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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2022

‘México en llamas’: Political Utopia and ‘taking justice into one’s own hands’ in Times of War

Résumé

The current violence challenges the ability of the Mexican state to perform its regalian functions and is driving Mexico’s most vulnerable people to “take justice into their own hands” in times of war. These experiences reflect a deep-seated mistrust among society towards institutions. What meaning can be attributed to the autonomous expressions of justice, such as the Zapatista experience or the search for the disappeared nowadays? And how can we conceive of political utopia in a brutalised society on which the early years of the war on drugs have had a devastating impact? Drawing on ethnographic research in the state of Chiapas and new research on disappeared persons in the states of Guerrero and, more recently, Veracruz, this chapter examines different moments in which experiences of “taking justice into one’s own hands” have taken place. First, in the 1990s, demands for social justice focused on the recognition of the rights of Indian minorities and Indian autonomy, embodied by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, who created autonomous territories controlled by Indian representatives with no presence from the state and its institutions. Second, since 2006 the official war on drugs has led to new movements calling for justice in response to insecurity and violence, human rights violations and systematic impunity in the area of criminal justice, showing how experiences of community justice of a defensive, sometimes ambivalent nature have increased in recent years in a context of widespread violence. Finally, this chapter reorients the concept of social justice in times of war around the search for the disappeared and the pursuit of truth.
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Dates et versions

hal-03979671 , version 1 (08-02-2023)

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Citer

Sabrina Melenotte. ‘México en llamas’: Political Utopia and ‘taking justice into one’s own hands’ in Times of War. Palgrave Mac Millan. Where Has Social Justice Gone? From Equality to Experimentation, Palgrave Mac Millan, pp.279-296, 2022, 978-3-030-93122-3. ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-93123-0_17⟩. ⟨hal-03979671⟩
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