Stanford University

Conference explores initiatives to curb youth violence in Latin America and US

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Christian E. Ollano
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In April, the Program on Poverty and Governance (PovGov) at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law welcomed academics, policymakers, practitioners and youth leaders from Latin America, the U.K. and the U.S. to explore educational and entrepreneurial initiatives to support youth in places of violence.

Building on last year’s theme on violence and policing, the conference examined the rise in criminality among youth in both Latin America and the U.S., calling on attendees to share best practices aimed at curbing this trend. The conference served as a platform for attendees to highlight innovative government and community-based programs that have been successful in steering youth away from violence and towards more promising pathways.

"This conference is the result of a long reflection on the connection of poverty, violence, inequality and corruption," said Associate Professor of Political Science and PovGov Director Beatriz Magaloni who organized the conference. "However, our goal is not to reflect on the costs of violence, but to highlight alternatives that organizations, public officials and individuals are helping create. We want to reflect on the work that has been happening on the ground and on the revolution that these players are making."

The two-day conference featured two keynote addresses. The first was delivered by Brazil’s Sub-Secretary of Youth and President of the National Council on Youth (CONJUVE) Angela Guimarães who remarked on violence and its negative impact on educational and employment opportunities for Brazilian youth.

“The current youth experience is marked by violence,” Guimarães said. “There has been an expansion in access to education, work, formalization and quality of life, but violence continues to mark this generation.”

The other keynote speaker Héctor Castillo Berthier highlighted his 28 year-old NGO, Circo Volador, one of the longest-running social interventions in Mexico. The organization supports excluded sectors of society, promoting culturally appropriate arts and culture programming to youth in collaboration with community partners.

angelaguimaraes Keynote: Angela Guimarães, Sub-Secretary of Youth (Brazil)

“We created a new common language that we could all understand,” said Castillo Berthier. “We planned things with them. We drew with them. We produced things on the ground with them. We gave them respect, self-sustainability and the space. This example must be taken into account when forming public policies."

Both days of the conference featured research presentations, uncovering some of the innovative evaluation work underway by the PovGov team. PovGov Postdoctoral Fellow Brenda Jarillo Rabling spoke about the effect of drug-related violence on educational outcomes for children in areas of high crime, such as Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. Rabling’s study pointed to the strong connection between violence and loss of instructional time in schools where the quality and quantity of school days are lower than the national average, creating inequality within the education system.

Gustavo Robles Peiro, a PhD student at Stanford’s political science department and PovGov pre-doctoral fellow, shared the results of a comprehensive impact study, which evaluated the overall effectiveness of Jóvenes con Porvenir, a government program operating in Zapopan, Mexico, that offers work and educational opportunities for youth living in neighborhoods with high levels of crime. Robles Peiro’s research found that over a six-month period, youth exposed to the program exhibited greater interest in pursuing educational and career endeavors.

hector castillo Keynote: Hector Castillo Berthier, Circo Volador

Academic research was complemented by the individual experiences of youth and youth advocates. Among them was Christa Gannon, founder and executive director of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), a Bay Area-based organization, which works with local at-risk and incarcerated youth to build their skills and reduce delinquent behavior through leadership training, legal education and active mentorship.

“Our youth have incredible strengths, but often society does not see them,” said Gannon. “At FLY, we always ask ourselves how do we look for strengths and potential in everyone that we work with - how do we see our young people as resources and co-creators that have so much to offer us?”

Gannon’s remarks were echoed by a number of other speakers, highlighting the need to provide more platforms for youth to become active community citizens, whether through education, volunteering, leadership, or artistic and cultural production.

Former inmate Felix Lucero spoke about his 18-year incarceration experience as a student of the Prison University Project, an initiative that provides higher education to inmates of San Quentin State Prison in California. “[The program] affects people not only when they get out of prison, but also while they are in there… it gives us something to look up to,” Lucero said. “Education allows people to think critically about their surroundings and empower people to do things differently.”

