Presentation and discussion of the research study Absence of government, violence and policy of abandonment in the north of Mexico, produced by Luis Alfonso Herrera Robles, lecturer-researcher at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juárez.

2008 was a bad year for the whole world, bringing such issues as the economic crisis and unemployment, but in the case of Mexico's northern border, in addition to the financial crisis and unemployment, the area also suffered from drug trafficking, an increase in feminicide, militarisation, mass deportations from the United States, as well as other phenomena that have produced – on an unusual level – a culture of violence, which some authors call “the lack of government of the city”. This approach cannot be understood without the “policy of abandonment” that the State and local governments have practised for a number of decades by championing a production-based economic model, without an accompanying social model. The dismantling and destructuring of civil society are threatening the social coexistence that the authorities cannot guarantee owing to their institutional weakness and the mistrust felt by part of the population. The proposal is to consider north Mexico by revising its local problems and those that have resulted from processes of globalisation. Categories such as the absence of government, abandonment, the culture of violence, social exclusion and precariousness are key tools for analysing Mexico's northern border today.

Commentators:
Carlos González (Chihuahua College)
Servando Pineda Jaimes (Autonomous University of Ciudad Juàrez)
Joan Subirats (Institute of Government and Public Policy, UAB)
María Jesús Izquierdo (Autonomous University of Barcelona)
Jaume Curbet (Open University of Catalonia)

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