Official Masks and Shadows Powers. Towards an Anthropology of the Dark Side of the State - GLEDHILL

7/30/2019 Official Masks and Shadows Powers. Towards an Anthropology of the Dark Side of the State - GLEDHILL

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Gledhill: OFFICIAL MASKS AND SHADOW POWERS 199

199ISSN 0894-6019, 1999 The Institute, Inc.

Official MasksAnd Shadow Powers:

Towards An AnthropologyOf The Dark Side Of The State

John GledhillDepartment of Social Anthropology

University of Manchester

ABSTRACT: Despite a degree of democratic opening, opti-mistic assessments of political change in Mexico must be tem-

pered by noting the effects of the militarization of internal secu-rity and the intimate relations between political power and in-volvement in illegal activities. Starting from a discussion of widerliterature on the relationships between economic globalizationand the rise of Shadow States, ethnographic material and pressreports from Mexico are used to carry forward a critique of theNew Barbarism theorists treatment of these developmentsas pathologies of the periphery, rooted in state crisis or partialexclusion from global networks. It is argued that while the

Shadow State is not an entirely new phenomenon in Mexicanhistory, contemporary developments reflect the emergence ofnew forms of state power and governmentality that are con-nected in important ways to the continuing regulatory powersof Northern governments and the interventions of transnationalcapital. Although the fact that their field of accumulation is theglobal economy problematizes the position of Shadow State ac-tors, their capacity to build and rebuild clienteles and politicalnetworks in societies shattered by neoliberalism throws doubt


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200 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 28(3-4), 1999

on the capacity of an untainted civil society to enforce politi-

cal reform and accountability.

Prologue: On Northern Interventions, Dangerous Periph-eries and Shadow States

In the era of the Cold War, the North Atlantic powersoffered their citizens a relatively straightforward model of

the world in which freedom was menaced by an organizedevil empire fostering subversion in former colonial terri-tories. Northern imagery of the present epoch is of a differ-ent and less coherent kind. In the case of Latin America, weare presented with a positive message on transitions to de-mocracy and economic reform, which is neverthelessqualified by anxiety focused on threats to regional secu-

rity, such as that posed by Colombian narco-terrorism.In the case of the Middle East, continuing sanctions (andlow-intensity military action) against Iraq are justified, inthe words of Britains Prime Minister, by the need to keepSaddam Hussein in his cage, despite some public disquietabout the consequences of this policy for the civilian popu-lation of Iraq in general, and for that countrys children inparticular. Fundamentalist movements also remain a pre-

occupation for Northern powers in the region, despite theirlimited political success in recent years. For fundamental-ist in this geo-political rhetoric, we should, of course, readIslamic, despite the fact that forms of Christianity that mightequally well (if equally simplistically) be labeled fundamen-talist are experiencing explosive growth elsewhere, nota-bly Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, without

causing similar offense to Northern sensibilities.Such a public rhetoric of labeling and personifying thecauses of conflict and suffering constitutes an imagery inwhich, in the words of Deborah Poole and Gerardo Rnique,


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part of the world is made up of sui generis madmen and

terrorists, warlords and drug barons, charismatic leaders andfundamentalist mass movements (Poole and Rnique 1991:160). These pathologies are constructed in post-Cold Warpolitical discourse as non-systemic, problems of an irratio-nal periphery separate from a rational center representedby the United States and Europe. To see them as systemicwould be to:

unveil the unutterable connections (or linkages) betweencenter and periphery, between drug economies and the in-ternational capitalist economy, between Third World debt,metropolitan banks and financial institutions, between ThirdWorld dictators like Saddam Hussein and the military indus-trial complex (Poole and Rnique 1991: 191).

The purpose of this paper is to look through the kinds of

constructions that Poole and Rnique criticize to the under-lying connections, focusing principally on the case of Mexico.My broader aim, however, is to suggest that the Mexicancase should be included in a more general theory of statetransformation.

By insisting that this broader framework is applicable toMexico, I am arguing that analysis of the process of de-

mocratization in Mexico needs to be tempered by consid-eration of the issues highlighted in the pages that follow. Itis not my intention to induce deep pessimism about the pros-pects for achieving more socially just and democratic societ-ies in Latin America or other parts of the world. I simplywish to emphasize that the efforts of local and global actorsto promote such a future are hampered by the way that ef-forts to promote liberal political institutions are constrained

by the drive to promote a pattern of global capitalist devel-opment that has deeply socially polarizing consequences,in the North as well as the South. If we persist in treatingsystemic effects of global transformation as anomalies rooted


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in purely local conditions, it will prove difficult indeed to

make the world a better place.This is not to deny that Mexico has its specific character-

istics. Its political history differs in an obvious way from thatof other countries of Latin America, given the continuity ofcivilian rule since the 1910 Revolution and the grip on na-tional power maintained by its ruling Institutional Revolu-tionary Party (PRI). This political history can be related to

the particularities of Mexicos social and cultural history, butit can also be related to the countrys relationships with itsNorthern neighbor, which annexed half the territory of thefledgling nation state in the nineteenth century, played a sig-nificant role in the processes which enabled the post-revo-lutionary regime to consolidate itself during the turbulent1920s, and has substantially increased its influence on gov-ernment decisions south of the border since the 1980s. Yet

we must be wary of over-hastily embracing exceptionalistarguments about Mexico, and it seems particularly impor-tant to begin with a more general picture in any effort todeconstruct Northern post-Cold War imagery, since anotherof its striking characteristics is a tendency to selective vi-sion. Explanations might be sought in the pragmatics of geo-political calculation for the Russian Federations operations

in Chechnya to be considered an internal matter not suscep-tible to international intervention, for the East Timor situa-tion to be subject to a belated process of international re-sponse, and for the Bosnia and Kosovo catastrophes to betreated in their own different ways. Yet it is less easy to ex-plain why dominant Northern discourse on some parts ofthe world remains one of hoped-for economic recovery anddemocratization rather than state collapse, whereas Af-

rica is more commonly treated as a basket case about whichlittle can be done. I therefore begin by exploring ways inwhich a critique of misdiagnoses of the problems of Africa


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can lead us towards a recognition of some of the problems

facing democratization in Mexico.A leading example of post-Cold War thinking on Africa

is the New Barbarism thesis of Robert Kaplan (1994). Itsbasic premise is that crisis is not a result of past or ongoingrelationships with the West but of weak ties with the centersof global order and progress. Economic crisis in Africa isnaturalized as Malthusian catastrophe; violence and disor-

der are seen as either products of a cultural atavism thatweakened state machineries are no longer able to contain,or as reactions to exclusion from the global system of con-sumerism and informational economy, as Manuel Castellssuggests in applying the thesis more widely (Castells 1996:31).On this reading, violence is the result of conditions in-side peripheral countries and excluded regions. It can-not be seen as rational or meaningful and it cannot be

stopped by reasonable methods of diplomacy and concilia-tion that respect national sovereignty.

This diagnosis is robustly challenged in Paul Richardssanalysis of the Sierra Leonean civil war (Richards 1996).Richards charts the way the 1992 coup by young army offic-ers started well, with promises of reform of the patrimonialstate, and ended badly, as the occupying forces in the

rainforest zone succumbed to the temptations of diamondsmuggling and regular troops began to dress as rebels of theRevolutionary United Front and plunder impoverished vil-lagers. By 1992 elites could no longer construct effectivepower relations simply by controlling the institutions of theofficial state, even if they helped themselves to foreign aidbudgets and appropriated tax revenues to reward their cli-ents. The only place effective power relations could now be

built was within the Shadow State tied to informal mar-kets, in this case illegal diamond mining. In consideringhow the Shadow State emerges, Richards points us awayfrom considering Sierra Leone as a periphery isolated from


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global cultural flows, whose political problems reflect struc-

tural adjustment and reduced foreign aid, towards its rela-tions with the North Atlantic powers. Firstly, urban-biasedwestern development policies destroyed rural subsistenceeconomies; secondly, the withdrawal of De Beers and othertransnational mining companies from Sierra Leone did notend their role as price fixers in the international market,which ensured the continuing profitability of diamond

smuggling.The idea that the growth of illegal economies is sim-ply a consequence of the failure of normal forms of devel-opment in Africa has also been challenged by JanetMacGaffey and a group of Zairian collaborators. MacGaffeyinsists that the growth of the second economy must berelated to political dynamics, rather than simply to the needfor people to construct survival strategies or to the exist-

ence of corruption. Second economies depend on localand foreign states classifying certain kinds of commodityflows and transactions as illegal (MacGaffey et al. 1991: 9-10). Evading the official state can be a way of expressingresistance to the state, and wealth generated in the secondeconomy can lead to social mobility, class formation and thereplacement or recomposition of elites.