Marcus Faustini, founder of Agência de Redes Para Juventude (Network for Youth Agency) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, expanded on the topic of youth opportunity, touching on his organization’s mission. “We knock from door to door in the favela. We don’t want to educate the youth, we want to walk alongside them. Social projects don’t have to give people fish, they need to teach people how to fish. At Agência, we go to the supermarket, buy the fish and cook it with the youth. We do things with them,” said Faustini.

Another theme emphasized by many of the conference speakers was the influence of arts and culture as an outlet for self-expression for many youth growing up in violent societies. To help illustrate the hopefulness of many of these youth projects, the PovGov Program hosted a photography exhibit inside the conference hall that contained a collection of twelve iconic photographs highlighting life in the slum neighborhoods – favelas – of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The collection was presented by Imagens do Povo, an arts initiative under Observatorio de Favelas (Favela’s Observatory), an NGO, which educates youth on critical urban issues affecting the under-resourced favela communities of Rio.

The conference concluded with a dynamic panel of youth activists and leaders who shared their inspirational accounts of experiencing and overcoming the challenge of criminality and violence in their hometowns. Drawing unconnected, but similar life stories of struggles and hardships, the panel provided examples of how individuals leveraged a variety of tools, resources, and community-based organizations to transform themselves – and others – to help bring about positive social change to their communities.

Mariluce de Souza, a social entrepreneur and artist from the Alemão favela in Rio, emphasized the significance of youth-to-youth assistance: “It is like a language from the community to the community,” she said. “We come together to demand respect and rights.”

10 crime lab PovGov signs a Crime Lab partnership agreement with Marcus Faustini (Agência de Redes para Juventude)(right) and Jailson Silva (Observatório de Favelas)(second from left).

Seeking to broaden its network and impact globally, PovGov also used the conference to serve as a launching point for its new International Crime and Violence Lab – Crime Lab – a new platform for academics and practitioners to share their work and research on crime and violence throughout the U.S., Latin America, and beyond. The Lab seeks to develop scientific and action-oriented research by assisting community organizations, government agencies, policy-makers, police departments, and other relevant players in Latin America - and eventually elsewhere in the developing world - to reduce violent crime and its devastating consequences.

 

Two of Crime Lab’s newest partners – Jailson de Sousa e Silva, co-founder and director of Observatorio de Favelas, and Marcus Faustini of Agência – signed a partnership agreement during the conference, opening the door to future research collaborations with PovGov focused on improving the youth experience in Rio.

This year’s PovGov conference was held in partnership with the Bill Lane Center for the American West; the Center for Latin American Studies; the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Mexican Initiative; and the Center on International Security and Cooperation.

All speaker presentations were video recorded and can be found on the CDDRL YouTube page and below. To view other conference materials, including an executive summary and full conference report; agenda; speaker bios; and presentation slides, please see below or refer to the original conference event page.

Conference Video Playlist

Conference Materials

PovGov Conference 2015 - Full Conference Report

PovGov Conference 2015 - Executive Summary

Multimedia (Videos and Presentations)

Conference Agenda

Descriptions of Panels and Talks

Speaker Bios

 

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The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico’s Drug War [June 2015]

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In 2006 the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintended consequences, increasing inter-cartel and intra-cartel fighting and fragmenting criminal organizations. What impact do captures of senior drug cartel members have on the dynamics of drug-related violence? Does it matter if governments target drug kingpins vs. lower ranked lieutenants? We analyze whether the captures or killings of kingpins and lieutenants have increased drug-related violence and whether the violence spills over spatially. To estimate effects that are credibly causal, we use different empirical strategies that combine difference-in-differences and synthetic control group methods. We find evidence that captures or killings of drug cartel leaders have exacerbating effects not only on DTO-related violence, but also on homicides that affect the general population. Captures or killings of lieutenants, for their part, only seem to exacerbate violence in “strategic places” or municipalities located in the transportation network. While most of the effects on DTO-related violence are found in the first six months after a leader’s removal, effects on homicides affecting the rest of the population are more enduring, suggesting different mechanisms through which leadership neturalizations breed violence.

