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Abstract
The context of terror that has resulted from the Mexican fight against organized crime since 2006 has led to the suspension of some citizens’ rights and freedoms. A re-appropriation of those rights is being engineered by social actors in different states of Mexico, demanding safety, a trust-worthy administration, and access to justice. Among the peace-building initiatives in Mexico driven by organized civil society are those emerging from social entrepreneurs in the state of Nuevo León, who are working at forging a new civic culture in northern Mexico. The case studies presented are the Monterrey-based organizations that constitute the Frente de Paz (Peace Front) and the successful implementation of the Crime Traffic Light in the states of Sonora and Nuevo León. The peace-building approach proposed includes participatory governance and a new role for the Mexican state as a partner in social development.
Le contexte de terreur ayant résulté la lutte menée par l’État contre le crime organisé au Mexique depuis 2006 a généré la suspension de certains droits et libertés des citoyens. Une réappropriation de ces droits s’organise par les acteurs sociaux de différents États du Mexique, exigeant davantage de sécurité, une administration digne de confiance et l’accès à la justice. Parmi les initiatives de consolidation de la paix menées au Mexique par la société civile organisée on retrouve celles qui proviennent des entrepreneurs sociaux du Nuevo León qui travaillent à forger une nouvelle culture civique dans le nord du Mexique. Des exemples sont tirés d’organisations basées à Monterrey qui constituent le Frente de Paz (Front pour la paix) et celui du feu de circulation de la criminalité mis en application dans les États de Sonora et de Nuevo León. L’approche de consolidation de la paix proposée comprend une gouvernance participative et un nouveau rôle pour l’État mexicain en tant que partenaire du développement social.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers of this paper, Santiago Roel-Rodríguez (author of the Crime Traffic Light, Government of Nuevo León), Hélène Rivière d’Arc (CNRS and Université de la Sorbonne-France), and Nicolas Foucras (Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey), who have generously given of their time to help improve its content. Thanks to Stephanie Valenzuela for the English language editing and to colleagues and graduate students who have contributed to the discussion at the 2012 and 2013 Congresses of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CALACS), where the first ideas were tested. Many of them are authors in this special issue.
Notes
1. Some of them (Treviño de Hoyos 2011) have met with the President Calderon Hijonosa during the peace dialogue in Monterrey in 2011.
2. We refer to “peace building” as an “action to solidify peace and avoid relapse into conflict”, following the United Nations’ definition (UN website). It became a popular concept following Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace (UN website, 2015).
3. The Gulf Cartel and its armed force, The Zetas, are proof to that, experiencing as of 2003 a wide territorial expansion from their original state, Tamaulipas, to most of the north-eastern and the Mexican Gulf states, including the southern border of Mexico in Chiapas (Guerrero Citation2014).
4. The Mexican Navy defines street gangs as “small groups who engage in common crime, like carjacking, ‘express’ kidnapping, and theft. Their members are aged between 13 and 26 years old” (Looft Citation2012). A study by Southern Pulse predicted that, “by the end of 2014 street gangs would supplant cartels as the top cause of violence in Mexico” (Looft Citation2012).
5. Especially Michoacán, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Veracruz. In the north, only Coahuila is occasionally on the list of benefiters from transfer acts (Rivière d’Arc Citation2003, 179).
6. Mexican corporations such as CEMEX, MASECA, AXTEL, GRUPO ALFA, BANORTE, FEMSA, etc. originated in Monterrey.
7. Cámara de la Industria de Transformación de Nuevo León (Chamber of the Transformation Industry of Nuevo León).
8. Confederación Nacional de la República Mexicana (National Confederation of the Mexican Republic), the Nuevo León office.
9. The term “changemaker” is used to describe agents of change in the society, following the definition proposed by the Ashoka network of social entrepreneurs (Ashoka website, Citationn.d.).
10. A learning community is “a territorial entity where the population (individuals and public and non public agents) is mobilized to feed a continuous state of alertness. The learning community comes to life around a shared project that gathers the different stakeholders, increases citizens’ sense of belonging and participation and empowers them in a perspective of a new grassroots governance where results and changes can be observed in their neighborhood (Prévost and Sévigny Citation2005, 4–5; Pretty Citation1995).
11. The Civic Council of Institutions of Nuevo León (CCINLAC) describes itself as “a non-partisan association of voluntary membership that currently consists of more than one hundred private institutions such as business chambers, private sector intermediate organizations, and associations of residents, professionals, charity, service clubs, sports and others ” (CCINLAC website, Citation2014). It seeks to promote “a better society, a better government and a better citizen”, and be the voice of the latter to “transform society” (CCINLAC, Citation2014, author’s translation).
12. Topics detected: (1) activities of associations; (2) attending vulnerable groups; (3) progress of associations; (4) training; (5) educating for peace; (6) funding; (7) building knowledge; (8) problems of the associations; (9) problems of their clients; (10) identifying root causes of problems of insecurity; (11) infrastructure; (12) partnerships problems; (13) replicability of experience; (14) living the consequences of insecurity; (15) working in network; (16) working with women; (17) working with the education sector; and (18) volunteering.
13. Comment made by Nicolas Foucras, Professor of Political Sciences at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey.
14. Methodological note: these are data from January to July 2008, compared to the same period the previous year and against the historical average using reference data from 2004–2007.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nathalie Gravel
Nathalie Gravel is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography at the Université Laval, Quebec city, Canada.
Hector José Martinez Arboleya
Hector José Martínez Arboleya is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Geography at the Université Laval and Professor at the program of International Trade and Customs (Programa Académico de Comercio Internacional y Aduanas) at the Universidad Politécnica del Golfo de México, Tabasco, Mexico.