State Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Globalization of Crime: The Case of Ayotzinapa

• Author: Nayar López Castellanos,Obed Frausto
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975014
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20975014

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 236, Vol. 48 No. 1, January 2021, 202–216

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20975014

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

202

State Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Globalization of

Crime

The Case of Ayotzinapa

by

Obed Frausto and Nayar López Castellanos

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

The violence perpetrated against the students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School

by the Mexican state constitutes an extreme form of social control and capital accumula-

tion. The forced disappearance of the 43 students can be explained in two dimensions,

political and economic. The political explanation is that the state administers institu-

tional repression and dispossession against peasant and indigenous communities to

inhibit social protest. The economic explanation is that violence meted out by the state

and criminal organizations is used to facilitate capital accumulation both by legal means,

through the extraction of natural resources, the exploitation of cheap labor, and the estab-

lishment of favorable contracts for transnational corporations, and by illegal means,

through drug and human trafficking, money laundering, extortion, and the expropria-

tion of community lands.

La violencia perpetrada contra los estudiantes de la Escuela Normal Rural de

Ayotzinapa por el Estado mexicano constituye una forma extrema de control social y

acumulación de capital. La desaparición forzada de los 43 estudiantes puede explicarse en

dos dimensiones: la política y la económica. La explicación política es la represión institu-

cional de la protesta social, y la económica es la facilitación de la acumulación de capital

tanto por medios legales (la extracción de recursos naturales, la explotación de mano de

obra barata y contratos favorables para las empresas transnacionales) como ilegales (el

tráfico de drogas y la trata de personas, el lavado de dinero, la extorsión y la expropiación

de tierras comunitarias).

Keywords: Violence, State, Capitalism, Mexico, Ayotzinapa

The events that occurred in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, on the night of

September 26, 2014, aroused indignation in Mexico and around the world over

the proven complicity between state institutions, organized crime, and the mafia

economy. When 100 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School com-

mandeered buses in Iguala to take them to Mexico City for the annual march

Obed Frausto is an assistant professor of humanities at Ball State University. Nayar López

Castellanos is a political scientist and professor-researcher in the Department of Political and

Social Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autonóma de México. Margot Olavarria is a transla-

tor living in New York City.

975014LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20975014Latin American PerspectivesFrausto and Castellanos

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