ABSTRACT
What is the relation between the state and organized crime in Mexico? Utter antagonism, as proclaimed by the government? In attempting to present its war against organized crime as a policy of the state, the government has pinned everything on the pure opposition between the state and its enemy, between us and them. Right from the day that Felipe Calderón finally learned of his triumph in the elections, on 10 September 2006, the grip of that schema was evident. “Today, friends,” the president-elect declared, “the future won, a future of hope, of civility opposed to a past of violence.” That past, he continued, was one that “despises the law, abhors institutions”; “the Mexico of the future is, precisely, the Mexico of the law, the Mexico of institutions.” 1
