Chiapas: paramilitarism as a vector of counterinsurgency warfare

Abstract

Political violence in Mexico is nothing new; after all, the first revolution that shook the 20th century was Mexican. But the southern region of the country, more specifically, the current state of Chiapas, has experienced land conflicts, peasant uprisings, and indigenous wars since the beginning of colonization. Still, it never had the attention of national authorities to resolve the perverse distribution of wealth, nor the oppression against the Indians, nor the concentration of land in the hands of a few families, nor political clientelism. On the contrary, the central and state governments were not only silent in relation to the growing armament of landowners, but encouraged it as a way of containing and repressing social dissatisfaction.