Threat Posed by Mounting Vigilantism in Mexico
Authored by Dr. George W. Grayson.
September 2011
75 Pages
Brief Synopsis
Until the 1980s, Mexico enjoyed relative freedom from violence. Ruthless drug cartels existed, but they usually abided by informal rules of conduct hammered out between several capos and representatives of the dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country until the 1990s. Relying on bribes, the desperados pursued their illicit activities with the connivance of authorities. In return for the legal authorities turning a blind eye, drug dealers behaved discretely, shunned high-tech weapons, deferred to public figures, spurned kidnapping, and even appeared with governors at their children’s weddings.
Unlike their Colombian counterparts, Mexico’s barons did not seek elective office. In addition, they did not sell drugs within the country, corrupt children, target innocent people, engage in kidnapping, or invade the turf or product-line (marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc.) of competitors. The situation was sufficiently fluid so that should a local police or military unit refuse to cooperate with a cartel, the latter would simply transfer its operations to a nearby municipality where they could clinch the desired arrangement.
Three key events in the 1980s and 1990s changed the “live and let live” ethos that enveloped illegal activities. Mexico became the new avenue for Andean cocaine shipped to the United States after the U.S. military and law-enforcement authorities sharply reduced its flow into Florida and other South Atlantic states. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect on January 1, 1994, greatly increased economic activities throughout the continent. Dealers often hid cocaine and other drugs among the merchandise that moved northward through Nuevo Laredo, El Paso, Tijuana, and other portals. The change in routes gave rise to Croesus-like profits for cocaine traffickers--a phenomenon that coincided with an upsurge of electoral victories.
Largely unexamined amid this narco-mayhem are vigilante activities. With federal resources aimed at drug traffickers and local police more often a part of the problem than a part of the solution, vigilantes are stepping into the void. Suspected criminals who run afoul of these vigilantes endure the brunt of a skewed version of justice that enjoys a groundswell of support.
Summary
On November 23, 2004, citizens in the impoverished Mexico City neighborhood of Tláhuac attacked three men who were ensconced in an unmarked car outside of the Popol Vuh primary school. Fearful that the strangers were seeking to molest the youngsters, a mob that quickly grew to 2,000 people dragged them from the vehicle, bound them, and began to beat them. Although badly injured, one of the presumed predators escaped. The other two were splashed with gasoline and set ablaze, killing them.
It turned out that the victims, who brandished their credentials, were federal detectives on the hunt for drug dealers attempting to corrupt the students. As television cameras and radio journalists disseminated the ghastly scene throughout the country, the officers’ pathetic cries for assistance went unheeded until riot police turned up 3 hours and 35 minutes after the incident erupted. A squad of municipal police located less than a kilometer from the site of the vigilantism remained in their stationhouse.
The mayor and other public officials tried to cover up the debacle: One excuse was that guerrillas belonging to the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces had spearheaded the bloodshed; another explanation was that narrow streets and forbidding terrain prevented helicopters from landing at ground zero—even though choppers belonging to television networks managed to set down. Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election, alluded to the inevitability of indigenous people, recent migrants to the capital, exercising traditional “uses and customs” (“usos y costumbres”), that is, taking the law into their own hands. In one message, he said: “[I]t’s better not to get involved in the traditions and beliefs of [native] people.”
After the Tláhuac episode, the media began to highlight other cases of “lynchings” (“linchamientos”), a generic term for crowd violence against individuals suspected of committing criminal acts in their communities. “Vigilantes’ Fatal Fury in Mexico,” “Vigilante Justice Spreads across Mexico,” and “The More Deadly Side of Growing Vigilantism in Mexico”—these were captions of some of the media articles suggesting that so-called “rough justice” was surging in the country. The author reached the same conclusion, believing that President Felipe Calderón’s no-holds-barred war against cartels had contributed to an atmosphere propitious for citizens to take the law into their own hands. However, most reports are extrapolated from one or two linchamientos to argue that Mexico suffered from a tsunami of grassroots assaults on purported wrongdoers.
Little reliable systematic information existed on the number and circumstances of attacks, with several exceptions—Carlos M. Vilas, an Argentine scholar living in self-exile in Mexico had begun to collect and analyze data. Meanwhile, sociologist Raúl Rodríguez Guillén, a distinguished professor and researcher at Mexico City’s Autonomous University of Azcapotzalco followed in his footsteps. It is fortunate that Professor Rodríguez also edits El Cotidiano, an academic journal devoted to social problems. In various issues of the publication, Dr. Rodríguez and colleagues have explored vigilantism. Not only was he kind enough to share a collection of his writings, but he took time from an extremely busy schedule to provide invaluable guidance on the topic and to encourage the author to collect as many cases of so-called “rough justice” as possible.
Meanwhile, Dr. Luis de la Barreda Solórzano, director general of Mexico’s Citizens Institute for the Study of Insecurity, provided his astute insights into the causes of Tláhuac and other examples of otherwise docile individuals torturing, or even killing, purported criminals. He emphasized that these men (few women are involved) are offered no chance to answer the charges or appeal the ad hoc verdicts against them.
This monograph contains the author’s preliminary findings, some of the most important of which are that: (1) evidence fails to support the tsunami theory of linchamientos; (2) these actions more often take place in or near urban settings than in the countryside; (3) uses and customs seldom, if ever, account for attacks on perceived miscreants; (4) the conflict between the government and drug lords has not increased the number of lynchings; (5) in addition to revenge, “community justice” has a cathartic effect on mob members who may suffer poverty, joblessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, and broken homes; and (6) the anonymity of the attackers enables most to act with impunity against wrongdoers; the police and authorities may turn a blind eye to the attackers or even cooperate with them.
By adding to the number of cases identified, it is the author’s hope that this monograph will assist others who embark on research on one of the most fascinating subjects, both in Mexico and in scores of other countries.
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