Rethinking Lynching and the State: Evidence from Post-Revolutionary Mexico

• In Event: New Frontiers in the Study of Crime and Violence

Abstract

Scholarly literature on lynching in contemporary Latin America has, by and large, examined this practice either as an expression of state absence or as the result of the state's incapacity to provide security and justice to citizens (Goldstein 2005; Snodgrass Godoy 2006; Zizumbo-Colunga 2010). As a result of this, most scholars have theorized lynching as a non-state form of violence that either replaces or undermines the state’s capacity to punish criminal conduct. Based on the examination of dozens of cases of lynching taking place in post-revolutionary Mexico (1930-1960), this paper will bring to the fore the participation of state actors in the organization of lynching as well as the interactions between police officers and citizens taking place before, during, and after the occurrence of lynchings. In this sense, the paper will show that lynchings cannot be simply defined in opposition to the state and that the lines between vigilantism and state-sanctioned violence are blurrier than has been traditionally acknowledged. The paper will draw comparisons with the United States, where the participation of state actors in the organization of lynching during the second half of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century has been amply documented. It will further reflect on the pertinence of revisiting the conceptual binary between state-led violence and vigilante justice in the context of contemporary Latin America.

Author

• Gema Santamaria, Loyola University Chicago