NCJ Number
218173
Journal
Crime, Law and Social Change Volume: 46 Issue: 3 Dated: 2006 Pages: 97-132
Date Published
2006
Length
36 pages
Annotation
Using Mexico as a case example, this study examined the influence of several social and individual level factors that led to the use of political assassination in a Latin American authoritarian state context.
Abstract
The analysis suggests that a combination of several factors produced the wave of assassination attacks against the leftist PRD (Partido de la Revolucion Democratica) during the period 1988 through 2004. The factors began with the resistance of ruling political elites to the rise of dissenting opinions within the dominant party. This resistance accelerated with the exit of prominent PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) dissidents from the dominant party. The resistance of the top political elite to the challenge of the leftist PRD was followed by the political assassination of a top aide. This created a social atmosphere conducive to the use of violence, which was aided by a passive legal system that failed to enact sanctions against state-sanctioned violence. The author argues that none of these factors in and of itself may have led to the wave of political-electoral homicides seen in Mexico during 1988 through 2004, but the combination of these factors helped to shape a social environment where such violence became permissive. The case study also explicitly illustrates how original ideological similarities between parties can transform a difference in convictions into assassination as political vengeance and vigilantism. The author uses macro-level structural theories of political crimes to explain how a state reacts when it feels threatened by a collective movement. The research involved the analysis of secondary interviews, news accounts, government reports, and political party documents concerning the rise of violent state criminality (assassination) against the political opposition in Mexico. The author also examined the investigative governmental report by the official National Human Rights Commission. Future research should focus on the motivations of political leaders who decide against the use of destructive behavior as well as the social conditions that lead them to fear the consequences of vigilantism for themselves. Footnotes, appendixes, references