War Cry, an autoethnographic proposal of a Peace Grand Strategy for Mexico

A talk by Alberto Solís Castro.

From 1989 to 2000, Mexico transitioned from a one-party autocratic political system to a multi-party democracy. The lack of institutional transformation during the regime change, especially in law enforcement and justice, resulted in an increase in violence by organized crime groups. Numerous academics (Trejo and Ley 2013, 2020) argue that the criminal activity was possible because of the relationship between government and cartels. The increase of violence was caused by the cartels´ uncertainty in their relationship with the government because of the arrival of new political actors during the transition (Trejo and Ley 2013, 2020, Kalyvas 2015, Lessing 2015, 2017, Trejo Albarracín and Tiscornia 2018). The militarization of security against organized crime (implemented since 2006) generated a logic of criminal warfare and detonated permanent violence that deepened in the following governments. By the year 2023, Mexico will accumulate more than 200,000 executions and 112,000 disappearances as a result of the war against drug trafficking. Civil and human rights organizations, victims’ collectives and international organizations have demanded a change of policy, producing multiple proposals and strategies to address the serious conditions of violence and impunity.
This paper presents a comprehensive proposal to confront the violence generated by the war against organized crime in Mexico by addressing both the direct violence and the structural and cultural conditions that sustain it at the local, territorial and regional levels. In order to develop this proposal, this project reviews strategies promoted by civil society networks, using the author’s professional experience as a key source through the development of an autoethnography. The autoethnographic work also builds from specialized academic literature on the subject and the recovery of lessons learned from recent experiences in the international regional context.

Alberto Solís Castro is a Graduate in Political Science and Public Administration from the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the UNAM; with professional studies in Philosophy from the same University and in Literary Creation from the General Society of Writers of Mexico (SOGEM). He studied a diploma in Theology for university students at the Alberto Magno Theological Center of the Centro Universitario Cultural (CUC) with the Order of Preachers. He is a University specialist in Protection and Security for Human Rights Defenders and Activists at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, Spain. He has taught several classes at the university level in History and New Paradigms of Peace, Peace Management and Mediation in the degree of Human Rights and Peace Management at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and at the Universidad del Medio Ambiente.

From 2014 to 2021 he was Executive Director of Servicios y Asesoría para la Paz A.C. (Serapaz) an organization specialized in Positive Conflict Transformation and Peace Building founded in 1996 by Bishop Samuel Ruíz García to support mediation work in the armed conflict between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Mexican federal government in the state of Chiapas. He has coordinated and participated in different research and analysis projects on social conflict in Mexico and advised and/or accompanied more than 80 conflict processes with social movements of different struggles and demands such as defense of territory and natural common goods; truth and justice, with relatives of disappeared people; democratic conditions, with individual, community and collective human rights defenders, with organizations against impunity; and for the defense of economic, social and cultural rights with unions, student movements and artists, for health, housing and culture in recent years.

Next May, he will get a Master degree in International Peace Studies at the Institute for Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, USA.

Contact:
Las Casas Institute
lascasas@bfriars.ox.ac.uk