The Politics of Violence in Latin America

The Politics of Violence in Latin America
Author: Pablo Policzer
Publisher: Latin American and Caribbean S
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2019-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781552389065
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Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world. It has suffered waves of repressive authoritarian rule, organized armed insurgency and civil war, violent protest, and ballooning rates of criminal violence. But is violence hard wired into Latin America? This is a critical reassessment of the ways in which violence in Latin America is addressed and understood. Previous approaches have relied on structural perspectives, attributing the problem of violence to Latin America's colonial past or its conflictual contemporary politics. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, this volume argues that violence is often rooted more in contingent outcomes than in deeply embedded structures. Addressing topics ranging from the root sources of violence in Haiti to kidnapping in Colombia, from the role of property rights in patterns of violence to the challenges of peacebuilding, The Politics of Violence in Latin America is an essential step towards understanding the causes and contexts of violence-and changing the mechanisms that produce it.

Violence and Crime in Latin America

Violence and Crime in Latin America
Author: Gema Santamaría
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017-02-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806158816
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According to media reports, Latin America is one of the most violent regions in the world—a distinction it held throughout the twentieth century. The authors of Violence and Crime in Latin America contend that perceptions and representations of violence and crime directly impact such behaviors, creating profound consequences for the political and social fabric of Latin American nations. Written by distinguished scholars of Latin American history, sociology, anthropology, and political science, the essays in this volume range from Mexico and Argentina to Colombia and Brazil in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, addressing such issues as extralegal violence in Mexico, the myth of indigenous criminality in Guatemala, and governments’ selective blindness to violent crime in Brazil and Jamaica. The authors in this collection examine not only the social construction and political visibility of violence and crime in Latin America, but the justifications for them as well. Analytically and historically, these essays show how Latin American citizens have sanctioned criminal and violent practices and incorporated them into social relations, everyday practices, and institutional settings. At the same time, the authors explore the power struggles that inform distinctions between illegitimate versus legitimate violence. Violence and Crime in Latin America makes a substantive contribution to understanding a key problem facing Latin America today. In its historical depth and ethnographic reach, this original and thought-provoking volume enhances our understanding of crime and violence throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America

Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America
Author: Oriana Bernasconi
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-08-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9783030170486
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This book analyzes state terror documentation as a form of peaceful resistance to oppressive regimes through substantial research in human rights archives that registered violations perpetrated by Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. The contributors provide in-depth analysis on state violence documentation, denunciation and resistance and how it affected civilians, activists and victims. Additionally, the project introduces research in transitional contexts (post-dictatorship, post-apartheid and post-colonialism) showing the role of documentation practices in achieving truth, reparation and justice. This work will be relevant to academics, students and researchers in the fields of political science, political history, Latin American and memory studies.

The Struggle for Memory in Latin America

The Struggle for Memory in Latin America
Author: Eugenia Allier-Montaño
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 113752734X
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This book examines the struggles that unfolded in Latin America over the memory of the pasts of political violence experienced by the countries of the continent in the second half of the twentieth century: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

Linking Political Violence and Crime in Latin America

Linking Political Violence and Crime in Latin America
Author: Kirsten Howarth
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1498507204
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This edited collection explores the politics of crime and violence in Latin America through both theoretical reflections as well as several detailed case studies based on empirical, primary research. Its overall aim is to explore common misperceptions and simplifications which are often found in political discourses, policy documentation, as well as some academic work. These simplifications include a focus on gangs, narrow understandings of organized criminal groups and the knock-on effect that such a focus has on policy making. Instead, the chapters in this book shift the reader’s gaze to more structural explanations and analytical approaches, moving them towards an understanding of how wider historical, economic, cultural and even psychological issues impact the complex relationships between crime, violence, and politics in the region. The detailed case studies also allow for a unique comparative analysis of problems faced throughout the region. While significant differences exist, analysis of the case studies reveals common issues, problems, and debates between countries (including structural violence, militarization, and neo-liberalism). These “golden threads” reveal not only the complexity of crime and violence in the region but also expose the failure of the overly simple “gangsterism” discourse found elsewhere. Finally, and importantly, several of the chapters explore the politics of policy making in relation to these problems, shedding light on the complex reasons for policy failures and highlighting innovative opportunities for change. Whilst shedding light on current problems in the region the book also offers a range of analytical approaches for exploring other cases where crime, violence, and politics collide.

State Violence and Genocide in Latin America

State Violence and Genocide in Latin America
Author: Marcia Esparza
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2009-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135244952
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This edited volume explores political violence and genocide in Latin America during the Cold War, examining this in light of the United States’ hegemonic position on the continent. Using case studies based on the regimes of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Peru and Uruguay, this book shows how U.S foreign policy – far from promoting long term political stability and democratic institutions – has actually undermined them. The first part of the book is an inquiry into the larger historical context in which the development of an unequal power relationship between the United States and Latin American and Caribbean nations evolved after the proliferation of the Monroe Doctrine. The region came to be seen as a contested terrain in the East-West conflict of the Cold War, and a new US-inspired ideology, the ‘National Security Doctrine’, was used to justify military operations and the hunting down of individuals and groups labelled as ‘communists’. Following on from this historical context, the book then provides an analysis of the mechanisms of state and genocidal violence is offered, demonstrating how in order to get to know the internal enemy, national armies relied on US intelligence training and economic aid to carry out their surveillance campaigns. This book will be of interest to students of Latin American politics, US foreign policy, human rights and terrorism and political violence in general. Marcia Esparza is an Assistant Professor in Criminal Justice Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Henry R. Huttenbach is the Founder and Chairman of the International Academy for Genocide Prevention and Professor Emeritus of City College of the City University of New York. Daniel Feierstein is the Director of the Center for Genocide Studies at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Argentina, and is a Professor in the Faculty of Genocide at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

