Mexican Drug Violence: Hybrid Warfare, Predatory Capitalism and the Logic of Cruelty

By Teun Voeten

“Brutally honest… a deeply extraordinary and original work.”
- SEBASTIAN JUNGER.

With an estimated 250,000 people killed in 15 years, the Mexican drug war is the most violent conflict in the Western world. It shows no sign of abating. In this book, Dr Teun A. Voeten analyzes the dynamics of the violence. He argues it is a new type of war called hybrid warfare: multidimensional, elusive and unpredictable, fought at different levels, with different intensities with multiple goals. The war ISIS has declared against the West is another example of hybrid warfare.

Voeten interprets drug cartels as ultra-capitalist predatory corporations thriving in a neoliberal, globalized economy. They use similar branding and marketing strategies as legitimate business. He also looks at the anthropological, individual level and explains how people can become killers. Voeten compares Mexican sicarios, West African child soldiers and Western jihadis and sees the same logic of cruelty that facilitates perpetrating ‘inhumane’ acts that are in fact very human.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664134164

Teun Voeten

Dr. Teun Voeten is a war photographer and cultural anthropologist who has covered conflicts worldwide since 1990. He wrote books on the underground homeless in New York, the war in Sierra Leone, drug related crime in Belgium and the Netherlands and made the photo book ‘Narco Estado. Drug Violence in Mexico’.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Teun Voeten and Small Wars Foundation.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Front Cover Image: Ciudad Juárez, April 2011. Late afternoon April 26th, Javier Herrera García, a 25-year-old traffic policeman was killed while carrying out a speed control with a radar gun. Forensic detectives found 10 caliber 223 bullet casings on the scene.

Back Cover Image: Culiacán, June 2009. A body was found in the early morning in a deserted alley in the industrial zone. The victim’s hands and mouth were tied with duct tape, a common practice in narco-related killings.

Cover design: Nathalie Albert, nathaliealbert.nl

All photos: copyright Teun Voeten, www.teunvoeten.com

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/11/2020

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword: Mexican Drug Violence

Introduction

Chapter 1 War, economics and perpetrators: The three main perspectives

Introduction

1.1 War is a chameleon: classic and cold, new and hybrid

1.1.1 From classic and low intensity wars: The disappearing of symmetry

1.1.2 Van Creveld and the transformation of war

1.1.3 Assessing the new wars

1.1.4 Challenging the greed grievance dichotomy and the new wars

1.1.5 Hybrid warfare: Towards a new model

1.2. War, violence and crime in a neoliberal and globalized world

1.2.1 Criticizing neoliberalism and globalization: the moral argument

1.2.2 The growth of global inequality. Are neoliberal policies to blame?

1.2.3 Are poverty and inequality causing crime? Anomie and the expectation gap

1.2.4 Drug cartels, the ultimate capitalist corporations in a globalized world

1.3 Perpetrators as rational actors: The anthropological perspective

1.3.1 The relevance of US gangs and West-African child soldiers for Mexico

1.3.2 Just trying to make a living: Crack dealers and the American Dream

1.3.3 Rebels with or without a cause: The fighters in Sierra Leone and Liberia

1.3.4 Anthropology and violence. Trying to define the obvious

Chapter 2 Drug related violence in Mexico: The historical dimension

2.1 From leisure farming to serious business: The early years

2.1.1 The emergence of drug cultivation and narco-trafficking

2.1.2 The 1930s and 1940s: Expansion of drug trade and incorporation in society

2.2 Post-war growth, professionalization, and international expansion

2.2.1 The marijuana boom and Operation Condor

2.2.2 From Miami to Mexico: The cocaine boom

2.2.3 The consolidation of the big cartels under corrupt PRI rule

2.3 Changing the guards: From PRI to PAN

2.3.1 The democratic transition and rearrangement of old structures

2.3.2 The Battle of Nuevo Laredo, the first open drug violence in 2004

2.3.3 Michoacán, Culiacán, Juárez: Calderón’s war on drugs and the escalation of violence.

2.3.4 Pena Nieto’s war on drugs and the continuation of violence

2.3.5 Hugs, not bullets from AMLO and the continuing escalation of violence

Chapter 3 The Mexican drug war: beyond a new war?

