Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?

- Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State?, by George W. Grayson. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2010.

Grayson's book takes on a topic of tremendous societal relevance. Since the administration of Mexican president Felipe Calderón started to crack down on the drug cartels in December 2006, thousands of people have fallen victim to escalating violence. Official statistics put the death toll at around 29,000, but real numbers are likely to be even higher as many deaths and disappearances remain unreported and unrecorded. Dutch and English language newspapers report almost daily on atrocities committed in the war between the government and the cartels, and in the turf battles among the cartels. Scholars along with the concerned public are struggling to understand the dynamics underlying the gruesome incidents that make headlines. Grayson offers one of the first books in English on these developments. He places current events in the context of Mexican political history and thus provides his readers with background information on incidents reported in the media. Grayson traces the emergence and consolidation of the cartels throughout the seven-decade-long hegemony of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) up to the present day. The book clarifies that the cartels are not a novel phenomenon and highlights how their fortunes were influenced by their relationship with the hegemonic party, on the one hand, and by the policies of the United States, on the other.

In telling the story of the cartels, Grayson draws mostly on publicly available information, such as research reports and newspaper articles. In addition, he conducted interviews with Mexican and US officials, diplomats and policy-makers. Large segments of the book provide detailed biographies of drug kingpins and describe how their strategies and interactions influenced the trajectories of the cartels. Grayson also provides biographical information about the major players on the side of the government, such as the members of the Security Cabinet. While Grayson portrays a wealth of personae and places, the book offers relatively little in terms of analysis or explanation. Readers hoping for a theoretically grounded account of the causes driving the current escalation of violence will be disappointed. It remains unclear, for instance, why President Calderón decided to pursue the cartels so forcefully. Grayson's objective appears to lie primarily in documenting developments and bringing together evidence from various sources. Mexico has become one of the most dangerous countries for journalists and the inability of newspapers to report freely curbs available information. As reporting on the cartels from Mexico is difficult, the documentation provided by Grayson is a substantial contribution.

As in his previous book, a biography of Andrés Manuel López Obrador titled Mexican Messiah (2007, Pennsylvania State University Press), Grayson draws on religious metaphors. He likens the PRI to a 'secular revolutionary church' with PRI presidents as popes, PRI governors as bishops and annual events such as the celebration of Independence Day as rituals. In addition to the 'revolutionary church', he argues, 'narco churches' emerged in Mexico, where drug kingpins are popes, their second-in-commands bishops and the way in which opponents are murdered carries ritualistic significance. The analogies between the Catholic Church, on the one hand, and the PRI and the cartels, on the other, are a stylistic device rather than an analytic lens. Yet, it sometimes seems as if the author values style more than clarity. At several points throughout the book, the excessive use of religious metaphors conceals fundamental differences between religious institutions and secular power structures. For instance, continuously referring to the Mexican president as the 'secular pope' obfuscates the fact that - in contrast to Catholic Popes - Mexican presidents are strictly limited to six-year terms. Regular alternations in the highest office, as Grayson acknowledges, 'changed the relative ascendancy - or even the ability to do business - of the cartels' (p. 30). Nevertheless, the analogy draws our attention to an aspect of the drug war that often remains unacknowledged. In addition to a power struggle, the government and the cartels are also engaged in a fierce battle for legitimacy. The cartel 'La Familia Michoacana', which Grayson discusses in chapter eight, tries to create social roots and aims to shore up popular support by portraying itself as an agent of divine justice. It embeds its actions in a broader discourse about the meaning of community and selfdefence.

In the title of the book Grayson raises the question of whether Mexico is in danger of becoming a 'failed state'. This issue has sparked heated debates among policy- and opinion-makers. The 2008 US Joint Forces Command report, for instance, expressed concern that Mexico might be in danger of 'rapid and sudden collapse'. Because the book's primary focus is not on the state, but on the cartels and the individuals involved in the government's anti-drug-strategy, it is not set up to fully answer this question. Grayson states that the country is not in danger of becoming the next Afghanistan or Somalia, but this does not make Mexico's problems less severe. In the conclusion Grayson identifies a number of fields in need of political reform, such as electoral law and the tax system. Grayson also shows that confidence in public institutions, such as Congress, the Supreme Count and political parties, has declined since the beginning of the crackdown on the cartels. What remains unclear, however, is whether the decline is due to escalating violence or, alternatively, whether violence as well as the lack of confidence are the result of the failure of the state to provide security to its citizens.

The book bears many imprints of a manuscript prepared in a hurry, such as typos and at times confusing layout. In light of the rapidly changing circumstances on the ground and the turbulent flow of information about the drug war this was probably unavoidable. Grayson recognizes in his acknowledgments that the book is part of an ongoing debate and that the importance of new topics became apparent only after the book was written. The role of women within the cartels, for instance, is tentatively discussed in Appendix 3. Despite its shortcomings, the book provides much needed descriptive detail. It therefore constitutes a useful starting point for future studies. The raging drug war has far-reaching consequences for all aspects of life in Mexico and we need to come to a better understanding of its implications for the development of democracy.