Violence and crime in Latin America: Mexico’s case
A preliminary exploration of the current condition of Latin America shows an unambiguous landscape: 9% of the global population lives within its borders, but it accounts for the 33% of the world's homicides rate. So, it is Latin America the world's most violent region; and accordingly, crime and violence are two of the biggest concerns for their citizens.
Their consequences are enduring and serious, as well as the measures carried out by all sort of authorities to solve them. Both, crime, and the fear it engenders foster deep changes in individuals and institutional behaviors, distort public priorities, reinforce old authoritarian conducts, and deepen prior forms of exclusion. It is also apparent the way in which increasing crime rates have impacted and affected the relations among countries, especially there where organized crime is involved.
Therefore, it is clear that crime and violence have emerged as one of the central challenges of our time, raising issues of urban governance and citizen security. In this regard, further analysis needs to be done concerning how both crime and violence intertwine with the proliferation of discourses and practices for security, fostering forms of military governance and understandings on the limits of the citizens’ rights.
Mexico’s current situation is exemplary in this regard. The intensification and multiplication of homicides, and all forms of criminality since 2007, especially stimulated by the War on Drugs (WoD) implemented by Felipe Calderon [1], have produced an extended sense of vulnerability and decay of the public life. In terms of the implemented policies to tackle the problem, both the militarization of the police, and the transformation of the military in an additional police body have been examples of Mexican elites’ preferred approach.
To this extent, the militarization and the proliferating criminality in Mexico have produced a geography of hot spots called plazas (squares), distributed across Mexico’s territory, encouraging constant government interventions, and delimiting imaginary spaces of fear, violence and legality. Simultaneously, there has been a physical propagation of no-go zones, internal boundaries, and multifarious landscapes of division, destruction, abandonment, separation and resistance.
So, at different scales and within different geographies, from individuals' bodies to national spaces, the recent violence trend in Mexico and the WoD, as a form to target crime and specific forms of anti-social behavior, have mobilized a series of affects, relations and processes, authorizing forms of perception and action, changing in ways not yet assessed the way power is exerted, and how political action is engaged.
Most important yet is the lack of results. In overall terms, violence and crime remain at the same levels in the country without significant changes. Thus, there are many important issues at stake in this matter, so that it is urgent to keep reflecting upon the forms violence takes in the region, its consequences and costs, especially regarding the future of the region’s democratization, and the preference given to military approaches to deal with the increased rates of criminality.
[1] Felipe Calderon was the former Mexico’s president (2006-2012
