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This article applies Social Network Analysis (SNA) to illuminate the task forces created by US-based activists undertaking public relations on behalf of migrant caravan participants that travel from Honduras through Mexico toward the US. Four functional roles – influencers, messengers, support groups, and founding members – are identified and described in detail. When taking into account the characteristics of the individuals involved, these roles facilitate "bridge-actions": the mobilization of support across distinct political structures such as Native American tribal governments, international human rights venues, and US political parties. The result is a flexible public relations venture that has ability to influence diverse audiences – and extend beyond this particular mobilization effort. This has been most useful in the current American debate concerning restrictive US immigration policies and border security measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains some of the mechanisms through which corruption by high-level Mexican politicians and other organized crime members is facilitated in the United States through money laundering operations. The analysis is based on information contained in court records related to key money laundering cases, as well as in news articles and reports from law enforcement agencies. These materials highlight the interrelationships among U.S. drug use, cartel activities in Mexico, human rights abuses, Mexican political corruption, and money laundering in the United States. This work demonstrates the pervasive use of legitimate businesses and fronts in the United States as a disguise for criminal activity. Finally, it provides recommendations for a reformation of policies and penalties directed toward U.S. institutions and persons that facilitate money laundering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed the extent to which violent, organised crime has disrupted anthropological research in Mexico and Central America by conducting a survey of anthropologists who work in the region. We found that although anthropologists will continue research in regions they perceive to have the socio-economic characteristics of a failed state they are far less inclined to work in areas that they perceive as excessively violent. We continue with examination of the state failure and feudalisation that are affecting the region. We conclude that in the feudal zones, the state has lost its comparative advantage in the use of force and that state intrusion into these areas increases armed collective violence in a manner similar to that described in the literature on warfare in tribal zones. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines participation of residents from the Montaña Baja region of central Guerrero, Mexico, in the Mexican government's seasonal migrant laborer assistance program. The program has many functions, most notably serving as the hub linking migrant workers with agribusinesses elsewhere in Mexico. An archive of regional registrants for the 1999-2000 agricultural season is analyzed to infer patterns of local labor mobilization. We test the hypotheses that residents from larger communities and communities alongside roads are more likely to participate and we offer an explanation for their recruitment. Our explanations draw on understandings of patronage networks and the recruiting strategies of labor contractors. Our findings are significant and provide insight into the impact of clientelist networks on labor mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of a survey administered in 2006 reveals that colonia residents in Chilapa, Guerrero, Mexico, are more likely to have migrated from rural areas within the city's traditional marketing hinterland than from equally nearby villages that orient their trade to other regional marketplaces. The study suggests that the regional marketing systems, rather than municipal jurisdictions, are the major institutions channeling rural to urban migration in the fieldsite. The article also explores the occupational shifts associated with the transition to life in the urban colonias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social life in Mexico has long been regulated not by codified jural rules and the institutions of the state but by means of hierarchically structured patronage networks. This article illustrates the pervasiveness of patronage relationships by looking at the activities of a human rights advocacy organization operating in Chilapa, Guerrero. Though ostensibly committed to working through the jural rules and the institutions of the state, practical reality commonly intrudes and forces the organization to activate patronage ties in order to assist their clients. The article also explores the implications of patronage relationships for ongoing debates about the presumed irreconcilability of the state's codified law and the customary law of indigenous communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]