Nevertheless, as the case of Mexicos narco-politiciansdemonstrates, existing political elites can also consolidatetheir power by seizing the commanding heights of the ille-gal economy. The Mexican state apparatus has hardly de-cayed to a point which would make a direct comparison withAfrican cases such as Liberia or Sierra Leone meaningful.However, there may be scope for comparison if one acceptsWilliam Renos argument (against MacGaffey) that private

and political circuits of accumulation can reinforce one an-other and that the Shadow State represents an alternativeinstitutionalization of power that may achieve relative sta-bility (Reno 1995: 183). Reno offers a detailed analysis of how


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the social foundations of the Sierra Leonean Shadow State

were laid in the colonial period. He argues that a state-cen-tered analysis focused solely on recent crisis obscures thelong-term relations between control of informal markets andthe exercise of political power in a context shaped by thecountrys place in the global economy. If the field of accu-mulation for the political actors in the Shadow State is thatglobal economy, and their power networks include foreign

companies, they become vulnerable to shifts of political andeconomic wind far beyond their immediate field of actionand control. Yet the local social power of such Shadow Stateactors throws doubt on the capacity of an untainted and ro-manticized civil society to enforce political reform andaccountability. The more globalized a local economic sys-tem becomes, the more acute this problem becomes. Theboundaries between roles in the public and private sector

are likely to become increasingly blurred as more former statefunctions are privatized, and entrepreneurial activity be-comes a means not only of exercising power but of occupy-ing formal positions in the political field.

Thinking About States in the North and the South

The contemporary problem of the state is not simply theproblem of the quest for good governance in peripheralsocieties. Even the most robust liberal-democratic states havealways invited questions about the backstage power of cor-porate capital and the extent of political control over nationalsecurity services. It was, after all, Eisenhower who coinedthe phrase the military-industrial complex. Yet post-Cold

War thinking not only celebrates the transparency of North-ern systems of governance, but distracts our attention fromthe way one countrys state crisis might be related to an-other countrys foreign policy.


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Freedom of information legislation in the United States

enables us, with hindsight, to discover much of the hiddenagenda of the U.S. invasion of Panama, including its role asa rehearsal for the subsequent intervention in the Gulf. Yetthis desirable democratic freedom has not materially affectedthe outcome of the invasion: a large number of dead, poorand largely black and mestizo Panamanians and an annihi-lated Panamanian Defense Force (Weeks and Gunson 1990;

Johns and Ward Johnson 1994). Although the Clinton ad-ministration is honoring the provisions of the treaty trans-ferring the canal to Panamanian control that populist leaderGeneral Torrijos negotiated with Carter prior to his death(in an aircraft that witnesses said exploded in a ball of flame),it is doing so under conditions in which the absence of aPanamanian army places a continuing question mark overthe rights of the United States to intervene in Panamanian

affairs.It was evidently hoped in security circles that the 1989

invasion would enable the United States to maintain forwardbases for operations in South America within Panama. Theissue was revived in June 1999 when General Wilhelm ofthe U.S. Southern Command testified to the Senate ForeignAffairs Committee that contingency plans for unilateral in-

tervention had been drawn up in response to an alleged in-crease in drug-trafficking activity and penetration by Co-lombian narco-guerrillas of the Darin region followingthe beginning of withdrawal of Southern Command unitsfrom their Panamanian bases (Latin American Weekly Re-port, WR-99-25). Wilhelms interpretation of the De ConciniCongressional Amendment to the Torrijos-Carter treaties asa license to intervene was endorsed by Guillermo Endara,

General Noriegas successor, whose election campaign wasaided by the U.S. taxpayer (Latin American Weekly Report,WR-99-27). Although it was strongly resisted (as incompat-ible with international law) by the outgoing Panamanian


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government, as were calls on Costa Rica to accept U.S. bases

as a replacement for those to be abandoned in Panama, it isdifficult to ignore either the way the present War AgainstDrugs has been harnessed to the long-term strategic think-ing of the groups in charge of the U.S. national security ap-paratus (an issue to which I will return) or evidence fromthe past that U.S. attitudes towards drug-trafficking havebeen tempered by perceived geopolitical interest. It was, af-

ter all, George Bush who originally brought General Noriegaback onto the CIA payroll, after his links with drug-traffick-ers were known, thus enabling him subsequently to playhis part in the Iran-Contra affair.

The government of the United States is not a transparentaffair, despite the existence of electoral democracy. Whileelected politicians in democracies need to exercise cautionwith regard to favoring specific private interests in public

policy-making and responsiveness to lobbyists, the domainof national security is one of the areas that most stronglydiminishes transparency: the culture of the personnel whooccupy this niche in the state apparatus, their mode of re-cruitment and social background, is a research issue in itsown right (Ross 1998). I find it difficult to discern any fun-damental difference between the kind of politics embodied

in the Iran-Contra affair and the politics of the world southof the Ro Grande. There is, however, a pervasive assump-tion that there is a difference, rooted in different public atti-tudes and political cultures which, it is assumed, make Mexi-cans or Colombians less concerned about political corrup-tion. Thus, what appears an anomaly in the United States,heavily and seriously castigated on discovery, becomes aritual gesture elsewhere.

I would dispute this view. Latin America may havebeen colonized by the European country least transformedby the Enlightenment. Yet this is precisely what made theregion a precocious laboratory of modernity, as Benedict


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Anderson conceded in recasting his account of Latin

Americas contribution to the rise of western nationalismsin the second edition of IMAGINED COMMUNITIES(Anderson 1991). Faced with elites that embraced the val-ues of liberalism on paper rather than in social practice, theideals of equality before the law and transparency, account-ability and predictability in the administration of justice werepopular ideas in 19th century Latin American societies. They

frequently manifested themselves in peripheral places, asDavid Nugent has shown in his study of the province ofChachapoyas, Peru (Nugent 1997). The long-term result wasnot exactly a hybrid of modernity because such a conceptwould deny Latin Americas right to be considered to havepursued a distinct but coeval and interrelated path of devel-opment to European societies. It was, however, a type ofsociety in which there is a constant and continuing tension

between different sets of principles. On the one hand, asDaMatta has argued, clientalistic relationships and socialconnectedness have remained essential to successful ne-gotiation of life. They pervert the operation of the rule oflaw into an instrument of class privilege (DaMatta 1991: 180-181). To be an isolated individual lacking connections is apersonal disaster. Patron-client relations, including political

clientalism, can be cognized as moral economy and citi-zens are forced into complicity with everyday law-breakingin order to resolve their problems. The equalizing potentialof liberal constitutions was further neutralized by appealsto essentialized racial or gender difference: the differentsouls of Blacks, Indians and women. Yet all this is in ten-sion with another model, in which taxes are collected to fi-nance public services, accounts are duly rendered by offi-

cials, and justice operates without fear or favor. It is a modelthat has been regularly articulated in civic culture and pub-lic political conflict, especially at the level of municipalities,and it is a model on which ordinary citizens spontaneously


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reflect on a daily basis. It is a model that people have died

for, and still die for.The difference between Latin Americans and the citizens

of Northern liberal democracies is that the former are lessinclined to suspend their disbelief about the way power ac-tually works. The culture of the state in post-revolution-ary Mexico was based on the twin ideas that the law wasnot a totally dead letter but that the wheels of justice fail to

grind without engaging the shadow powers behind the le-gal apparatus. One should thus seek to use the law to solveproblems, such as land disputes, but by finding intermedi-aries who could take the case forward through the bureau-cratic labyrinth by virtue of their connections to higher in-stances of power and influence, hopefully, to the Presidenthimself (Lomnitz-Adler 1992: 307; Nuijten 1998).

