ABSTRACT

Asking about the place of law in regions of violence may have an obvious if rather flippant answer: it is non-existent. However, in the Mexican case, as in many others, the application of judicial remedies and the use of the language of rights as a means of supporting social struggle, promoting state legitimacy, and even to protect the actions of private companies, are definitely growing. San Francisco Cheran is an indigenous community of the Purepecha people. According to the authors' argument, post-colonial nations are often associated with disorder; they are the archetypes of chaos. Neoliberal policies have latched on to these nations' tendency towards informality and traditions of economic exploitation to create flourishing parallel economies involving a mix of formal enterprises, criminal groups and the state. These parallel economies often intersect the 'decadent markets fostered by liberalization'.