Sociology of Mexican Drug War Essay Example

Mexican social structures and legitimizing their operations (Sullivan, 2012). Mexican citizens have been and still are exposed to narcoculture through music, film, TV, fashion and oftentimes religion. This extensive exposure brings about a normalization of the traits that are part of the narcoculture, such as masculinity and violence, and even obscure the originally negative connotations of these traits (Guevara, 2013, pp. 140–144). Further analysis on this process will be given in the Communication Studies segment (propaganda).

An issue that should be treated separately here is the influence of cartels on Mexico’s youth. Evidently, youth living in poverty is very vulnerable to the normalization of narcoculture. This can be explained by their propensity for exhilaration, danger and other things that they associate with drug cartels (Harding, 2014, p. 175). Furthermore, cartel members “embody success” in the eyes of the youth since they have the power and resources to do anything they want (Guevara, 2013, p. 144).

As showed in a short documentary directed by Everardo González (2018) children being directly exposed to cartel violence exhibit aggressive behavior such a threats and physical violence to both schoolmates and teachers. “The future I see for him is the worst I am afraid” says the teacher of a five-year-old after the boy threatened that his dad would kill her if she keeps on telling him what to do (González, 2018).

The phenomenon of normalization is pivotal for the Mexican Drug War since it fosters the exponential growth of cartels and enhances their durability against the state’s efforts to contract them. However, it is important to understand that Mexico’s socioeconomic context allows for such a thing to occur. In the following section we

are going to look into the Mexican status quo and how cartels have come to embody the role of social bandits in this context.

Poverty, Inequality and Hobsbawm’s Social Banditry

Looking into Mexico’s status quo we see relatively high levels of poverty and income inequality, in combination with low social mobility. In 2018, 41.2% of Mexicans lived in poverty, which means that almost half of the Mexican population at the time was unable to obtain the basic goods and services for a respectable survival (Pasquali, 2019; World Bank, 2020). Furthermore, on the same year Mexicans experienced considerably high levels of social inequality (Pasquali, 2019). To give a better illustration of that, from 2010 to 2016 the richest 20% of the population has been holding more than 50% of the nation’s income share (Pasquali, 2019) while in 2014 the top 10% held 39,70% of the nation’s income share (Roser & Ostriz-Ospina, 2016).

Lastly, by looking at the Social Mobility Index, which is an indicator of the extent in which individuals can mobilize within the social stratification, we see that Mexico scores 52,1. This means that the economy does not really provide equal opportunities for improvement of the socioeconomic status of individuals (Pasquali, 2020). However, poverty and inequality have been a constant struggle in Mexico for decades, but since the militarization of the conflict the situation has further worsened.

Before we move forward it is important here to introduce Hobsbawm’s concept of Social Banditry. Subject to Marxist influence, British historian Hobsbawm developed this term to describe a redistributive action by illegal means taking place in the context of class struggles, and it was introduced in his book Primitive individuals (Blok, 1972).

Social Banditry has been a grave part of Mexican history and it can be used as framework to better understand the role of narcotraffickers in Mexican society and the conflict (Sullivan, 2012).

Living under conditions of poverty, a vast number of Mexicans indeed find themselves susceptible to drug cartel influence that often appear as deus ex machina by offering them the opportunity to make a living for their families (Morales, 2017). Cartels make use of social banditry to gain social acceptance and exert influence on Mexican population (Sullivan, 2012).

Here we return to narcoculture, and more specifically narco-religion, which plays an important role in consolidating the public image of drug traffickers as Robin Hood type social bandits. Using again symbolic violence, drug cartels have introduced the so-called “narco-saints” or “sanitos” in their effort to exert influence through religion.

A good example given by Guevara (2013) is that of a Sinaloa cartel member called “Jesus Malverde” who took from the rich and offered to the poor (Guevara, 2013, p. 142). Additionally, Narcocorridos, a type of epic folk music that romanticized drug traffickers and their lifestyle, creates the “narco-trafficker persona” (Edberg, 2001, p. 259) which portrays members of drug cartels as opposed to a state that remains inactive against the issues of poverty and inequality.

All of the before mentioned accumulate to the, most of the times, passive approval of the cartels by the public, which, to a certain extent allows them to conduct their illicit operations without much popular resistance (Guevara, 2013). However, the biggest issue is when Mexican citizens switch from passively supporting to actively participating. The active participation accounts to engagement in violent crimes and corrupt discourses and

in the following two parts we will discuss how this occurs.

Deviance and Anomie

Mexican citizens often finding themselves in situations where they have to choose between poverty or deviance which forces them to actively participate in the cartel’s illicit operations. In this section we will use Merton’s concept of Anomie, and its revision by Messner and Rosenfeld (Vilalta, 2014), for a better understanding of why and how this happens.

The term Anomie was first used by Durkheim in his study of modern industrial societies. He defines it as “a condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals” (Durkheim, idk when, in (Macionis & Plummer , 2012 , p. 125) and claims that it arises as a result of the freedom associated with the modern world. Based on this concept Merton developed a strain theory that aims at explaining crime and deviance. Merton believes that excessive violence occurs in a context of Anomie where societies promote cultural goals but do not provide to individuals the institutionalized means to achieve them (Macionis & Plummer , 2012 , pp. 605-606).

For example, a cultural goal could be to live in a big house and the means that society could provide for individuals to achieve that is equal access to education, in order for them to acquire sufficient skills and get a well payed job. However, when education is not equally accessible, the goal of owning a big house remains the same and individuals from lower social strata will be prone to use alternative measures to achieve this goal.