Although this was, in a sense, a correct theory, it could

fail miserably in any particular instance, and generally did.Issues such as land claims dragged on for decades. The verydragging on became a means of political control as well as ameans of self-enrichment for officials and community lead-ers. Recourse to the law in other contexts was and is inhib-ited by the awesome power of impunity. Let me give a smallexample of how awesome that power can be.

A small town in the state of Michoacn, Mexico, electeda municipal government drawn from the center-left opposi-tion Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). The mayorand other officials, accompanied by their wives, were stroll-ing down the main street on their way to lunch when theywere shot at by a group of assailants armed with automaticweapons normally issued to the state judicial police. One ofthe women died. The culprits, not local people, were pur-

sued and arrested by the town police, who were also quitewell armed. After an ungentle interrogation, the assailantsconfessed that they had been hired by the former police chief,an ally and political associate of the former community boss.


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The latter was a well-connected member of the ruling Insti-

tutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) at state level. He was con-sidered to have made his fortune in the marijuana business,like many local politicians of his day. On removal to the statecapital, the assailants changed their story: the official ver-sion now became that the attack had been motivated bypurely personal grudges. The point of the official versionwas, of course, that it should totally lack credibility: the

message was simply that we can kill you and you cannotdo anything about it. This was a highly effective message,at this historical moment, in terms of convincing citizens thatdefying the powers that be by flirting with democracy waslikely to cause them problems.

Yet it was effective only in so far as it appeared at thismoment in time that the national president and his partywere reconsolidating their grip on power after the disputed

1988 presidential elections.1 Furthermore, it was not totallyeffective. Use of these kinds of tactics strengthened the de-termination of domestic civic and human rights NGOs, es-pecially in urban areas, where the straightforward applica-tion of state terror seemed less viable. This should be suffi-cient to set the scene for a deeper exploration of the role ofshadow powers in Mexican politics and the extent to which

such power can be contested by popular social movementsand middle class advocates of liberal democracy and hu-man rights.

The Shadow State in Mexico

In 1994, the Chiapas revolt and the murder of the PRIs

candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio, produced a sweeping elec-toral victory for his successor, Ernesto Zedillo. Mexicans nowbecame afraid of chaos. This needs to be understood in termsof a traumatic past history of revolutionary violence ex-


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tended over two decades, complemented by a less well-

known history of local violence in some parts of the countrylinked to the failures of the land reform process and clan-destine opposition by Catholic organizations that had someaffinities with European Fascism (Meyer 1977; AguilarValenzuela and Zermeo Padilla 1989). By the end of 1994,however, economic collapse changed the scenario again, lay-ing the basis for a slow recovery of the electoral opposition

from the Center-Left, aided by growing evidence of factionalconflict within the old political class.To understand why this mattered and what its implica-

tions are, we first need to consider how the old regimeworked. The ruling party was created by the military vic-tors of the revolution to perpetuate their power. Access tohigh office and distribution of the spoils of office were regu-lated from the 1940s onward by a structure of cliques (Camp

1996: 114-118). Over time, the development of these back-stage power networks overcame regional differences andcreated a remarkably solidary ruling elite. This now incor-porates leading members of the real political parties thatcoexisted with the ruling party without, in the past, alter-nating in power with it. The center-left PRD was originallyformed by the fusion of dissident members of the ruling party

and members of smaller left-wing parties, including the com-munists. As time has gone by, it has drawn in more defec-tors from the ruling PRI, several of whom have now wonstate governerships after being rejected as PRI candidates.This suggests that the logic of the clique structures and tra-ditional ways of doing politics could survive an apparentshift to more democratic governance based on political partyalternation. Yet matters are less straightforward once we fac-

tor in the shadow networks of power.The old regime was based on the political classs ability

to exploit the tributary mechanisms of the state apparatusfor private purposes. In the 1970s, a vast expansion of the


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state sector of the economy made this type of political ac-

cumulation increasingly important. From the beginningsof the post-revolutionary state, political leaders convertedthemselves into revolutionary capitalists and self-enrich-ment and the acquisition of private sector assets was con-sidered normal. Real capitalists by and large kept out ofpolitics, with the exception of the powerful elite of the north-ern industrial city of Monterrey (Saragoza 1988). Between

1950 and the 1970s, the private sectors relationship withthe regime was relatively cordial, but growing state inter-vention produced tensions that the new neoliberal orienta-tion of the ruling party in the 1980s and 1990s was designedto defuse (Bensabet-Kleinberg 1999: 72-73). To a great ex-tent, this strategy has been successful. The problem lies withthe substantial sectors of business and elements of the po-litical class that are not tied to the large-scale, transnational,

financial and commercial interests now served by the state.The corporatist mechanisms embedded in the old ordercould be used to manage the transition to neoliberalism, byimplementing a selective strategy of using resources to di-vide the social movements coalition that had threatened todefeat the PRIs candidate, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, in the1988 elections. Repression was also selectively deployed from

the start of the 1990s to further incapacitate those sectors ofthe opposition that remained recalcitrant. After the 1994 eco-nomic crash, however, militarization of internal security wasincreasingly used to plug widening gaps in the power struc-ture (Gledhill 1998a). This was not simply a question ofChiapas, but of other rural states in which armed movementswere developing and above all, of the cities, where pre-emptive strikes were made against the popular bases of im-

portant urban social movements.This is one aspect of an increasingly visible dark side of

the Mexican state. One striking example is the case ofSUTAUR (Sindicato nico de Trabajadores de Auto-


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transportes Urbanos Ruta 100), the union that organized the

drivers of Mexicos urban buses, noted for its left-wing poli-tics. The union itself ran the bus company, which was liqui-dated on grounds of corruption. The sacked workers wenton strike. A settlement was finally reached for conventionalreasons: the drivers had mortgages to pay and children tosend to school and gradually lost the will to resist. Yet therewas never a satisfactory explanation of how the former head

of the company managed to commit suicide by shooting him-self in the head twice. Suspicions of foul play deepened af-ter unknown assailants murdered the investigating judgewho declared the original liquidation of the company ille-gal. The deployment of the army to deal with Mexico Cityscrime wave led to some scandalous generalized assaults onlow income neighborhoods. The Jaguars, a new police unitcreated under the Zedillos governments program to im-

prove public security, had to be disbanded after its own in-volvement in crime became too obvious. Here we can dis-cern various distinct dimensions of shadow power.

First, there are official conspiracies, none more apparentthan in the investigation of the assassination of Luis DonaldoColosio. The Colosio family has never been satisfied withthe official version. Most ordinary Mexicans appear to be-

lieve that Colosio was killed on the orders of the man whochose him, ex-president Carlos Salinas, after Colosio showedsigns of being unwilling to be a puppet of his former masterand thereby blocked Salinass ambitions to break the rulesof the political game by perpetuating his own backstagepower. The purpose of the much-extended investigation wasclearly to ensure that the truth could never be established.That Mexicans could readily believe that Salinas killed

Colosio is a significant window onto popular views of power,but it is not necessarily an index of hostility towards theformer president: strong men can be admired and Salinashad improved his public rating by being seen in those terms.


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Although intensified intra-elite conflict in the next sexenio

was eventually to turn the adjective Salinista into a termof abuse and forced all aspirants for the PRI presidentialnomination in 2000 to dissociate themselves from ties to Sali-nas and his allies, Ernesto Zedillo had difficulties in capital-izing on his driving of Salinas into exile, since he was per-ceived as a weak president, and, objectively, remained a weakpresident, as a young man of relatively humble origins who

had difficulties building up a strong clique network centeredon himself. Salinas was more adept in this regard, and bet-ter placed by virtue of his familys wealth, social status andconnections, despite also being young and a technocrat.The network he fostered leads us straight into a second di-mension of the Shadow State: the links between its agents,notably the police, politicians and illegal activities.

