Political‐Criminal Nexus in Southern Mexico: The Municipal Face of Caciquismo

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to the study of the criminalisation of politics in Mexico from an ethnographic perspective. Its methodology is based on a case study in the municipality of Ayutla, in the southern state of Guerrero. Fieldwork not only reveals the depth of the Nexus that binds criminals and public officials, but also the central role of the municipal government in the organisation of crime. Based on this ethnographic case, I argue that understanding criminal violence in Mexico requires revisiting the classical study of caciquismo (local political bossism), as a form of exercising political power that has managed to reproduce itself through a criminal mutation. In this sense, the main finding lies in the relevance of the municipality for understanding processes of criminalisation of politics, as a level of government where the dynamics of a grey zone have expanded due to the reproduction within it of a specific mode of governance: caciquismo.