3.1 Violent pluralism, failed democracy and state failure: Latin American perspectives

3.1.1 Why is Latin America so violent?

3.1.2 Violent pluralism

3.1.3 State failure or security failure?

3.1.4 The case of Mexico’s failed state status

3.2 Through the new war lens: Dissecting the Mexican drug war

3.2.1 War in plural: seven simultaneous wars

3.2.2 Actors: Ruthless opportunists and cunning chameleons in a corrupted environment

3.2.3 Methods: whatever it takes and by all means necessary

3.2.4 Methods: a real insurgency or a metaphorical one?

3.2.5 Methods: a morphology of ultraviolence

3.2.6 Goals: greed above everything

3.2.7 Financing: means to an end and end to means

3.3 Hybrid warfare as the next step

3.3.1 Mexico as a theater of hybrid warfare on a sliding crime-terror scale

3.3.2 Hybrid warfare: Mexican cartels and ISIS compared

Chapter 4 Business as usual: Mexican drug violence from an economic angle

4.1 Blaming neoliberalism: The traditional viewpoint

4.1.1 The neoliberal transformation in Mexico

4.1.2 Is inequality producing drug related violence?

4.2 Cartels as ultra-capitalist predatory corporations

4.2.1 Quite common business issues

4.2.2 Godfather versus Facebook

4.3 Transnational organized crime flourishing in an age of globalization

4.3.1 How the five plagues of international crime constitute an alternative economy

4.3.2 Transnational crime as an international security threat

Chapter 5 Trying to understand killers and murderers

5.1 Why take up arms? A wild variety of reasons

5.1.1 Passive victims of willing agents: Maras, child soldiers, ISIS Jihadists and sicarios

5.1.2 Categories of killers

5.1.3 Social exclusion and poverty: The usual suspects

5.2 Turning men into killers

5.2.1 Natural born killers or rather reluctant murderers?

5.2.2 How to make killing nice and easy: Facilitating mechanisms

5.2.3 Teaching to kill: Practice and training

5.2.4 The pleasures of war and the joy of killing

5.3 Foot soldiers of the drug wars: Sicarios in Mexico

5.3.1 Sicarios in media and academics

5.3.2 Some case studies of Mexican sicarios

5.3.3 Patterns in variety

5.4 Mexico: Culture of violence or violent culture?

5.4.1 A tradition of violence in Mexico?

5.4.2 Narcocultura: A pantheon of Saints and opulent consumers

5.5 Senseless violence: Finding the sense in senseless

5.5.1 Wicked monsters beyond understanding: The dehumanization of the perpetrator

5.5.2 The four roots of evil

5.5.3 The horror of the concentration camp

5.5.4 Shame and disgust in civil war: Getting emotional

Chapter 6 The Netherlands as a narco-state, and Antwerp as its principal cocaine hub

Summary and Conclusions

Afterword: Crime Wars, Criminal

Insurgency, and State Transformation

Endnotes

References

Reactions to Mexican Drug Violence

Teun Voeten has penetrated one of the most dangerous societies in the world—the narco-traffickers of Mexico—and come back with far more than a stunning portrait of crime syndicates. He has developed a profound understanding of how violence works and why it is so hard to eradicate. His assessment is brutally honest and shuns the facile myths that exist in both right-wing and left-wing thought—thank god. It is a deeply extraordinary and original work.

Sebastian Junger, war journalist, anthropologist and bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and Tribe: on Homecoming and Belonging

This book is a reminder of what ethnography should be. Relativism is firmly dismissed, in favor of empathetic exploration. Prose is direct and jargon-free. Detail-rich stories are brought to life, framed by theory, and situated in historical context… a penetrating study of the human condition, which is equally fascinating and useful—an all too rare achievement in the field today.

Nicholas Krohley, author of The Death of the Mehdi Army: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of Iraq’s Most Powerful Militia

A solid, well-crafted, nuanced, but also bloodcurdling account of extreme violence, based on courageous fieldwork. Most studies on crime and violence focus their attention on the perspective of the victim. Teun Voeten is one of the few researchers who does not hesitate to also investigate the perspective of the perpetrator, and to confront the darker side of humanity.

Maarten Boudry, philosopher and co-author of Science Unlimited?: The Challenges of Scientism

Revealing, penetrating and urgent. Fast-paced prose, written with visual imaginary by a journalist who has been at the first line of every international conflict, including drug wars.

Linda Polman, investigative reporter and author of War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times

A unique insight into the raw reality of modern conflicts. Voeten’s combination of journalistic experience and academic insights truly reveals how war and crime are increasingly intertwined in today’s societies.

Martijn Kitzen, Associate Professor of War Studies at the Netherlands Defence Academy and former military officer.

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Acknowledgments

This book is inspired by my PhD thesis with which I obtained my doctorate at Leiden University, Netherlands, September 2018. A study like this is a rather large enterprise and it could only be realized with the advice, inspiration and help of many people. First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Dr Patricio Silva. Without his practical and inspirational guidance, I think I could not have written my thesis, and eventually this book.

Dr An Vranckx, Dr Sabine Guez, Dr Timo de Rijk and Dr Maria Berghs encouraged and helped me to navigate through the PhD process. While working in Ciudad Juárez, Prof. Howard Campbell from the University of Texas in El Paso was a continuously source of inspiration, so were his fellow anthropologists Dr Jorge Balderas and Dr Arturo Chacón from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez.

