Sara Schatz

Conceptual structure and social change : the ideological architecture of democratization

Introduction Categorization and Social Agents: The Case of Democratization A Cognitive Model of Concepts and Ideology Ideological Systems, Dynamics, and Constraints Mass Attitudes in the Transition to Electoral Democracy Governing Elites, Counter-Elites and the Struggle to Shape Mass Opinion Concluding Remarks Bibliography Index

Disarming the Legal System

This article studies the role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating impunity for political assassinations in Mexico by analyzing a wave of homicidal action against the leftist opposition party—Partido de la Revolucion Democratica (PRD)—throughout the 1988-2004 period. The Mexican case is interesting because hundreds of leftist political party militants often engaged in legal activities were gunned down by state agents (the police, the military, local politicians associated with the dominant party-state, the Institutional Revolutionary Party [PRI]) or indirectly by hired guns on behalf of state leaders. Using case studies collected by the Mexican National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), an official governmental body, it is argued that the Mexican state showed its acquiescence in the killings through the impunity that was afforded the killers through the further disarming of the legal coercive powers of the existing state to properly prosecute and punish murderers.

Disarming the Legal System: Impunity for the Political Murder of Dissidents in Mexico

Despite a body of emergent scholarship documenting state crimes (Ross 1995, 2000), and political terror (De Mesquita et al. 2005), much less is known about the specific use of political killings as a strategy of control of domestic political opponents. Nor is the role of the criminal justice system in perpetuating impunity for such crimes well understood. Most research on political killings are single case studies of the assassination of high-profile political leaders (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy) or give very brief information about many cases from different cultures (Ford 1985; Kirkham et al. 1970). The few comparative approaches that exist conclude that political killings are largely the result of political vengeance against external enemies that occurs in the context of states with weak mechanisms of formal justice (Ben-Yehuda 1997).

Disappearances as Forced Abductions in Ciudad Juárez

It is argued in this chapter that the repetition over time of disappearance “hot spots” in Ciudad Juarez reflect continued “gaps” in the rule of law that discriminate against women. Organized human traffickers and unorganized sexual assassins take advantage of the impunity afforded by neighborhoods characterized by lack of social investment in public security and equipment to utilize women as paid and unpaid sexual commodities in both the Historical Center zone and in the Poniente [West], South and Southeast. In the Historical Center and its surrounding neighborhoods, urban density, impunity, acquiescence and/or collusion by varying levels of law enforcement has facilitated the organization of human trafficking networks. These networks render the “Red Light” area, the zone from the Monumento to the Cathedral to Francisco Javier Mina Street, a lucrative zone for the sexual abduction and forced prostitution of women. This explains, in part why, since the 1990s, girls, teens and women have been repeatedly subject to forced abductions consisting of physical seizures on public streets, in public downtown markets and near major central bus transit terminals. Disappearances in several “hotspots”, often located in industrial, neighborhoods in the Poniente, South and South-East of the city reflect a more diffuse criminal strategy. In such instances, (largely) poor women are disappeared on public streets, raped, killed and often abandoned in nearby neighborhoods or picked-up and forced into localized human trafficking rings.

Impunity and Sexual Assassination in Ciudad Juárez: Exclusion, Cruising, Collusion

In this chapter, it is argued that in Ciudad Juarez, the key factors causing sexual assassination of women are: (a) industrialization without safe streets, (b) a criminal justice system with a history of impunity that fuels machista rape-murder, (c) a drug-war that increased the human trafficking of women by certain organized-crime related elements, and (d) a spatial geography which includes multiple empty lots without adequate public or private security. Taken together, these complex, multiple, inter-related factors help explain why sexual assassination has been a repetitive crime in Ciudad Juarez over decades.

