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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Garcia, Karina Title: Poverty, gender and violence in the narratives of former narcos accounting for drug trafficking violence in Mexico General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. POVERTY, GENDER AND VIOLENCE IN THE NARRATIVES OF FORMER NARCOS: ACCOUNTING FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING VIOLENCE IN MEXICO Karina Guadalupe García-Reyes University of Bristol School of Politics, Sociology and International Studies Doctor of Philosophy “A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of the School of Sociology Politics and International Studies” June 2018 Word Count: 77,931 ABSTRACT Dominant scholarly approaches to drug trafficking violence (DTV) in Mexico generally explain its onset and escalation by focusing on one of four issues: a) the democratisation process in the 1990s and 2000s; b) the systemic corruption of the judicial and legislative institutions; c) a weak rule of law across the country; and d) the ‘war on drugs’ launched by former president Felipe Calderón (2006-2012). These approaches, however, fail to account for the discursive conditions that enable the perpetrators to engage in DTV. This thesis, therefore, proposes a new critical approach to our understanding of DTV by examining the life stories of thirty-three former narcos collected in Mexico between October 2014 and January 2015. Using a discourse analytical approach, I identify a set of meaning production regularities, uncovered through detailed interviews, which I conceptualise as narco discourse. In this discourse, informed by a neoliberal ethos, poverty is understood as a fixed condition, ‘poor people have no future’ and have ‘nothing to lose’. Under this logic, the ‘only’ way for them to enjoy life is to engage in illegal activities conceived as ‘la vida fácil’ [the easy life] which guarantee them ‘dinero fácil’ [easy money]. The narco discourse also produces the idea that ‘un hombre de verdad’ [a true man] embodies the normative characteristics of machismo. This masculinity, in turn, justifies male violence as ‘necessary’ in order to ‘survive’ in contexts of poverty. These three intertwined discourses of poverty, masculinity and violence enable the construction of DTV in instrumental terms, e.g. as ‘un negocio’ [a business’], as something ‘exciting’ and even as a source of empowerment. In this way, I demonstrate how DTV is discursively made possible by and for former narcos. This is a starting point for rethinking DTV not only as the result of corruption, or failed policies, but also as the product of the interplay between pre- existing social conditions and discourses produced and reproduced by perpetrators of DTV. i ii DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank supervisors Jutta Weldes and Karen Tucker. Thank you for your time, your guidance, your constructive feedback and your invaluable advice. Thank you for believing in this project and for supporting me in this academic marathon. Special thanks to the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) for funding this thesis as well as the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) which provided additional support for this research. I would also like to thank my gatekeepers Dariela Reyes, Alex Maldonado, Gabriela de León, Tere, José and Pastor Carlos Pacheco and his wife Rosy Pacheco. Gracias por todo su apoyo y sus oraciones. Gracias, de todo corazón. Finally, I would like to thank my research participants for sharing their life stories with me. I dedicate this thesis to my family. My parents José Guillermo García Cota and María de Lourdes Reyes Cardona. To my sisters, Yeridia and Ileana García and my brother in law Bruno Maury. To my uncle Gaspar Reyes Cardona, my aunt Sandra Peart, and my cousins Gaspar, Ricardo and Rafael. Gracias a todos, otra vez, por siempre estar conmigo. A la distancia, pero nunca lejos. Y sí, otra vez, para ustedes, todo lo que soy y todo lo que seré. To my amazing friends, my new family, Magda, Lydia, Rodrigo, Juan Pablo, Julio, Francisca, Natasha, Phil, Ioatzin and Felipe. To my friends from always, Ana and Elsa. To the loveliest office mates Nat, Carlos, Chao and Firdausi. To my Latin American sisters, Maria Teresa and Mónica: gracias por iluminar mi vida con sus sonrisas, sus consejos y su bondad. Las admiro harto y las quiero más ¡Que viva América Latina! To my guardian angel, my fairy godmother, Faustina. Last, but not least, to my miracle, the love of my life, Andrew. iii iv AUTHOR’S DECLARATION I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: ............................................................. DATE:.......................... v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................................... i DEDICATION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. iii AUTHOR’S DECLARATION ............................................................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................. 1 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 My personal interest in DTV ............................................................................................................... 2 1.2 Introducing Drug Trafficking Violence in Mexico ................................................................................ 4 1.3 Drug trafficking violence: a conceptual discussion ............................................................................. 5 1.4 Literature Review ................................................................................................................................ 7 1.4.1 Mainstream approaches to the study of drug trafficking violence ............................................. 9 1.4.2 Critical approaches to the study of drug trafficking violence .................................................... 15 1.5 Thesis overview ........................................................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 2 FIELDWORK IN MEXICO AND DATA GENERATION: AN INDUCTIVE APPROACH ................... 29 2. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 29 2.1 The research framework: grounded theory...................................................................................... 29 2.2 Fieldwork location and the research setting Cristo Vive .................................................................. 31 2.3 The emerging focus of this research: the narcos’ perspectives on DTV ........................................... 36 2.4 Ethnographic methods of data generation ....................................................................................... 38 2.4.1 Participant observation .............................................................................................................. 38 2.4.2 Life story interviews ................................................................................................................... 38 2.4.3 Preliminary analysis: poverty, gender and violence as main themes ........................................ 42 2.5 Ethical and safety considerations ....................................................................................................
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