In Mexico, friends and journalists showed an incredible generosity in helping me maneuver in hostile, unknown territories and I want to express my great appreciation to Julián Cardona, Lucio Soria, Fernando Britto, Javier Valdez, Rafael Rentería and Mauricio Rodríguez. In El Paso, Jennifer Burton and Justin Leah always provided a safe haven in their downtown loft.

I also have to express my gratitude for the cooperation I received from the authorities in Mexico: The Army HQ in Mexico City, the municipal police, prison authorities, city government and its public information department in Ciudad Juárez. I am particularly grateful for the life stories the imprisoned sicarios in the CeReSo wanted to share.

A special thanks to my esteemed colleague, filmmaker and video artist Maaike Engels. Together we conducted the interviews with the sicarios in prison and without her inquisitive and creative mind I would have been lost. I also want to thank the patience and support my family offered: My father Ad, Margje, Jaap, Pieter, Claire and Claudius and my son Sebastian.

Many thanks to my fellow journalists I worked together in war zones and who helped me improve my understanding of war: Linda Polman, Sebastian Junger, Robert Dulmers, Arnold Karskens, Gert van Langendonck, and Harald Doornbos. I want to thank Dr Robert J. Bunker and Dr John P. Sullivan from Small Wars Journal to give me the opportunity to publish this book, for the foreword and afterword they wrote and for all the editorial assistance and input they gave me. On top of that, John P. Sullivan undertook the amazing effort to weed out countless stylistic inconsistencies in the list of sources. Thousands thanks to Dr Mike Volmar for his incredible work as a proofreader. He turned my Dunglish into US English.

This study is dedicated to my mother Marieke. A special mention is for all my journalist friends who have been killed in action: Eddy Smith, ambushed near Kenema, Sierra Leone (1998), Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora, ambushed near Newton, Sierra Leone (2000), Ricardo Ortega Fernández, shot in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (2004), Tim Hetherington, mortally wounded in Misrata, Libya (2011), Jeroen Oerlemans, shot in Sirte, Libya (2016) and Javier Valdez Cárdenas, murdered in Culiacán, Mexico (2017).

At last, I want to pay homage to the thousands of soldiers, combatants, officers but also say thanks to the aid workers, civilians, victims and the many, many people crushed by the wheels of modernity. I encountered them during the course of 30 years reporting in conflict zones and they were willing to share their lives, fears, doubts and experiences with me. Without their trust and insights, I could have never ever started my work.

Foreword:

Mexican Drug Violence

Robert J. Bunker

Los Angeles, California

16 September 2020

This masterful new work written by Teun Voeten—a Dutch conflict reporter and anthropologist—is the next iteration in the series of Small Wars Journal—El Centro books focusing on Latin American cartels and gangs and the ensuing criminal insurgencies now taking place in that region of the world. Mexican Drug Violence is partially derived from Voeten’s dissertation completed in September 2018 in fulfillment of his doctorate at Leiden University. In addition to this foreword, it contains an acknowledgements section, an introduction, six chapters, summary and conclusions, an afterword, references, and an imagery section (found in the middle of the book).

The 1st chapter (war, economics and perpetrators) provides a fascinating introduction to the subject matter and serves as the methodological component of the manuscript. The ways in which war itself is evolving into something new is discussed and how globalization and neoliberalism are leading to increasing inequality is highlighted. Chapter 2 then offers the historical dimension of drug related violence in Mexico. It provides insights into the trajectory of the illicit (drugs) economy, its interrelationship to political parties in Mexico, and the geography topography of drug violence within that country.

As the work’s subtitle suggests, it goes on to analyze three subthemes of Mexican cartel violence: hybrid warfare, predatory capitalism, and the logic of cruelty. Each subtheme can be characterized as follows:

• Hybrid warfare: pertains to the ‘transformation of war’ and ‘new war’ constructs and the merging of criminality, insurgency, and acts of terrorism and brutality. Additionally, this touches upon the rise of conventional-like cartel military forces. This subtheme is developed in Chapter 3 (the ‘new war’ aspects of the Mexican drug war) within the work.

• Predatory capitalism: focuses on how drug trafficking organizations are functioning in a hyper-capitalist economy—the dark side of neo-liberalism—much like ‘legit’ corporations. Chapter 4 (Mexican violence from an economic angle) within the book sees this subtheme discussed.

• Logic of cruelty: focuses on the micro-level and pertains to sicarios (assassins), other armed cartel operatives, and the act of killing. Cartel enforcers are also compared and contrasted to child soldiers, Islamic state fighters, and Western military soldiers. This subtheme is outlined in Chapter 5 (trying to understand killers and murderers) within the book and includes sicario interviews.

