In 2011 the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Xochimilco campus, called a meeting attended by both activists and human rights defenders and representatives of non-governmental organizations and academics to reflect on violence in Mexico, which during the administration of Felipe Calderon, who then came to an end, new highs, only comparable to those that occur in conditions of war.

In this volume the results of the meeting are collected. The authors examine the structural conditions of violence in Mexico linked to the current configuration of society and state, and the specific ways in which these two dimensions (social and State) are specified in resistance processes, citizenship and institutionalization of human rights.

On the other hand, a more specific level of historical analysis, problems, issues and cases that collect the experience of how to live daily under the current conditions of fear and insecurity in the country but also of organization and citizen responses are addressed They are seeking to glimpse possibilities of order and resistance to chaos.