Mexican Drug War Research Articles

Firms and Labor in Times of Violence: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of violence resulting from drug trafficking on manufacturing firms in an emerging economy. By utilizing comprehensive longitudinal data spanning all of Mexico from 2005 to 2010, and employing an instrumental variable strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variations in the homicide rate during the outbreak of drug violence, the analysis reveals a significant negative effect of violence on plant output, employment, product scope, and capacity utilization. The negative effect on employment is entirely driven by blue-collar employment and concentrated among low-wage, female-intensive firms. Further, consistent with a violent-environment-induced blue-collar labor-supply shock, the results show positive effects on blue-collar wages and negative effects on white-collar wages at the firm level. Output resilience to violence is also shown to be lower among labor-intensive, domestically selling and sourcing, less diversified firms. These findings show the rise of drug violence has a significant negative effect on development of domestic industrial capability in Mexico and shed light on the characteristics of the most affected firms and the channels through which they are affected.

Escaping Precariousness: Criminal Occupational Mobility of Homicide Inmates During the Mexican Drug War

Escaping Precariousness: Criminal Occupational Mobility of Homicide Inmates During the Mexican Drug War

Export side effects of wars on organized crime: The case of Mexico

This paper finds that law enforcement interventions during the Mexican Drug War (MDW) hindered local export growth. We leverage exogenous variation in drug enforcement from the close election of mayors affiliated with the national ruling party during the MDW. Firms servicing the same markets but exogenously exposed to drug enforcement experienced lower export growth. The MDW decreased capital investments, eroding productivity gains in capital-intensive activities.

Revisiting Gandhi’s Philosophy: A Quest for Global Peace

More than three dozen conflicts are presently ongoing throughout the world. Of these, six have been converted into major wars, viz.: Yemeni Civil War, Mexican Drug War, Afghanistan Conflict, Myanmar Conflict, Ethiopian Civil War and the Russia-Ukraine War. Innocent citizens of these countries, including women and children, are being brutally killed in these conflicts. War leads to disaster. And after the holocaust one tends to preserve what is left behind and creates, once again, what has been destroyed. Ultimately, the end sufferers of the war going countries are its guiltless citizens. Solution to the above-mentioned violent conflicts lies in the Gandhian philosophy based on its four major principles, viz.: satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), satyagraha and sarvodaya. There is little scope for greed, lie, hatred, and urge for power, violence and possessiveness in Gandhian philosophy. After all when shall man realize that he is not immortal. Man has to realize that the mentality for more than required material possessiveness is the root cause of poverty and starvation. Wealth earned throughout life cannot be carried after death. The aforesaid chaos and conflict, which the world faces today is because man is running blindly in quest for the attainment of material gains and for the acquisition of absolute power. This selfish quest for money and power attracts jealousy and hatred from all corners ultimately resulting into grievous conflicts. And, therefore, Gandhi propagated in favour of non-possessiveness and detachment from material things. The world has had enough of bloodshed for the establishment of a so called just order, i.e., based on freedom and democracy, especially after the II World War. It is high time these conflicting countries realize that peace is indivisible and so is freedom and both together co-exist and are indivisible too.

The War on Drugs Turns 50

A discussion of major developments since the war on drugs launched in 1971 including mass incarceration, the overdose crisis, and the Mexican drug war. Challenges are described and solutions considered.

The deadly protection trap: the ‘instrumentalisation’ of fundamental human right norms by state actors in the Mexican Drug War

ABSTRACT Despite a proclaimed strengthening of international human rights norms on an international level, the fundamental human ‘right to life’ is not always able to act as a barrier against state violence and militarization on national levels. As illustrated by Operation Michoacán, which in retrospective marked the start of the Mexican ‘war’ on drugs, the right to life has been interpreted and implemented by domestic state actors in ambiguous and often very counterproductive ways. Specifically, the argument to protect innocent citizens’ lives against drug criminality served as a major justification for the use of lethal force by the military in Mexico. While norm compliance and so-called norm ‘localisation’ processes have already received considerable scholarly attention, the possibility that state authorities evoke fundamental human rights norms for legitimizing their own violent practices (= norm instrumentalisation) has so far not formed part of the academic debate. This paper bridges this gap by conducting an in-depth discourse analysis of key state actor’s statements surrounding the start of Operation Michoacán.