A Century of Revolution

A Century of Revolution
Author: Gilbert M. Joseph
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2010-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822392852
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Latin America experienced an epochal cycle of revolutionary upheavals and insurgencies during the twentieth century, from the Mexican Revolution of 1910 through the mobilizations and terror in Central America, the Southern Cone, and the Andes during the 1970s and 1980s. In his introduction to A Century of Revolution, Greg Grandin argues that the dynamics of political violence and terror in Latin America are so recognizable in their enforcement of domination, their generation and maintenance of social exclusion, and their propulsion of historical change, that historians have tended to take them for granted, leaving unexamined important questions regarding their form and meaning. The essays in this groundbreaking collection take up these questions, providing a sociologically and historically nuanced view of the ideological hardening and accelerated polarization that marked Latin America’s twentieth century. Attentive to the interplay among overlapping local, regional, national, and international fields of power, the contributors focus on the dialectical relations between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary processes and their unfolding in the context of U.S. hemispheric and global hegemony. Through their fine-grained analyses of events in Chile, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru, they suggest a framework for interpreting the experiential nature of political violence while also analyzing its historical causes and consequences. In so doing, they set a new agenda for the study of revolutionary change and political violence in twentieth-century Latin America. Contributors Michelle Chase Jeffrey L. Gould Greg Grandin Lillian Guerra Forrest Hylton Gilbert M. Joseph Friedrich Katz Thomas Miller Klubock Neil Larsen Arno J. Mayer Carlota McAllister Jocelyn Olcott Gerardo Rénique Corey Robin Peter Winn

Political Violence and the Construction of National Identity in Latin America

Political Violence and the Construction of National Identity in Latin America
Author: Peter Lambert
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2006-11-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230601723
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This topical volume seeks to analyze the intimate but under-studied relationship between the construction of national identity in Latin America, and the violent struggle for political power that has defined Latin American history since independence. The result is an original, fascinating contribution to an increasingly important field of study.

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America
Author: Eduardo Moncada
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2016-01-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804796904
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This book analyzes and explains the ways in which major developing world cities respond to the challenge of urban violence. The study shows how the political projects that cities launch to confront urban violence are shaped by the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. It introduces business as a pivotal actor in the politics of urban violence, and argues that how business is organized within cities and its linkages to local governments impacts whether or not business supports or subverts state efforts to stem and prevent urban violence. A focus on city mayors finds that the degree to which politicians rely upon clientelism to secure and maintain power influences whether they favor responses to violence that perpetuate or weaken local political exclusion. The book builds a new typology of patterns of armed territorial control within cities, and shows that each poses unique challenges and opportunities for confronting urban violence. The study develops sub-national comparative analyses of puzzling variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence across Colombia's three principal cities—Medellin, Cali, and Bogota—and over time within each. The book's main findings contribute to research on violence, crime, citizen security, urban development, and comparative political economy. The analysis demonstrates that the politics of urban violence is a powerful new lens on the broader question of who governs in major developing world cities.

Violent Democracies in Latin America

Violent Democracies in Latin America
Author: Enrique Desmond Arias
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2010-03-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822392038
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Despite recent political movements to establish democratic rule in Latin American countries, much of the region still suffers from pervasive violence. From vigilantism, to human rights violations, to police corruption, violence persists. It is perpetrated by state-sanctioned armies, guerillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-protection. The everyday presence of violence contrasts starkly with governmental efforts to extend civil, political, and legal rights to all citizens, and it is invoked as evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The contributors to this collection take the more nuanced view that violence is not a social aberration or the result of institutional failure; instead, it is intimately linked to the institutions and policies of economic liberalization and democratization. The contributors—anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, and historians—explore how individuals and institutions in Latin American democracies, from the rural regions of Colombia and the Dominican Republic to the urban centers of Brazil and Mexico, use violence to impose and contest notions of order, rights, citizenship, and justice. They describe the lived realities of citizens and reveal the historical foundations of the violence that Latin America suffers today. One contributor examines the tightly woven relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, while another contextualizes violence in Rio de Janeiro within the transnational political economy of drug trafficking. By advancing the discussion of democratic Latin American regimes beyond the usual binary of success and failure, this collection suggests more sophisticated ways of understanding the challenges posed by violence, and of developing new frameworks for guaranteeing human rights in Latin America. Contributors: Enrique Desmond Arias, Javier Auyero, Lilian Bobea, Diane E. Davis, Robert Gay, Daniel M. Goldstein, Mary Roldán, Todd Landman, Ruth Stanley, María Clemencia Ramírez