Doubt as drug war discourse

Created Thursday 02 April 2026


  • Entanglements Of Sovereignties: Searching Mothers, Criminal Organizations And The State Apparatus Amid The Mexican War On Drugs
  • Jorge Isaac Vargas-Gonzalez (2026) PhD

This is an interesting PhD because it looks at the role of doubt in Mexico's drug war. I am interested in this myself as I often see the how doubt and rumours, even from government officials, around the violence serves to obscure the truth. Pushing us away from structural explanations. Instead we are often left guessing who did what and what the real motives are.


Vargas-Gonzalez explains how he sees doubt.


In this regard, I turn to doubt (duda) as an analytical tool to explore the porous boundaries between state officials and drug trafficking groups. In anthropology, there is an important discussion about rumors—often regarded as the oldest form of communication in the world. Rumor has always been present in human relations, woven into the very fabric of society’s formation. Rumor is typically defined as a process of information exchange whose truthfulness or veracity is not firmly established. It is a form of knowledge shaped by doubt, nourished by uncertainty. (page 7)


And as if to proof his theory, the Mexican government recently released a report on disappearances calling into doubt its own official figures. As reported in the LA Times, Sheinbaum's administration has in effect reduced the 130,000 reported disappearances to 43,128. In response, the United Nations has proposed providing technical assistance to the Mexican government This was rejected, with a Sheinbaum official declaring: "we don't tolerate, permit or order forced displacement".


This is an interesting reply. Namely, because, as the article in the LA Times notes, much evidence suggests that the state, in the form of local police of military units, often work closely with the cartels. In the academic literature, this is viewed as the privatisation of violence. A phenomena linked to the advancement of neoliberalism practice in the region.


As the state retreats, cartels take their place as a parallel state. Their role is to expand capitalism to disparate spaces. The violence that this produces is deadly not just for the criminals, but also for those that stand in the way of capitalist development. In effect, a counter-insurgency that claims the lives of the poorest and most venerable in a society while also destroying democratic accountability. Doubt plays an important role in helping to obscure this fact.