Luz-Paula Parra
Luz-Paula Parra

The increasing public insecurity has negatively affected the quality of life of all Mexicans. However, its impact is differentiated among diverse sectors of the population and it has deeper consequences depending on regional, gender, age and ethnic conditions. This situation is particularly sensible because it has aggravated the historical socio-economic inequalities already existing around the whole country. The two questions that this article tries to answer are: how public insecurity has exacerbated socio-economic inequality in Mexico? And what are the different responses of unequal socio-economic sectors to deal with public insecurity? In the article, it is argued that since 2006 when the war on drugs was launched, there has been a notorious increase of criminal violence and insecurity and the state authorities are incapable or unwilling to provide equitable public security to all Mexicans. Therefore, multiple organized and unorganized responses have been generated by the population, which go from contracting of private security forces, integrating self-defense groups, lynching, isolating in private enclaves among many other individual and collective, formal and informal, legal and non-legal measures that entail uneven costs and benefits for the people.

Link to the publication: http://journals.umcs.pl/al/issue/view/361/showToc