extremely controversial. Colombian conservatives and the United Nations alike have <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2017/03/16/colombia/1489680361_529580.html">criticized</a> it for prioritizing the rights of guerrillas over those of their victims. Colombia’s peace process has also been fraught by delays, <a href="https://theconversation.com/colombias-murder-rate-is-at-an-all-time-low-but-its-activists-keep-getting-killed-91602">flare-ups of violence</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-latest-threat-to-peace-in-colombia-congress-87810">political opposition</a>.</p>
<p>Still, according to the <a href="http://www.cerac.org.co/es/">Conflict Analysis Resource Center</a>, a think tank, conflict-related deaths among both civilians and combatants <a href="http://blog.cerac.org.co/un-ano-de-desescalamiento-conflicto-casi-detenido">dropped over 90 percent</a> in 2016. </p>
<h2>Would amnesty work in Mexico?</h2>
<p>Mexico is not Colombia. </p>
<p>López Obrador is proposing amnesty in a different conflict carried out by radically different actors – drug kingpins, corrupt politicians and security forces who for 11 years have waged war with <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-corruption-problems-are-still-among-the-worlds-deepest-76627">virtual impunity</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unclear, for example, why drug traffickers would abandon their <a href="http://olinca.edu.mx/images/PDFs/Antecedentes_CONAGO_A.pdf">US$40 billion</a> illicit industry – which supports around <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2013/04/01/edito">500,000 jobs</a> in Mexico – in exchange for a preemptive pardon from authorities.</p>
<p>It is also difficult to reconcile López Obrador’s vows for <a href="https://www.forbes.com.mx/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-promete-honestidad-como-pilar-de-su-gobierno/">honest government</a> with his proposal to pardon corruption, though he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ5rvIHoAG4">has committed to</a> finishing all <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/04/19/mexico/1524150473_535247.html">ongoing investigations into public officials</a> accused of corruption. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219597/original/file-20180518-42200-vh6d1l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who goes by his initials, AMLO, has not elaborated on his amnesty idea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>López Obrador claims to seek a new “<a href="http://www.nacion321.com/elecciones/las-claves-para-entender-la-constitucion-moral-de-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador">moral constitution</a>” for Mexico. He maintains that forgiveness is necessary to construct a “república amorosa” – “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=pJHoAQAACAAJ&source=gbs_book_other_versions">loving republic</a>” – in which Mexicans “live under the principle that being good is the only way to be joyful.” </p>
<h2>A simple expectation</h2>
<p>Mexicans don’t feel joyful right now. </p>
<p>According to a <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-04/www-march-2018.pdf">recent IPSOS poll</a>, 89 percent of Mexicans believe the country is on the wrong track. Almost 70 percent disapprove of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s <a href="https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Impacta-el-periodo-electoral-en-la-aprobacion-del-presidente-20180301-0153.html">performance</a>.</p>
<p>Journalist and historian Héctor Aguilar Camín has <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=34957">described</a> voters’ current mood as “melancholic.” <a href="https://theconversation.com/governors-gone-wild-mexico-faces-a-lost-generation-of-corrupt-leaders-76858">Rampant corruption</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/for-many-mexicans-this-government-spying-scandal-feels-eerily-familiar-79981">government repression</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-mexico-actually-the-worlds-second-most-murderous-nation-77897">bloody violence</a> have made them skeptical of politics. But, as Aguilar Camín says, people also need desperately to believe that change is possible.</p>
<p>This discontent has given López Obrador <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/elecciones-2018/lopez-obrador-el-presidenciable-que-mas-crece-en-intencion-de-voto">a virtually unbeatable lead</a> in the lead-up to the July election. </p>
<p>To paraphrase the prominent Mexican-American Univision reporter Jorge Ramos, all Mexicans want from their next president is <a href="https://twitter.com/oneamexico/status/996036144423952384">to keep them from being killed</a>. So they’re open to unusual ideas.</p>
<p>During <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/05/21/mexico/1526881664_964397.html">two presidential debates</a>, the only candidate other than López Obrador to propose a <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/04/bronco-mochar-manos/">radical new crime-fighting tactic</a> is Governor Jaime “El Bronco” Rodríguez, an independent from Nuevo Leon state. He promised “to cut off the hands” of corrupt politicians and criminals, a suggestion that left moderator <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPcI1RdkYJk">Azucena Uresti</a> – and <a href="https://www.debate.com.mx/politica/memes-bronco-debate-presidencial-declaracion-polemica-20180422-0266.html">most of the country</a> – aghast. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/1_150917.pdf">Mexican Constitution</a> prohibits punishment with mutilation and torture.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qwY4XngqgZ4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico held its first presidential debate on April 23, 2018. Independent Margarita Zavala, far left, dropped out of the race in mid-May.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Electoral advantages of ambiguity</h2>
