Kidnapping in the US-Mexico Borderlands

Kidnapping in the US-Mexico Borderlands: Citizen Responses and the 'Intimacy-Distance Paradox' Presented by: Mrs. O'Reilly Date: 28 May 2021 Underpinning Assertions - Kidnapping must be examined within a highly nuanced, and contextualized, research approach. - Intimacy must be understood and conceptualized in its broader, sociological, sense. The Project - 'Mobile Solutions to the Mexican Kidnapping Epidemic: Beyond Elite CounterMeasures, Towards Citizen-Led Innovation' (Newton Fund); - Key research challenge: How do you counter kidnapping when you cannot access private solutions or rely on the state? - - Two key work packages: • Citizen-Led Counter-Kidnapping; • Transborder Effects & Transnational Solutions; USMX Border & Colombia Fieldwork: 38 interviews in transborder hubs of Juarez/El Paso & Tijuana/San Diego; and, 11 interviews in Bogota & Medellin. Kidnapping in a Transborder Context - (Im)mobility & Intimacy - Kidnapping patterns takes on new dynamics in Mexico's Northern borderlands - Citizen-led counter-kidnapping measures are characterized by 'Intimacy-Distance Paradox’ Transborder Trade & The Vulnerabilities of Visible Wealth - Medical tourism: doctors were one of the first groups to be systematically targeted; - Restaurant industry: suffered both through the demise of nightlife, as well as specific targeting of restauranteurs; - Maquiladora industry: owners often US-resident and reliant on cross- border private security services. Secession and Immobility in 'The Kidnapped City' (Kun 2012) - Auto-contention; - Gated communities; - Closing of social circles; - Removal of visible displays of wealth; - Security protocols as everyday practice. - (Researcher, Tijuana 2019) • ...we live with fear...I won't take my son into a park. I don't take him into a park. Why? Because I'm afraid kidnapping. We have many, many cases of kidnapping. Daily cases of kidnapping of kids. I don't know if it's for organ traffic or sexual traffic. I don't know but it's happening. It's happening everywhere. You can see that every single day. ' Kidnapping: The Betrayal of Intimacy - The 'treason phenomenon' (Ochoa 2019); - Osmotic paranoia born of Las Listas in Tijuana; - Kidnap negotiations are parasitic upon 'shared' intimate knowledge about targets, their movements and vulnerabilities, as well as families' wealth and assets; whilst, - Kidnap negotiation strategies action intimacy through 'proof-of-life' questions, as well as the cruelty rituals of sending severed body parts to relatives. - (Doctor, Tijuana 2019) • 'If my friend got kidnapped, my close friend. I would be very frightened and would change my car for another one and would do things...the danger is close to me, because he knows me and he is my friend and he loves me and everything, but you know, he will talk because he will talk. I am sure I would do it if I was in the same situation. I mean I wouldn't blame him...' The Intimacy-Distance Paradox - (NGO Worker, Juarez, 2018) • '...if you are taken, you are taken! There is: "we will rather sacrifice one than sacrifice all." The idea of our family isn't to be extorted, so we don't ransom. So I can tell you that my family is one of those families that we will not pay a ransom...It is a security measure for the whole family, the extended family • Yes, it is horrible but our family is a journalism family. We have different stakes than other families and I understand that. And when that decision was made I didn't even think twice of taking my kids away [across the border to the US]. The Intimacy-Distance Paradox: Transborder Secession - 'MEXODUS': Local Mexican border elites become 'elite refugees'; - Chula Vista: 'A gilded colony of Mexicans'; - The transborder mobile elite enjoy circular mobility through privileged corridors of security, supported by private security when needed; - However, the price of secure (cross-border) refuge is the human toll of lost intimacy, remote family and business connections, as well as the stigma of having abandoned their home cities: - (NGO Worker, Juarez 2018) • 'The distance for me is almost eight years of living away from my husband...it really does take a toll because you do grow apart and that is the reality. So I think there is a bigger cost than one would have expected or that I would have expected.' Amor Secuestrado ('Kidnapped Love') Merging Science and Soap Operas to Combat Kidnapping in Mexico - Breaking taboos about kidnapping; - Building new narratives of solidarity/resilience; - Promoting peer-to-peer security planning within families in Mexico