ON NORMALIZATION OF DEATH IN MEXICO IN TERMS OF EVIL AFTER THE OUTBURST OF THE “WAR ON DRUGS”

Abstract

On December 11th, 2006, the then Mexican president Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), through his Security Cabinet, announced the deployment of five thousand military in the Mexican State of Michoacán to fight organized crime, which marked the beginning of what has been termed as the Mexican Drug War or the Mexican War on Drugs, a warfare-style combat against Mexican drug syndicates. Allegedly, the war started as an effort to reduce Mexican drug cartels power, which increased in recent years both in terms of land control and violence, as well as intromission in state corruption and politics.To this day, approximately, 150,000 persons have been killed, 28,000 have disappeared, and 280,000 have been displaced from its hometowns due the intensity of violence. In 2011, the homicide rate increased to reach a maximum of 62 killed people per day, and was the first cause of death among men between 15-44 years old. All these numbers equate the death toll of an average war, and in these regards the Mexican situation is not so different—actually, it has been defined as a low-intensity war. What has been different from a normal state of war (if there are any clear boundaries to define so) is the production of death, both as massive executions and kidnappings and as a legitimization of violence via narcocultura.Death in Mexico, it is proposed, has been assimilated into the everyday life and has been taken for granted: violence is less a disruption and more an expectation; death is still grievable, but not surprising; criminals are tolerated, and sometimes praised. Hence, what is now at stake is not who will “win” the War on Drugs, but how death can be detached from the ordinary. When death has attained such a degree of integration into the social fabric, it is worth to speak about normalization of death.