<p>Only López Obrador, with his amnesty suggestion, has questioned whether aggressive law enforcement should even be the core tenet of Mexican security policy.</p>
<p>His competitors have <a href="https://www.publimetro.com.mx/mx/destacado-tv/2018/04/22/todos-me-estan-echando-monton-asi-fueron-los-ataques-amlo-debate.html">attacked</a> the idea, calling it “madness” and “nonsense.” Some accused López Obrador of being “a puppet of criminals.” </p>
<p>Alfonso Durazo, whom López Obrador’s would nominate to be Mexico’s secretary of security, <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/04/alfonso-durazo-presenta-la-estrategia-de-seguridad-de-amlo/">believes</a> that an amnesty law could end the “cycle of war” in Mexico by setting in motion a process of national reconciliation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, to actively combat crime, López Obrador says he would <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/seguridad/">merge</a> the police and the military into one unified <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/11B0aNBuVpHB7GDVXhCKdYvVKw7D7Ta-x/view">national guard</a> under <a href="https://www.laotraopinion.com.mx/video-amlo-admite-que-dominaria-la-guardia-nacional/">direct presidential command</a>.</p>
<p>Maybe forgiveness and justice is what Mexico needs. But, for now, presidential pardons seem like little more than a hollow campaign promise. As Mexican pundit Denise Dresser has <a href="https://www.reforma.com/aplicacioneslibre/editoriales/editorial.aspx?id=133785&md5=bf01a6c9a494d84f5a9996299910ee64&ta=0dfdbac11765226904c16cb9ad1b2efe&lcmd5=e7143908412dfff2e3b6e6f84bc178f5">put it</a>, López Obrador’s amnesty plan is merely “a blank page on the table, with multiple scriveners working on it.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexico’s presidential front-runner wants to end violence in Mexico by pardoning drug traffickers and corrupt officials. Some 235,000 people have died in the country’s 11-year cartel war.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/696802017-12-11T13:36:18Z2017-12-11T13:36:18ZWhen crime pays: mobsters who spent more time at school earned more money<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198554/original/file-20171211-27680-732tmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Did college help don Michael Corleone become a better criminal?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/thegodfather/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10150325244634343">Facebook/TheGodfather</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it comes to education, you may not think of a mobster or gang member as top of the class, but it turns out that even criminals benefit from more time spent at school. </p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716301303?via%3Dihub">2017 study</a>, which used a unique sample from the Italian American mafia, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716301303?via%3Dihub">shows that mobsters</a> who began their working lives in the 1930s made significant financial gains from extra years of schooling. We found that a mobster who completed just one extra year of education could increase <a href="https://www1.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=10096">earnings by around 8% on average</a>. </p>
<p>Of course, mobsters by their very definition are high level, well connected members of complex criminal organisations – that mimic the structure of a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mob-Rules-Mafia-Legitimate-Businessman/dp/1591843987">large corporation</a>. And in the 1940s, the Italian American mafia were involved in a large number of criminal activities in the US and overseas. </p>
<p>This included running gambling enterprises, large scale drug distribution and selling and loan sharking. To excel at such activities, meant the top personnel needed to be able to evaluate probabilities and risks, as well as have an understanding of logistics – both in terms of national and international boundaries. So maybe then it’s not so surprising that even the mafia can benefit from more time in school.</p>
<h2>The business of crime</h2>
<p>As part of our research, we searched the <a href="https://1940census.archives.gov/index.asp">1940 US population census</a> manuscripts for the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2091216.Mafia">723 mobsters who were listed</a> in the 1960 records of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN). This was a bureau within the United States Department of Justice, which laid the groundwork for the modern Drug Enforcement Administration. </p>
<p>The US population census records revealed educational attainment, occupation, wages, employment status, addresses and housing values or rent for 414 of the mobsters in 1940. Using the FBN records, we were able to cross reference these details to find out the extent of each individual’s mob involvement and criminal career – which had been collected for investigative purposes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181421/original/file-20170808-22982-om3ia3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The governing body of the American Mafia, formed in 1931.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Initially, we found the mobsters in our research spent about eight years of their lives in education. This is about one year less than the average for men at the time who were of similar age and race. And this appears to be consistent with the idea that criminals face lower economic benefits from spending extra years in school and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5_1m10K9E50C&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=criminals+spend+less+time+in+school&source=bl&ots=gLlDnY-Uux&sig=dYR0pTZqP2BPFF03mfT3uArJJ08&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjW_Zyw8oHYAhWkB8AKHfiiDggQ6AEIRDAH#v=onepage&q=criminals%20spend%20less%20time%20in%20school&f=false">so invest less time in it</a>. </p>
