Looking at violence in Mexico with clear eyes

Images and opinions about contemporary violence in Mexico today are plentiful, almost as much as the illegal substances that pay for that violence. Crime seems to be the one fact of Mexican reality that everyone can describe with certainty. Yet the precise contours of the current wave of murders remain clouded by the absence of reliable judicial investigations about specific acts of violence. It seems easier to talk about violence in the abstract sense, as if it was a “natural” characteristic of the country, than trying to look at it with an close, analytical eye.

The first step is to be aware of what we do not know. About the big narco bosses that are supposed to control everything, for example, very little is known that can be supported with solid evidence, because they are seldom tried in front of the public. The current levels of violence (by some estimates, 30,000 deaths in the last decade) probably reflect the competition between multiple organizations vying for control of consumption, production, and routes to ship the drugs into the United States. The violence seems barbaric (decapitations, mutilations, massacres) but also perversely deliberate. Bodies are found with messages attached to them, or displayed in ways meant to convey a message. These murders are often referred to as “executions,” suggesting that the victims were killed with a controlled use of force after their identification. YouTube videos, tweets, and chatrooms provide additional explanations and further warnings. Journalists are assassinated if they fail to cover these events in a way that satisfies the violent actors. The fluidity of betrayal and business opportunities preside over the current situation—the opposite of complete power attributed by myth to drug lords.

Evidence about all of this comes from the news, but is seldom confirmed by official investigations. The central problem today in Mexico is the almost complete lack of concern about the responsibility for individual crimes. Local police stop investigating homicides when the crime appears to be linked to drugs. After all, if the federal police does not take over the case (drug trafficking is a federal offense), the narcos themselves use violence against local police investigators—witness the recent murder of the officer in charge of investigating the death of an American citizen in the Rio Bravo. The result is that the overwhelming majority of homicides remain unsolved. The absence of a serious effort to adjudicate responsibilities reinforces the deep-seated belief among most Mexicans that impunity, not punishment, defines crime. The government of Felipe Calderón and a good part of the media implicitly justify this state of affairs by arguing that most of the victims of the violence are involved with drugs, and that, if they happened to be policemen or journalists, they must have collaborated with the narcos in some capacity: They had it coming, in other words, so why investigate?

This argument is beginning to face serious challenges: Human rights organizations claim that part of this violence comes from agents of the state. The number of complaints against the Army for human rights abuses is increasing rapidly. A few days ago, the Mexican Senate demanded that intelligence agencies look into allegations that a number of homicides are operations of “social cleansing” committed by vigilante groups against young men who are suspicious because they lack schools or jobs. It is becoming clear that the lack of justice is in itself a crime of the state, and that the large number of “executions” hides a lot of different forms of violence. Mexico is facing, in other words, not only the public health effects of the thriving business of illegal drugs, but also a massive human rights question that will haunt governments for years to come.

In the universities and research centers on both sides of the border, we have an obligation to think clearly about the problem and avoid the simple answers that so easily emerge out of sensationalized views of Mexico. One good example is the Project on Reforming the Administration of Justice in Mexico, run by the Trans-Border Institute of the University of San Diego, and their invaluable efforts to establish facts, inform policy, and keep an intelligent discussion going. My own research is about the practices and narratives that form the historical antecedents for the contemporary public impact of crime in Mexico. At Columbia in general, the Journalism School, SIPA and the Institute of Latin American Studies regularly host research and discussions on these themes. However, as always, it is the interest and the questions of students that will drive the conversation and turn into something more. Our joint work as scholars can contribute to that of human rights organizations and brave Mexican journalists in bringing to light the dangerous consequences of the use of force without the support of justice.

The author is a professor in the department of history. He is the director of Columbia University’s Institute of Latin American Studies.

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