The Legacies of Revolutionary War on Contemporary Criminal Violence in Mexico

• In Event: The Legacies of Historical Violence

Abstract

Criminal violence has led to more than 100,000 deaths since Mexico transitioned to democracy at the beginning of the century. This article investigates the continuity between the two main explosions of civil violence since 1810 —Independence and Revolution— and the current upswing of criminal violence. We find that the probability of experiencing criminal violence is highest if the municipality had a rebel presence during the revolutionary period yet no organized royalist militias during the war of Independence. The results are robust to the inclusion of geographic controls and contemporary covariates. In addition, we find that having had an indigenous government during the colonial period (pueblos de indios) reduces average violence in a municipality for all types of legacy of political violence, yet the appeasing effect of indigenous governance is highest in municipios with neither revolutionary rebels nor royalist militias in their history. All other things constant, having organized a royalist militia also reduces contemporary criminal violence, yet we find no systematic effect on criminal violence of the various land redistributions that followed the Revolution. The article suggests that local organization —both through a history of indigenous government or a history of local royal militias— shields communities against drug gangs and other rent seeking specialists.

Authors

• Luz Marina Arias, CIDE

• Luis De la Calle, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE)