Continual Curse or Potential Cure? Collective Criminal Governance Resistance Movements and Their Democratic Implications in Mexico

I argue that collective resistance movements in Mexico are most likely to successfully resist criminal governance when they combine strong local political insulating institutions with sustained social mobilization capable of preventing criminal infiltration. Without these two mutual forces, collective resistance movements like autodefensas (i.e., self-defense groups) and community policing efforts are undermined, and further exacerbate democratic erosion by which resistance fails to organized crime groups' (OCGs) imposition of criminal governance corrupting power away from the state through local institutional penetration. When collective resistance movements succeed in challenging criminal governance, however, local political institutions help consolidate state democratic power, such as Cheran's indigenous autonomous self-governance resistance, at the local level.