Fighting for social justice in Guerrero, Mexico: Creating alternatives to the state’s failure to provide security and justice.

Since the nineties, social movements in Latin America have been very successful: theyhave overthrown presidents in Ecuador, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and Brazil, they have stopped or slowed down privatizing processes and have forced elites to negotiate and take into consideration their demands. However, questions remain as to whether the resistance can survive if it does not put forward a coherent alternative to the neoliberal state. In this paper, I address the experience of constructing an autonomous, indigenous-based system of security and justice in Guerrero, Mexico, that along with the Zapatistas’ Juntas de Buen Gobierno in Chiapas and the Rondas Campesinas in Peru has become an important example of the creative and innovative potential of social movements across Latin America. Based on in-depth interviews with leaders and members of the Coordinadora Regional de Autoridades Comunitarias (CRAC-PC) and from the Unión de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Estado de Guerrero (UPOEG) the paper looks at the rise of the community police force or policía comunitaria in the ultra-violent state of Guerrero, and critically examines in what sense are they succeeding in creating alternatives to the state´s political hegemony and for building social peace.