<p>But our research also revealed that for every additional year a mobster spent in education, the average increase in income was in fact quite high. So although most mafia members did not attend school for very long, they saw a large economic benefit from any extra time spent there.</p>
<h2>The right type of crime</h2>
<p>As part of our research, we split our sample mobsters into two groups, “business criminals” and “non-business criminals”. The business criminals’ crimes included embezzlement, forgery, fraud, counterfeiting, gambling, liquor offences, prostitution, tax evasion, and bookmaking. The non-business criminals, on the other hand, tended to commit more violent crimes.</p>
<p>Using our data, we found that the income gains from an extra year of education for the business criminals were shown to be around 13-18%. Whereas for the non-business crinimals, the returns were a lot lower – at around 4-6%.</p>
<p>But of course, as criminal incomes may well have been under-reported at the time, we also used housing values in our research to check if this relationship between income and years spent in education still existed. But even with this comparison, the picture didn’t change. Mobsters who spent more time in the classroom were shown to live in, or rent houses of higher value than those with less education. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196922/original/file-20171129-29152-ruo2h2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano was instrumental in the development of organised crime across the US.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To put these estimates into context, we used the <a href="https://1940census.archives.gov/index.asp">1940 US Census</a> to look at a sample of the mobster’s neighbours. This allowed us to compare the mobsters with their neighbours on educational attainment and income. We found that male neighbours of similar age to the mobsters got the same “income bonus” from additional years spent in education in their legal jobs as the mobsters did in their illegal activities. And in this way, crime appears to have been a rational route to economic success for Italian immigrants in the US. </p>
<h2>Crime as a step up</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/louis-ferrante/mafia-business-lessons_b_871464.html">Louis Ferrante</a>, a former member of the notorious New York Gambino crime family, once claimed that “accomplished mobsters are just like top business leaders” and our research supports this claim. </p>
<p>Our research also demonstrates how participation in the Italian American mafia allowed first and second generation immigrants of Italian origin to achieve fairly large economic benefits from education. But this was only true for those involved in “white collar” crimes – where cognitive abilities were likely to be more valuable. </p>
<p>Clearly then even for a criminal organisation, a level of intelligence is certainly important – especially for those mob members found at the top of these complex criminal networks. </p>
<p>And who knows, given the link between education levels and criminal earnings, maybe similar patterns can be seen in other organised crime groups – like the Russian mafia or Mexican drug cartels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69680/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Giovanni Mastrobuoni recieves funding from the British Academy </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadia Campaniello and Rowena Gray do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Godfather effect: how higher levels of education helped Italian mobsters earn more money and live in wealthier neighbourhoods.Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Professor of Economics, University of EssexNadia Campaniello, Lecturer in Economics, University of EssexRowena Gray, Assistant Professor in Economics, University of California, MercedLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/755212017-04-24T06:37:15Z2017-04-24T06:37:15ZMexico’s military is a lethal killing force – should it really be deployed as police?<p>There is nothing noble about war. In the <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=zSodAAAAQBAJ&pg=PR13&dq=george+santayana+life+of++reason+society&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC0taO26PTAhXEp5QKHW6QDyIQ6AEIUTAJ#v=snippet&q=nation's%20wealth&f=false">words of</a> the Spanish-American philosopher and poet George Santayana, it “wastes a nation’s wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower,” and “condemns it to be governed by adventurers”.</p>
<p>Mexico has endured all these pains and more, including <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16578&LangID=E">150,000 murders and some 26,000 disappearances</a>, during its brutal ten-year war against drug cartels. </p>
