Mexico's Dirty War: A Reassessment

Abstract

Recent scholarship has found that Mexico's dirty war was rooted in existing, but also limited, violent practices established during the 1940s and 1950s. During the 1960s, these limits began to disappear. But it was not until the early 1970s when the state had sufficient capacity to launch counterinsurgency tactics throughout the nation. However, contrary to traditional appreciations of Mexico's dirty war, these tactics were not exclusively used on urban and rural insurgents. They were soon employed by soldiers, secret agents and state cops often in alliance with local landowners and their pistoleros. They focused these violent practices on land invaders, groups aiming at indigenous autonomy, drug traffickers and drug producers. La tibieza ya se acabó, esto es una guerra a muerte (The softly‐softly approach is over, this is a war to the death) Durazo Moreno, April 1977.