Legacies of Resistance: Mobilization Against Organized Crime in Mexico

• Author: Javier Osorio,Michael Weintraub,Livia Isabella Schubiger
• Published date: 01 August 2021
• Date: 01 August 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021989761
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414021989761

Comparative Political Studies

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414021989761

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Article

Legacies of Resistance:

Mobilization Against

Organized Crime in

Mexico

Javier Osorio1, Livia Isabella Schubiger2,

and Michael Weintraub3

Abstract

What are the legacies of armed resistance? Why do some communities

engage in armed mobilization in response to violence, disorder, and

insecurity, while others under very similar conditions do not? Focusing on

mobilization against organized crime in contemporary Mexico, we argue that

historical experiences of armed resistance can have lasting effects on local

preferences, networks, and capacities, which can facilitate armed collective

action under conditions of rampant insecurity in the long run. Empirically,

we study the Cristero rebellion in the early 20th century and grassroots

anti-crime mobilization in Mexico during recent years. Using an instrumental

variables approach, we show that communities that pushed back against

state incursions almost a century earlier were more likely to rise up against

organized crime in contemporary times.

Keywords

historical legacies, organized crime, self-defense forces, Mexico, conflict

processes

1University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

2Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

3Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

Corresponding Author:

Javier Osorio, University of Arizona, 125 Social Sciences Building, Tucson, 85721-0027,

AZ, USA.

Email: josorio1@arizona.edu

989761

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Introduction

In armed conflicts around the globe, ordinary citizens organize civil militias

to resist powerful armed actors, often with important and long-term effects

(Bateson, 2013; Jentzsch et al., 2015; Schubiger, 2020). The Autodefensas

Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá in Colombia,1 the comités de autodefensa

in Peru, or the Civilian Joint Task Force in Nigeria, among many others, are

cases in point. Such forces also play an important role beyond civil wars, in

the context of pervasive criminal violence. Despite their prevalence, and

despite the wide-ranging social, political, and economic effects that they

occasion at both the local and national levels, we know little about the condi-

tions under which such mobilization is more likely to occur. Why do some

communities engage in armed mobilization in response to violence and pre-

dation, while others under very similar conditions do not?

In this article, we argue that communities that have historically been

affected by outside threats and successfully fought back, may draw on these

experiences even generations later to organize armed self-defense campaigns

when facing contemporary threats. If institutional transmission belts persist,

past experiences with armed mobilization can help communities overcome

barriers to collective action via intra- and inter-generational political social-

ization, preserved organizational and tactical legacies, and cross-generational

social networks of trust. This, we argue, can help explain variation in com-

munity resistance in the long run.

Empirically, we study the legacy of one particular armed political move-

ment in 1920s Mexico—the Cristero rebellion—in which ordinary citizens

took up arms to resist anti-Catholic repression efforts by the Mexican state.

We contend that path-dependent processes following the Cristero rebellion

produced enduring mobilizational legacies that, together with a particular

confluence of events in the contemporary period, partially explain variation

in communities’ participation in the self-defense (autodefensa) movement

that emerged against organized crime in Mexico.2

Using novel data on the Cristeros and contemporary self-defense forces,

we find a positive relationship between the pro-Catholic Cristero rebellion in

the 1920s and contemporary autodefensa mobilization. This result holds after

controlling for an extensive set of potential confounders, including historical

covariates from the 15th, 16th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Moreover, we

rely on an instrumental variable approach that exploits variation in local

Catholic bishops’ ideologies preceding the Cristero uprising, and also address

spatial interdependence. Alternative explanations—specifically, that commu-

nities historically engaged in the Cristero rebellion simply face more contem-

porary crime and more drug-trafficking organizations, or that self-defense

mobilization is driven by inequality—produce inconsistent results.

Osorio et al. 1567

Osorio et al. 3

This paper contributes to the literatures on vigilante group formation

(Bateson, 2013, 2020; Phillips, 2017); historical legacies of conflict

(Balcells, 2012; Lupu & Peisakhin, 2017; Rozenas et al., 2017; Weintraub

et al., 2015); and the dynamics of order, repression, and criminal violence

(Barnes, 2017; Dell, 2015; Kalyvas, 2015; Lessing, 2015; Osorio, 2015;

Osorio et al., 2018a, 2018b; Sullivan & Elkus, 2008). We address these con-

tributions in turn. First, we add to an emerging literature on self-defense

group formation in response to organized crime, which tends to posit either

economic explanations for vigilante appearance (Phillips, 2017) or focus on

the ineffectiveness of state institutions in providing justice (Godoy, 2006).

Few look to historical legacies to explain contemporary mobilization of self-

defense groups (for important exceptions see Bateson, 2013, 2020; Ley &

Trejo, 2019; Wolff, 2020).3 Second, we contribute to the literature on the

legacies of important historical events, particularly those involving violence

(Bateson, 2020; Daly, 2012; Osorio et al., 2018a; Rozenas et al., 2017;

Zhukov & Talibova, 2018). We study a particular kind of historical legacy

and show that efforts to shield a religious group from state repression had

lasting effects on local communities’ propensity to rise up against radically

different external threats.4 This should invite a reflection about what kinds

of historical events prime communities to engage in future instances of col-

lective action, a question addressed below. Third, the paper contributes to

the literature on the Mexican Drug War (Dell, 2015; Kalyvas, 2015; Osorio,

2015), which has largely neglected the puzzling variation in mobilization

against organized crime.5

We begin by developing a theoretical argument for explaining how lega-

cies of high-risk resistance can shape future mobilization against disparate

threats. The following section describes the Mexican context, particularly the

Cristero rebellion in the 1920s, the shift toward predation by drug cartels fol-

lowing the Mexican state’s crackdown, and finally, the “wave” of autode-

fensa mobilization in the early 2010s. Next, we describe our empirical

strategy and the data we use to test the relationship between the Cristeros and

autodefensas. The following section presents results and robustness checks,

while the final one concludes with avenues for future research.

Violence and Local Order

While the ideal-typic Weberian state is characterized by the legitimate

monopoly of violence, in many contexts state presence is unevenly distrib-

uted geographically and state institutions are captured by non-state armed

groups (O’Donnell, 1993; Risse & Stollenwerk, 2018). Deals struck between

armed actors can provide some measure of predictability, yet the outcome

may be violent and economically and socially stifling to local residents.