VIOLENCIA

Miguel Olmos Aguilera

Desear el objeto del otro
Esta violencia, segun Heritier (1996), es una coaccion de naturaleza fisica o
psiquica susceptible de atraer el terror, el desplazamiento, la desgracia o la
muerte de un ser animado, incluye actos que tienen por efecto el despojo del
otro y el dao o la destruccin de objetos inanimados pertenecientes al otro. P.
156
Herittier, Francoise, 1996, Seminaire sur la Violence. Pars, Odile Jacob
Miguel Olmos Aguilera Despojo y violencia en los pueblos indgenas del
noroeste de Mexico 153-173 en Fronteras Culturales, Alteridad y Violencia,
Colegio de Tijuana, Tijuana, 2013
VIOLENCE LEFEBVRE AND ZIZEK
From his use of the term, however, it is clear that the violence of abstraction is not limited to direct
physical violence, but also possesses what Slavoj iek has conceptualized as structuraland
symbolicdimensions. iek (2008: 11) argues that our commonsense understanding of violence limits it
to direct acts performed physically by one agent upon another; it normalizes the structural violence
embodied in the socially exploitative and ecologically destructive dynamics of capital as
an abstract form of domination, while drawing attention away from the subtle symbolic
violence of economic and technological abstractions that simplify the designated thing,
reducing it to a single feature . . . destroying its organic unity (ibid.: 52
Violence whether direct physical aggression or structural conforms a form of destruction. The visibility of
physical aggression allows for a normalization of less direct forms of violence

The Violence of Abstract Space: Contested

Regional Developments in Southern Mexico
JAPHY WILSON
Volume 38.2 March 2014 51638 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12023

iek, S. (2008) Violence. Profile, London

Lefebvre, abstract space embodies violence in each of these respects. In structural terms, abstract
space constitutes the grids, nodes and networks of property, production and exchange through which the
law of value exerts its abstract domination (Lefebvre, 1991: 341, 404). This structural violence is enabled
by a symbolic violence enthroned in a specific rationality, that of accumulation, that of bureaucracy . . . a
unitary, logistical, operational and quantifying rationality (ibid.: 280) through which social space is
discursively homogenized and stripped of qualitative content in order to function as a passive
receptacle for the planners (ibid.: 420). This intertwining of structural and symbolicviolence is in turn
profoundly dependent on the direct violence of state power through which abstract space is produced and
reproducedAfounding violence, and continuous creation by violent means(ibid.: 280). The seemingly
apolitical form of abstract space as the space of economic infrastructure and technocratic planning
functions to conceal its violence, appearing as the neutral backdrop and container of society through which
contradictions . . . are smothered and replaced by an appearance of consistency (ibid.: 363). Yet Lefebvre
(ibid.: 57) insists that within this space violence does not always remain latent or hidden, as its
constitutive antagonisms imply the constant threat, and occasional eruption, of [direct] violence. The

seemingly apolitical form of abstract space as the space of economic infrastructure and technocratic
planningfunctions to conceal its violence, appearing as the neutral backdrop and container of society
through which contradictions . . . are smothered and replaced by an appearance of consistency (ibid.:
363). Yet Lefebvre (ibid.: 57) insists that within this space violence does not always remain latent or
hidden, as its constitutive antagonisms imply the constant threat, and occasional eruption, of [direct]
violence. P. 520
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The production of space.
Blackwell, Oxford

