Lynchings and State Intervention in Mexico

• In Event: Sabotage, Contention, and Violence in Movements

Abstract

Attempted and realized lynchings–defined as “lethal, extralegal group violence, perpetrated by ordinary people, intended to punish offenses to the community” (Jung and Cohen 2020)–are strikingly common in contemporary Mexico and other high crime and weak rule of law contexts. When do state authorities intervene in lynching events, and how? What explains why perpetrators of lynchings go unpunished, while victims of attempted lynchings are often arrested for alleged crimes? This paper draws on an original dataset of lynchings in Mexico constructed from newspaper data on events of realized and attempted lynchings between 2009-2019, as well as in-depth qualitative case studies of lynching hotspots. The paper demonstrates that lynching is rarely punished, and in contrast, victims of attempted lynchings are frequently arrested. The mixed-methods approach theorizes and tests the conditions under which state authorities respond to lynchings, and either punish perpetrators or victims of lynchings. This paper contributes to our understanding of vigilantism, policing, and the rule of law by examining the microdynamics surrounding state-citizen negotiations in extralegal crime control.

Author

• Hannah Baron, Tulane University