The Vigilante: Killing in Self-Defense in Mexico
By: Héctor Juárez Lorencilla.
Mexico has crowned its new folk hero: “The Vigilante”—the Lone Ranger of buses and taco stands, the Zorro of highways. Truth is, most citizens cheer this bald man’s unbeaten streak (rumored to be a bodyguard).
The authorities, ever the legalists, invoke the Rule of Law: No one may take justice into their own hands, they intone. This isn’t the age of lex talionis; retributive justice is archaic. Meanwhile, the hyper-moralistic crowd shrieks that no one has the right to take a life, ever. And the media? They churn out daily clickbait, treating the story like a jigsaw puzzle—digging, speculating, hungry for the next blurry photo to unmask this avenger.
Enter biopower (Foucault’s pet concept): the modern state’s art of control through economics, politics, police, media, even faith. But Mexican society is done —done with lies, injustice, hunger, sickness, and poverty. The President and his coterie of intellectual-lites wax poetic about Mexico’s greatness. Tell that to the 70 million poor who’d disagree.
Now, the antihero emerges. They call him The Vigilante. Beware.
Cases of “DIY Justice” multiply; the façade of institutional legitimacy tears at the seams. Corrupt governors, once shielded by power, are now abandoned by it. The elite pull strings, but no one’s safe when stability cracks.
What’s brewing? Gas price hikes, currency devaluation, budget cuts, inflation —a recipe for more antiheroes. Grandmas whacking assailants with frying pans, mobs tying thieves to lampposts after a beating, women defending their purses in broad daylight and leaving attackers in critical condition.
Thieves, rapists, fraudsters —they all risk being caught, lynched, and sentenced ipso facto to corporal punishment.
Byung-Chul Han, Europe’s darling philosopher, offers metaphors for our neoliberal, globalized post-modernity in “The Burnout Society”. But Mexico’s 21st-century mantra is simpler:
“We’re sick of this fucking bullshit”.
A soap opera former President, his comedy-princess sidekick, and an endless cops-vs-army-vs-cartels farce—all shackled by Rule of Law but strategy-free against crime. Farmlands lie fallow; Mexico can’t feed itself. Daily insecurity means criminals rob pennies from workers, not the rich —they have bodyguards, guns, and friends in the judiciary.
The poor bear the catastrophe. So antiheroes gain traction, and imitation spreads. “Wild Wild West Mexico” is a myth; Vindicta Mexico is real. Just dare to challenge government corruption, and the dominoes tremble—remember the Arab Spring?
