Armed actors : organized violence and state failure in Latin America / Kees Koonings & Dirk Kruijt, editors.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Koonings, Kees.

Kruijt, Dirk.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence--Latin America.

Violence.

Political stability.

Political violence.

Latin America.

Political violence--Latin America.

Political stability--Latin America.

Physical Description:

x, 214 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Zed Books ; New York : Distributed in the USA exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Summary:

In Armed Actors, Latin Americanist scholars explore the recent evidence relating to the ways in which partial state failure in the continent is interacting with new types of organized violence, thereby undermining the process of democratic consolidation that has characterized Latin America over the past two decades. Case studies from Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and other countries, including El Salvador, show that this 'new violence' stems from a heterogeneous variety of social actors including drug mafias, peasant militias and urban gangs (collectively referred to as actores armadas), as well as from state-related actors like the police, military intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces.

These armed actors are reproducing organized social and political violence beyond the confines of democratic politics and civil society. The results, as the authors warn, include both 'governance voids' - domains where the legitimate state is effectively absent in the face of armed actors prevailing by force - and an erosion of the capacity and willingness of state officials themselves to abide by the rule of law. These tendencies, in turn, pave the way for a possible reinstallation of authoritarian regimes under the control of politicized armies or, at the very least, the spread of state violence in one form or another.

Why these tendencies need to be taken so seriously is, the authors argue, because of the deeper social roots underlying them - notably the failure of neoliberal economic policies and weakened state structures to deliver the jobs, standards of living and social services every democratic citizenry has a right to expect. The Argentinian collapse and persistent Colombian and Venezuelan crises receive special attention in this regard.

Contents:

1 Armed actors, organized violence and state failure in Latin America: a survey of issues and arguments / Kees Koonings, Dirk Kruijt 5

Democracy and violence 5

State failure, uncivil society and 'new violence' 7

The proliferation of armed actors 9

Armed actors and violence: social and political consequences 13

2 The military and their shadowy brothers-in-arms / Dirk Kruijt, Kees Koonings 16

Political armies: officers and gentlemen? 16

Intelligence: secrecy, impunity and action 19

Paramilitary forces 25

3 Policing extensions in Latin America / Piet van Reenen 33

The nature of 'policing extensions' 34

Latin American policing extensions: basic pattern and diversity 35

Brazil: simple patterns 38

Guatemala: complexity 43

Final observations: the threat of repoliticization 48

4 Civil defence forces: Peru's Comites de Autodefensa Civil and Guatemala's Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil in comparative perspective / Mario Fumerton, Simone Remijnse 52

The genesis of civil defence patrols in Peru and Guatemala 53

State counter-insurgency and civil defence in Peru and Guatemala 56

The civil defence patrols and the rule of law 61

The civil defence patrols and civil society 63

The civil defence patrols and the construction of citizenship 66

The social legacy of civil defence patrols in Peru and Guatemala 68

5 Violence as market strategy in drug trafficking: the Andean experience / Menno Vellinga 73

The cocaine industry: production and trafficking 74

The growth of the drug industry: major conditioning factors 75

The industry and its entrepreneurs 78

Business practices in the drug industry 82

6 Armed actors in the Colombian conflict / Francisco Leal Buitrago 87

Deficient political administration, guerrilla consolidation, and the rise of the paramilitaries, 1958-90 87

The failure of the civil control of military policy and the strengthening of armed actors, 1990-98 92

Plan Colombia and the escalation of the war, 1998-2003 99

7 Venezuela: the remilitarization of politics / Harold A. Trinkunas 106

The role of the military in the Punto Fijo democracy 108

The erosion of civilian control of the armed forces in Venezuela 110

The 11 April 2002 coup attempt 112

The December 2002 general strike and beyond 118

The growth of civilian organized violence during the Chavez administration 120

The effects of organized violence on Venezuelan society 122

Conclusions: explaining the remilitarization of politics 125

8 A failed state facing new criminal problems: the case of Argentina / Marcelo Sain 127

Democratization and new forms of violence 127

The new criminal problems in Argentina 130

Political misgovernment, deficient policing and social insecurity 135

9 Urban violence and drug warfare in Brazil / Alba Zaluar 139

A brief history of social and institutional violence in Brazil 140

Urban violence, crime and drugs 141

Explaining the paradox of violence 143

Drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro 146

The warrior ethos and warfare 149

10 Youth gangs, social exclusion and the transformation of violence in El Salvador / Wim Savenije, Chris van der Borgh 155

Statistics on violence and homicides 156

The depoliticization of violence in El Salvador 157

Explaining the transformation of violence in El Salvador 159

Structural, political and symbolic violence 160

Violence in marginalized neighbourhoods in San Salvador 161

The mara phenomenon 165

11 Violence and fear in Colombia: fragmentation of space, contraction of time and forms of evasion / Luis Alberto Restrepo 172

Violence and fear in Colombia 172

Social distribution of the violence 174

Fear and its impact 179

Forms of flight 182

12 Epilogue: violence and the quest for order in contemporary Latin America / Patricio Silva 186.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 194-210) and index.

ISBN:

1842774441

184277445X

OCLC:

54415812