Chronic violence and slaughters in Michoacan, Mexico: making sense of illegal forces

Abstract

The territorial hegemony that drug cartels have established over a weak Mexican State has shaped a context of chronic violence in Mexico, where slaughters have become a standard method to establish spatial control. We argue that slaughters become a means of disseminating social terror and imposing a violent order that allows illegal groups access to economic and political resources. Furthermore, we claim that this type of violence expresses the total power used by illegal groups and the State to impose their hegemonic control. To explain this phenomenon, we analyze two slaughters committed by drug cartels in the municipalities of Marcos Castellanos and Zinapécuaro, respectively, in 2022, in the state of Michoacan de Ocampo and two by the State forces in the municipalities of Apatzingán and Tanhuato, respectively, in 2015, in the same entity. To explain the effects of this kind of extreme violence, we articulate observation techniques, bibliographic research and hemerographic follow-up, which have allowed us to explain the meaning and the social effects of this sort of atrocity.