Abstract
This article explains why some indigenous communities in Mexico have been able to resist drug cartels’ attempts to take over their local governments, populations, and territories while others have not. While indigenous customary laws and traditions provide communal accountability mechanisms that make it harder for narcos to take control, they are insufficient. Using a paired comparison of two indigenous regions in the highlands of Guerrero and Chihuahua—both ideal zones for drug cultivation and traffic—we show that the communities most able to resist narco conquest are those that have a history of social mobilization, expanding village-level indigenous customary traditions into regional ethnic autonomy regimes. By scaling up local accountability practices regionally and developing translocal networks of cooperation, indigenous movements have been able to construct mechanisms of internal control and external protection that enable communities to deter the narcos from corrupting local authorities, recruiting young men, and establishing criminal governance regimes through force.
Highlights
After sixteen years of inter-cartel wars for control over drug-trafficking routes, drug violence in Mexico rose to new levels following the 2006 federal intervention, when President Felipe Calderón declared war on the cartels and deployed the military to the country’s most conflictive regions
These results show that the deterrent effect of both indigenous customary laws and traditions and of social mobilization happen when social movements scale up local indigenous institutions to the regional level, and that this effect may be prevalent beyond the eastern Guerrero highlands
We have argued that while village-level indigenous customary laws and traditions can be invaluable institutional instruments for the provision of public goods, they are insufficient to resist narco conquest in Mexico
Summary
Indigenous Resistance to Criminal Governance: Why Regional Ethnic Autonomy Institutions Protect Communities from Narco Rule in Mexico. Using a paired comparison of two indigenous regions in the highlands of Guerrero and Chihuahua—both ideal zones for drug cultivation and traffic—we show that the communities most able to resist narco conquest are those that have a history of social mobilization, expanding village-level indigenous customary traditions into regional ethnic autonomy regimes. By scaling up local accountability practices regionally and developing translocal networks of cooperation, indigenous movements have been able to construct mechanisms of internal control and external protection that enable communities to deter the narcos from corrupting local authorities, recruiting young men, and establishing criminal governance regimes through force. We develop our argument through a paired comparison of two similar indigenous highland regions: the Montaña/Costa Chica region of the southern state of Guerrero and the Sierra Tarahumara in the northern state of Chihuahua These are two leading states for poppy cultivation and strategic corridors for drug trafficking, where cartels have been engaged in fierce turf wars. We suggest, might be a major omitted variable in this emerging debate
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