These measures often involve engaging in illegal activities. Messner and Rosenfeld, as cited by Carlos Vilalta (2014), bring Merton’s theory one step

further and talk about Institutional Anomie which holds social institutions (economy, polity, religion, education and family) accountable for providing the means for individuals to meet their cultural goals (21).

Vilalta’s research confirms that in certain Mexican states, the presence of incompetent political power, weak economy and high inequality, were predicting factors of higher levels of deviance (Vilalta, 2014). Furthermore, in the book “Mexico is not Colombia” the authors also identify Merton’s Anomie as a source of extensive deviance in Mexico. An interesting example they give is about how policies of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) have put Mexican agricultural producers in direct competition with much more profitable American ones.

Mexican producers struggle to compete against them and eventually find themselves in a situation where they have to choose between shutting down their business and entering a state of poverty or harvesting Marijuana for cartels in order to secure an income (Paul et al., 2014, p. 24), so eventually they actively participate in the operations of drug cartels. From an institutional anomie perspective this is a manifestation of how a weak economy leaves individuals with no other option but to seek alternative ways of providing to their families and in the context of Mexico the easiest alternative lies together with the cartels.

In this part we engage in a pessimistic approach of the Mexican population, however it is worth to mention here that passive acceptance and active participation is not always the norm, and this will be further analyzed in the Communication Sciences approach later on.

Corruption

As we have seen earlier, corruption is a very complex phenomenon and it is beyond the purpose of this paper to fully explain

it. However, on this part we will discuss some causes and outcomes of corruption with a focus again on culture and social inequality. The causes are relevant to the study of our conflict, because they can point to how corruption can be tackled, while the outcomes are relevant because they indicate how corruption amplifies the power of drug cartels over Mexican society.

Corruption and Culture

Opinions about the causes of corruption vary amongst academics but without knowing the causes of a malfunction it is difficult to tackle it and this is one of the reasons why corruption poses such a great challenge for the Mexican government. The two following theories assume that corruption emerges as a result of socioeconomic inequalities and culture. Husted (1999) conducted a research aiming at studying the correlation between potentially relevant features and corruption. According to his findings, corruption is common in societies with low levels of economic growth as well as in countries matching a cultural profile of “high uncertainty avoidance, high masculinity and high-power distance” (Husted, 1999, p. 354).

As we have mentioned before Mexico is a country with high levels of poverty and social inequality. Furthermore, Hofstede Insights (n.d.) confirms that Mexico corresponds with the cultural profile determined by Husted. To make this more clear; high uncertainty avoidance refers to individuals that will keep away from risky situations, high power distance stipulates that individuals of the lower social strata have accepted the fact that power is concentrated on the hands of a few and do not react to it and high masculinity indicates that individuals are susceptible to competitiveness, attainment and triumph (W Hofstede).

Morris (2003) adds to Husted’s research by including

other cultural factors spotted specifically in Mexico that relate corruption. These factors consist of the following; low trust in public institutions, low social trust, low abidance to the law. Furthermore, he posits that culture of corruption and corruption are interlinked since one facilitates the other (Morris, 2003). Furthermore, he supports the opinion that it is a responsibility of the State and the Justice System to break the vicious cycle of culture and corruption. Nevertheless, the two not only fail to fulfil their purpose on that matter but their malfunctioning generates a series of societal issues that aggravate Mexico’s condition (Rosas, 2001; Zúñiga, 2017). In the following paragraph we will discuss one of these social issues, social inequality and its relation to corruption.

Corruption and Inequality

As mentioned earlier cartels are highly dependent on corruption, it is thus evident that anti-corruption efforts are pivotal for the government in its war against the cartels. However, there is a really important factor which stands in the way of the government and that is the relationship between corruption and social inequality. It is a topic of agreement between academics that corruption in Mexico is negatively correlated with income inequality (Rosas, 2001; Zúñiga, 2017). To understand this correlation better we need to look back into the income inequality in Mexico.

We have mentioned earlier that in 2018 41% of Mexican lived below the poverty threshold but there is more to that; on the same year 57.3% of Mexican’s had no access to social security (Li Ng et al., 2019). Linking this to Merton’s theory of anomie, Mexican citizens that belong to the proportion of the population that lives in poverty are in search

of alternative ways to provide for themselves and their families and corruption appears like the best option for them.

At this point, in Mexico, corruption has come to support several sectors of the economy and embodies a substitute income redistribution apparatus, which contributes to the reduction of inequality (Rosas, 2001, p. 5) . However, this is just a temporary solution that has a negative effect on the economic growth of the country (Zúñiga, 2017). It is understandable that since a big proportion of the Mexican population depends on corruption and black markets to make their living, the any anti-corruption efforts of the government are fruitless.

Conclusion

In this segment we have discussed some social aspects of the conflict that help us understand better why drug cartels embody such a challenging opponent to the Mexican government. These challenges lay in narcoculture, poverty, corruption and the long history of Mexico’s social inequality. Narcoculture normalizes the very existence of drug cartels within society (Guevara, 2013). Poverty and social inequality prepare the ground for cartels to exploit the disadvantaged (Vilalta, 2014; Paul et al., 2014, p. 24). Lastly cartels sustain themselves through the corruption which balances the, otherwise, excessive income inequalities (Rosas, 2001).