 

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Authors
Gabriela Calderón
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Beatriz Magaloni

The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico

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Abstract:

In 2006 the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintended consequences, increasing inter-cartel and intra-cartel fighting and fragmenting criminal organizations. What impact do captures of senior drug cartel members have on the dynamics of drug-related violence? Does it matter if governments target drug kingpins vs. lower ranked lieutenants? We analyze whether the captures or killings of kingpins and lieutenants have increased drug-related violence and whether the violence spills over spatially. To estimate effects that are credibly causal, we use different empirical strategies that combine difference-in-differences and synthetic control group methods. We find evidence that captures or killings of drug cartel leaders have exacerbating effects not only on DTO-related violence, but also on homicides that affect the general population. Captures or killings of lieutenants, for their part, only seem to exacerbate violence in “strategic places” or municipalities located in the transportation network. While most of the effects on DTO-related violence are found in the first six months after a leader’s removal, effects on homicides affecting the rest of the population are more enduring, suggesting different mechanisms through which leadership neutralizations breed violence.

 

Speaker Bio:

gustavo robles
Gustavo Robles is PhD candidate in political science at Stanford University with specialization in political methodology and comparative politics. His research interests include the economics of crime and violence in Latin America, political economy of development, and legislative studies. He is currently working on his PhD dissertation on the dynamics and consequences of drug-related violence in Mexico. He is a researcher for the Program on Poverty and Governance at CDDRL. Before attending Stanford, Robles worked at Protego Asesores as a financial advisor for states and municipalities in Mexico. He also worked as an economic analyst for the Mexican Minister of Finance and for the Cente r of Analysis and Economic Research at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He holds a M.A. in economics from Stanford University and a B.A. in economics and political science from ITAM. He won the Ex ITAM Research Prize for the best undergraduate thesis in Political Science in 2009 and the Fulbright-García Robles Scholarship in 2008 (declined).

Gustavo Robles Pre-doctoral Fellow, CDDRL
Seminars

Educational and Entrepreneurial Initiatives to Support Youth in Places of Violence

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Participant youth, Wallace and Wellington, overlooking the city from their community.

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

The heavy presence of youth and young adults in the world of criminality is an issue that has been gaining increasingly more attention in the agendas of policymakers and politicians in developing and developed nations. With scarce options for a quality education, prospects for gainful employment and the possibility for future economic sustainability, on a daily basis, young individuals from poor communities throughout Latin American and U.S. cities are exposed to a violent environment with easily accessed - and often attractive - gateways into the world of criminality. From casual affiliation to gangs in schools and neighborhoods in Southern California, to full-time armed participation in international drug cartels in Juarez and drug factions in Rio de Janeiro favelas, youth are the biggest target – and victims – of violence.

In attempts to shed light to this very complex and fundamental issue that is claiming thousand of lives every year and deteriorating the social fabric across cities, the Program on Poverty and Governance (PovGov) at Stanford Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) in conjunction with the Center for Latin American Studies, The Bill Lane Center for the America West, The Mexico Initiative at FSI, and The Center on International Security and Cooperation, will hold a two-day conference to discuss the dimensions of youth and criminal violence in Latin American and U.S. cities and share pathways to hope.

Ranging from grassroots initiatives to widespread government policies, the conference will develop on various established development actions and programs aimed at providing educational, work, and entrepreneurial opportunities for youth in territories impacted by poverty, criminality and violence in the U.S. and Latin America. We will gather activists and practitioners from grassroots civil society organizations, community leaders, educators, professionals from international development platforms, policy-makers, politicians, scholars - as well as some of the very individuals participating in these programs - to discuss the many challenges faced by the youth population in these different locations and to share innovative and inspirational initiatives to generate opportunities and foster change.                                                        

At PovGov, we believe in the importance of creating an environment where actors with different backgrounds across sectors, disciplines, realities and environments can come together to share their first-hand experiences, challenges and aspirations. We hope this wide-reaching and multiplayer conference can enrich the discussion around the formulation of policies and development strategies to benefit the youth in places of violence and better inform the work moving forward.    