Ex-president Salinass own brother Ral was arrested

and, in February 1999, convicted, for intellectual author-ship of the murder of his own brother-in-law, Jos Fran-cisco Ruz Massieu, a former governor of Guerrero state. Themotive was sought in Ral Salinass links with drug traf-ficking and money laundering in addition to theft from thepublic purse. The whole Salinas presidency is now seen asone in which Mexico became the principle source of drug

shipments into the United States, allegedly through thebrokering of deals between the President and drug cartels.Although the narco-poltico predates the Salinas era, sev-eral figures in his cabinet and major political allies in thebackstage networks of power were alleged by the press onboth sides of the border to have been major players in thedrug economy.

According to recent official U.S. statements, Zedillos

government has only scratched the surface of a corruptionthat runs deep in Mexican politics. Yet this did not inhibitthe Clinton administration from persuading Congress tocertify Mexico as cooperating in the war against drugs. At


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the end of May, 1999, THE WASHINGTON POST and NEW

YORK TIMES published articles citing leaked official reportsthat implicated the fabulously wealthy former Minister ofAgriculture under Salinas, former regent of Mexico City, andpolitical boss of bosses of the State of Mexico, Carlos HankGonzlez, in links with the drug trade.2 As the Mexican gov-ernment protested, the State and Justice Departments ex-pressed themselves unaware of any grounds for such

charges. However, they did also seized the opportunity toreiterate their concern about the continuing flow of drugsfrom the south and the need to adopt further measures toattack the cartels (La Jornada, June 3rd, 1999). In October1999, former FBI agent Stanley Pimental renewed the assaulton the Salinas administration, following the suicide (whilehe was awaiting trial in a U.S. prison on money launderingcharges) of Mario Ruz Massieu, once deputy attorney gen-

eral and brother of the politician for whose murder RalSalinas was convicted. Pimental published an article in themagazine TRENDS IN ORGANIZED CRIME asserting thatmoney from drug trafficking had ended up directly inSalinass office, stressing that the PRI had provided protec-tion to Mexicos drug cartels throughout its history (Mexicoand Nafta Report, RM-99-10). Once again, the Mexican gov-

ernment position was that Pimental was simply repeatingfamiliar slanders, while the U.S. administration remainedin a refusal to confirm or deny posture.

There may be more to the U.S. administrations ambigu-ous stance on these issues than pragmatic reasons of state:the need to balance considerations of political stability inMexico against other concerns. U.S. behavior suggests thatthe drugs issue provides a convenient pretext for ensuring

Mexicos compliance on other issues of vital U.S. interest,the NAFTA and immigration policy. If U.S. official agenciescontinue to be economical with the truth as far as theirreal knowledge of the private economic activities of power-


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ful Mexicans are concerned, this would, after all, be a pat-

tern of behavior with precedent in the Panamanian casementioned earlier. The idea that the transition from theReagan-Bush to Clinton eras has not totally changed thenature of U.S. foreign policy is further reinforced by consid-ering how some aspects of the Panamanian case resonatewith current stances towards the situation in Colombia aswell as Mexico, different though U.S. attitudes towards

Mexico and Colombia appear to be at first sight.The FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colom-bia) guerrillas were allowed by the Pastrana government totake charge of a demilitarized zone in the South as a prepa-ratory step in a peace process, which seems increasinglyvulnerable at the time of writing, following renewed FARCmilitary operations and increasing evidence of U.S. interestin a military solution and possible direct intervention. What

remains far from clear is whether drugs are really the salientissue. Whereas it is undeniable that the guerrilla movementhas used income from cocaine laboratories to finance itsoperations, and affords protection to peasant coca produc-ers, the 5,000 strong right-wing paramilitary armyAutodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) has a direct linkto the cartels through its leader, Carlos Castano, whose

brother Fidel was a close associate of Pablo Escobar. Accord-ing to GUARDIAN journalist Jeremy Lennard (A war runon drugs, The Guardian Weekend, November 13th, 1999),Drug Enforcement Agency sources are diffident even on theissue of whether Fidel Castano actually died in 1994, as pre-viously reported, or is still active, and acknowledge linksbetween the paramilitaries and the Russian mafia. While theAUC is allowed to run drugs with apparent impunity in

northern Colombia (under the protection of army generalswho learned their counter insurgency tactics at the Schoolof the Americas), the suggestion that a counter insurgencyagenda remains more significant than an anti-drugs agenda


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does not seem far-fetched. Somewhat against the grain of

the image of the post-ideological narco-terrorist organi-zation, the FARC has justified its continuing bellicosity byarguing that the first priority in the peace negotiations shouldbe reversal of the social polarization that has been inducedby Colombias pattern of high-growth capitalist developmentin the 1990s, which reflects both the structural effects of open-ing to the world market and the contribution of the violence

to displacing and impoverishing rural people (Latin Ameri-can Weekly Report WR-99-43). The one thing that is clear,from recent public demonstrations involving up to 12 mil-lion citizens in urban and rural areas, is that most Colombi-ans want peace above all else, an outcome made less ratherthan more likely by current U.S. policy.

On this reading, the War Against Drugs, which, as Jer-emy Lennard noted, currently costs the U.S. taxpayer almost

three times as much annually as it would cost to buy theworlds entire production of cocaine, may be a war to guar-antee the continuation of the neoliberal economic model inLatin America. The facts, of course, are likely to remainmurky, but this is precisely the point. Shadow State networksin Latin America are the subject of controlled leaks to jour-nalists from official sources in the United States, and may

contain as much misinformation as information; there is aclear selectivity in what is being disclosed at any moment.An emphasis on the way the drug issue can be harnessed toother economic and geopolitical agendas, however, does notexhaust the linkages that can be discerned in present pat-terns of development. Following through the logic of JanetMacGaffeys position, understanding the drug economy inLatin America should be a matter of understanding how

states, by classifying activities as illegal, create frameworksfor legal and illegal activities to articulate to each other. Thepowerful political networks said to be associated with drugtrafficking and money laundering in Mexico are also central


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partners in transnational consortia developing a range of

legitimate businesses in the fields of financial services,resort, hotel, condominium and commercial gambling de-velopment (casinos and betting).

Unspeakable Connections

This model of development is taking away the traditionallivelihoods of rural Mexicans while offering them a varietyof new ones, some of which are linked to the ever diversify-ing production and transshipment of narcotics as well asother kinds of contraband operations. Therefore, there is astrong connection between the pattern of development be-ing fostered by official states and that linked to shadowpowers, which is heavily mediated by corporate capital. The

connections seem extremely visible in the careers of the over-night millionaires of the Salinas era, in particular, that of thefugitive banker, Carlos Cabal Peniche, who added to thePRIs woes from a jail cell in Australia by claiming to havemade a major financial contribution to both the Colosio andZedillo presidential campaigns. Cabals investment portfo-lio revealed the tell-tale signs of drug investment by com-

bining industrial assets with the common denominator oflegal use of precursor chemicals with a financial sector port-folio including banks and currency exchanges. Yet his deepersignificance lies in the way his career manifested the entireweb of connections established between the formal politicalsphere, privatizations of public enterprises, and legal andillegal economic activities.

After a false start to a business career as administrator of

his fathers enterprises in Tabasco, Cabal Peniche provedmore successful in the shrimp export business in Campeche,where his export company, Promo-Sea, secured an 80,000U.S. dollar credit in 1987 from Eastbrook Inc., brokered by


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Merrill Lynch (Proceso, 6th September 1998). The credit was

never repaid, since the operation was part of the BCCI (Bankof Credit and Commerce International) fraud. BCCI was de-nounced in the North as a rogue bank created by ThirdWorld criminals (doing business in non-Western waysthrough patronage, clientalism, bribery and political lobby-ing). Yet, as Ananth Aiyer has noted, there appeared to belittle concern about BCCIs practices when they were con-

tained in the South (Aiyer 1998). Important U.S. politicallobbyists and government officials had dealings with BCCI;it played a significant role in the Iran-Contra affair; and itsoverall pattern of activity as a global financial enterprise reg-istered in Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands and other off-shore banking centers hardly made it unusual. BCCI becamea problem when its operations broke down the insulationbetween North and South and it made moves on Ameri-

can banks (Aiyer 1998: 6). In addition, as we will see shortly,this may help us to understand the increasing exposure topublic scrutiny of the activities of the family of Carlos HankGonzlez, but for the moment the important point is thatentrepreneurs such as Cabal Peniche not only benefited fromthe BCCI affair, but became model entrepreneurs, patron-ized first by Federico de la Madrid, son of Salinass prede-

cessor, and then by Salinas himself.According to press reports, Salinas not only providedCabal with government credits to assist his private sectorinitiatives and participation in the purchase of privatizedpublic assets, but provided him with personal introductionsto other entrepreneurs now accused of involvement in thedrug business (Proceso, 6th September 1998). It was not,however, merely politicians who participated in the social

networks that underpinned Cabal Peniches rise to fame andfortune in the early 1990s. Cabals most intimate businessadvisor was the priest Jacques Charveriat Prenat, who re-turned to his native France in August 1994, a month before


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Cabal himself fled the country to escape the consequences

of further investigation into the insolvency of the two banksthat he owned. Charveriat formed part of the circle of CarlosHank Gonzlez when he was regent of Mexico City, but cleri-cal associates of Cabal Peniche supposedly also included theBishop of Tabasco, Rafael Garca Gonzlez.3 At the time ofhis purchase of the Unin and Cremi banks, Cabals networkof associates ramified throughout the Mexican political and

social elite of his day, demonstrating the high degree of inte-gration that elite achieved when it came to business oppor-tunities.

