Combatting Violence: Creating “good” Citizens in Ciudad Juárez (Mexico, twenty-first century)

Between 2006 and 2012, offensives by the military against drug trafficking were the cause of more than ten thousand killings in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city bordering the United States. ?In 90 % of cases, the victims were men, and most of them were poor. Various public policies towards the victims, such as a children’s aid fund, were developed, indicating that the authorities took some responsibility for the situation. These policies included the restoration of social rights to subjects who had previously been denied them, aiming to help them develop as “normal citizens”. Considered in detail, these programs set out not so much to relieve the negative effects of the (anti)criminal action by the State, as to reduce the causes of criminality among young men of the lower classes by improving their conditions of existence : types of counselling were developed which aimed to “correct” a type of masculinity perceived as deviant and potentially violent. The granting of citizenship was therefore closely linked to conformity with gendered norms of behaviour.