 

Conference Materials

Conference Agenda

Descriptions of Panels and Talks

Speaker Bios

 

Agenda

Tuesday, April 28th 2015

8:40 – 9:00: Welcoming Remarks

·      Beatriz Magaloni, Director, PovGov, Stanford University.

·      Larry Diamond, Director, CDDRL, Stanford University.

·      Rodolfo Dirzo, Director, Center for Latin America Studies, Stanford University.

 

 9:00 – 10:30

Panel 1. Youth Violence: Risk Factors and Consequences

·      Beatriz Magaloni, Director, PovGov, Stanford University.

·      Brenda Jarillo, Post-Doctoral Fellow, PovGov, Stanford University.

·      Monica Valdez González, Director of Research and Studies, IMJUVE, Mexico.

Discussant: Francis Fukuyama, Director, Program on Governance, Stanford University.

 

10:40 – 11:40

Keynote Speaker

The Agenda for Youth Violence Prevention in Brazil: Where We Are Now and Where We Are Heading

Angela Guimarães, Brazil’s Sub-Secretary of Youth and President of the National Council on Youth (CONJUVE)

 

11:50 – 12:50: Lunch

 

1:00 – 2:30

Panel 2. Initiatives for At-risk Youth in Rio Favelas

·      Eliana de Sousa e Silva, Director, Redes de Desenvolvimento da Maré, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·      Jailson de Sousa e Silva, Director, Observatório de Favelas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·      Ivana Bentes, National Secretary of Citizenship and Cultural Diversity, Brazil.

Discussant: Larry Diamond, Director, CDDRL, Stanford University.

 

(10-minute break)

 

2:40 – 4:10

Panel 3. Reducing Youth Gang Activity and Violence in the U.S.

·      Amy Crawford, Deputy Director, Center for Crime Prevention and Control, John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

·      Lateefah Simon, Director, California’s Future Initiative at Rosenberg Foundation, San Francisco, California.

·      Christa Gannon, Founder and Director, Fresh Lifelines for Youth, San Mateo and Santa Clara, California.

Discussant: Bruce Cain, Director, Bill Lane Institute for the American West, Stanford University.

 

4:15 – 5:00: Closing Event of the Day

Stanford International Crime and Violence Lab announcement; cooperation agreement ceremony; photography exposition from Observatório de Favelas (“People’s Images” project).

·      Beatriz Magaloni, Stanford University.

·      Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Stanford University.

(Adjourn)

 

Wednesday, April 29th 2015

9:00- 10:30

Panel 4. Evaluating Effective Interventions for Youth

·      Jorja Leap, Adjunct Professor, Department of Social Welfare; Director, Health and Social Justice Partnership, UCLA.

·      Gustavo Robles, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, PovGov, Stanford University.

·      Felix Lucero, The Prison University Project, California, U.S.

Facilitator: Martin Carnoy, Professor, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University. 

 

10:40 – 1:00

Panel 5. The “Network for Youth Agency” Experience

 

Sector 5.1. Instruments to Make a Difference

·      Veruska Delfino, Production Coordinator, Agência de Redes Para Juventude.

·      Ana Paula Lisboa, Methodology Coordinator, Agência de Redes Para Juventude.

·      Elaine Rosa, Former Participant and Entrepreneur, Agência de Redes Para Juventude.

Discussant: Stephen Commins, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Associate Director for Global Public Affairs at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA.

                                                                                                                      

Section 5.2. World Exchange of Methodologies

·      Marcus Faustini, Director and Founder, Agência de Redes Para Juventude, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·      Paul Heritage, Professor, Queen Mary University of London, UK.

·      Liz Moreton, Battersea Arts Centre, London, UK.

·      Suzie Henderson, Contact Theatre, Manchester, UK.

Discussant: Stephen Commins, Lecturer in Urban Planning and Associate Director for Global Public Affairs at the Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA.

 

1:00 – 2:00: Lunch

 

2:10 – 3:10

Keynote Speaker

Applied Social Research: Youth and Gangs in Mexico City

Hector Castillo Berthier, Founder and Director, Circo Volador, Mexico

 

3:55 - 4:35

Panel 6. Victims and Perpetrators of Violence: Redirecting Youth in Mexican Prisons

·      Carlos Cruz, Founder and Director, Cauce Ciudadano, Mexico.

