A Long Dirty War: State Terror and the Counterinsurgent Origins of Mexico's Contemporary Drug Violence, by Alexander Aviña
Department: Latin American Studies
Date and Time: May 9, 2018 | 3:00 PM-4:30 PMEvent Location: HG1010
Event Details
Dr. Alexander Aviña
Associate Professor of History, Arizona State University
In tracing the links between state terror and the political economy of narcotics in southwestern Mexico during the 1960s and early 70s, my talk will argue that, in logic and practice, the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) violent campaigns against peasant guerrilla movements and drugs constituted a singular “war:” a war against poor people. While high-ranking PRI and military leaders publicly described counterinsurgency operations in the state of Guerrero as “wars against narco-traffickers,” key military and police officials on the ground practiced a terroristic “Dirty War” against civilian populations suspected of harboring or supporting guerrillas. Nearly 700 guerrerenses remain disappeared at the hands of state agents. These same officials, after militarily defeating the guerrillas in the mid-1970s, would play a key role in cementing Guerrero’s place as a major producer and exporter of marijuana and opium poppies. By showing the permeable, if non-existent, boundary between a “Dirty War” and a “War on Drugs,” I suggest the need to rethink the historical roots of Mexico’s current narco-violence. As the recent September 2014 disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa students demonstrates, the Dirty War continues.
For more information, please contact Dr. Rachel O’Toole, rotoole@uci.edu