Chapter 6, focuses on the narco-state aspects of the Netherlands, provides a newer post-dissertation analysis of drug gang and cartel penetration into the Belgian city of Antwerp, which has the 2nd largest European port with direct road and rail net access into the heart of the continent. It represents a juxtaposition with the earlier Mexican cartel focused chapters.

The main thesis of the work is that the sheer level and complexity of the drug violence now taking place in Mexico cannot be explained by a mono-causal approach or theoretical model. Rather, he argues that seven levels of conflict are simultaneously taking place which is so complex that its akin to ‘Wizard’s Chess on steroids.’ This research finding is amply supported by the cross-cultural comparisons and micro and macro level analysis that is provided throughout the book. While some tentative policy recommendations concerning this assessment and lessons learned vis-a-vis increasing drug violence in Europe are provided, the author recognizes that the threat posed by organized crime and its involvement in the new forms of 21st century conflict now taking place will require far more evolved response policies to be developed.

The work greatly benefits from Dr. Voeten’s field research conducted in various regions of Mexico, including Ciudad Juárez, Nuevo Laredo, Culiacán, Tijuana, Michoacán, and Mexico City, from 2008 through 2019. Additionally, his research trips to Colombia, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other war zones have provided him with additional context and insights into conflict processes which further honed his analytical skills. We at SWJ-El Centro feel very privileged to publish Dr. Voeten’s work and believe our readers will find it of great interest.

Dr. Robert J. Bunker is Director of Research and Analysis, C/O Futures, LLC and is a Senior Fellow, Small Wars Journal—El Centro.

Introduction

One evening in March 2010, I accompanied the municipal police from Ciudad Juárez in their pickup truck. They were called to a murder scene. While on their way, the next victim was already announced. The first victim was in an eerily deserted barrio. He laid in a pool of blood that slowly flowed from his head downward to the sloping alley. Outside, the night was pitch black, not a living soul was to be seen. The barking of dogs was the only sign of life, except for the cops who investigated the scene with their flashlights. The police took some pictures, collected a few bullet casings and hastily drove off to the next scene. It was a repetition of the same routine. A police photographer snapped some pictures, the police agents made some lame jokes amongst themselves, one policeman took a selfie. Soon, a van from the morgue arrived and the victim was hauled away under a blanket.

2010 was the most violent year in Ciudad Juárez¹ with an average of ten murders a day. Sometimes, armed commandos stormed a bar emptying their AKs and unleashed another wave of terror. At night, the streets were deserted. It was estimated that 30 percent of the inhabitants had fled since the violence spiraled out of control in 2008. The strangest thing was that even with all the killings, life went on. Juárez was a modern, thriving, bustling city, not another miserable third world city in a failed state as I had seen in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan. The people from Juárez had quickly become accustomed to the new routine of murder and bloodshed. A few days later, I photographed a bloodstained wall where six boys were executed during a soccer game. Although the wall was still painted in blood, other kids were already training for the next game.

For decades, Mexico has been plagued by drug related violence. The situation escalated dramatically when in 2006 President Felipe Calderón declared an all-out war on the drug cartels, resulting in bloodshed on unprecedented levels. It has become one of the bloodiest conflicts in the Western hemisphere and there is no sign that it is abating. With 34.500 victims, 2019 was the most violent year so far.

This study results from a profound interest in a phenomenon that contradicts human decency in shocking ways and terrorizes large parts of the country. At the same time, it puzzles observers, but also captures the imagination of popular culture worldwide. Many academics such as Astorga, Watt, Campbell, Balderas, Flores, Chacón and journalists such as Hernández, Grillo, Turati and Valdez have described the recent Mexican drug related violence and have done important work grasping the complexity of the situation on the ground. This is not a simple task because the study of the Mexican criminal underworld poses certain challenges, as I will explain later.

In this book, I will analyze the Mexican drug war from different angles, using a macro-perspective as well as looking from a micro-level. From a political science point of view, I will explore if the violence is an example of a so-called ‘New War,’ a postmodern conflict in which armed groups merge with organized crime and deliberately create a situation of chaos and lawlessness. Or, is the drug violence a logical consequence of decades of Mexican authoritarian politics that were embraced in the 1980s along with a neoliberal system resulting in growing inequalities, subsequently causing an exacerbation of criminality? From another perspective, can we see the drug cartels as extreme examples of predatory capitalism that thrive in a neoliberal environment? And looking at the individual actors involved, what is their rationale and what are their motivations? Why do actors engage in criminal activities and extreme violence that might certainly end with their own death? In this book, I will try to find answers to these questions and will approach the Mexican drug violence from a political war viewpoint and an economic angle. Finally, I will take a more anthropological approach by looking at the actors from a micro-level. To better understand the actors at work in Mexico, I will make cross-cultural comparisons as well with actors in different geographic, cultural and historic contexts.