Firms and Labor in Times of Violence: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

I study how industrial development and employment in an emerging economy are affected by urban violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and exploiting plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in homicide rates during the outbreak of drug-trade related violence in Mexico, commonly referred to as the Mexican Drug War, I show that a violent environment has a significant negative impact on manufacturing plants’ output, product scope, employment, and capacity utilization. The impact is very heterogeneous among plants. Studying within and cross-plant heterogeneity points to two underlying channels through which the Drug War affects firms: violence induced reduction in local demand and violence induced drop in labor supply participation. The output sensitivity of plants to a violent conflict increases in less diversified, locally selling and sourcing plants. The employment sensitivity increases with lower wages and a higher share of unskilled female workers. The results show both channels co-exist, and by reallocating resources from smaller, local, and female-intensive plants toward bigger and more diversified ones, the rise of drug violence has significant distortive effects on domestic industrial development in Mexico.

Identifying Export Side Effects of Law Enforcement During the Mexican Drug War

Identifying Export Side Effects of Law Enforcement During the Mexican Drug War

The Effects of Violent Crime on Labor Decisions: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

The Effects of Violent Crime on Labor Decisions: Evidence from the Mexican Drug War

\u201cComplete Labelling\u201d and Domestic Prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity

Fair labelling is an established principle of criminal justice that scrutinises the way that States use language in labelling criminal defendants and their conduct. I argue that “complete labelling” is a related but separate principle which has not received any explicit attention from commentators. Whereas fair labelling focuses, usually, on the protection of defendant’s rights, the principle of complete labelling explains and justifies whether the labels attached appropriately represent the nature and scale of the wrong done to the community. As a case study, I apply this lens in the context of regional (U.S./Mexican) criminal justice responses to crimes against humanity perpetrated by “drug-cartels” in the context of the Mexican Drug War. Successive administrations in Mexico and the U.S. have tended to charge cartel leaders (and/or their political supporters) with so-called “transnational crimes” (for example, drug-trafficking, money-laundering, bribery/corruption). This is despite the fact that many of the most powerful cartels have controlled territory, attacked entire towns, carried out acts of terror, and disappeared thousands of people. The principle of complete labelling is useful in normative terms because it helps in the critical examination of a State’s prosecutorial practices, exposing problems that might otherwise be missed. In relation to the case study discussed, for example, a focus on complete labelling helps to expose the regional prosecutorial policy as either an unjustified exercise in selectivity or, at worst, an expression of collective denial. After considering certain counteracting reflexions which speak to some of the foundational anxieties of international criminal justice, the article concludes that domestic prosecutions for crimes against humanity in the context of drug-cartels may, sometimes, be justified.

The Ghost Newspaper: Fake Journalism in the Mexican Drug War

During the 2010s, Tamaulipas, a border state in northern Mexico, became a “silenced zone” for journalism as a result of the Mexican Drug War. In 2016, during an international theatre festival in the port of Tampico, the Stultifera Navis Institutom collective intervened at the headquarters of what used to be one of the most important journals in the city. The building, located in downtown Tampico, had been abandoned for thirty-three years. For three days, we brought the newspaper “back to life,” using only fake news. This essay recovers the experience of this multidisciplinary site-specific intervention by casting a critical look at its theoretical foundation in Jacques Derrida’s concept of “Hauntology” and Georges Didi-Huberman’s method of “Anachronism.” Engaging deontological debates within media practice and the “virtuality” concept in literature, it analyzes the use of fiction as an act of discursive rebellion. Finally, “spectrality” and Aby Warburg’s notion of “images in history” are problematized with a decolonial perspective, concluding with a reflection on the theatrical character of historical resurgences through an analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Efectos de la violencia sobre las tasas de emigración interna municipal en México: 1995-2015

This article explores the relationship between the increase of violence in Mexico and the rising level of internal municipal emigration before, during, and after the so-called Mexican Drug War, which started in 2007. Through a linear regression and multinomial logistic models, it is shown that violence has had a positive and significant effect on the increase of internal emigration rates, particularly in municipalities with the highest internal emigration rates during the 2005-2010 period. In addition, the effect of violence tendsto be greater on female emigration rates compared to males. This indicates the increase of forced internal displacement in Mexico due to violence in recent years. However, more studies are needed to shed light on forced displacement and the effects of high violence levels on internal and international migration.