The layers of violence symbolic, structural and direct inscribed in the very functioning of the abstract
space which main quality is appearing as the neutral backdrop and container
RESISTANCE
SPACE AS A PROJECT IN PERMANENT REALIZATION
These antagonisms include the contradictions between exchange value and use value, between the
conceived space of the planners and the lived space of the inhabitants, and between the abstract space of
the state and the traces of pre-existing spatial practices and representations. Together, they hold open the
concrete possibility of a post-capitalist differential space (ibid.: 52) dwelling within the cracks and
fissures of planned and programmed order (Lefebvre, 1996: 129). Lefebvre sees this possibility expressed
in a proliferation of place-based struggles in-and-against abstract space, characterized by assertions of
diversity against homogenization, territorial autogestion against state domination, and commonality against
privatization and fragmentation (1991: 368; 2008:
168; 2009d: 14850). P. 520
abstract space can be understood both as the spatial outcome of the
complex and contested historicalgeographical dynamics of capitalist development, and
as a specific technology of power that attempts to rationalize the contradictions inherent to
this process, through the production of a space that simultaneously advances capital
accumulation and extends state power while reducing constitutive differences and
presenting itself as a pragmatic response to economic necessity in the interest of the common good. This
project, however, remains necessarily incomplete an
incompleteness that is both a cause and a consequence of the direct, structural and
symbolic violence of abstract space. This incompleteness is constituted by gaps and
ruptures within which differential space exists as an immanent possibility, the realization
or negation of which is determined through the contingencies of political struggle. It is this
incompleteness and contingency that Lefebvre (ibid.: 11) wishes to emphasize, insisting
that we must not bestow a cohesiveness it lacks upon a totality which is in fact decidedly
openso open, indeed, that it must rely upon violence to endure.
Abstract space is the compound effect of the geographical capitalist development, technologies of power
that rationalizes this development and forms of direct violence p 521
SPATIAL HISTORY OF MEXICO
Mexico as an abstract space
The historic tensions of Mexico- an spatial history The conflict between the organization of an
homogenous national territory and the commodification of land on one hand andthe the communal
practices and cultural diversity of the regions peasant and indigenous populations on the other (Bonfil,
1996; Nash, 2001). This tension contributed to the forces that exploded in the Mexican revolution (1910
17), through which a new fraction of the national bourgeoisie gained control of the Mexican state, offering
land reform as a means of co-opting the peasant base on which the success of the revolution had rested
(Cockcroft, 1998: 1049). P. 522 cfr Craib
The ejido

the communal practices and cultural diversity of the regions peasant and indigenous
populations on the other (Bonfil, 1996; Nash, 2001). This tension contributed to the
forces that exploded in the Mexican revolution (191017), through which a new fraction
of the national bourgeoisie gained control of the Mexican state, offering land reform
as a means of co-opting the peasant base on which the success of the revolution had
rested (Cockcroft, 1998: 1049). P. 522
Cockcroft, J.D. (1998) Mexicos hope: an
encounter with politics and history.
Monthly Review Press, New York.
EJIDO, INDUSTRIALIZATION, URBANIZATION AND THE EXTENSION OF NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE
NETWORK: MEXICO AS AN ABSTRACT SPACE

Combined with urbanization,

industrialization and the extension of the national infrastructure network, the ejidos can
thus be said to have contributed to the consolidation of Mexico as an abstract space, even
as they simultaneously functioned as semi-autonomous spaces for the incubation of the
spatial practices and representational spaces of the peasant and indigenous population. 11 P. 523
This socio-spatial compromise weakened over the following decades. Land reform
slowed as the Mexican miracle of high growth through the 1950s and 1960s gradually
ground to a halt, leading to stagnation in the 1970s, default in 1982 and the subsequent
neoliberalization of the Mexican state.. P. 523
NAFTA AS THE INCORPORATION OF MEXICO INTO A HOMOGENEIZING TRANSNATIONAL
SPACE
An spatial history of Mexico in the XX century is explained as the progressive subsumption of the
communal and other local spatialities into a larger project of territorial homogeneity and national market.
Industrualization, Urbanization, the extension of a national infrastructure network and the ejido are
singular strands of this process of expansion of an abstract space.
ejido system functioned not only to ensure the acquiescence of the peasantry to the
inequities of the post-revolutionary capitalist state, but also to normalize differentiated
forms of land tenure and to provide the increased agricultural production required
to sustain a rapidly urbanizing industrial proletariat. P. 523
NAFTA marks the moment of the end of that socio-spatial compromise
THE NATURE OF THE PPP
The PPP was centred upon the production of an integrated multimodal transport network, which would
reorient the economic space of the region away from Mexico City and towards export markets in Europe
and the USA. This would be complemented by an upgraded energy grid,
connected to a series of hydroelectric projects designed to capitalize upon the vast water
resources of the region. On the scale of Mesoamerica as a whole, these infrastructure
projects would contribute to the two central infrastructure systems of the PPP the
International Network of Mesoamerican Highways (RICAM) and the Central American
System of Electricity Integration (SIEPAC). Combined with continued land privatizations
in the context of the broader process of neoliberalization, these infrastructure networks
would allow the region to maximize its comparative advantages in natural resources and
cheap labour and improve its productivity and competitiveness, attracting foreign
investment and catalysing the economic transformation of southernMexico into a space of
large-scale export-oriented agriculture, export processing zones, natural resource
extraction, high-end ecotourism and bioprospecting (Presidencia de la Repblica, 2001). P. 524
ABSTRACT SPACE AS AN STRATEGY THAT AIMED
to

structure space in the perspective of unlimited growth (Lefebvre, 1976: 113), while
simultaneously negating the substantive cultural and political-economic differences that
existed within the region. P. 524
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE OF THE PPP- IMPOSITION OF CAPITALIST SOCIAL RELATIONS
WITHOUT RECOURSE TO DIRECT VIOLENCE
In structural terms, the PPP would function to open southern Mexico more fully to the forces of global
competition. As theWorld Bank (2003: 19) noted in its strategy for southern Mexico, which reproduced the
logic of the PPP:
Firms that are located in areas with better infrastructure will be more integrated into the . . .
global market system . . . Firms that are located in highly accessible areas are also more
exposed to competition, and are thus forced to improve productivity.