In the first chapter, I will discuss how war evolved from classic warfare into a new kind of warfare where material gains (greed) instead of ideology (grievances) were central and how this irregular warfare eventually developed into so-called ‘Hybrid Warfare.’ Next, the economical perspective will be addressed by discussing how globalization and neoliberalism increased inequality that in its turn exacerbated crime. I will also introduce in this first chapter the third, anthropological perspective by presenting the perpetrator’s perspective.

In chapter 2, I will provide a historical analysis of Mexico focusing on the emergence of the drug trade, how the narcotics industry became embedded in the political system and how the matrix of violence increased in complexity. In this chapter, I will describe in more detail the real nature of the drug war, trends and statistics, regional differences, and remarkable incidents; in short, a topography of the drug violence and its evolution in time.

In the following chapters, I will discuss the warfare, the economic and the anthropological perspective discussed in the first chapter, but now in relation to the specific Mexican context. In chapter 3 I will explore if we can use the ‘New War’ concept, introduced by Mary Kaldor and Herfried Münkler, to describe the Mexican drug war. The conflict, with its multidimensional and unpredictable matrix of violence is actually beyond a new war and has transformed into a hybrid conflict. These are conflicts with multiple goals, fought with ultra-modern weapons as well as with low tech, primitive techniques, fought globally and locally at the same time. I will describe methods and actors in the Mexican drug war in detail. Finally, I will compare the structure, dynamics and methods of the hybrid war currently being waged by ISIS against the West with the Mexican drug war.

In chapter 4, I will discuss how neoliberal policies have affected the Mexican social context and how great economic inequality has resulted in the drug violence. I will also explore how the drug trafficking organizations in themselves should be interpreted as predatory capitalist enterprises that in many aspects function exactly as ‘legit’ corporations and how they flourish in a globalized world by establishing links with the formal economy.

Chapter 5 deals with violence at an individual level and I will focus on the actors and the act of killing. Why do people join armed groups and how can people become ruthless killers? I will compare actors in the Mexican drug war with West African child soldiers and Western ISIS recruits and also look at testimonies from fighters in World War I and II, and the Vietnam War. I will also present some case studies of perpetrators and look at the subculture of violence in Mexico. Finally, I will confront the disturbing issue of how people are able to commit unspeakable atrocities.

In Chapter 6, I briefly explore the situation in Holland and Belgium that I know rather well, not only as a Dutch citizen, but since I carried out extensive research in 2019 into the anthropological and cultural context of crime in the Low Countries at the request of the City of Antwerp.

The main aim of this study is to create an analytical model of the Mexican drug violence. In the conclusion, I argue that the Mexican drug violence is of such an order that no single, exclusive approach and theoretical model will do justice to its staggering complexity. Research should be as wide and open as possible and avoid methodological limitations that might close certain venues. Complimentary approaches and multidimensional angles, cross-cultural comparisons and different focuses, all need to be applied at the same time. Also, how shocking this may sound to some people, extreme violence is part of the repertoire of human behavior. Finally, I argue that even when a full, comprehensive understanding of the Mexican drug violence is beyond reach, this does not need to result in a fatalistic and passive attitude. The Mexican drug violence may not be eradicated, but a pragmatic approach is possible—and imperative—in order to reduce the violence to more acceptable levels.

Studying the Mexican drug violence poses certain challenges. Most actors and events are shrouded in secrecy making a thorough analysis rather difficult. As Howard Campbell points out, anthropologists … face a tremendous challenge: how to sort out fact from fiction, and how to keep track of the creative legerdemain of smugglers and their adversaries. Drug ethnography is made more difficult by pervading atmosphere of paranoia and betrayal… (2009, 13). Ethnographic studies of street level dealers, such as those carried out by Terry Williams (1989, 1992) and Philippe Bourgois (2002) might be possible, but studying the upper echelons with traditional anthropological methods is out of the question, writes Mangai Nataranjan (2000, 274). Patricia Adler, who did fieldwork among high-level cocaine dealers in Southern California writes how researchers, will be confronted with secrecy, danger, hidden alliances, misrepresentations, and unpredictable changes of intent (1993, 27). Any researcher, be it a social scientist or a journalist, has to be realistic and accept that there is knowledge he will never be part of, simply because of the secretive, illegal and dangerous nature of the subject he is studying. That leads Campbell to state that given such a murky environment, an ethnographer must accept that many things will be unknowable (2009, 14). This highly opaque universe not only defies exact description but seems to harbor many internal contradictions as well. According to journalist Ioan Grillo, confusion should be expected from a Mexican Drug War (2011, 7). The fight against drugs is famously a game of smoke and mirrors, he continues, invoking Carl von Clausewitz’s ‘Fog of War.’ Still, although it might be difficult and dangerous to infiltrate and investigate the crime syndicates in depth, a provisional model and theories of the workings of the cartels can be inferred from observable data as well as from the rare glimpses we now and then get of the inside world, mostly from former and/or incarcerated cartel associates (Bowden and Molloy 2011, Slater 2016, Martinez 2015) who have the urge to talk, although their stories can be erroneous and self-aggrandizing, as Nataranjan (2000, 274) warns. Academic literature provides many testimonials (see e.g. Campbell, Chacón, Valdez, García-Reyes) as well as the Mexican journalists, who have carried out extensive interviews with hitmen and assassins for hire, the so-called sicarios, and other cartel members.

