Mexico: The Other Side of the Wall

I would file this article by Alejandro Lerch, Police Protection Rackets and Political Modernity in Mexico , as an example of the geopolitics of development in Mexico. Central to the geopolitics of development in Mexico are processes of state formation in which the development of state capacity plays a central role and, of course, integral to state formation are the development of the police, which provide the political and administrative underpinnings for capitalist development.  From this point of view, to draw on Lerch’s review of the critical literature on policing, “The police is the tool allowing for the unequal distribution of resources and skills required by the capitalist division of labor” (3), its main functions being to quell riots, protect property and break up strikes.  From the point of view of Stuart Schrader, the police provide the means through which dominant groups can avoid negotiating a social contract with subaltern groups.  In place of that, the poli...

Criminal Violence in Guanajuato This is an article by Tomas Andres and Michael Carvallo in Small Wars Journal discussing the recent upsurge of violence in Guanajuato, Mexico.  This is rooted in inter-cartel violence exacerbated by the kingpin strategy pursued by the United States and Mexico.  This multiplied criminal organizations by creating struggles for secession and splinter groups who turned to other criminal activities besides narco-trafficking to make money.  In the state of Guanajuato - far from the U.S. border - this is through natural resource theft and attempting to control the domestic drug market, largely with respect to meth. The article makes important points about the importance of each of these:  • Gasoline:  “The theft of Pemex fuel for sale on the black market is a major criminal racket in Mexico, causing over one billion USD in losses to the state oil company at its peak in 2016.[67] According to organized crime expert Dr. Guadalupe Correa-...

  Migration   Reading quite a lot about migration and drug trafficking issues between the United States and Mexico.  I will address each of these in turn. First, migration.  A lot of migration is from Central America, Venezuela, Haiti, and Cuba - with Mexico as a transit country.  Mexico devotes significant resources to migrant interdiction, as the New Humanitarian Reports. Migrants crossing from Guatemala to the Mexican city of Tapachula must procedure a migrant permit to travel through Mexico.  If not, they will be subject to expulsion as security check points run by the Mexican National Guard.  The wait for a permit can be up to 6 months - too long for many migrants to endure.  Beyond the border, migrants are subject to abuse and harassment at the hands of security forces, including the National Guard and organized crime group, who kidnap and ransom them or use them for their human trafficking operations. Once they reach the border, the m...

This is from an article in Latin American Perspectives ( State Violence, Capital Accumulation and Globalization of Crime ) which is focused on interpreting Ayotzinapa in the context of extractivist forms of domination in Mexico.  There is a history to this, which is very much embedded in the rural education school of Ayotzinapa, a legacy of the Mexican Revolution and agrarian reform that was heavily repressed by the Mexican state.  The lineage of Ayotzinapa goes by the Zapta’s liberation army of the South.  Ruben Jaramillo was a member of this army and a leader of the Agrarian Labor Party of Morelos. Jamamillo’s assassination by the Mexican military in 1962 helped to spark and armed movement among the peasantry of Guerrero in the 1960s and a dirty war of repression by the Mexican military in 1970s.  An important episode in this conflict was the guerilla kidnapping of PRI Senator Rueben Figueroa Figueroa, inspiring an antagonism between the Figueroa’s and peasant acti...

I am intrigued with a column by Luis Hernandez in La Jornada , about the lady Iguala, aka, Maria de Los Angeles Abarca Pineda, who was the wife of the mayor of Iguala when the 43 students of Ayotzinapa went missing in 2014.  She came from fairly humble origins - her parents being market vendors. But the family also sold drugs locally.  Pineda’s brothers all became narcos and three of them were killed in their line of work.  The surviving brother, Salvador, is thought to be the chief of the drug organization Guerreros Unidos, who allegedly played a role in the disappearance of the 43 normalistas.  Much of the fortune of Pineda and her husband, Jose Luis Albarca, came from the drug money being reinvested into licit enterprises. The couple owned more than 60 properties, the crown jewel of their throne being the ownership of a shopping mall outside Iguala.  Hernandez notes that  Cuando en mayo de 2009 la entonces Secretaría de Seguridad Pública federal anun...

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...

  While Mexico is failing to come to terms with water shortages, the country is also becoming increasingly militarized.  The government of AMLO has done an about face by first of all establishing the national guard that would be subject to civil authority and then by transferring authority of the National Guard to the Secretary of Defense - or Sedena - so that the guard is now under military command.  AMLO says that he does not need the authority of the Mexican Congress to do this and can transfer control by means of a presidential order, but he would like this arrangement to be constitutionalized so that it could not be reversed by whoever his successor might be.   The key security rationale is the corruption of civilian bureaucracies, which was the story, supposedly, with the disbandment of the federal police with the establishment of the National Guard and the dissolution of previous federal police forces in the wake of corruption scandals - the most notable ...