Mexico's Human Rights Crisis

Mexico's Human Rights Crisis
Author: Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2019-01-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812251075

Lawless elements are ascendant in Mexico, as evidenced by the operations of criminal cartels engaged in human and drug trafficking, often with the active support or acquiescence of government actors. The sharp increase in the number of victims of homicide, disappearances and torture over the past decade is unparalleled in the country's recent history. According to editors Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz and Barbara Frey, the "war on drugs" launched in 2006 by President Felipe Calderón and the corrupting influence criminal organizations have on public institutions have empowered both state and nonstate actors to operate with impunity. Impunity, they argue, is the root cause that has enabled a human-rights crisis to flourish, creating a climate of generalized violence that is carried out, condoned, or ignored by the state and precluding any hope for justice. Mexico's Human Rights Crisis offers a broad survey of the current human rights issues that plague Mexico. Essays focus on the human rights consequences that flow directly from the ongoing "war on drugs" in the country, including violence aimed specifically at women, and the impunity that characterizes the government's activities. Contributors address the violation of the human rights of migrants, in both Mexico and the United States, and cover the domestic and transnational elements and processes that shape the current human rights crisis, from the state of Mexico's democracy to the influence of rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the decisions of Mexico's National Supreme Court of Justice. Given the scope, the contemporaneity, and the gravity of Mexico's human rights crisis, the recommendations made in the book by the editors and contributors to curb the violence could not be more urgent. Contributors: Alejandro Anaya-Muñoz, Karina Ansolabehere, Ariadna Estévez, Barbara Frey, Janice Gallagher, Rodrigo Gutiérrez Rivas, Susan Gzesh, Sandra Hincapié, Catalina Pérez Correa, Laura Rubio Díaz-Leal, Natalia Saltalamacchia, Carlos Silva Forné, Regina Tamés, Javier Treviño-Rangel, Daniel Vázquez, Benjamin James Waddell.

Beyond the Drug War in Mexico

Beyond the Drug War in Mexico
Author: Wil G. Pansters
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-10-30
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1351580604

This volume aims to go beyond the study of developments within Mexico’s criminal world and their relationship with the state and law enforcement. It focuses instead on the nature and consequences of what we call the ‘totalization of the drug war’, and its projection on other domains which are key to understanding the nature of Mexican democracy. The volume brings together chapters written by distinguished scholars from Mexico and elsewhere who deal with three major questions: what are the main features of and forces behind the persistent militarization of the drug war in Mexico, and what are the main consequences for human rights and the rule of law; what are the consequences of these developments on the public sphere and, more specifically, on the functioning of the press and freedom of expression; and how do ordinary people engage with the effects of violence and insecurity within their communities, and which initiatives and practices of ‘justice from below’ do they develop to counter an increased sense of vulnerability, suffering and impunity?

Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's War on Drugs

Narratives of Vulnerability in Mexico's War on Drugs
Author: Raúl Diego Rivera Hernández
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2020-08-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030511448

This book explores the current human rights crisis created by the War on Drugs in Mexico. It focuses on three vulnerable communities that have felt the impacts of this war firsthand: undocumented Central American migrants in transit to the United States, journalists who report on violence in highly dangerous regions, and the mourning relatives of victims of severe crimes, who take collective action by participating in human rights investigations and searching for their missing loved ones. Analyzing contemporary novels, journalistic chronicles, testimonial works, and documentaries, the book reveals the political potential of these communities’ vulnerability and victimization portrayed in these fictional and non-fictional representations. Violence against migrants, journalists, and activists reveals an array of human rights violations affecting the right to safe transit across borders, freedom of expression, the right to information, and the right to truth and justice.

Mexico's Disappeared

Mexico's Disappeared
Author: Nik Steinberg
Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013
Genre: Disappeared persons
ISBN: 9781564329875

"This 176-page report documents nearly 250 "disappearances" during the administration of former President Felipe Calderón, from December 2006 to December 2012. In 149 of those cases, Human Rights Watch found compelling evidence of enforced disappearances, involving the participation of state agents."--Publisher's website.

Privilege at Play

Privilege at Play
Author: Hugo Ceron-Anaya
Publisher:
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0190931604

While most research on inequality focuses on impoverished communities, it often ignores how powerful communities and elites monopolize resources at the top of the social hierarchy. In Privilege at Play, Hugo Ceron-Anaya offers an intersectional analysis of Mexican elites to examine the ways affluent groups perpetuate dynamics of domination and subordination. Using ethnographic research conducted inside three exclusive golf clubs and in-depth interviews with upper-middle and upper-class golfers, as well as working-class employees, Ceron-Anaya focuses on the class, racial, and gender dynamics that underpin privilege in contemporary Mexico. His detailed analysis of social life and the organization of physical space further considers how the legacy of imperialism continues to determine practices of exclusion and how social hierarchies are subtlety reproduced through distinctions such as fashion and humor, in addition to the traditional indicators of wealth and class. Adding another dimension to the complex nature of social exclusion, Privilege at Play shows how elite social relations and spaces allow for the resource hoarding and monopolization that helps create and maintain poverty.