Particularly noteworthy are the diaries of drug lord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo (Osorno 2011). In addition, on social media, we occasionally get a look inside the world of the perpetrators, some of whom have Twitter accounts and Facebook pages. I was able to conduct a few interviews in Mexico with sicarios that gave me many insights into the reasons they became professional killers. Court records, such as the extensively publicized criminal court proceedings from the US Federal court against Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzmán, better known as ‘El Chapo,’ in New York (2018-2019), provide another valuable source of information. The drug trafficking organizations might form an invisible, hidden and secretive parallel world and it is true that these complex organizations and their shady context may defy exact description. Yet its smaller parts, the actors and their actions and the tangible traces they leave in the form of—literally—forensic evidence, can indeed be studied and analyzed.

While studying the drug violence, there is always the temptation of ideologically colored biases. At one hand, there is the official discourse of the Mexican government that claims the drug war is a valiant struggle conducted by the legitimate authorities against illegal crime syndicates. The many very well documented cases of blatant corruption on the side of law enforcement officials and other authorities distorts this perfect picture of "los buenos contra los malos, the good ones versus the bad ones," as the Mexican government likes to paint it. The disappearance of 43 students in Guerrero state in October 2014 was one of the most illustrative examples. The mayor of Iguala and his wife, who was the sister of a member of the Beltrán Leyva cartel, were arrested for cooperation with the local drug cartel to eliminate the protesting students. This incident shattered drastically, once and for all, the official government discourse.

On the other side of the political spectrum, we find the traditional left, and people with an innate distrust of the government, who entertain a wide variety of conspiracy theories. According to some, the Calderón government was responsible for most of the violence in the period 2006-2012, when the drug violence reached unprecedented peaks. "Calderón, asesino!," was a common slogan at civil protests against the government. Some see the ongoing killing as an operation of limpieza social (social cleansing), some say the Army represents in fact the biggest cartel in the country,² while others say the counter-narcotics strategy is an excuse for social control and repression (Paley 2014). Related with this perspective is the interpretation that views drug violence in Mexico as a logical consequence of the neoliberal policies culminating in the NAFTA accords (Watt and Zepeda 2011, Bowden 1998). In a more radical interpretation of this school of thought, the thousands of victims are collateral damage of a diabolic system imposed by US Imperialism.

Mexican authors like Oswaldo Zavala and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera have also specific interpretations. Zavala argues in his book with the provoking title Los cárteles no existen: Narcotráfico y cultura en México³ that the cartels are not a separate category of organizations that threaten the state, but that they are completely intertwined with the government and that drug violence is in fact government sponsored violence. Correa-Cabrera interprets in her book Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico the Zetas as an avant-garde infantry that is opening and preparing the ground for big business. Zavala and Correa-Cabrera make a valuable contribution to the debate, but in my opinion, their work tends to be overly politized.

Many theories often degenerate into conspiracy theories, and as such they are notoriously hard to prove, in the same way they are impossible to dispel. Another problem is that they rely on mono-causal explanations for complicated and multifaceted phenomena. Current conspiracy theories should however never be entirely dismissed, as there might be some element of truth in them. Social cleansing is not the explaining mechanism behind the drug war, but there have indeed been well-documented cases of this practice. Blaming NAFTA for all that went wrong is also too easy, but undeniably, the NAFTA agreements have had a great effect on Mexican social economic context. Some of these arguments will be analyzed in the sections discussing neoliberalism. More importantly, conspiracy theories give an insight into the perception of people directly affected by the drug war. Most people in Mexico are in shock and traumatized by the situation. Pointing an accusing finger and finding someone responsible are ways of making sense of the events and have some healing and therapeutic value. Some of the elements in the conspiracy theories mentioned here as well as the official discourse will be discussed later.

A rather large part of this book consists of theoretical exploration and discussion of existing literature. Considering the complexity of the subject, I will make forays into the domains of cultural anthropology, criminology, history, sociology, biology, ethology, evolutionary psychology, economics and political science. As already explained, I will use macro-perspectives, looking at systems and structures but also micro-perspectives, looking at the individual actor and his context and motivations. I agree with Enrique Arias and Daniel Goldstein (2010, 30-31) who write that the macro historical and structural analysis of history, sociology and political science combine usefully with the more ethnographic techniques of anthropology to provide these scholars access to sociopolitical realities at multiple levels of experience.