Butterflies, organized crime, and “sad trees”: A critique of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Program in a context of rural violence

• UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) zoning generates frontier regions that are fertile ground for Organized Crime. • Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve Program of Ecosystem Services incentivizes local patrols to fight Organized Crime. • Crime is associated with NAFTA’s avocado market in the MAB area. • Acknowledging Traditional Ecological practices inside this reserve is necessary. The conservation of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is rearranging the rural landscapes of Michoacán and Estado de México, Mexico. Based on ethnographic and historical data, and combining insights from the green security and neoliberal conservation literatures, this paper examines how monarch butterfly conservation unfolds in an area shaped by a recent designation as a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve as well as increasing violence associated with the Mexican Drug War. I argue that these processes are deeply interconnected. I show how the conservation program, and the broader neoliberal project of which it is part, have undermined social control of land by converting communally managed forests into a supposedly human-free reserve. This has transformed the region into a frontier zone that facilitates the increased presence of organized crime groups and devolves responsibility for forest security to local residents. I show how the monarch reserve’s core and buffer land boundary, and the human and nonhuman divide underpinning it, reconfigures authority in ways that deepen the control of organized crime, facilitate the expansion of il/licit economies, and undermine sustainable community forest management. While international conservation actors view the reserve as the best strategy for preventing the disappearance of the monarch's migratory phenomenon, my analysis concludes that the MAB has increased the risk of disappearance of both its butterfly and human inhabitants. As an alternative to conventional conservation strategies designed to separate human and nonhuman nature, principles from nondualist traditional ecological ethics can inform better pathways for protecting both the region’s humans and nonhumans.

Are voters too afraid to tackle corruption? Survey and experimental evidence from Mexico

AbstractAre individuals in violent contexts reluctant to tackle corruption for fear of future violence? Or does violence mobilize them to fight corruption? We investigate these questions looking at the effects of fear and violence stemming from the Mexican Drug War on attitudes toward corruption. We conducted two surveys before the 2012 Mexican presidential election. First, as part of a nationally representative survey, we find a positive correlation between fear of violence and willingness to accept corruption in exchange for lower levels of violence. To disentangle causal effects, we conducted a follow-up survey experiment in Greater Mexico City where we manipulated fear over the Drug War. We find that individuals within this context are not easily scared. Those who received a common fear-inducing manipulation do not report higher levels of fear and are less willing to tolerate corruption. Conversely, we find strong evidence that individuals who have been victims of crime are more likely to report both higher levels of fear and willingness to accept corruption if it lowers violence. Our findings suggest that voters are more strategic and resilient in the face of violence than many extant theories of political behavior suggest.

Fuerza Civil: Capital Accumulation and Social Control in Nuevo León, Mexico

Policing is central to the promotion and enforcement of neoliberalization efforts across the globe. The militarization and police reform associated with the Mexican drug war must be viewed in this context. Examining Nuevo León’s highly militarized semiprivate police force, the Fuerza Civil, reveals that political-economic objectives are inextricably linked to policing reform in the Mexican border state and highlights the role of the city’s industrial elite in these processes.La vigilancia policial es fundamental para la promoción y aplicación de los esfuerzos de neoliberalización en todo el mundo. La militarización y la reforma policial asociadas a la guerra del gobierno mexicano contra las drogas deben ser consideradas en este contexto. Un análisis de la fuerza policial semiprivada y altamente militarizada de Nuevo León, conocida como la Fuerza Civil, revela que los objetivos político-económicos están inextricablemente vinculados a la reforma policial en este estado fronterizo mexicano y destaca el papel de la élite industrial de la ciudad en estos procesos.