“Dangerous Streets”: Sexual Assassination, Impunity and Industrial Zones in Ciudad Juárez

In this chapter, it is argued that a lack of social investment in neighborhood public security and equipment, a failure of private security and a lack of vetting of public and private security personnel for sexual violence facilitated sexual assassinations in three main specific mixed industrial neighborhoods zones in Juarez: the Poniente [West], South/South-East and the Border. A spatial analysis finds that lethal sexual assaults upon girls, teens and women engaged in routine activities (walking to and from school and work) took place on public streets and unlighted foot pathways in all zones. In the Poniente, frequently-used pedestrian pathways along abandoned railroad land corridors to and from urban industrial parks greatly increased the risk for sexual assassination. In the South/South-Eastern zones, sexual assassination also took place near the railroad corridor, federal lands and maquiladora plants located at uninhabited areas of the city. Very high levels of impunity in the criminal justice system particularly fueled blitz auto abductions and produced “pockets of opportunity” for repetitive crimes at the neighborhood level in all zones.

Cognitive impairment and pragmatics

BackgroundOne of the most important ingredients of felicitous conversation exchanges is the adequate expression of illocutionary force and the achievement of perlocutionary effects, which can be considered essential to the functioning of pragmatic competence.FindingsThe breakdown of illocutionary and perlocutionary functions is one of the most prominent external features of cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease, with devastating psychological and social consequences for patients, their family and caregivers.ConclusionsThe study of pragmatic functions is essential for a proper understanding of the linguistic and communicative aspects of Alzheimer’s disease.

Social Cognition and the Pragmatics of Ideology

In this paper a theory of ideology which is based on the interaction of social and cognitive factors is discussed. This theory takes a pragmatic approach to build its main background theory. The present model would also provide evidence for the need to expand our understanding of the basic units of pragmatic analysis and pragmatic acts in general, in order to include the cognitive and social factors associated with language and ideology, as implied by the general theory of the pragmeme.

Rub Outs in the Territory: Killing Police Chiefs and Top-Level Commanders in Chihuahua

This chapter examines in detail the assassination of municipal police chiefs and top-level commanders in the state of Chihuahua (2006–2012). These murders are the result of the interaction between impunity in the political, legal and law enforcement systems and the goals and weapons of the criminal organizations. Such goals include: (1) retaliation for federal, state and local prosecution, (2) the attempt to neutralize police chiefs, (3) the effort to achieve intermittent local governance and/or to place corrupt police chiefs, and, (4) to reduce local governmental capacity in order to obtain greater freedom for movement of goods. A geographical mapping of the assassinations of local police chiefs and top-commanders in Chihuahua also reveals that they are not random but follow a northbound pattern along drug-smuggling routes. In some instances organized crime elements did take total temporary political control in some small towns near the U.S.-Mexican border and near the cross-roads of major drug-smuggling highways. These instances can be understood as limited “governance” through organized crime (Sheptycki, 2003; Sullivan and Elkus 2008).

Weapons and Methods of Attack as a Tactical Advantage

This chapter analyzes the weapons and methods of attack of assassins on municipal police chiefs and top-commanders across all other Northern Tier states. The tactical superiority of organized crime elements is manifest in the similarity of weaponry employed in law-enforcement assassinations (mainly AK-47s, AR-15s). It is also illustrated by the two signature attack “styles”: convoy style armed vehicular assaults and strategic hits on officers in or near their homes largely engaged in off-duty, everyday social activities. Operationally, such assassinations occur in strategic towns along three distinctive North-bound drug-transit highways across a range of municipalities in the multiple states of Baja California Norte, Baja California Sur, Sonora, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Durango, Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi. The enhanced weaponry of organized crime elements along with surprise attacks, often involving deception, intersects with the relatively poor equipment (lack of bullet-proof vehicles) and uneven security for officers characteristic of multiple Mexican municipal police departments. Taken together, the tactical superiority of organized crime elements combined with their efforts to clear routes to smuggle drugs (operational means) facilitate the use of law-enforcement assassination as a strategy for action against law-enforcement agents.