Though mostly theoretical, my study is also based on observations I made during nearly twenty trips as a journalist and photographer to the hotspots of the drug war, such as Ciudad Juárez, Culiacán, Michoacán, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana and Acapulco. I also add, where relevant, my own observations and remarks from the many Mexicans from all walks of life with whom I spoke. In the last chapter, I add in-depth interviews with perpetrators to illustrate the human dimension in the misery, moral confusion and depravity.

This book also relies on my experience as an international war reporter, both as a writer and photographer. For nearly thirty years, I have been covering many conflicts in the world. Actually, being a war photographer is a great way to conduct participatory observation, the preferred method of anthropologists. War photographers have to go to places where normal researchers don’t venture and are able to develop close relations with combatants on the front lines. I worked in a few classic wars, notably Gulf War I, but mostly in places such as Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia (from 1991 until 2005), theaters of war that have become emblematic of the so-called new wars. In the last few years, I worked frequently in the Middle East, and as a former inhabitant (2005-2014) of the so-called ‘European Jihad Capital’ Molenbeek in Belgium, I also have some first-hand knowledge and experience with terrorism and the war waged by radical Islam. This experience started as a New York resident during the 2001 Twin Tower attacks on September 11th.

My interest in drugs, crime, gangs and violence, dates back to 1987-1988. As a student, I photographed the decaying inner cities of New York, especially Harlem and the South Bronx that were plagued at that time by a devastating crack epidemic. Later, in the mid-1990s, I lived as a journalist/anthropologist for five months with an underground homeless community in New York. This resulted in my first book Tunnel People (1996) where drugs, poverty and urban violence were central themes. Actually, the main character of my tunnel book was Bernard, a black man who had been an upscale cocaine smuggler and dealer in the 1980s, catering to the rich and famous. He had become homeless, but was still, as he put it himself, a recreational crack smoker. New York based ethnographer Terry Williams, who had studied crack and cocaine gangs, helped me to navigate these difficult subjects and aroused my interest in the field of urban anthropology.

In 1990, I went for the first time to Latin America and visited Colombia. While in Medellín, As a photographer. I focused on the violence that was engulfing the city in the heyday of the criminal rule of Pablo Escobar, developing an interest in drug-related violence, youth, crime, gangs and sicarios. During that trip, I met sociologist Alonso Salazar,⁴ who had just written a book on sicarios and was a source of inspiration. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, I revisited Colombia a few times, but focused mainly on the civil war and human rights violations in the countryside. In 2008, I focused again on Latin American urban violence by making two reportages on maras, youth gangs in Honduras.

In 2009 I read a news article describing Ciudad Juárez as the most dangerous city on the planet. Coincidentally, a fellow journalist, Sabine Guez, who I had met in the tunnels of New York, was now writing a PhD on trafficking in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Guez introduced me to some of her friends in Juárez who helped me set my first steps in this treacherous city in early 2009. Having witnessed some of the worst massacres and cruelties in late 20th century warfare, I still was shocked by the ferociousness and savagery of the conflict in Ciudad Juárez. What initially was meant as a single trip, became a series of reportages in the years to come where the conflict in Ciudad Juárez was only escalating, with 2010 as its most violent year in history. Roughly twelve trips during the years 2009-2012 resulted in my photo book Narco Estado: Drug Violence in Mexico with prefaces from El Paso anthropologist Howard Campbell and Culiacán based writer Javier Valdez, who was murdered early 2017.

Photographing the conflict is a valuable activity—some things can better be shown with images than expressed with words—but it left me with the feeling that I was only scratching the surface. I never found answers to the many questions I had, questions that challenged my curiosity and actually stimulated me to pursue further research, which in the end resulted in this study.

In the anthropological chapter, I make some cross-cultural comparisons between perpetrators active in New York based gangs, West African child soldiers and ISIS recruits. This may seem like an unusual choice, but is for one part based on methodological considerations. There are many interesting similarities between the actors in these three contexts with the ones in Mexico. Many cultural anthropologists intensely study one cultural setting, but I think it is necessary to transcend the ‘tribe,’ to look beyond the village and instead look for regularities and similar phenomena that go above the peculiarities of a specific cultural context. After nearly thirty years of covering wars worldwide, I started to discern certain patterns and similarities in the conflicts I covered. As for the three groups specifically mentioned, I researched them as a journalist/anthropologist and have direct empirical knowledge. During the crack epidemic in New York (mid 1990s) I lived in the city and developed a keen interest in urban poverty, gangs and inner-city culture, an interest that never faded away. As a journalist, I personally witnessed child soldiers and rebels in Sierra Leone in Liberia in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a rather deep intensity. I was actually at many times confronted with a brutal savagery that on a few occasions nearly cost my life—notably when a gang of five drugged up child soldiers in Sierra Leone put their AKs and M-16s at my head, robbed me, and subsequently threatened to torture and execute me. As mentioned earlier, I wrote a book on the underground homeless but also studied the war in Sierra Leone in depth. Although both books are classified as journalistic non-fiction, they have anthropological merit as well.

