The subjective bases of political violence in Atoyac, Guerrero (Mexico). An interpretation of the insurrectional process of the guerrilla of the Party of the Poor in the sixties of the twentieth centurys

Abstract

This article seeks to explain the insurrection process of the guerrilla of the Party of the Poor, led by the rural master Lucio Cabañas Barrientos in Atoyac, Guerrero (Mexico). The focus of this research seeks to study daily cultural and social violence, as part of a historical process that was part of the phenomenon of political-caciquil violence. The problem-axis of this investigation will be the agrarian counter-reform initiated during the forties of the twentieth century, which in the sixties will produce in Guerrero an accentuated agrarian problem crossed by the problem of land inheritance, tensions around boundaries and family and community lawsuits for the usufruct of family or collective work. The institutional distance of the State to intervene in the disputes and how the government promoted a culture of violence, in which the dominant actors could legitimize themselves with the "law of the strongest" will be seen. Various unwritten community rules will be studied, which established as legitimate the resource of revenge and justice by their own hands. In this context of peasant rage, aggravated by the economic offense of local chieftains, and the abuse of corrupt rulers, the leap from social violence to politics will be explained; the path that the peasants of Atoyac would follow to organize an armed struggle of the poor against the rich.