La Lucha

La Lucha
Author: Jon Sack
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 178168801X

A front-line human rights defender fighting murderous impunity in the Mexican borderlands The Mexican border state of Chihuahua and its city Juárez have become notorious the world over as hotbeds of violence. Drug cartel battles and official corruption result in more murders annually in Chihuahua than in wartorn Afghanistan. Thanks to a culture of impunity, 97 percent of the killings in Juárez go unsolved. Despite a climate of fear, a small group of human rights activists, exemplified by the Chihuahua lawyer and organizer Lucha Castro, works to identify the killers and their official enablers. This is the story of La Lucha, illustrated in beautiful and chilling comic book art, rendering in rich detail the stories of families ripped apart by disappearances and murders—especially gender-based violence—and the remarkably brave advocacy, protests, and investigations of ordinary citizens who turned their grief into resistance.

OD

OD
Author: Nancy D. Campbell
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262357488

The history of an unnatural disaster—drug overdose—and the emergence of naloxone as a social and technological solution. For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys—an ugly death awaiting social deviants—neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose prevention has become the unlikely object of a social movement, powered by the miracle drug naloxone. In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned—and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and “reversal” after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction. Liberated from emergency room protocols and distributed in take-home kits to non-medical professionals, it also became a tool of empowerment. After recounting the prehistory of naloxone—the early treatment of OD as a problem of poisoning, the development of nalorphine (naloxone's predecessor), the idea of “reanimatology”—Campbell describes how naloxone emerged as a tool of harm reduction. She reports on naloxone use in far-flung locations that include post-Thatcherite Britain, rural New Mexico, and cities and towns in Massachusetts. Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists—whom she calls the “protagonists” of her story—Campbell tells a story of saving lives amid the complex, difficult conditions of an unfolding unnatural disaster.

Undeniable Atrocities

Undeniable Atrocities
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2016
Genre: Disappeared persons
ISBN: 9781940983622

"Since the Mexican government escalated its war on organized crime at the end of 2006, over 150,000 Mexicans have been intentionally murdered. Countless thousands of others have been tortured; no one knows how many have disappeared. Caught between government forces and organized crime cartels, the Mexican people have suffered as atrocities and impunity reign. Based on three years of research, over 100 interviews, and previously unreleased government documents, this report finds a reasonable basis to believe that government forces and members of criminal cartels have perpetrated crimes against humanity in Mexico. The report comprehensively examines why there has been so little justice for atrocity crimes, and finds the main answers in political obstruction. Given the lack of political will to end impunity, new approaches must be taken. The report argues for a series of institutional changes, most importantly the creation of an internationalized investigative body, based inside Mexico, with powers to independently investigate and prosecute atrocity crimes."--Page 4 of cover.

Disappearances in Mexico

Disappearances in Mexico
Author: Silvana Mandolessi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-10-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781032196619

This volume presents an interdisciplinary analysis of the practice of disappearances in Mexico, from the period of the so-called 'dirty war' to the current crisis of disappearances associated with the country's 'war on drugs', during which more than 80,000 people have disappeared. The volume brings together contributions by distinguished scholars from Mexico, Argentina and Europe, who focus their chapters on four broad axes of enquiry. In Part I, chapters examine the phenomenon of disappearances in its historical and present-day forms, and the struggles for memory around the disappeared in Mexico with reference to Argentina. Part II addresses the political dimensions of disappearances, focusing on the specificities that this practice acquires in the context of the counterinsurgency struggle of the 1970s and the so-called 'war on drugs'. The third section situates the issue within the framework of human rights law by examining the conceptual and legal aspects of disappearances. The final chapters explore the social movement of the relatives of the disappeared, showing how their search for disappeared loved ones involves bodily and affective experiences as well as knowledge production. The volume thus aims to further our understanding of the crisis of disappearances in Mexico without, however, losing sight of the historic origins of the phenomenon.

Votes, Drugs, and Violence

Votes, Drugs, and Violence
Author: Guillermo Trejo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2020-09-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108899900

One of the most surprising developments in Mexico's transition to democracy is the outbreak of criminal wars and large-scale criminal violence. Why did Mexican drug cartels go to war as the country transitioned away from one-party rule? And why have criminal wars proliferated as democracy has consolidated and elections have become more competitive subnationally? In Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley develop a political theory of criminal violence in weak democracies that elucidates how democratic politics and the fragmentation of power fundamentally shape cartels' incentives for war and peace. Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis spanning more than two decades and multiple levels of government, Trejo and Ley show that electoral competition and partisan conflict were key drivers of the outbreak of Mexico's crime wars, the intensification of violence, and the expansion of war and violence to the spheres of local politics and civil society.