Conclusion

This chapter concludes the book. It establishes its main contributions to the literature on crime in Latin America, as well as the broader sociological and criminological theories of crime, trust, and signaling in a context where the state does not willingly provide protection in an egalitarian manner. It outlines how the book has sought to contribute to our understanding of kidnapping by entering into a dialogue with the existing literature on crime in Mexico and Latin America, its causes, and its consequences. It also explains how the book has provided a methodologically sound account of the evolution of the crime of kidnapping, and the ways in which communities and individuals navigate the risk of being kidnapped. The chapter also sets out new questions and issues for further research.

Kidnapping

This chapter presents a first attempt at a methodologically sound history of the crime of kidnapping—in particular, its evolution from the 1970s to today in Mexico and specifically in Mexico City, from existing only as a political tool used by radical groups to promote their struggle or raise funds for their cause, to a crime that is simply economical in nature. Kidnapping has become a crime that affects mainly the working and middle classes as opposed to its traditional wealthy victims. The chapter analyses the evolution of kidnapping gangs and also how the government responded to them via a diverse set of policies. It also describes the gangs which took part in this crime.

Crime, Trust, and Signaling

Today, Mexico is faced with a severe crisis in the fields of security and crime which has seeped into all areas of political and social life. In the last three decades, kidnapping has seen a puzzling evolution from a politically driven act in the 1970s to a crime that targeted the wealthy in the 1990s to a widespread crime that targets middle- and low-income victims today, thus producing many more deaths and higher victimization rates. Explaining these changes and how they affect communities in Mexico is the central objective of this book. This chapter outlines the theoretical framework for the book. I will use signaling theory to explore problems of trust in the context of kidnapping in Mexico City. This chapter presents a discussion of these theories in the broader context of governance.

Introduction

This chapter set out the main arguments of the book, as well as its structure and the ways in which it relates to existing literature on crime in Latin America and the broader sociological and criminological literature. It begins with the case of Mr X, whose daughter was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. It then goes on to describe a case in which thirteen youths were abducted from a nightclub in Mexico City, their bodies discovered months later. These cases are illustrative of the kind of situations that, on both a personal and an academic level, inspire this book and, more specifically, the questions of how people can deal with the ensuing fear and protect themselves from this kind of crime when the state is incapable, or unwilling, to provide this protection.

The Employee’s Perspective

This chapter analyses the employment relationship from the perspective of the employee. It looks at how they are able to access jobs and job security in a very informal environment with scant contract enforcement, and focuses in particular on how drivers signal their trustworthiness as opposed to how they decide whether or not to trust the employer. The chapter analyses drivers’ relationship with their employers and how they are hired as protectors—not just as drivers. It also examines what happens when the relationship between employer and employee breaks down. Overall, the chapter helps us to understand how relationships are entered into and sustained in an environment of insecurity.

Avoiding an Intimate Crime

This chapter analyses the mechanisms employed by wealthy people to navigate the risk of kidnapping when hiring employees for their family homes. It shows how employers screen for different properties such as discretion and how they use vertical integration as a way to lower the cost and risk of hiring. The focus is specifically on the hiring process of drivers for the household. This is based on the fact that many kidnappings are orchestrated by someone close to the victim. The hiring process is seen as a problem of trust, and—following Spence—is solved through a signaling game, where employers look for hard-to-fake signals.

Survival Strategies

This chapter analyses the ways in which different communities in Mexico City have reacted to the risk of being kidnapped: as a result of the initial rise in crime and kidnappings against wealthy individuals in the 1990s, and the perception that there was the potential for this to happen, these people and their families devised a series of survival strategies aimed at avoiding victimization. The chapter describes the different security measures which have been put into effect in the City. It explores in detail the relationships between the wealthy and the government and the results this has had in terms of the provision of security.

Crime, Kidnapping, and Liberalization in Mexico in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries (1994–2015)

This chapter provides the political-economic context in which the book takes place. It describes the processes of liberalization and democratization which took place in Mexico from the 1960s and explores the relationship of these processes to crime—specifically, the non-intended consequence of higher crime rates and heightened social volatility. The rise of most types of crime since the mid-1990s is intimately tied to political economic processes that were gripping the country and the Latin American region at the time. They are, as this chapter will show, a by-product of deep economic and political changes—democratization and liberalization—that took place in Mexico from the mid-1980s. The chapter aims to provide the reader with a solid context on which to situate the analyses of kidnapping and trust explored later in the book.