As far as ISIS, this phenomenon took the world by surprise in 2009, just as I was starting with my dissertation project. A few times between 2013 and 2017, I visited the frontlines with ISIS in Syria and Iraq and was personally confronted with its cruelty, losing a few journalist friends. I found the brutality and tactics of ISIS in many ways comparable with that of the Mexican cartels, so it would be a grave omission to ignore that conflict.

I do not want to conflate the personal with the academic; still, it is impossible to deny that nearly three decades of firsthand experience in war zones have fed my curiosity and shaped my thinking and approach on the studied subjects. I have always been fascinated by the question how people can commit atrocities. In this study, I think I found some answers. For me, the act of formulating interpretations about war, crime and the actors involved, is greatly aided by vividly visualizing and memorizing, some of the—to say the least—remarkable encounters I have had in my career. The many faces of war I saw as a photographer, the completely different theaters of war I visited, reinforce my deeply held conviction that generalizations are difficult, that for every rule there are exceptions and the reality on the ground is incredibly complicated. Remarkably, though, in all wars, similar phenomena exist and you encounter the same recurring cast of characters: the self-sacrificing civilian hero, the intrepid local reporter, the scheming war profiteer, the sadistic bully who gets his self-esteem from his uniform, the opportunistic local leader and the idealistic, young and brave soldier. Although this is more an impressionistic and journalistic observation and certainly not an academic conclusion, it lifts however a veil how war and its actors, however different they may seem in appearance, have rather similar structures. I hope that I am able to make a valuable academic contribution with my combination of theoretical research coupled with a wide empirical knowledge of different wars on the ground.

In 2019, I was commissioned by the city of Antwerp to research for 9 months the social context of the drugs industry in Antwerp which has a giant port and is a major entry point for cocaine into the European market. I had in-depth interviews with criminals, lawyers, dealers, prisoners, policemen, judges, aid workers, consumers and addicts and also looked at the connection with the Netherlands. It is interesting to see, that although the intensity of the drug problem is on a different level, the same structures and dynamics that can be found in Mexico are also playing out in Western Europe. Observations from that research (Voeten 2020) have been used throughout this book.

As for some methodological and theoretical considerations, working in conflict zones has showed me how different people in the same context have completely opposite interpretations and contradictory perceptions of the same events. I have seen firsthand how in the fog of war, facts, fiction and interpretations tend to mingle and merge. It is often said that truth is the first casualty in war. Some academics (and many people for that matter who have no academic background at all) opt for a relativist approach and attribute all possible interpretations an equal epistemological value, the same way some people state that science is just another opinion. In the same light, people from the postmodern school claim often how empirically verifiable scientific facts are just social constructs. I, however, reject epistemological relativism since it eventually will mean the end of science. Inspired by philosopher Michael Vlerick (2012, 103), I subscribe to his endeavor to create a hierarchic epistemological system that attributes more epistemic value to certain observations, propositions and conclusions, and less to others. Although I do realize that observations and interpretations might be biased, and to a certain extent are always subjective, there are statements and conclusions that are more congruent with reality and others that are clearly less. To paraphrase cultural anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes: but while reality is always more complex, contradictory and elusive than our limited theories and methods can possibly encompass, some things remain incontestably ‘factual.’ Either 150 or 350 children died of hunger, respiratory disease and dehydration in the Alto do Cruzeiro in a given year, and the anthropologist has a strong scientific and moral imperative to get it right (Scheper-Hughes 1993, 891).

In the same light, one can find explanations that are more accurate, coherent and tend to have a better predictive character and are wider in scope. In this, I follow philosopher Vlerick (2012, 156), who lays out a very pragmatic theory of knowledge, in which he argues that epistemic relativism is at the end self-defeating. Knowledge is never final and absolute, but an ongoing process. Within the parameters of our cognitive system, knowledge is still possible. However murky a situation, there exists always a realm of simple, empirically verifiable facts, Tatsachen, from which we should start. In the case of a war, this might be the number of shells fired by either party, an objective fact that can be verified through the administrative logs of the army units involved. In the case of Mexico, this can be the number of victims and the way they died, as described in police and autopsy reports. This initially basic forensic evidence is processed and soon these simple facts acquire multiple layers of