Since 2007, scholars and the general public have tried to understand the nature ofthe increasingly violent conflict in Mexico. As a result, many different concepts, andcharacterisations about the violence in Mexico have arisen, but many of these, eitherborrowed from many fields of literature terms or new concepts, fall short to classify or explain the key differences from high scale violence involving organised crime and other types of violent conflicts such as civil wars. Also, considering the regional trend of high homicide rates in Latin America, especially in Central America and Brazil, it is relevant to build a new concept that can be useful, theoretically, and empirically, for the study of violence and conflict derived from involvement of organised crime, gangs, and other nonstate actors. In this article I review most of the academic and political commentary of the nature of the Mexican case and, from there, I analyse the different concepts proposed from two angles: first, a comparison with the characteristics of other high scale violent conflict concepts, and second, an examination of their utility in terms of theory, field studies, internal coherence, parsimony, familiarity, depth, differentiation, and familiarity. The aim of the comparison of different types of conflict is to assess how scholars use the literature from diverse fields to influence categorisation of new violent phenomenon. The examination of utility aims is to establish how these comparisons help or not to study of violence in Mexico and other Latin America cases of high scale violence of non-political conflicts, and how characterisations and evidence collected can enhance the understanding of violence with thebbuilding of a useful concept of this phenomenon.
Politicised crime: causes for the discursive politicisation of organised crime in Latin America