Political patronage enabled Cabal to conduct some of hisbusiness with loans from public bodies, such as NAFINSA,which helped to finance his takeover of one of the divisionsof the Del Monte corporation, while Carlos Hank Gonzlezwas Secretary of Agriculture (Proceso, 6th September 1998).

Yet political favor also facilitated operations based on unse-cured loans provided by other arms of Cabals businessempire, and offered protection to those parts of the Cabalbusiness empire which serviced the drug economy. Thereare no clear boundaries between public and private powerhere. Once again according to press reports, Carlos HankGonzlez, Cabals most powerful patron, invested freely in

companies and consortia which had direct financial relationswith the government offices that he directed. Indeed, this issomething that Hank Gonzlez himself has recently con-ceded, arguing that interest conflicts were not proscribedunder the traditional rules of Mexican politics, although hecontends that the rules changed and that when they did, heimmediately complied with the letter of the law (Proceso,28th November 1999). This contention is part of a compre-

hensive public campaign to contest the further allegationsthat have been made about the Hank family, for which theyhave hired a group of former U.S. law enforcement officersand secured the testimony of former U.S. ambassadors to


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Mexico (Proceso, 28th November 1999). The claims being

contested include the charge that Carlos Hanks sons forgedclose relationships with the organizations of the ArellanoFelix brothers, Amado Carillo Fuentes and other drug car-tels, as the familys investments in racetracks and casinos(on both sides of the border) became central to the cartelsmoney-laundering operations (Proceso, 7th November 1999).The airline TAESA, also in the news for its lamentable safety

record, and the Transportacin Martima Mexicana (TMM)company, which went on to invest in railroads with KansasCity Southern and manufactured its own containers, are al-leged to have formed another part of the Hank familys crimi-nal empire. The charge is that they were not only used bythe cartels, but received additional direct investments fromthem (Proceso, 7th November 1999).

Once again, we are faced with the problem of facts that

become increasingly murky as leaks combine with rumorsand possible systematic diffusion of misinformation; thedeliberate diffusion of a demonstrable falsehood is a usefulmeans of casting doubt on other evidence. The security ofshadow power depends on the way in which actors withdiverse interests are willing to allow a lack of clarity to pre-vail. Ral Salinas might legitimately claim that his own fate

was determined on the basis of facts that a court mighthave found less convincing under different political circum-stances.

Factional competition within the Mexican political elitehas allowed a limited official exposure of other narco-polticos, notably Mario Villanueva, former PRI governorof Quintana Roo. Accused of links with both the CiudadJurez cartel in Northern Mexico and the Cali cartel,

Villanueva was, nevertheless, able to flee the country aftercharges were laid against him. Although patrons in the po-litical and military elite could not guarantee total impunityto the traffickers, given the existence of competition within


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and between the cartels themselves as well as U.S. pressure

for some evidence of action in the War Against Drugs, theprinciple that some politicians positions have been fortifiedby infusions of funds from the second economy is not offi-cially contested. What is important are the clear limits set topolitical and judicial action from above and reactions frombelow to public revelations about the structures of shadowpower.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the career of thecontroversial governor of Tabasco state, Roberto MadrazoPintado, who reassumed his office for the third time in De-cember 1999 after two periods of leave of absence, with theblessing of President Zedillo. Madrazo was accused by thePRD in his home state of spending more on his gubernato-rial campaign than Clinton spent on getting into the WhiteHouse, thanks to funding received from Carlos Cabal

Peniche. Despite the scandal these charges provoked,Madrazo was able to run, albeit unsuccessfully, for the PRIsnomination for presidential candidate in 2000. In doing so,on an antineoliberal neopopulist platform that, together withan ebullient personality, brought him good poll ratings,Madrazo was anxious to play down his well-documentedlinks with the Hank family (Proceso, 12th April, 1998; La

Jornada, May 14th, 1999). Such a move made political sensegiven the Hanks recent reversal of political fortune, althoughthere was an obvious Hank influence at an earlier stage inthe Zedillo administration, as a function of both thepatriarchs great personal wealth (estimated at more thanone thousand million dollars by Forbes) and the range andcomplexity of the clique network that he built up over thedecades from his base in the State of Mexico and positions

in the Federal government. Madrazo nevertheless also ap-peared to be asserting his independence from the PRI politi-cal machine. He conducted his campaign for the nomina-tion against the victorious candidate, Francisco Labastida,


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in an extremely intemperate way, accusing Zedillo and the

PRI apparatus of aiding Labastida with government re-sources and violating their pledge to allow the militants ofthe PRI to choose their candidate freely. Yet this was all for-gotten after Labastida secured a handsome majority, withthe President publicly presiding over embraces between thevictor and the vanquished, embraces that appeared to guar-antee Madrazo continuing impunity and a possible place in

a future Labastida administration. As 1999 drew to a close,the PRI appeared to have secured the realignments neces-sary to retain power against a divided opposition in the 2000elections.

While elite compromise may be on the agenda again inMexico, the particular difficulties faced by the Hanks mayreflect the way that their transnational operations brokedown a necessary insulation between North and South,

as I suggested earlier. Carlos Hank Rohn, son of HankGonzlez, was fined and ordered by the Federal ReserveBank to divest himself of the 71% holding that he and hisrelatives had acquired in the Laredo National Bank in Texas.This was on the grounds that he had dishonestly manipu-lated the accounts of holding companies and other individu-als managed by Citibank to disguise the identity of the banks

real owners, in violation of U.S. banking regulations (LaJornada, June 6th, 1999). Citibank was not itself accused ofany criminal offense or violation of Federal Reserve rules.Yet the case has revealed a long history of transnational fi-nancial manipulation managed by the bank on behalf ofCarlos Hank Gonzlez himself, dating from the time whenhe occupied federal office and mirroring the kinds of ser-vices offered by the same bank to Ral Salinas.

It now transpires that a number of U.S. agencies havebeen conducting investigations of the Hank family empire.At one level, the boundary between legitimate and illegiti-mate activity seems somewhat blurred when one considers


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the ways the deals are actually made in these complex

transnational financial relationships. What has sustained it,however, as a classificatory device, is a complex institutionaland political construction in which Citibank is kept at a safedistance from people dying from drug abuse and its ethicsare protected by a transcendent discourse of commercialconfidentiality and client privilege, despite the fact that itsemployees concede that they make special arrangements to

ensure that the private affairs of Mexican political figuresare protected from public scrutiny. Recent developments,however, have highlighted the difficulties of maintaining thisfragile insulation of the worlds of the licit and illicit.