In southern Mexico, of course, the majority of firms are campesinos (peasant farmers), and being forced
to improve productivity implies the abandonment of the land and the transition to wage labourin other
words the primitive accumulation that Marx (1977: 873940) identified as the foundational violence of
capitalist social relations. TheWorld Banks logic thus illustrates the structural dimension of the violence of
abstraction, in which capitalist social relations are imposed through apparently objective processes
without recourse to direct violence, and the law of value is exerted as an abstract form of domination P.
524
FORMS OF SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE-ORGANIC REDUCTION OF COMPLEXITY TO STATISTICAL
VARIATIONS
In the case of the PPP, the violence intrinsic to this process was further concealed by the discursive
reduction of southern Mexico to a purely formal and quantitative space, defined only by high poverty
statistics, low productivity, long transport times and underexploited resources, and stripped of any trace of
the Zapatista uprising or the subsequent movement for indigenous autonomy (Presidencia de la Repblica,
2001: 12765). .524
SYMBOLIC SPATIAL VIOLENCEembodimenst of the symbolic violence of abstraction
Representation of spaces as purely formal and quantitative space defined only by high poverty statistics,
low productivity, long transport times and underexploited resources and stripped of any form of
heterogeneity, specificity and difference
Places are represented as depoliticized spaces of inadequacy, deprivation and wasted potential@
This representation of the region as a depoliticized space of inadequacy, deprivation and wasted potential
embodied the symbolic violence of abstraction, erasing the representational spaces of southern Mexicos
diverse population and the history of struggle through which these spaces had been produced, developed
and defended.15 This symbolic violence had very real effects, to the extent that it facilitated and legitimated
the material erasure of the socio-spatialities that it discursively denied p. 525
THE DIVISIONS BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH

Comparing the north and south of the country, the coordinator of the PPP announced that
Two Mexicos exist. One that is dynamic and that is progressing towards full development,
and one that remains submerged in stagnation and backwardness (Tejeda, 2001). This
representation created a spatial dichotomy that obscured the complexity and contradictions of
each region, concealing the persistent poverty and underdevelopment of the north, while
devaluing southern Mexicos peasant agriculture and indigenous cultures, and failing to
acknowledge the extent to which urbanization and large-scale agribusiness are already well
established in the south. As Lefebvre (1996: 99) notes, Planning as an ideology formulates
all the problems of society into questions of space . . . It is an ideology which immediately

divides up . . . what are represented as healthy and diseased spaces. P. 525 in foot note
Lefebvre, H. (1996) The right to the city. In
H. Lefebvre (ed.), Writings on cities,
Blackwell, Oxford.
ADDRESSING VIOLENCE
any study of violence needs to be disaggregated and contextualized; violence cannot be treated as a generic phenomenon obeying common
identifiable causes. Violence may be a serious problem and an important topic for analysis, but to understand violence we need to look at
particular cases in particular contexts. In this respect, violence resembles war (or, I would add, terrorism), rather than, say, malaria.
ALAN KNIGHT
Narco-Violence and the State in Modern Mexico
P. 63
Excerpt From: Pansters, Wil. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico. iBooks.
Excerpt From: Pansters, Wil. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico. iBooks.
Narco-violence is just one of many forms of violent phenomena that can be identified, in Mexico and elsewhere. Indeed, violence is so
pervasive and Protean that, as I suggested at the outset, it seems to me futile to try to explain it as a generic phenomenon. It may be that
there are some very widespread, even universal, features of violence that derive from the hardwiring of humans (or from human nature, if
you prefer)19: men commit more violence than women; young men are particularly prone to violence (and are disproportionately the
victims of violence);20 and some violence can be attributed to individual psychopathologies (certainly some narcos seem to have been
psychopaths, who relished casual violence and homicide).21 But these universals obviously do not help us explain particular waves of
violence in particular contexts. It may be that, when violence is on the historical agendawhether for criminal, political, or warlike
purposesthe usual suspects will turn up: face-to-face violence is likely to be the work of men, especially younger men; and a few of them
will be psychopaths who enjoy their work (who, in the case of Ramn Arellano Flix, gave a whole[]
Excerpt From: Pansters, Wil. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico. iBooks. P. 256