<p>Some of the main drivers of this abysmal violence are Mexico’s armed forces, which have de facto aided police in fighting the drug war since 2006. The military has proven to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/americas/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https%3A%2Ft.co%2Fc0xEU4vlvo&ref=nyt-es&mcid=nyt-es&subid=article&_r=1">exceptionally efficient killers</a>. From 2007 to 2014, the army killed around eight opponents – or suspected criminals – for each one it wounded, <a href="http://data-ppd.net/PPD/index.php/site/documento/id/25.html">according to researchers at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica</a> (CIDE). </p>
<p>The marines were even more deadly: they killed some 30 combatants for each one they injured, CIDE’s <a href="http://data-ppd.net/PPD/index.php/site/documento/id/25.html">lethality index</a> shows.</p>
<p>Several senior UN officials have urged Mexico to “<a href="https://daccess-ods.un.org/TMP/3547035.75372696.html">completely withdraw military forces from law enforcement activities</a>” and ensure that “<a href="http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/RegularSessions/Session26/Documents/A_HRC_26_36_Add.1_ENG.DOC">public security is upheld by civilian rather than military security forces</a>.”</p>
<p>The Mexican Congress seems to disagree. The governing Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), which holds a majority of seats, is <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/473553/la-ley-seguridad-interior-puede-esperar-pri-ofrece-aprobarla-del-30-abril">pushing</a> for “fast track” approval of legislation that would formalise the role of the armed forces in law enforcement.</p>
<h2>Between two (rogue) armies</h2>
<p>President Felipe Calderón first conscripted Mexico’s military into police work in December 2006, when he decided that his mandate was to “<a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2006/12/anuncio-sobre-la-operacion-conjunta-michoacan/">take back</a>” Mexico from organised crime. To do this, Calderón reasoned, he would need the army: local police departments were too <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8lyvx0ldAs">weak</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPSeaik38GE">corrupt</a>.</p>
<p>His <a href="http://calderon.presidencia.gob.mx/2010/06/la-lucha-por-la-seguridad-publica/">security strategy</a>, which was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-usa-idUSTRE70O05Z20110125">lauded</a> by the United States, delegated law enforcement to the military until the police could be “reinforced and cleansed”.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">a decade of murder and grief</a>, his mistake is clear. In the <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/12/16/opinion/019a2pol">words</a> of a former high-level Mexican intelligence official, Jorge Carrillo Olea, Calderón’s strategy is one of the “major stupidities” in recent history, implemented without a base study on either its “legality” or “political relevance.”</p>
<p>Calderón had no time for such due diligence, he told the newspaper <em>Milenio</em> in a 2009 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSoBTndizI">interview</a>. Organised crime was a cancer “invading” the country, and as Mexico’s doctor he would use the army “to extirpate, radiate and attack the disease” – even if the medicine was “costly and painful.”</p>
<p>Calderón’s conservative National Action Party (PAN) was <a href="http://world.time.com/2012/07/02/mexico-election-how-enrique-pena-nieto-won-himself-and-his-party-the-presidency/">voted out of office</a> in 2012, perhaps because patients don’t usually embrace needless suffering. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto of the long-ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), has continued his predecessor’s aggressive “treatment” of organised crime. </p>
<p>A few weeks before the 2012 election, the then-candidate appointed Colombian general Oscar Naranjo, who is credited with helping <a href="http://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/los-secretos-del-general-oscar-naranjo/259254-3">take down</a> Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar in 1993, as one of his key “<a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/310947/quiere-epn-como-asesor-a-exjefe-de-la-policia-colombiana">external advisers</a>”.</p>
<p>As director of the Colombian National Police from 2007 to 2012, he grew the National Police from <a href="https://www.mindefensa.gov.co/irj/go/km/docs/Mindefensa/Documentos/descargas/Resultados_Operacionales_2/resultadosenero-marzo.pdf">136,000</a> to <a href="http://www.emedios.mx/testigospdfs/20121009/568b7f-e49f3f.pdf">170,000</a> members and oversaw “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/02/04/fact-sheet-peace-colombia-new-era-partnership-between-united-states-and">Plan Colombia</a>”, a US$500 million-annual US aid package providing military equipment and training to Colombian police. </p>
<p>In Mexico, Naranjo <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/mexico-enrique-pena-nieto-oscar-naranjo-colombia.html">was supposed to work</a> “outside of hierarchies” to effect Peña Nieto’s aggressive anti-narcotics policy. He did his job with vigour. During his 2012-2014 tenure, Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reported that the army accumulated 2,212 complaints – <a href="http://www.voltairenet.org/article187080.html">541 more</a> than those lodged against the military in president Calderón’s first two years.</p>
<p>Mexico has now been trapped between two duelling rogue forces – the cartels and the military – for ten years. Impunity is rampant. Of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/americas/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&referer=https%3A%2Ft.co%2Fc0xEU4vlvo&ref=nyt-es&mcid=nyt-es&subid=article&_r=1">4,000 complaints of torture</a> reviewed by the attorney general from 2006 to 2016, only 15 resulted in convictions. </p>