In U.S. Senate committee hearings on the Ral Salinascase, senior executives of Citibank had some difficulty ex-plaining not merely why they had allowed the former Mexi-can presidents brother to deposit millions of dollars in sepa-

rate accounts under a series of false names that included thesomewhat implausible Bonaparte, but also why Citibankstaff had actively impeded the tracing of these accounts af-ter Rals arrest (Proceso, 14th November 1999). AfterCitibanks Amy Elliot (also private banking executive toCarlos Hank Rhon) failed to convince the senators that herconfidence in Ral Salinas could have been justified simply

by the international eminence of his reforming brother, com-bined with their membership of an old and wealthy Mexi-can elite family, she caused further consternation by assert-ing that the Salinas brothers had been major investors in theprivatization of Telfonos de Mxico (TELMEX), whose prin-cipal shareholder is nominally the millionaire Carlos Slim.Although it has indeed long been popularly believed inMexico that Salinas must have been a secret beneficiary of

the privatizations (a matter that was not, in itself, a causefor censure, since the powerful were expected to serve theirpersonal interests whilst performing their public functions)Elliots effort to explain the Salinas familys increasing wealth


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by linking it to the share value of TELMEX backfired, given

that the private excess of the Salinas family was now associ-ated with an absolute loss in terms of public benefit.

A major element in Mexico politics during 1998 had beenthe controversy over the FOBAPROA (Fondo Bancario deProteccin al Ahorro). In addition to rescuing banks,FOBAPROA was to rescue other private companies whichwere in difficulties, including those that had received con-

cessions to build private toll-roads (superhighways) underSalinas. FOBAPROA transformed private debt into publicdebt, but in a manner that favored the interests of a smallnumber of enormously wealthy families enjoying privilegedpolitical connections with the groups close to the Zedilloadministration. The rescue package did nothing for smallerbusinesses, and was vigorously opposed not only by theCenter-Left opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution

but by the El Barzn debtors movement, representing suchsmaller urban businesses and commercial farmers. Facedwith a public outcry, Zedillo was forced to allow an inde-pendent audit of the bad debts of the banks, which fueledpublic outrage as the sheer cost to the taxpayer was aug-mented by revelations of anomalies of the kind alreadydescribed in the context of the career of Cabal Peniche. In

the case of the superhighway concessionaires, three fami-lies were to benefit from public indemnification while en-joying a light touch in terms of promised audits by theCommunication and Transport Industries (Proceso, 8th No-vember 1998).

Although the institutional basis for rescuing Mexicos richwas finally created, thanks to the last minute support of theopposition Party of National Action (PAN), and FOBAPROA

was replaced, at the end of 1998, by a new agency, the IPAB(Instituto para la Proteccin al Ahorro Bancario), Mexicosbanking system remains in crisis. With a sum equal to 1.5times Mexicos 1998 oil export revenues being needed to res-


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cue the fourth largest bank, Bancrecer, at the end of 1999,

and foreign banks buying heavily into the Mexican system,it seems likely that the country will follow global trends to-wards concentration of bank capital, and that foreign capi-tal will exercise an increasing hegemony over the Mexicanfinancial system (Mexico & Nafta Report, RM-99-10; RM-99-11). Once again, it is difficult to preserve the fiction thatwhat happens North and South of the border belong to com-

pletely separate worlds.In one sense, the indemnification of Mexicos rich mir-rors a long-standing tendency for Latin American elites totransfer losses incurred during economic downswings to thepublic purse and thus to lower-class taxpayers: capital thatfled the country in bad times had to be induced to returnwith fiscal concessions and could acquire new assets ex-tremely cheaply (Petras and Morley 1990: 198). Yet what

public opinion questioned during the FOBAPROA scandalwas whether elites should be indemnified for losses madeon enterprises that they had acquired or launched throughwhat were, in effect, legalized forms of corruption in the dis-posal of state assets as well as involvement in a wide rangeof more strictly illegal transactions. Elliots efforts to defendthe Salinas brothers simply strengthened the sentiment that

the nations assets had been hijacked by a small coterie ofpoliticians, their domestic business partners and allies intransnational corporations, leaving the Mexican public inthe unfortunate position not merely of footing the bill, butof relying on foreign governments to exercise what regula-tion they might be disposed to exercise. Given that the ulti-mate beneficiaries of mismanagement of the Mexican bank-ing system are the foreign corporations now able to buy up

the equity of these failing enterprises, while relatively trans-parent connections between private wealth and political in-fluence continue to manifest themselves, the public airingof a few scandals does not, once again, in itself promise any


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change other than a regrouping within the power blocs ly-

ing behind the formal facade of the state. Significant actionfrom the U.S. government seems unlikely, given the advan-tages to U.S. capital of letting matters take their course.

In discussing these issues, it is essential to reject the per-spective that we are dealing with pathologies of periph-eral regions, rooted in distinct political cultures, develop-ment failure and flawed transitions to modernity. Illicit

activity has long been integral to the accumulation of capi-tal by members of Mexicos political class. As I discoveredin my own ethnographic research, even the great populistPresident of the 1930s, Lzaro Crdenas, took his personalcut of the development projects that he won for his homestate, usingprestanombres (front-men). His younger brotherswere epitomes of corruption. Yet all this pales into insignifi-cance in comparison with the systemic relationships between

the types of development the North Atlantic hegemon nowimposes on its satellites, on the one hand, and the growth ofthe second economy, on the other. In insisting on theprivatization of state enterprises, the World Bank and IMFgave the holders of political power yet another opportunityto make money for themselves and their circle at the expenseof the domestic taxpayer.

It is quite evident ethnographically that the secondeconomy is flourishing. In provincial regions such asMichoacn, it is easy enough to collect evidence on illicitdimensions of the wealth-creation process in the personalbiographies of some local businessmen and politicians, andto trace the linkages which tie these local actors into largernetworks. Yet it is important not to stop at this level, but torecognize the way the possibilities of such local develop-

ments are rooted in the structures of national and interna-tional power relations, because nothing will change unlessthose relations change. The small fry rise, fall and are sacri-ficed, because they are simply cogs in a much larger ma-


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chine. One of the factors that sustains the machine is the

eagerness of transnational corporations and banks to courtthe politicians of the South and grant them confidentiality,undermining local efforts to insist on a separation of publicfunctions from private interests. There is also a direct rela-tionship between the effects of neoliberal development onlocal economies (through the exposure of undercapitalizedproducers to world-market pricing, for example) and the

kinds of activities that are adopted as substitutes. Not onlyis the cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana the mostremunerative alternative use of land that has been commer-cially devalued in other uses, but the trade can use the sameinfrastructure of transport and migratory movements as ear-lier systems of production. It should be stressed that themajority of local people derive very limited benefits fromthese developments. They are driven by Northern demand

in just the same way as production of winter vegetables orassembly work in the maquiladora plants, and they obey thecost reduction imperatives of the competitive global marketeconomy. Although life might now be unimaginable with-out it, the countervailing force of the second economy hasnot greatly moderated the socially polarizing effects of theneoliberal development model, either in Mexico or other

Latin American countries, and it brings its own problems ofviolence and further perversion of an already weak justicesystem.

Transnational Processes and National States

I have argued that Shadow State networks constitute

emergent forms of state power that are different from thosewhich existed earlier in the century in Mexico. One of thethings that makes them different is their transnational con-nections. It might be argued, however, that transnational


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processes also undermine the basis of the Shadow State, by

strengthening local social movements through the prolifera-tion of global discourses on rights and accountability, fur-thered by global media and NGO interventions in foreigncountries, and by promoting a global public sphere inwhich issues of accountability and models of developmentcan not only be debated but possibly changed through in-ternational pressure on governments. It seems necessary to

juxtapose this line of argument against other positions thatstress the increasing global power of capital.The debates about economic globalization and

transnational movements of people have often invoked theidea that the national state is of declining significance. Crit-ics of that post-national position have not only come upwith a series of arguments about why national states remainimportant, but often accuse their adversaries of neglecting

the continuing salience of the term imperialism to the con-temporary world order. Yet as Aihwa Ong has recently putit, both sides of the debate capture only part of what is amore complex dialectic of change:

Transnationality induced by accelerated flows of capi-tal, people, cultures, and knowledge does not simply reducestate power, but also stimulates a new, more flexible and

complex relationship between capital and governments. Theterm transnational first became popular in the late 1970slargely because global companies began to rethink their strat-egies, shifting from the vertical-integration model of themultinational firm to the horizontal dispersal of thetransnational corporation. Contrary to the popular viewthat sees the state in retreat everywhere before globaliza-tion, I consider state power as a positive generative forcethat has responded eagerly and even creatively to the chal-

lenges of global capital (Ong 1999: 21).

