Victims’ Narratives Foster Solidarity and Punitive Justice in Mexico’s Drug War

• In Event: Building Peace and Reducing Violence

Abstract

In contexts of large-scale criminal violence, victims are often stigmatized because citizens perceive them to also be involved in criminal activities, particularly when they belong to marginalized groups. The stigmatization of victims of human rights violations is a critical obstacle for policies that curb criminal violence and power abuses by state security forces, as citizens become more tolerant of atrocities and do not demand accountability—a pattern consistent with non-victims' lack of mobilization in support of victims.

How can human rights organizations promote solidarity with victims? Political and social psychological research shows that narrative strategies that elicit compassion—a prosocial emotion—foster behaviors toward reducing the suffering of stigmatized groups and support for inclusive policies, while reducing prejudice and discrimination. Yet we know less about the effects of these narratives on individuals' reactions toward perpetrators—those causing the suffering. I argue that perspective-getting—hearing about the experiences of stigmatized group members—successfully induces compassion and solidarity toward victims, yet in so doing it also increases citizen demands for harsh punishments, even at the expense at the rule of law. I support this argument with evidence from two experiments conducted in Mexico’s Drug War, which generated a human rights crisis featuring both drug cartels and state forces as perpetrators. I complement these studies with observational survey quantitative data and qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews and four focus groups.

I show that victims’ voices effectively trigger civic engagement but also punitive attitudes toward state and criminal perpetrators—a phenomenon I call punitive solidarity. In addition to compassion, victims’ discourses activate another important mechanism: the perception that anyone, not only criminals, can be targeted—that violence is more random than initially believed. A key takeaway from this study is that prejudice-reduction interventions can also motivate punitive attitudes favorable to harsher punishment of perpetrators, including legal and extralegal violence and support for candidates favoring iron-fist policies.

Author

• Natan Skigin, Harvard University