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Gender Violence and Security in Mexico

This is a very interesting podcast from the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Georgetown, focused on Mexico.  In this episode, the host, Mariana Campero, speaks with Lisa Sanchez, the CEO of Mexico United Against Crime.  I will try to capture here some of the key points in their conversation. First, femicides against Mexican women are increasing faster than the Mexican murder rate; so too are disappearances of Mexican adolescents, aged 12-18.  These trends are rooted in the lack of governmental capacity, particularly to engage in criminal investigations. Only 8% of murders in Mexico are investigates and only 2% of murders result in convictions, which leads to the conclusion that violence is a low cost strategy for individuals. The result to violence is exacerbated by the influx of illegal firearms into Mexico - there are some 16 million such weapons in Mexico, almost all of which come from the United States.  More women are, in fact, being killed by handguns rather than being murdered in other ways.  Mexico's femicide crisis dovetails with the increased presence of women in the public sphere - both in terms of the economy and government.  One might read the femicide crisis as a macho backlash against the increased empowerment of women, which, of course, negates that empowerment by subjecting women to violence and pervasive insecurity. A powerful feminist movement has emerged. Here Sanchez notes the hostile reception to the women's movement by Lopez Obrador, who brands them as conservative and out to undermine his government.  Sanchez speculates that Lopez Obrador’s hostility might be rooted in the fact that women’s movement is able assert a strong public presence in the streets and, as such, competes with the Lopez Obrador, whose political repertoire has also included popular mobilizations.  One telling anecdote was the women’s march on the presidential palace, with AMLO complaining how he was trapped inside the palace and under siege - part of a narcissistic litany of presidential grievances. 

 

The other part of the talk that I thought was very interesting was the failures of AMLO’s security strategy.  Campero raised the question of whether there is a strategy or not and Sanchez explained that, apart from the banality of official slogans (Hugs, not Bullets), yes, there is a strategy.  It has two pillars. The first is transfer payments to the poor - the so called ni-nis - with the idea that these resources would give them other alternatives than becoming involved with organized crime.  The interesting point that Sanchez raises here is the assumption that the poor are predisposed to engage in criminal activities, on account of their poverty.  Obviously, this is not working because Mexico’s security crisis is deepening.  Sanchez suggests that the government should be invested in strengthening its criminal justice system instead.   The second major pillar of government security strategies - going back to 2006 - is the militarization of security and the use of the police to fight drug cartels.  There are at least two major problems with this strategy.  The first is that fighting the cartels and going after their leaders causes organized crime groups to fragment and multiply while, at the same time, having to diversify their income generating criminal activities.  This leads to more groups engaged in preying on the domestic population through extortion and human trafficking. The second problem is that the military commits human rights abuses in their own right, often by targeting sectors of the population (the poor) who are associated with criminal activity.   The point that is not discussed here but impossible to ignore is the military’s involvement with narco-trafficking and organized crime in general.  This is part of the story of Ayotzinapa, for example. 

Here is a meme to go along with these notes:  



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