Ongs observations have important implications for thelong-standing debate about whether transnational corpora-


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tions undercut the powers of national states or convert them-

selves into sovereign states ruling through local proxiesin certain countries, since she suggests that todaystransnational corporations are different from the multina-tional firms of the past. Transnational companies are in theincreasingly happy position of being able to extract concealedsubsidies and even, in many cases, investment, from hostareas that are competing for mobile production facilities.

State governments in countries such as Mexico and Brazilare now playing as important a role as federal governmentin trying to lure foreign plants to their regions. The kind ofinfluence this provides on other aspects of governanceshould not be ignored. On the other hand, transnational cor-porations would scarcely find it convenient to take on re-sponsibility for governing a country at this stage in history.Even disciplining labor is an expensive business that eats

into profits, but more general governmental functions in-volve obligations that it is best to slough off onto others;examples of capitalist elites investing in running the socialinfrastructures of health care and education are relativelyrare. They are also, as the case of biotech company Monsantodemonstrates, vulnerable to public opinion and media cam-paigns. What Ong suggests, plausibly in my view, is that

contemporary globalization involves new kinds of alliancesand divisions of labor between transnational corporationsand national states.

Governments have responded to the conditions of eco-nomic globalization by subjecting their middle and work-ing classes to distinct disciplinary regimes, creating differ-entiated forms of governmentality aimed at dividing poten-tial forces of opposition and disarming resistance to the

market economy. In some cases limited state functions havebeen outsourced to private enterprises, producing zonesof graduated sovereignty involving the deployment of dif-ferent forms of disciplinary power which evolve and adapt


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in a way that reflects the exigencies of the global economic

system (Ong 1999: 217). Yet even in these cases, national statescontinue to supervise the overall framework for adaptingcapitalist accumulation to a specific cultural and institutionalcontext.

National states also still play important roles in structur-ing the way other transnational processes work. I have al-ready stressed their role as the definers of illegality, which

is also integral to the structuring of movements of peopleacross international borders and the way that those peopleare treated after they cross them. In the case of Mexicans inthe United States, the recent articulation of legislation onimmigration, drugs and terrorism has created a regime oftruth in the U.S. public sphere that has profound effects onthe life situations of all Mexicans in the country, irrespectiveof their migratory status (Gledhill 1998b). Yet Mexico also

illustrates ways in which state capacities can be underminedby transnational processes. It has become more difficult, forexample, to repress indigenous activists in Oaxaca state nowthat such actions can be answered by a public protest out-side the Mexican consulate in Los Angeles within hours ofthe event (Besserer 1997).

However, it has not become impossible to engage in re-

pression, especially with the logistical and technologicalsupport of the United States, even if using repression hasthese new consequences. Furthermore, there is also still scopefor encouraging migrant organizations that have achievedthis greater tactical flexibility to negotiate with government.Some transmigrant organizations are actually helpful to theneoliberal project since their members are eager to partici-pate in programs for encouraging the growth of small busi-

ness or larger scale commercial networks (as is the case withthe overseas Chinese). It is clear that some transnationallyorganized people are more post national than others, andthere are other good reasons for not making the


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transmigrant a universal hero of resistance in the face of

disillusion with former heroes, such as the working classesor post-colonial subalterns. As I have demonstrated else-where (Gledhill 1995; 1998b), many of those who leaveMexico for the United States are seeking individualistic so-lutions to their problems, and live lives that are full of ten-sions with other categories of Mexican migrants and othersubaltern groups across the border.

Robert Kaplan, writing in Britain's OBSERVER newspa-per, has in fact invoked Mexico as well as the Arab countriesof the Middle East as likely arenas for state collapse and re-gionalist fragmentation in the face of the pressures of eco-nomic globalization. Even at first glance, the comparisonseems superficial. It is true, for example, that Mexico doesdisplay a growing pattern of regional polarization. This re-flects a long-standing cultural historical differentiation be-

tween the North and the deep South, with its much greaterproportion of population actively maintaining and rework-ing indigenous identities. The NAFTA may well exacer-bate aspects of this division linked to economic factors, andis already eroding the position of the central regions of thecountry, which are also more socially and culturally hetero-geneous. It is not immediately clear, however, what kinds of

political consequences these processes might have.The U.S.-Mexico border remains relatively porous tomigrants from the Center and South of Mexico despite itsgrowing militarization (Dunn 1996). Some of the most po-litically interesting developments among transmigrant popu-lations are related to the southern state of Oaxaca, which isalso a region with an armed insurgent movement, and tothe relatively poor state of Zacatecas, which is on the bor-

derland between Central and Northern Mexico. In theOaxaca case, reworked ethnic identities and attempts to cre-ate more inclusive kinds of Indian identities that transcendpast ethnic fragmentation are central to transnational politi-


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cal projects (Stephen 1997: 82-83). The people involved sel-

dom saw themselves as part of the nation of which they werenotionally citizens. They have a different kind of project fordeveloping their rights in Mexico as members of atransnational population which is also diasporically distrib-uted within national territory from, for example, the mesti-zos of Zacatecas, who are seeking rights in Mexico throughnew rules on dual nationality.4

All that it might be possible to say in general terms isthat different kinds of political projects can draw on globaldiscourses focused on rights. Some of these invoke claimsto special treatment by states on grounds of disadvantagelinked to historical minority identities, whereas others seekto appeal to the conscience of an emergent international pub-lic sphere and are more radically post-national. There isno simple and uniform global tendency to identify here, for

two reasons. First, the publics of more affluent countries ar-ticulate to the global rights discourse in a contradictory way:they pity the victims of Third World development and ac-cept cultural difference as sanitized multicultural consum-erism, but have difficulty accepting the full personhood ofmigrants and are susceptible to anti-immigrant politics inan era of generalized social insecurity (Leach 1998). Second,

only certain categories of people can play the game of rightsdiscourse beyond the discourse of citizenship. The real prob-lem in Mexico is not the marked category, indigenous butthe unmarked category, mestizo, which was made integral tothe model of national identity, mexicanidad, forged by thepost-revolutionary state (Gledhill 1997: 91-92). Since the dis-tinction between Indians and non-Indians remainsdeeply embedded in everyday practices of discrimination,

the specific historical features of state- and nation-buildingin Mexico may well impede the development of a new popu-lar imaginary of the nation as a collective in which all citi-zens are stakeholders now that the positive features of the


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old regime have largely disappeared. Here we also need to

consider the way the structures of Shadow State power en-ter the everyday lives of ordinary people.

Globalized Feudalism as an Emergent Form of Power

I have sketched out a model of how what was previously

a conflictive but relatively solidary structure of elite networksdistributed positions within the formal structure of the offi-cial state. This structure permeated all levels of governmentand was able to absorb and co-opt new social elements, in-cluding elements that expressed dissidence. The army waseffectively kept out of politics after 1940, serving its politicalmasters obediently in return for a dignified public positionand a high degree of impunity with regard to the private

economic interests of the upper echelons. The shift toneoliberalism involved acceptance of the overriding inter-ests of the segment of the Mexican bourgeoisie whose finan-cial and industrial interests were already transnational. Thisin turn forced a progressive dismantling of the corporatistfeatures of the old post-revolutionary regime, which wasaccelerated by the economic shocks resulting from the open-

ing up of the economy and speculative capital inflows, plusdirect political pressure from the United States under theNAFTA regime.

There are innumerable other cases where opening to theglobal economy had a major impact on how politics couldbe conducted. In Sri Lanka, for example, there were chal-lenges from new elites tied to the global economy while ex-isting elites played the ethnic card in trying to cope with

mounting social dissidence from Sinhalese, creating a doublespiral of escalating ethnicization of conflict and state assaultson trade unions and left organizations, with the latter draw-ing legitimation from the security situation (Tambiah 1996).


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Although each of these cases develops in ways that we can

only fully comprehend in terms of local cultural logics, spe-cific colonial legacies and other contextual factors, there aresome interesting common features that are related to the wayin which forms of political organization are built fromclientship networks.

