Violence in Mexico is not the cause of the torn social fabric, it is a consequence of the retraction of the State: Claudio Lomnitz

The idea that the problems of violence suffered in Mexico stem from a moral crisis—from a torn social fabric—is part of the ideology of a new State that has ceded its responsibilities to the God of contingency, Claudio Lomnitz posits.

In an interview on the occasion of the recent release of his book “The torn social fabric”, edited by Era, the renowned anthropologist, states that the violence in Mexico has been consubstantial to the country’s transit (which began to take shape during the neoliberal reforms of the eighties and nineties of the last century) towards a new order.

This violence is often attributed to a rupture in the social fabric, however, the academic from Columbia University points out that this “tear” does not originate in an ethical crisis, but in the retraction of the State, which has lost the capacity to regulate the informal economy and the illicit economy, handing it over to organized crime.

The book collects a series of conferences offered in his first cycle as a member of El Colegio Nacional, in which he presented three theses. The first indicates that we are not facing a war, but rather a new way of regulating the informal economy, which is linked to a State that has other characteristics, compared to those that existed before the so-called neoliberal stage.

The second, argues that this current State is not characterized by the loss of its sovereignty, as is often said, but by the abandonment of several of its administrative functions, in particular, by the relegation of the administration of justice.

And, the third, indicates that violence, which has become a consubstantial part of the transition to a new order, has been erroneously interpreted as the result of a crisis of moral order, summarized in the idea of ​​the torn social fabric, but rather than a cause of violence underlines, the order of customs has become a tactical objective between violent groups.

—How should we understand the violence that exists in Mexico? Are they the phenomenon to see or are they the symptom of a larger process?

—The issue of the torn social fabric, that is, the moral crisis and its relationship with violence is very complicated, because there are times when the moral crisis, that is, the breaking with the habits, customs and values ​​that had prevailed in our society for many, many years. Is this rupture sometimes the cause of violence? Yes, but many times it is a tactical objective of violence.

The breaking of the social fabric is a bad idea because in the end it blames. There is a process of revictimization of society itself with that idea.

Finally, society ends up being guilty, because the morals of its young people, for example, no longer adhere to expectations and then there is the blame.

—Since 2006, the explanation given for the escalation of violence is that we are living through a war against drug trafficking started by President Calderón without having prepared for it. You say we are not facing a war but rather a new way of regulating the informal economy. How is that?

—Without a doubt, the outbreak of the war against drug traffickers marked a before and after. It’s a very expensive historic decision that we’re still in the middle of.

Part of what is in the background is that the Mexican State, let’s say, prior to the neoliberal reforms, organized the issue of justice and the police in a strategy of a kind of politically regulated extortion system.

It was not an issue of individual corruption of this or that police, but that is how the police functioned, it had a certain level of political control, because as we had a single party system, where from top to bottom, the country was governed by the same party. and a chain of political dependencies, that gave it some limits.

They were forces regulating order, both at the level of the police, as well as public ministries and prosecutors.

The problem that is beginning to happen is that this system is crumbling, in part because the democratic transition means that there is no longer a single party that regulates, which means that the elections are more uncontrolled and begin to depend more on local factors, including the money from drug trafficking and partly because at the end of the 1980s, a new product entered Mexico within drug trafficking, which is cocaine, which means that organizations dedicated to international drug trafficking have to be much more complex, because they have to coordinate not only with the United States United States, but to Colombia and Central America, then to China and Asia.

They become much more complex, much more money enters at a time of very deep economic crisis that occurred in the country during the eighties and nineties.

This leads to the consolidation at the local level of the powers of an illicit economy that is no longer well regulated under the previous system.

—In part, society is blamed for situations of violence with the argument that social values ​​have been lost and in parallel it is said that we are in a fourth transformation of public life. How do you see that? Are we really in a major transformation?

—First, there are some continuities in the government of the Fourth Transformation from the previous ones and then, yes, there are some important differences.

At the level of continuities, one of them is curiously that a tendency to blame society, returning to a discourse that was traditionally conservative, which is the exaltation of the family as the solution to everything.

This government has returned to the family discourse and implicitly the idea of ​​hugs, not bullets. The idea is that, well, those people who are dedicated to illicit economies have been pushed into those situations by poverty, and poverty is a result of neoliberalism. They have been, like misguided, they have not known how to direct their problems, which have led them to an incorrect violence; Instead of moving toward political transformation, they have turned to making a living violently and illegally. So, we are going to open our arms to them and we are going to reincorporate them into society.

That idea is simply not based on any economic analysis. In illicit economies it is not about receiving the embrace and forgiveness of the president of the republic and no one else.

Second, the analysis that all this is due to poverty is also not exactly proven. It is clear that poverty is part of the context in which all this occurs, but it is not clear that, for example, if one distributes through direct transfers from the State to families or whatever, that this will resolve the issue of economies This has not been proven and has not happened before and has not happened before, because the system of State transfers was basically invented by the government of President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and they have existed in all neoliberal governments and in this one as well.

—How is this idea of ​​the contingency that you propose?

—Today this time could be called the time of contingency because instead of there being a strategy of institutional construction of the economy, of regulation of the administration of justice, what there is is constantly presenting day to day as something that improves here and it gets worse there.

So these events are presented as localized explosions, both in one place and at one time, and then they pass.

The way of governing is not based on a structural solution or a route towards a structural solution, but as a kind of administration of a violence that is already in society and that is going to break out in different ways in different places at different times.

diego.badillo@eleconomista.mx