A soldier holds his gun while patrolling from a vehicle in Morelia in Mexico's Michoacan state. AP Photo/Carlos Jasso. All rights reserved.
Mexico’s so-called war on drugs has not ended. While no longer part of the government’s official discourse, the logic of war continues to pervade the state’s militarized strategies against criminal organizations. Most importantly, this war continues to be felt amongst individuals, families, and local communities that endure its consequences in the form of extortions, kidnappings, disappearances, torture, and forced displacements. More than “collateral effects,” these various forms of violence and its victims are at the center of Mexico’s ongoing war.
To the extent that it has fundamentally impacted the life and wellbeing of thousands of citizens, this war cannot longer be understood- if it ever was- as one waged by the state against criminal organizations. The number of massacres committed by criminal organizations with the complicity or neglect of state actors against unarmed civilians –including immigrants- speaks to a reality with roots and ramifications that we are only beginning to understand. Violence’s geographical reach and its levels of brutality confirm Mexico is enduring a war, albeit of a different kind. Scholars like Andreas Schedler have suggested the term “economic civil war”; others have proposed “narcoviolencia” or “non-conventional war”. A civil war, I would say, against and amongst citizens, no matter where they stand on the “drug business.”
