The relationship between the presence of mines and conflict: the case of Mexico

Abstract

In light to contribute to the resource curse literature, especially to the rent-seeking thesis and the role of violence in the phenomenon, Mexican’s case is studied in the present paper. Being one of the countries blessed with natural resources, Mexico is not on the top of any development ranking, and its reality is overtaken by violence. To study if natural resources hinder the development of the north american country, an analysis of panel data from 2005 to 2015 at a municipal level related to mines has been conducted using a logit model. On the one hand, a regression for social conflict has been done to study the increasing number of conflicts around mining projects in the last decades. On the other hand, a second regression to analyze minerals' role in organized criminal groups has been carried out. In both cases, results show that valuable minerals are relevant to explain the emergence of the two types of conflict. However, the explanatory capacity of the models is not high, suggesting that the phenomenon studied needs more research to be fully understood.