Terrorism - A Concept Under Construction: The Use of the Term in Mexican Congressional Debates in the First Half of the XX Century

Abstract

The paper focuses on the perceptions of “terrorism” that Mexican politicians developed in the initial decades of the 20th century, and which definitions did emerge in the Congressional debates. The aim is to assess which events were crucial in shaping an official narrative of the phenomenon, and, in doing so, it will apply the Foucaultian theory, looking at the issue of discontinuity, which provides an analytical key to assess the whens and whys for the emergence of a State-centered discourse on terrorism.