·      Ana Laura Magaloni, Professor of Law, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Mexico.

·      Humberto Padgett, Journalist, Mexico.

·      Antonio Cervantes, Producer, Mexico.

Discussant: Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Senior Fellow, FSI, Stanford University.

 

4:40– 6:00

Panel 7: Youth Experiences: Sharing Lives, Practices and Knowledge

·     Emanuelle Gomes Pereira Mallete, Agência de Redes Para Juventude and Pontão de Cultura, Sepetiba, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

.     Mariluce Mariá de Souza, Social Enterpreneur and Activist, Complexo do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·     Francisco Valdean Alves dos Santos, Observatório de Favelas, Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·     Valnei Succo, Observatório de Favelas, Rocha Miranda, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

·     Christian Paronable, Fresh Lifelines for Youth, California.

·     Alma Yureni Esqueda Garcia, Cauce Ciudadano, Morelos, Mexico.

Facilitator: Izabela Moi, John S. Knight Journalism Fellow, Stanford University.

 

6:00 – Closing Remarks and Final reception

·       Beatriz Magaloni, Director, PovGov, Stanford University.

 

WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.

 

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Conferences
CDDRL Conferences

The Transformation of Democracy and Populism in Latin America

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Conference Description 

 

There is currently a worldwide debate regarding the transformation of democracy. The representative system (political parties, parliamentary bodies, and the executive government) has been weakened and in some cases displaced by non-electoral representative actors (mass media, judicial magistrates, public commissions, etc.) and by intense manifestations of civic empowerment that remain politically active well after elections. As a result, the legitimacy of government decisions is consistently called into question. This evolution of democracy at the beginning of the 21st century is particularly apparent in Latin America, but it is affecting the quality and stability of democracy in many countries around the globe.

One element of the transformation has been the repeated emergence of populist governments, characterized by the informal practice of power. These movements, which frequently include marginalized sectors of society and identify with charismatic leadership, exert substantial power in a number of countries. The expansion of regimes with populist features in the context of electoral democracies has led to several unresolved questions that will be discussed in the seminar.

Agenda

 

9:15     Coffee 

9:30     Introduction, Isidoro Cheresky, Full Professor, University of Buenos Aires; CLAS Tinker Professor

9:40     “The Global Democratic Recession and Its Implications for Latin America”

             Larry Diamond, CDDRL, Stanford

10:15   “Populism and the Politics of the Extraordinary”

             Carlos de la Torre, Professor of Sociology, University Kentucky, Lexington

11:15   “Latin America and the Theological, Epistemological and Aesthetic Regimes of Politics,” Martin Plot, School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts

12:15-12:30  Concluding Discussion          

Discussants

 

Isidoro Cheresky

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros, Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

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Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png
MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Isidoro Cheresky Full Professor University of Buenos Aires; CLAS Tinker Professor
Carlos de la Torre Professor of Sociology University of Kentucky, Lexington
Martin Plot School of Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros

Encina Hall, C149
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 725-0500
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
diaz-cayeros.png
MA, PhD

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C. in Mexico from 1997-1999. His work has focused on federalism, poverty and violence in Latin America, and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is: The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization. 

Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2016 - 2023)
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Authoritarian Survival and Poverty Traps: Land Reform in Mexico [Feb. 2015]

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This paper examines why governments in underdeveloped countries systematically pursue policies that prevent long-term economic growth. Focusing on the design and implementation of Mexico's massive land redistribution program, we argue that governments do so to improve their chances of political survival. Mexico’s incumbent PRI regime gave peasants communal property under a restrictive and inefficient property rights regime. This form of land reform created dependence upon the regime for survival. We find empirical support for this hypothesis using data from a panel of Mexican states from 1917-1992. Land distribution was higher during election years and where the threat of rural unrest was greater. We also show that economic growth and modernization eroded PRI support over the long term, and, further, that PRI support eroded more slowly in states receiving greater levels of land. Inefficient land redistribution therefore served the PRI’s electoral interests, generating a loyal political clientele; and it contributed to political stability. Nonetheless, this policy carried steep costs: land reform substantially depressed long-term economic growth. These findings hold across various model specifications and instrumental variables estimation.

