Panel: "Mexico: Narco-State, Popular Resistance, and the U.S."

On 26 September 2014, forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Normal School in Guerrero disappeared on their way to a protest in the town of Iguala. Six weeks later, it was revealed that they had been executed and incinerated in the municipal dump. Local government officials, along with a local gang allied with the mayor of Iguala, have been implicated in the crime and many of them are now in detention on murder charges. Hundreds of thousands filled the Zocalo daily in Mexico City demanding justice, transparency, and an end to police corruption, protesting the unbridled violence that has brought death to as many as 100,000 people in the last decade.

The Ayotzinapa protests have come in the wake of a series of popular struggles highlighted by dramatic strikes of militant trade unionists, including teachers in Oaxaca. Our presenters will consider the multiple forms that the rebellions have taken, as well as their causes. What part has the state played in provoking the resistance and how has it responded to it? What role do the narcotraficantes play in the localities with respect to their own business and in connection with the government and its policies? How should we understand the US role—especially with respect to its so-called “war on drugs”? What has been the longer-term evolution of Mexican politics and the economy that has brought the country to this point?

Daniel Hernandez is VICE News bureau chief for Mexico. He was previously a writer for the Los Angeles Times in Mexico. He is the author of Down & Delirious in Mexico City (Scribner 2011).

Christy Thornton was the Executive Director of NACLA for five years. She has written for The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Nation, and Jacobin. She is a co-host of the WBAI Morning Show in New
York City.

This event is FREE.

Presented by the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History as part of its Annual Colloquium Series. Co-sponsored with the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, the UCLA Latin American Institute, and the UCLA Center for Mexican Studies.