Abstract

AVILA CORONEL, Francisco. From Corporatism to Counterinsurgency: The Massacre of Copra Producers in Acapulco, Guerrero, in Historical Perspective: 1940-1967. Hist. mex. [online]. 2024, vol.73, n.4, pp.1803-1868.  Epub Apr 22, 2024. ISSN 2448-6531.  https://doi.org/10.24201/hm.v73i4.4765.

This article addresses the process of domination and political clientelism by the Mexican state in its coercive relations with the peasants of coastal Guerrero, who were coopted by the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Regional Union of Copra Producers of the state of Guerrero (URPCEG), the state’s most important peasant organization, which had been hegemonically controlled by caciques since its founding. This article studies and analyzes one of the bloodiest massacres in Mexico in the nineteen sixties, which has been overlooked by the twentieth century historiography. While the focus is on regional history, the problem addressed herein is of national importance and impact, as the massacre of peasants on August 20 1967 in Acapulco constituted the immediate background to the appearance of guerrilla groups in Guerrero and other parts of the country. It’s not an exag geration to state that this was an act of state terrorism that formed part of a counterinsurgency strategy that sought to invoke a peasant insurrection in Guerrero’s Costa Grande region, where there was a simultaneous crisis in the PRI’s structures of political clientelism, as well as an intracacique struggle combined with a mass movement of copra and coffee producers, with agrarian and economic demands.

Keywords : political clientelism; massacre of copra producers; counterinsurgency; political violence; Guerrero.

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