<p>A decade’s worth of forced disappearances and killings <a href="http://www.acnur.org/fileadmin/scripts/doc.php?file=fileadmin/news_imported_files/10274">have also gone unpunished</a>. </p>
<h2>Clarifying the constitution</h2>
<p>Mexico’s current legal framework facilitates armed forces arbitrary involvement in law enforcement. </p>
<p>Though the Constitution expressly <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2015.pdf?lang=en">prohibits</a> military authorities to intervene <em>motu propio</em> in civil affairs during peacetime, in 2000 the Supreme Court <a href="http://sjf.scjn.gob.mx/sjfsist/Documentos/Tesis/1001/1001284.pdf">interpreted</a> this provision to mean that armed forces could assist civil authorities whenever their support was explicitly requested.</p>
<p>In truth, the broad terms in which the Constitution was originally drafted enables the president to determine the extent of military involvement in civil affairs. Calderón made use of this room for manoeuvre, issuing secret <a href="http://www.sedena.gob.mx/pdf/informes/primer_informe_labores.pdf">guidelines</a> that provided ample powers to military officials for planning and conducting operations against organised crime in 2007. This directive, along with everything related to the war on drugs, was <a href="http://www.vanguardia.com.mx/pideifaiasedenaentregarinformacionsobreestrategiasdecombatealnarcotrafico-1391891.html">classified information</a> until October 2012.</p>
<p>The “internal security” bills now being debated in Mexico’s Congress seek to address this contradiction, as well as to clarify an obscure distinction between the two types of security – public and internal – mentioned in <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Mexico_2015.pdf?lang=en">Mexico’s Constitution</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LGSNSP_170616.pdf">former</a> refers to law enforcement aimed at safeguarding the integrity and rights of individuals, while <a href="http://bibliodigitalibd.senado.gob.mx/handle/123456789/3344">the latter</a> encompasses the state’s response to domestic threats against the public order, such as rebellion, treason or natural disasters.</p>
<h2>Certainty for whom?</h2>
<p>Increasing criticism against the armed forces has moved senior military officers to demand more “<a href="http://aristeguinoticias.com/1701/mexico/insiste-epn-en-defender-ley-de-seguridad-interior-para-dar-certeza-a-fuerzas-armadas/?fb_comment_id=1495807620459642_1495936250446779#f19ae1d86c4ebc">certainty</a>” in their fight against organised crime. </p>
<p>In December 2016 Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda, Mexico’s minister of defence, <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/12/09/politica/003n1pol">declared</a> that fighting the war against drugs has “denaturalised” the Mexican military. Soldiers, he said, are not trained “to chase criminals”. </p>
<p>If 52,000 soldiers are going to be deployed on a daily basis, he argued in a December 2016 <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/nacion/seguridad/2016/12/5/cienfuegos-no-confundir-seguridad-interior-con-seguridad-publica">article</a> in the newspaper <em>El Universal</em>, they need clear rules to operate within a human rights frame. </p>
<p>Cienfuegos demanded a law that would establish a finer legal distinction between public security (the purview of the police) and internal security (specific threats requiring military intervention).</p>
<p>That (seemingly reasonable) request spurred today’s Congressional debate on internal security. Each of Mexico’s three main parties has presented its own bill. There’s the PRI’s, put forward by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/333767595/Propuesta-de-Cesar-Octavio-Camacho-Quiroz-y-Martha-Sofia-Tamayo-Morales#from_embed">César Camacho Quiroz and Sofía Tamayo Morales</a>; the PAN’s, stewarded by <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/333767857/Propuesta-de-Roberto-Gil-Zuarth#from_embed">Senator Roberto Gil Zuarth</a>; and the Revolutionary Democratic Party’s (PRD), tabled by Senator <a href="http://sil.gobernacion.gob.mx/Archivos/Documentos/2017/01/asun_3473709_20170111_1484156817.pdf">Luis Miguel Barbosa Huerta</a>.</p>
<p>It’s unclear exactly what kind of “certainty” these proposals might bring. There are differences between them, but all evoke <em>déjà vu</em> because they <a href="http://bibliodigitalibd.senado.gob.mx/bitstream/handle/123456789/3343/Mirada%20Legislativa%20121.pdf">refer</a> to organised crime as a potential threat to internal security and justify involving the army by pointing to the incapacity or corruption of local police. </p>
<p>The military <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2016/11/22/deportes/003n1pol">supports</a> the PRI’s bill, which served as the <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/02/19/politica/008n1pol">basis</a> for the “internal security” law that will soon come up for vote. Congress is currently weaving elements of the other proposals into the law’s structure to build consensus.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2017/04/08/politica/005n2pol">Academics</a> and <a href="http://www.proceso.com.mx/469520/ongs-alertan-ley-seguridad-interior-amenaza-al-derecho">NGOs</a> have criticised this bill for its dangerously vague and broad language. </p>
<p>Per article 7, threats to internal security include “any act or fact that endangers the stability, security and public peace.” No time limit is set for such military interventions. And article 3, advocates say, would authorise the executive to use the army to repress peaceful protest.</p>
