Dr. Albert M. Camarillo Lecture: Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez presents “The Rise of the Necro/Narco Flexible Superstate Network: From Tucson to Tapachula and Their Cultural and Behavioral Consequences”

The UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center presents the inaugural Dr. Albert M. Camarillo Lecture.

“The Rise of the Necro/Narco Flexible Superstate Network: From Tucson to Tapachula and Their Cultural and Behavioral Consequences” will be presented by Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Regents’ Professor at the School of Transborder Studies and School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University

Reception: 3:15 p.m.

Lecture: 4 p.m.

Chon Noriega, Distinguished Professor of Film and Television and former CSRC Director, will moderate the Q&A

Since the implementation of neoliberal and structural adjustment policies in the United States and Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s, and the rise of a huge drug market in the U.S., millions were pushed from rural areas in Mexico, and necessary social programs and agricultural subsidies were abolished. The result was large-scale migration to the U.S. and Mexican urban cities and towns from the 1970-1990s. Enormous profit-making by drug cartels and organizations through to the present day have created an illegal arms trade using narco dollars as payment, which in turn compensates a highly militarized and organized cultural architecture. Combined with almost hysterical public policy and media representation concerning immigration, since 1970 the US has created the basic architecture for diverse “low intensity” warfare doctrines, which became sharply focused as militarization in the aftermath of 9/11. The Mexican version has been the sustained introduction of a "militarized" Mexico supported with millions of dollars in U.S. aid. The increased roles of the military in Mexico’s public works such as airport, railway, and highway developments as well as seaport and airport customs and fiscal controls all circumvent general fund allocations. The resulting phenomena is a U.S. Necro/State Network Structure and its accompanying Mexican Narco/State Structure that are inexorably linked.

Vélez-Ibáñez is the author of Reflections of a Transborder Anthropologist: From Netzahualcóyotl to Aztlán (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2020)

This event will not be live-streamed.

Self-pay parking is available for attendees in UCLA Parking Structure 2, 602 Charles E. Young Drive East, Los Angeles, CA 90095

A recording of this event is available on the CSRC YouTube channel.