Caught in the crossfire: reactions to persistent mortality salience

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to draw on terror management theory (TMT) to explore the impact of pervasive mortality cues on consumer behaviour as a result of residing in a community ravaged by escalating violence.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative analysis of 27 in-depth interviews of consumers living in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico during the height of the Mexican drug war provides insight into their coping strategies and consumption.FindingsLiving under such conditions results in unrelenting mortality salience (MS), as well as the adoption of consumption-related coping strategies that can conflict with cultural worldviews and threaten self-esteem. The normalization of coping strategies severely strains worldviews. Consumers manage their ensuing intrapersonal evaluative tension by developing consumption safe havens and through identity fragmentation. Moreover, permanent proximal defences result from persistent MS.Research limitations/implicationsAlthough cross-sectional and idiosyncratic to the Mexican culture, the findings broaden TMT by suggesting that consumers facing relentless MS experience altered brand meanings and social interactions, as they were reluctant to acquire prestige brands, while indicating an increase in the value placed on relationships over possessions.Practical implicationsMarketers can help consumers alleviate their death-related anxiety by eliminating telemarketing campaigns, promoting online shopping, using unique customer identification numbers and investing in visible security measures such as gates, security cameras, and guards.Originality/valueThis exploratory study provides a preliminary theoretical framework for consumers’ reactions to persistent MS.

Breaking sad: drug-related homicides and mental well-being in Mexico

This paper examines the effect of drug-related homicide rates on mental well-being among adults in Mexico, amid a conflict known as the “Mexican Drug War,” during the period 2006–2012. The empirical strategy consists, on the one hand, of a multilevel analysis for mental well-being outcomes at the individual level and, on the other hand, of a difference-in-difference approach for aggregate mental well-being variables at the municipality level. Results suggest no effect of violence on clinical and non-clinical mental well-being for men and on clinical mental well-being for women. Yet, findings indicate a statistically significant effect between 3.5 and 4.9 percentage points of drug-related violence on non-clinical mental well-being of women in Mexico. These results are robust to a variety of specifications, falsification tests and data sources of drug-related homicide rates.

Scarcity without Leviathan: The Violent Effects of Cocaine Supply Shortages in the Mexican Drug War

This paper asks whether scarcity increases violence in markets that lack a centralized authority. We construct a model in which, by raising prices, scarcity fosters violence. Guided by our model, we examine this effect in the Mexican cocaine trade. At a monthly frequency, scarcity created by cocaine seizures in Colombia, Mexico's main cocaine supplier, increases violence in Mexico. The effects are larger in municipalities near the United States, with multiple cartels and with strong support for PAN (the incumbent party). Between 2006 and 2009 the decline in cocaine supply from Colombia could account for 10% to 14% of the increase in violence in Mexico.

Household responses to escalating violence in Mexico

ABSTRACT Despite catastrophic fallout from the Mexican drug war, headlines fail to capture the full cost to civilians. Using three waves of survey data on the same households, conducted between 2002 to 2012, we show that households adjusted both their consumption habits and altered their behaviour in response to increased homicide rates in their municipality. We demonstrate that higher murder rates are associated with households reducing expenditure on visible commodities and with individuals avoiding carrying valuables and going out at night. The spending changes occurred mainly for middle- and upper-income households, while the behavioural adjustments happened mainly in households that were poorer or headed by a female. Assuming that household behaviour was in equilibrium before the escalation in violence, these adjustments represent a non-obvious, but significant, welfare loss which should be considered in any account of the costs and benefits of the drug war.

Not Just a Narcosaint: Santa Muerte as Matron Saint of the Mexican Drug War

Santa Muerte is a Mexican folk saint who personifies death. Santa Muerte has been depicted as a narcosaint, that is to say a saint propitiated only by those who belong to drug cartels, in particular by the Mexican State. As a consequence, the Mexican army, under orders from the Mexican State, has obliterated thousands of shrines dedicated to the folk saint across the country. However, as we evince, the popular figure has followers in all camps involved in the drug war. Both narcos and those who fight them, prisoners and prison guards, venerate the folk saint, turning to her for spiritual favours, protection and even to predict death. This diverse group of people, although divided by their differing positions in the drug war, turns to her for parallel reasons, to explain, predict and control events. As such, Santa Muerte rather than being a narcosaint should be considered the Matron Saint of the Drug War.