<p>The law’s all-encompassing definition of internal security would seem to defeat Cienfuegos’ ostensible purpose in demanding a law: to clarify the army’s role in law enforcement. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"846365270197329920"}"></div></p>
<p>But it quite likely meets his actual need: to protect his troops from criminal prosecution. Soldiers, Cienfuegos said in December 2016, are currently “dubious” about persecuting criminal organisations because they risk being accused of a “human rights-related crime”. </p>
<p>That’s because, in 2011, the Supreme Court <a href="https://sjf.scjn.gob.mx/sjfsist/Paginas/DetalleGeneralV2.aspx?id=160488&Clase=DetalleTesisBL">established</a> that human rights violations committed by military personnel should always be subject to civilian, rather than military, jurisdiction. </p>
<p>As currently drafted, Mexico’s internal security law would dramatically expand the rights of the armed forces in combating cartels – and anyone suspected of engaging in the drug trade – eliminating any concern about prosecution for violating those pesky human rights.</p>
<h2>And what of the police?</h2>
<p>Cienfuegos is right about one thing: that the armed forces are currently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y85pJgwseUg">doing the job</a> of the police because “there is no one else to do it”. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.transparency.org/gcb2013/country/?country=mexico">90% of Mexicans</a> feel that the police are corrupt. They are also basically useless: an estimated <a href="http://www.udlap.mx/igimex/assets/files/igimex2016_ESP.pdf">99% of crimes go unsolved</a>.</p>
<p>The armed forces, as the CIDE researchers have shown, are <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2017/02/01/guerra-contra-el-narco-de-calderon-perfecciono-letalidad-de-fu/">quite the contrary</a>. The marines are six times more lethal than the federal police, who <a href="http://data-ppd.net/PPD/index.php/site/documento/id/25.html">kill</a> about five opponents for each one they injure in combat (the university’s index does not include data on local or state police). </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IlzigmxiMCo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Allegedly hunting a Leyva Cartel kingpin, a Mexican military helicopter fired directly into the populated city of Tepic, Nayarit (Feb 9 2017).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There were <a href="https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/2016/10/21/challenges-of-measuring-an-armed-groups-lethality-insights-from-the-mexican-drug-war/">methodological challenges</a> in determining what CIDE calls the “deadliness ratio” of Mexico’s federal police, army and marines from 2007 to 2014. And today, it would be impossible: Peña Nieto’s administration <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/diez-de-guerra/militares.html">stopped publishing</a> military statistics on civilian casualties in 2014.</p>
<p>Comparing these figures, however, at a minimum shows the basic ethical and political shortcoming of Mexico’s internal-security debate. Not one bill in Congress addresses the most fundamental question: should the armed forces even have a law enforcement role?</p>
<p>Based on Mexico’s dire experience, the answer is a desperately firm no. It is not the army that needs its duties and powers clarified, but the police, who have abandoned their obligations. Simply supplanting them with the armed forces is not a viable solution for a democratic society.</p>
<p>At this stage, it is impossible to simply send the army back to the barracks. But lawmakers could set a schedule for gradually demilitarising the country as they work concurrently to strengthen police. </p>
<p>Both the <a href="http://insyde.org.mx/">Institute for Safety and Democracy</a> (INSYDE), a Mexican think tank, and <a href="http://www.hchr.org.mx/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=153:resumen-informe-sobre-seguridad-ciudadana-y-derechos-humanos-2009&catid=17&Itemid=278">the Inter-American Human Rights Commission</a> have developed sound models to improve the efficacy and accountability of Mexico’s police. But in Congress, these well-considered suggestions generally <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-ruta-critica/2016/06/22/llega-a-mexico-la-certificacion-policial-ciudadana/">fall on deaf ears</a>.</p>
<p>The poet Santayana <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/soliloquiesineng00santrich/soliloquiesineng00santrich_djvu.txt">ominously noted</a> that “only the dead have seen the end of war”. Mexico has too many dead. For survivors to live in peace, they will require more from their government than <em>déjà vu</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75521/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A controversial law to officially engage Mexico’s armed forces in fighting crime has human rights groups dismayed.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/758512017-04-10T20:19:32Z2017-04-10T20:19:32ZWhy glamorising narco culture, on screen and in Sydney’s pop-up shop, is wrong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164605/original/image-20170410-29396-1g6f0xw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Photos of some of the 43 Mexican college students who disappeared in 2014 and are feared to have been massacred by gang members and police. Screen depictions of Mexico's drug trade mostly ignore their human cost.