 

 

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Authors
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Beatriz Magaloni
Michael Albertus
Barry R. Weingast

Living in Fear: The Dynamics of Extortion in Mexico's Criminal Insurgency [Feb. 2015]

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This paper provides an account of the strategies of extortion and co-optation used by drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) toward civil society in Mexico. Drawing on the civil war and mafia crime literatures, our theoretical approach focuses on levels of territorial contestation among armed actors, as well as state capture by DTOs, to explain variation in co-opting or coercing civil society. Through the use of list experiments in a nationally representative survey, the paper measures extortion and assistance by DTOs in Mexico. We find that the effect of territorial contestation among rival DTOs has two effects. The effect on extortion is non-linear: highly contested places and non-contested places, controlled by a single DTO, show significantly less extortion than moderately contested places. The effect on assistance is negative: DTOs provide assistance mostly in non-contested places. Additionally, using areas of governance by the former ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), as a proxy for state capture by DTOs, we find that both DTO and police extortion is higher in municipalities where the state has been captured. These results suggest that territorial contestation and state capture are important in determining the choice of tactics toward civil society during drug wars.

 

 

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Beatriz Magaloni
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Aila M. Matanock
Vidal Romero

Information, Female Empowerment and Governance in Oaxaca, Mexico [Feb. 2015]

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Traditional community rules are formally recognized in multiple constitutions across Latin America. Scholars debate the extent to which these practices conform to broader principles of gender equality. A unique institutional feature in the impoverished state of Oaxaca, Mexico, divides municipalities into traditional and party-based governance. We exploit this feature with original survey data and find that rates of female participation in traditional communities are not different when compared to non-traditional ones. We also conduct a survey experiment to explore how perceptions about female leadership change with factual information about female mayors. We find the strongest demonstration effect on women recipient of the conditional cash transfer program Oportunidades. Our evidence suggests overall that traditional governance is not a relevant dimension to understand female disempowerment, and that entrenched discriminatory practices against women (which exist but are not inherent to traditional rule) are sensitive to community bargains and well-designed policy.

 

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CDDRL Working Papers
Authors
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Beatriz Magaloni
Alexander Ruiz-Euler

Caught in the Crossfire: The Geography of Extortion and Police Corruption in Mexico [Feb. 2015]

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When Mexican President Felipe Caldrón took office in December 2006 he declared a war on the nation’s drug traffic organizations (Ríos and Shirk, 2011). Violence escalated as criminal organizations became increasingly fragmented and disputed their territories (Killebrew and Bernal, 2010; Beittel, 2011). The main strategy followed by the federal government involved capturing leaders and lieutenants of criminal organizations (Calderón et al. forthcoming). This seemed to provoke even more violence, by making the competition over territorial control fiercer and providing incentives for many gangs to make extortion and protection fees (derecho de piso) an additional source of revenue (Guerrero-Gutiérrez, 2010). Given the absence of legal (and peaceful) rules and enforcement mechanisms for competitors in the illegal drug market, disagreements were usually solved violently. Under the pressure of the crackdown by the federal police, the navy and the army, contracts among criminal gangs were often disrupted, leading to even more violence.1 Competition over the strategic routes towards the market in the United States was settled by literally eliminating rivals (Dell, 2012).

This chapter explores the connection between police distrust, corruption and extortion. Despite the difficulty in measuring these phenomena through conventional public opinion polls and citizen or firm level surveys, much can be learned from the variation across geographic units in reported victimization and corruption. We use a list experiment collected through the Survey on Public Safety and Governance in Mexico (SPSGM), to study the practices of extortion by both police forces and criminal organizations.4 Using a Bayesian spatial estimation method, we provide a mapping of the geographic distribution of police extortion.

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Publication Type
Working Papers
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Journal Publisher
CDDRL Working Papers
Authors
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros
Beatriz Magaloni
Vidal Romero
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