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Abstract
Mexico is arguably immersed in an unprecedented wave of violence in which drug cartels and law enforcement officials at times work together in cases of forced disappearance, kidnapping, execution, torture, persecution and other atrocities considered violations of the most basic human rights, including the right to life and to physical integrity. However, these atrocities are only classified as human rights violations if they can be unequivocally attributed to the state; this is not always possible. Using Foucault’s idea of governmentality and Valencia’s concept of the Endriago as a subjectivity emerging from the specific governmentalisation of the Mexican state, this article examines how hybrid agents in Mexico – law enforcement officials working for criminal gangs or criminals working for the state – serve to subvert common understandings of attribution and responsibility in the state-centric discourse of human rights in general, and of the right of asylum in the specific case of Canada, a country to which thousands of Mexicans have fled.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Louiza Odysseos and Anna Selmeczi for their hard work in editing this special issue and for their invaluable feedback. Also, many thanks to the four anonymous reviewers for their comments and constructive critique.
Notes
1. UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2007; UNHCR, 2008 Global Trends; UNHCR, 2009 Global Trends; UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2010; UNHCR, A Year of Crises; UNHCR, Undisplacement; and UNHCR, Asylum Trends 2013.
2. Ramírez de Alba et al., Indicadores de Víctimas.
3. Amnesty International, Enfrentarse a una Pesadilla.
4. Benavides and Patargo, México ante la Crisis Humanitaria.
5. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population; and Valencia, Capitalismo Gore.
6. The relationship between organised crime and the Mexican state has been documented in journalistic work that shows the uneven existence of such links at the different levels of government (local, state, federal). See Bowden, Murder City; Bowden and Molloy, El Sicario; Grillo, El Narco; Hernández, Los Señores del Narco; and Flores Pérez, “La Lógica del Botín.”
7. The following people were interviewed via Skype between December and January 2014: Francisco Martínez Rico, Co-director of the FCJ Refugee Centre; Annie LaPalme, former member of the Mexicanxs Unidxs por la Regularización; Erick Argüello, Member of the Mexicanxs Unidxs por la Regularización; and anonymous asylum seekers and refugees in Canada.
8. The article builds on the preliminary findings of a wider research project called ‘Asylum Policy in the US and Canada: Human Rights and Biopolitics’, based in the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The project looks at the role of human rights discourse in migration policy through the enforcement of asylum laws between 2006 and 2013.
9. President Felipe Calderón finished his term in office in December 2012. New president Enrique Peña Nieto made it very clear he would adopt a similar strategy concerning drug trafficking from the moment he took office. In fact, in December 2012 and during the first months of 2013 violence remained at the same levels. Although these trends indicate that drug-related violence is likely to continue with the new presidential administration, this article will focus exclusively on the Calderon administration. See Randal, Unabated Violence.
10. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.
11. See Ramírez de Alba et al., Indicadores de Víctimas.
12. Valencia, Capitalismo Gore. Valencia borrows the term ‘Gore’ from a movie genre focused on extreme and graphic violence to describe the Third World’s current stage of capitalism, in which blood, corpses, mutilated bodies and captive lives are used as the tools of capital reproduction. Valencia characterises gore capitalism’s political, cultural, economic and power dynamics in terms of the Narco-state, hyper-consumption, drug trafficking and necro-politics.
13. See the research of Carlos Antonio Flores Pérez on the historical formation of the narco-state in Mexico. He maintains that the Mexican state fails to function as a proper state because of the dominance of circuits and institutional areas by criminal interests, which are often sponsored by public servants responsible for ensuring collective interests. He argues that the implementation of these interests in institutions has obstructed their functions and generated serious deviations from what was initially expected of them. This process of state co-optation is considered from the perspective of ‘co-opted State Reconfiguration’, in which a group of public and non-public actors with shared interests of an illicit nature employ different strategies to use state resources to their benefit, thereby determining or hindering institutional design and operation. In addition, in asylum cases many witnesses and applicants claim that law enforcement officials have been present before or after murders and disappearances. Flores Pérez, “La Lógica del Botín.”
14. Valencia, Capitalismo Gore.
15. Flores Pérez, “La Lógica del Botín.”
16. Valencia, Capitalismo Gore.
17. Ibid.
18. For example, Los Zetas, which is a drug cartel allegedly formed by former and active soldiers; or La Línea, a gang of active policemen providing gore services to the Juárez Cartel. More recently the local police in Iguala, Guerrero, were known to provide this type of services to the Guerreros Unidos criminal gang. See Osorno, La Guerra de los Zetas.
19. Rainbow and Rose, “Biopower Today.”
20. Equipo Bourbaki, El Costo Humano de la Guerra.
21. Equipo Bourbaki, Reflexiones sobre la Guerra.
22. Equipo Bourbaki, El Costo Humano de la Guerra.
23. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge.
24. Laclau, New Reflections.
25. Warrick, “Beyond the Dislocation(s) of Human Rights.”
26. Chinkin, “A Critique.”
27. Ibid; Gal, “Language Ideologies Compared”; and Owens, “Distinctions, Distinctions.”
28. UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2007; UNHCR, 2008 Global Trends; CitationUNHCR, 2009 Global Trends; UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2010; UNHCR, Global Trends 2011; UNHCR, Undisplacement; and UNHCR, Asylum Trends 2013.
29. Carmona Martínez, “El Refugio Político como Estrategia de Migración Económica.”
30. UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2007; UNHCR, 2008 Global Trends; CitationUNHCR, 2009 Global Trends; UNHCR, Asylum Levels 2010; UNHCR, Global Trends 2011; UNHCR, Undisplacement; and UNHCR, Asylum Trends 2013.
31. Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Migrants, “Brief to Standing Committee.”
32. Author’s translation from the Spanish.
33. People are classified as ineligible for the following reasons: if they have been recognised as a Convention refugee somewhere else; if they have been granted protected person status in Canada; if they arrived in Canada via the USA; if they have been accused of criminal activity or human rights violations; if reasons of security exist; if they have been denied asylum status in Canada before; or if they gave up a previous refugee claim.
34. Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, “Conclusion on the Provision of International Protection.”
35. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, “X (Re), 2012 Canlii 7218 (Irb),” para 17.
36. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, “X (Re), 2010 Canlii 96300 (Irb).”
37. Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, “X (Re), 2012 Canlii 89911 (Irb).”