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jorge Lopez/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian streaming service Stan will open a <a href="https://www.broadsheet.com.au/sydney/food-and-drink/article/los-pollos-hermanos-pop-">pop-up restaurant called Los Pollos Hermanos</a> in Sydney this week to promote the latest season of the Breaking Bad spin-off <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3032476/">Better Call Saul</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=855&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164597/original/image-20170410-29403-buqtm2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1074&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring in Better Call Saul.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Giancarlo Esposito, who plays the restaurant’s owner - drug lord Gus Fring - in both shows, will attend the event. Fring uses Los Pollos as a front for his criminal activities and a money laundering operation. The pop up restaurant has previously opened in Los Angeles and Austin, Texas. </p>
<p>This marketing stunt turns the promotion of a TV show built around a savage reality - the consumption of narcotics in the US and the cartel wars in Mexico - into a pop culture event. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Breaking Bad</a> and Better Call Saul revolve around the New Mexico underworld and the distribution of illegal narcotics in the US. Created by Vince Gillian, they show the end of the drugs chain that starts with the Mexican cartels. Mexican criminal organisations, particularly the Juárez Cartel, cast a shadow over the main plotline throughout the shows. Numerous Mexican narcos get tangled up with the main characters. </p>
<p>Yet since the shows began in 2008, their producers have done little in the plotlines to acknowledge the human tragedy being experienced in Mexico. For the past 40 years, it and other countries such as Colombia have suffered the deathly effects of the drug trade, including mass murder, corruption at all levels of government and a general sense of unease in the population.</p>
<p>When Mexicans and other people of colour appear in these shows they are exclusively shown as <a href="https://theconversation.com/narcos-and-cartel-land-fall-into-the-same-trap-an-obsession-with-one-sided-storytelling-48273">“bad hombres” </a> whose activities corrupt virtuous Anglo characters such as Walter White, a chemistry teacher who becomes an amphetamines producer. In Weeds (2005-2012), produced by Showtime, a naive, white suburban widow involved in narcotics dealing confronts a vicious Mexican cartel. The comedic tone of this show uses cheap laughs to deal with an issue that has cost thousands of lives “south of the border”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164596/original/image-20170410-3845-1rrpowi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manuel Uriza in Better Call Saul (2015)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">High Bridge Productions/idmb</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The repercussions of drug violence are seldom explored in these shows or other screen depictions of the narco trade. Indeed, Hollywood has a long history of glamorising and misrepresenting narco culture, with dealers and hitmen or <em>sicarios</em> often portrayed as heroes with compelling rags-to-riches stories. </p>
<p>In cult classics such as Brian DePalma’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086250/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Scarface</a> (1983) and Ted Demme’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0221027/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Blow</a> (2001), drug dealing is shown as carefree and luxurious. In the Netflix hit <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2707408/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"> Narcos</a> (2015), Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar is a noble, if flawed, individual with an enviable lifestyle. Like the TV mobster Tony Soprano, Escobar is depicted as a good family man who happens to kill and torture for a living. In real life, Escobar was a vicious murderer whose violent legacy has shaped contemporary Colombia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164601/original/image-20170410-29396-8ix5gw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar in Narcos (2015).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dynamo, Gaumont International Television, Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hollywood’s more recent obsession has been the current Mexican cartel wars, a conflict that has fascinated producers and A-listers. In January 2016, actor Sean Penn infamously travelled to rural Mexico to interview billionaire drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán - then the most wanted man in the world - which he turned into a <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/el-chapo-speaks-20160109">flawed article</a> for Rolling Stone magazine. Guzmán, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, was later apprehended by authorities. At least two major studios are preparing biopics about Guzmán’s life. </p>
<h2>A brutal reality</h2>