In Mexico, the 1970s saw a massive expansion of sys-tems of state clientalism, funded from oil revenues. Yet these

processes also strengthened what might be described as lo-cal feudal structures. One illustration would be the do-main of the boss of the Oil Workers Union, JoaqunHernndez Galicia, La Quina, who was removed and jailedby Carlos Salinas after it became clear that he was backingSalinass rival Cuauhtmoc Crdenas. After La Quina wasincarcerated, the economy of his home region suffered a se-vere recession.5 Figures such as Carlos Hank Gonzlez who

grew fat in the era of statization created much larger net-works and continued to be major power brokers in the yearsof neoliberal government. Such power blocs can certainlybe challenged in the political arena, by opposition groups aswell as by rival cliques within the ruling party. The dynam-ics of political competition have always provoked a move-ment between cliques and a constant process of realignment.

The more fundamental issue, however, is the tremendouseconomic power that the cliques that lie behind the state nowpossess. By whatever means they originally achieved theirwealth, they are clearly among the winners from the neweconomic development model, and their power is not sim-ply local or regional, in contrast to the caudillos of the earlyyears of the revolutionary era. Transnationally connectedshadow powers pose an enormous challenge for any genu-

ine democratization in Mexico, particularly if it continues toprove impolitic for administrations in the United States totake actions that would support any domestic campaignagainst the entire elite system in Mexico (as distinct from


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particular power blocs that go too far in escaping their con-

tainment in the South).The period since 1994 has seen a further building of the

civic and human rights movement. Since 1997, the center-left PRD has been allowed to win four state governorships,achievements that were denied it under the previous admin-istration. Cuauhtmoc Crdenas, defeated presidential can-didate in 1988 and 1994, also won a landslide victory in the

first direct elections for Mayor of Mexico City. There are manyother local examples of an apparent strengthening of demo-cratic life. On the other hand, there have also been manyexamples of continuing impunity, notably the case of RobertoMadrazo Pintado. In this mixed pattern of developments,many of the vices of the old way of conducting Mexicanpolitics continue in place, and these are not restricted to thePRI. Indeed, since the proportion of former PRI politicians

in the PRD is increasing, one could argue that this is entirelypredictable. That would, however, be somewhat simplistic,since effective ways of conducting politics vary accordingto situational fields of force rather than follow the innatepredispositions of politicians. What we need to look at iswhat might be structuring the situations.

Economic misery and dislocation in marginalized rural

areas has laid at least a passive base of support for guerrillamovements in some areas of the country, notably Guerreroand parts of Oaxaca. The evidence suggests, however, thatthe attempt to revive 1960s style protracted peoples warhas proved a failure. The well-armed but small PopularRevolutionary Army (EPR) split in 1999, after a number ofincidents in which defectors were eliminated by their ownside. In contrast to the Colombian guerrilla organizations,

the Mexican guerrillas command considerably less firepowerand resources than the drug cartels, and have fewer oppor-tunities to insert themselves into the sector as leading play-ers. Drug cartels do at least offer opportunities for gaining


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livelihoods and employment. This is a powerful consider-

ation in discussing the possible future of the Shadow State,at the margins of Mexican society at least. Leaders of offi-cially recognized peasant organizations are already warn-ing that the tentacles of clientship linked to this sector of thereal economy are penetrating deeper into rural communi-ties as the old organs of political control decay for lack ofresources (La Jornada, February 12th, 1999). My own ethno-

graphic experience suggests that such anxieties are not mis-placed.At one level, such developments would correspond to

established patterns. For example, at the start of the decade,the perceived weakening of the ruling party after the 1988elections produced some quite vigorous mobilizations inMichoacn state against local bosses who were involved inillegal logging, drugs, and tourism development (Zrate

Vidal 1998). All of these were prejudicial to the interests ofpeasant communities, especially indigenous peasant com-munities. They were defeated or reduced in effectiveness bytwo factors. One was the backing such local figures receivedfrom higher political levels, but the other was the sheer des-peration of the poor and landless. People were willing totake risks to get land, but they were unwilling to turn down

offers of jobs. Providing the bosses could stay out of jail,they possessed a great capacity to subvert movements byoffering economic alternatives: agrarian militants by daycrept off to work in the next communitys illegal sawmill bynight. If we look at how these local, ethnographically vis-ible, figures articulate to the larger networks of the kind Ihave described as emergent feudal domains withtransnational connections, we can begin to see how new

kinds of power can be reforged in the shadows.


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State Violence Through Proxies

This does not mean that the federal state apparatus inMexico ceases to play any significant role in the new powerrelations. Another recent development is the appearance ofparamilitary groups, notably though not exclusively inChiapas. This fits into a broader global pattern by whichembattled states use proxies to conduct dirty wars against

civilians, since their actions have the useful quality of offi-cial deniability. As Eric Wolf noted, the privatization ofproperty and service provision is matched by a growingprivatization of the means of violence, in which extra-legalforce can also become a major instrument for advancing newagendas for global economic transformation (Wolf 1999: 273).It has now become clear that the emergence of paramilitarygroups in Chiapas was part of the military counterinsurgency

plan drafted in 1994 to deal with the EZLN rebellion (Proceso,4th January, 1998). The foot soldiers of the paramilitarygroups are recruited from poor and landless households, andthe attractions of joining such a group are manifold. Theyare a means of recuperating dignity and masculinity by pos-sessing a modern automatic weapon, and achieving a posi-tion in which fear breeds respect.6 Some of the groups in

Chiapas are officially recognized as social developmentorganizations, headed by politicians of the ruling PRI(Gmez Tagle 1998; Craske et al. 1998). They receive federalsocial development funds and although there is no evidenceof them using such funds for their ostensible purpose, notall of their budget goes on arms purchases, since most of theguns and training come from the federal army and statepolice. Although there are some historical precedents for this

way of organizing repressive power, there are no precedentsfor the present level of militarization in a country which tra-ditionally had one of the smallest national security budgetsper capita in Latin America (Grindle 1987). Although the


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massacre of women and children at Acteal in December 1997

proved a tactical error, the strategy as a whole reflects a quitesubtle understanding of the realities of the Chiapas situa-tion which is, alas, not shared by most of the internationalleft (Viqueira 1999). Although I do not have space to expati-ate on this theme here, the following points are worthy ofreflection.

Contrary to popular opinion, Chiapas does not have a

simple, polarized class structure, cannot be seen as a placeuntouched by the Mexican revolution and has followed apattern of development strongly linked to ever closer inte-gration between local actors and the federal governmentapparatus (Viqueira 1999; Ascencio Franco 1998). In particu-lar, the wave of spontaneous land invasions outside theZapatista core area in the Selva Lacandona which followedthe failure of the initial attempt to put down the rebellion by

force has alienated a politically significant group of small tomedium-sized ranchers. These are exactly the same kinds ofsocial actors who spearheaded the reactionary Mapacheuprising against the Carranza government in 1914 (Benjamin1995). Including them in the equation makes the rise of theparamilitaries even more alarming, for the ranchers havetheir own agendas for sponsoring violence, laden with rac-

ist attitudes, certainly, but also with a sense of moral indig-nation as a class of people victimized both by Indians andthe countrys modernizing elite. Another factor is the tacti-cal errors of the EZLN rebels. In particular, their call forpeople to abstain from voting for the PRD in the 1995 mu-nicipal elections enabled a large number of communitybosses to remain in power, and thus contributed to the sub-sequent cycle of violence and counter-violence in those com-

munities (Viqueira 1999: 96).This, then, is an extremely complex situation in which

forces of opposition are divided, and a number of differentgroups have reasonable claims to have their diverse inter-


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ests reconciled. It is the perfect setting for a counterinsur-

gency war of attrition. In the summer of 1999, however, thewar seemed in danger of heating up again. On June 6th, themilitary entered six communities in Las Caadas deOcosingo. A thousand people became displaced in the pro-cess, and further violence was perpetrated against commu-nity activists and priests by prista loyalists. The army sub-sequently entered Zapatista base communities in the bio-

sphere reserve and blocked access to the press and humanrights organizations. Althoug

Official Masks and Shadows Powers. Towards an Anthropology of the Dark Side of the State - GLEDHILL

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