Murder and Politics in Mexico studies the causes of political killings in Mexico’s liberalization-democratization within the larger context of political repression. Mexico’s democratization process has entailed a little known but highly significant cost of human lives in pre- and post-election violence. The majority of these crimes remain in a state of impunity: in other words, no person had been charged with the crime and/or no investigation of it had occurred. This has several consequences for Mexican politics: when the level of violence is extreme and when political killings that are systematic and invasive are involved, this could indicate a real fracture in the democratic system. This book analyzes several dimensions regarding impunity and political crime, more specifically, the political killings of members of the PRD in the post-1988 period in Mexico. The main argument proposed in this book is that impunity for political killings is a structured system requiring one central precondition, namely the failure of the legal system to function as a system of restraint for killings. Dr Schatz’s research finds that political assassinations are indeed rational, targeted actions but they do not occur within an institutional vacuum. Political assassinations are calculated strategies of action aimed at eliminating political rivals. As a form of interpersonal violence, political assassination involves direct or implied authorization from political leaders, the availability of assassins for hire and the willingness of some political leaders to utilize them against political opponents, and violent interactions between political parties combined with judicial system ineffectiveness. A corrupt legal system facilitates the use of political assassination and explains the persistence of impunity for political murder over time. To reduce political violence in the transition to electoral democracy, specific institutional conditions, namely a structured system of impunity for murder, must be overcome.

This book offers a contemporary look at violence in Mexico and argues for a recalibration in how necropolitics, as the administration of life and death, is understood. The author locates the forces of mortality directly on the body, rather than as an object of government, thereby placing death in a politics of the everyday. This necropolitics is explored through testimonies of individuals living in towns overrun by organized crime and resistance groups, namely, the autodefensa movement, that operate throughout Michoacán, one of the most violent states in Mexico. This volume studies how individuals and communities go on living not in spite of the death that surrounds life, but more disturbingly by attuning to it.

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.

On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. On route to a protest, local police intercepted the students and a confrontation ensued. By the morning, they had disappeared without a trace. Hernández reconstructs almost minute-by-minute the events of those nights in late September 2014, giving us what is surely the most complete picture available: her sources are unparalleled, since she has secured access to internal government documents that have not been made public, and to video surveillance footage the government has tried to hide and destroy. Hernández demolishes the Mexican state’s official version, which the Peña Nieto government cynically dubbed the “historic truth”. As her research shows, state officials at all levels, from police and prosecutors to the upper echelons of the PRI administration, conspired to put together a fake case, concealing or manipulating evidence, and arresting and torturing dozens of “suspects” who then obliged with full “confessions” that matched the official lie. By following the role of the various Mexican state agencies through the events in such remarkable detail, Massacre in Mexico shows with exacting precision who is responsible for which component of this monumental crime.

The grim role of violence in shaping modern Mexican identity

Admiral Paul von Hintze arrived in Mexico in the spring of 1911 to serve as Germany's ambassador to a country in a state of revolution. Germany's emperor Wilhelm II had selected Hintze as his personal eyes and ears in Mexico (and concomitantly the neighboring United States) during the portentous years leading up to the First World War. The ambassador benefited from a network of informers throughout Mexico and was closely involved in the country's political and diplomatic machinations as the violent revolution played out. Murder and Counterrevolution in Mexico presents Hintze's eyewitness accounts of these turbulent years. Hintze's diary, telegrams, letters, and other records, translated, edited, and annotated by Friedrich E. Schuler, offer detailed insight into Victoriano Huerta's overthrow and assassination of Francisco Madero and Huerta's ensuing dictatorship and chronicle the U.S.-supported resistance. Showcasing the political relationship between Germany and Mexico, Hintze's suspenseful, often daily diary entries provide new insight into the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution, including U.S. diplomatic maneuvers and subterfuge, as well as an intriguing backstory to the infamous 1917 Zimmermann Telegram, which precipitated U.S. entry into World War I.

A harrowing and unforgettable look at reporting in Mexico, one of the world's most dangerous countries to be a journalist In 2017, Mexico edged out Iraq and Syria as the deadliest country in the world in which to be a reporter, with at least fourteen journalists killed over the course of the year. The following year another ten journalists were murdered, joining the almost 150 reporters who have been killed since the mid-2000s in a wave of violence that has accompanied Mexico's war on drugs. In Killing the Story, award-winning journalist and filmmaker Témoris Grecko reveals how journalists are risking their lives to expose crime and corruption. From the streets of Veracruz to the national television studios of Mexico City, Grecko writes about the heroic work of reporters at all levels—from the local self-trained journalist, Moises Sanchez, whose body was found dismembered by the side of a road after he reported on corruption by the state's governor, to high-profile journalists such as Javier Valdez Cárdenas, gunned down in the streets of Sinaloa, and Carmen Aristegui, battling the forces attempting to censor her. In the vein of Charles Bowden's Murder City and Anna Politskaya's A Russian Diary, Killing the Story is a powerful memorial to the work of Grecko's lost colleagues, which shows a country riven by brutality, hypocrisy, and corruption, and sheds a light on how those in power are bent on silencing those determined to reveal the truth and bring an end to corruption.

This open access book offers a synthetic reflection on the authors’ fieldwork experiences in seven countries within the framework of ‘Authoritarianism in a Global Age’, a major comparative research project. It responds to the demand for increased attention to methodological rigor and transparency in qualitative research, and seeks to advance and practically support field research in authoritarian contexts. Without reducing the conundrums of authoritarian field research to a simple how-to guide, the book systematically reflects and reports on the authors’ combined experiences in (i) getting access to the field, (ii) assessing risk, (iii) navigating ‘red lines’, (iv) building relations with local collaborators and respondents, (v) handling the psychological pressures on field researchers, and (vi) balancing transparency and prudence in publishing research. It offers unique insights into this particularly challenging area of field research, makes explicit how the authors handled methodological challenges and ethical dilemmas, and offers recommendations where appropriate.