Lynchings in Mexico: Reflections on a commentary

Abstract

In this short piece, Carlos Vilas reflects on the criticisms that Antonio Fuentes and Leigh Binford made, in the previous issue of this journal, of his interpretation of lynchings in Mexico. Placing those criticisms along two axes—tradition/modernity and the State as perpetrator of lynchings—Vilas replies that the first pair is not the most productive for analyzing the phenomenon and finds strikingly weak the argument that the State also lynches. Lynching is a private, tumultuous form of punitive violence that can be attributed to the State only metaphorically.