Transnational Organized Crime and Hybrid Governance in Latin America : The Case of Forced Disappearance in Mexico

The present working paper aims to introduce the concept of hybrid governance as a form of mediation between tri-dimensional political actors: the state; violent non-state actors (VNSAs), and society. In the first instance, we create a virtual separation between the state, non-state actors, and society to clarify our analysis’s core. Since the 1980s, Latin America has been experiencing the emergence of several VNSAs with governance capacities, originating from distinct factors among which are economic, political, and social crises, as well as intrastate conflicts. We propose a qualitative methodological approach through which we explore the strategies developed in Mexican civil society to confront forced disappearance perpetrated by both organized crime and the state. We explore this situation of conviviality, understood as a set of social practices created by individuals or social groups to live under severe high levels of violence. The research is based on interviews conducted using an open model to indicate the possible paths developed as a form of resistance to contexts of extreme violence.