In Mexico and across other parts of Latin America local Indigenous peoples have built community policing groups as a means of protection where the state has limited control over, and even complicity in, crime and violence. Luis Hernandez Navarro, a leading Mexican journalist, offers a riveting investigation of these armed self-defense groups that sprang up around the time of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Available in English for the first time, the book spotlights the intense precarity of everyday life in parts of Mexico. Hernandez Navarro shows how the self-defense response, which now includes wealthier rancher and farmer groups, is being transformed by Mexico's expanding role in the multibillion dollar global drug trade, by foreign corporations' extraction of raw minerals in traditionally Indigenous lands, and by the resulting social changes in local communities. But as Hernandez Navarro acknowledges, self-defense is highly controversial. Community policing may provide citizens with increased agency, but for government officials it can be a dangerous threat to the status quo. Leftists and liberals are wary of how the groups may be linked to paramilitary forces and vulnerable to manipulation by drug traffickers and the government alike. This book answers the urgent call to understand the dangerous complexities of government failures and popular solutions.

Defend yourself with salad tongs, hairbrushes--and even a dirty diaper! A sidewalk thief tries to steal your wallet, but you are unarmed. What do you do? With A Guide to Improvised Weaponry, you'll know how to protect yourself--even if all you have are your car keys and a candy bar. Written by Green Beret and combat expert Terry Schappert, this book teaches you how to turn your lipstick, your wristwatch--even the shoes on your feet--into strategic self-defense tools. Traditional weapons can be expensive, dangerous, and in the blur of an attack, easily turned against you, but with his life-saving advice, you can avoid these risks and defend yourself by deploying the hidden tactical uses of 100 ordinary items. Whether you're out grocery shopping, riding in an elevator, or enjoying a stroll through the park, A Guide to Improvised Weaponry shows you how to control your environment and become your own bodyguard--ready and able to act when you need to.

In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs). Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.

The early 1960s are remembered for the emergence of new radical movements influenced by the Cuban Revolution. One such protest movement rose in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. With large timber companies moving in on the forested sierra highlands, campesinos and rancheros did not sit by as their lands and livelihoods were threatened. Continuing a long history of agrarian movements and local traditions of armed self-defense, they organized and demanded agrarian rights. Thousands of students joined the campesino protests in long-distance marches, land invasions, and direct actions that transcended political parties and marked the participants’ emergence as political subjects. The Popular Guerrilla Group (GPG) took shape from sporadic armed conflicts in the sierra. Early victories in the field encouraged the GPG to pursue more ambitious targets, and on September 23, 1965, armed farmers, agricultural workers, students, and teachers attacked an army base in Madera, Chihuahua. This bold move had deadly consequences. With a sympathetic yet critical eye, historian Elizabeth Henson argues that the assault undermined and divided the movement that had been in its cradle, sacrificing the most militant, audacious, and serious of a generation at a time when such sacrifices were more frequently observed. Henson shows how local history merged with national tensions over one-party rule, the unrealized promises of the Mexican Revolution, and international ideologies.

Tulchin and Espach (both are at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars) have collected ten essays on the place, choices, dangers, and options of Latin America in the context of economic globalization. The contributors are political scientists, scholars on international affairs, and specialists in Latin America. Three essays feature Cuba, Brazil, and Mexico separately; the rest consider Latin America as a whole, particularly in terms of its foreign and economic policies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The 4th Small Wars JournalEl Centro anthology comes at a pivotal time, roughly a third of the way through the term, for the Enrique Pea Nieto administration in Mexico. The mass kidnapping and execution of 43 rural student teachers in Iguala, Guerrero in late September 2014 has only served to further highlight the corruptive effects of organized crime on the public institutions in that country. In addition, many other states in Latin America are now suffering at the hands of criminal insurgents who are threatening their citizens and challenging their sovereign rights. Dave Dilegge, SWJ Editor-in-Chief