<p>The reality glossed over by Hollywood is brutal and unforgiving. Since the escalation of cartel violence during the Felipe Calderón presidency (2006-2012), more than 160,000 Mexicans have been murdered as a result of narcotics trafficking.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164610/original/image-20170410-29396-13xzs97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman holds a placard that reads Stop the Drug Wars at a march in Monterrey, Mexico last year.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Becerril/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The flow of arms from the US to Mexico and the failure of US authorities to curb domestic drug consumption have helped perpetuate the conflict. The fragmentation of the drug cartels has led to gruesome displays of power such as the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2166484/Mexican-drug-cartels-decapitate-rivals-disturbing-video.html">circulation of decapitation videos on the Internet</a>. In the past few years <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/15/americas/mexico-mass-grave-skulls-found-veracruz/">mass graves</a> have been found throughout the country. Countless corpses have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/05/bodies-bridge-23-mexico-drug">hung from bridges</a>. In 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/ayotzinapa-a-timeline-of-the-mass-disappearance-that-has-shaken-mexico">disappeared</a> and were allegedly killed as a result of drug violence. </p>
<p>The cartels have branched out into other illegal activities such as organ harvesting, sex trafficking, extortion and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/feb/21/mexico-kidnappings-refugees-central-america-immigration">kidnapping of Central American migrants</a>. Many regions of Mexico live in a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4126304/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1"><em>de facto</em> civil war</a>. </p>
<p>Hollywood is not the only cultural industry that glamorises narco culture. In Latin American countries such as Mexico and Colombia, <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/mexico-narco-soap-operas-do-more-than-just-glorify-drug-trade">highly controversial</a> <em>narcotelenovelas</em> (soapies) such as El patrón del mal (2012, about Escobar) and El Señor de los Cielos (2013, about the Mexican dealer Amado Carrillo) sanitise drug violence. The shows are full of luxury cars and impossibly beautiful people. Violent deaths are a fun narrative trick. The ethical and humanitarian dilemmas of armed conflict become banal. </p>
<p>In a genre known as <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_se/article/mexican-narco-cinema-part-1-of-3">narco cinema</a>, dozens of straight-to-video Mexican B-movies, often financed by the cartels themselves, also treat criminals like heroes. Meanwhile <em>narco corridos</em>, a folksy musical genre derivative of the <em>corridos</em> that narrated passages of the Mexican Revolution, have been <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3552370.stm">forbidden</a> in some regions of Mexico for glamorising narcos by turning their lives into epic stories and portraying them as modern day Robin Hoods.</p>
<p>Mexican arthouse directors, however, have tackled the complexities and harmful effects of the drug trade. Gerardo Naranjo explored the effect of drug violence on young women in the critically acclaimed <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1911600/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Miss Bala</a> (2011). Amat Escalante won the Golden Palm as Best Director in Cannes for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852376/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Heli</a>, an unforgiving realist film that depicts how the drug trade destroys family life. More recently, documentary filmmaker Everardo Gonzalez released <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/devil-s-freedom-974782">La libertad del Diablo</a> (Devil’s Freedom), where he interviews <em>sicarios</em> as well as victims of the narco wars.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ReF2xxKGqwo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The opening of Los Pollos Down Under has been met with enthusiasm by the Australian media. Last week, Fairfax Media <a href="http://www.goodfood.com.au/eat-out/news/breaking-bads-los-pollos-hermanos-is-popping-up-in-sydney-20170403-gvc96f">reported </a>that, “Los Pollos Hermanos, Breaking Bad’s chicken shop and crystal-methamphetamine distribution front, is taking over Thirsty Bird in Potts Point…” Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.timeout.com/sydney/blog/get-free-fried-chicken-at-a-los-pollos-hermanos-pop-up-breaking-bad-fans-040317">Time Out Sydney noted</a> that the food will be free but that there is, “No word yet on whether there’ll be [a] chunk of crystal meth in there too”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164600/original/image-20170410-29399-1jmai6n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walter White (Bryan Cranston) outside Los Pollos Hermanos in an episode of Breaking Bad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">High Bridge Productions/idmb</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The tone of these articles was light-hearted. But as a Mexican-Australian, I am troubled by the opening of Los Pollos Hermanos in Sydney. In the show, Fring uses the chicken shop to pass as a legitimate entrepreneur, a common practice among the cartels north and south of the border. He also uses food containers to smuggle amphetamines. </p>
<p>There would be public outcry if a TV show found banal entertainment value and marketing potential in the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, or the Rwandan genocide or the Syrian civil war. The brutal narco wars should be no different.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75851/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>César Albarrán-Torres does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Los Pollos Hermanos is a chicken shop run by a drug lord in the TV series Better Call Saul. A pop-up version opens in Sydney today - and both ignore the savage reality of Mexico’s drug wars.César Albarrán-Torres, Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.