The fear of the power of the state took a hold of me completely — Alberto Ulloa Bornemann
In attempting to develop a focus on the provisionally hegemonic expression of class rule in Mexico and its uneven articulation across local and regional state spaces, a recent article in Latin American Perspectives raises important reflections about the cracks in hegemonic power. In doing so, the authors Carlos Figueroa-Ibarra and Lorena Martínez-Zavala draw our attention to recurring guerrilla movements in Mexico linked to groups from the 1940s to the 1970s, including present day elements such as the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR). The broad point is that hegemony in Mexico was always fractured, incomplete, or cracked as a result of local and regional forms of dominance and violence. In order to capture the substate fractured articulation of hegemony in Mexico there is no better resource than Alberto Ulloa Bornemann’s memoir, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War, on life amidst the guerrilla movements in Mexico during the 1970s. Building on my previous posts, much is thereby revealed in this book about the ‘dark side’ of the state in Mexico and the significance of recognising the ‘violence of hegemony’.