Gothic sovereignty : street gangs and statecraft in Honduras / Jon Horne Carter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carter, Jon Horne, author.

Series:

William & Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the Western Hemisphere.

The William and Bettye Nowlin series in art, history, and culture of the western hemisphere

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gangs--Honduras.

Gangs.

Gangs--Honduras--Social life and customs.

Police corruption--Social aspects--Honduras.

Police corruption.

Gangs--Political aspects--Honduras--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (391 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, [2022]

Summary:

Gang-related violence has forced thousands of Hondurans to flee their country, leaving behind everything as refugees and undocumented migrants abroad. To uncover how this happened, Jon Carter looks back to the mid-2000s, when neighborhood gangs were scrambling to survive state violence and mass incarceration, locating there a critique of neoliberal globalization and state corruption that foreshadows Honduras’s current crises. Carter begins with the story of a thirteen-year-old gang member accused in the murder of an undercover DEA agent, asking how the nation’s seductive criminal underworld has transformed the lives of young people. He then widens the lens to describe a history of imperialism and corruption that shaped this underworld—from Cold War counterinsurgency to the “War on Drugs” to the near-impunity of white-collar crime—as he follows local gangs who embrace new trades in the illicit economy. Carter describes the gangs’ transformation from neighborhood groups to sprawling criminal societies, even in the National Penitentiary, where they have become political as much as criminal communities. Gothic Sovereignty reveals not only how the revolutionary potential of gangs was lost when they merged with powerful cartels but also how close analysis of criminal communities enables profound reflection on the economic, legal, and existential discontents of globalization in late liberal nation-states.

Contents:

Part I. Angels. Flash

Baroque

Allegory

Image

Danger

Part II. Devils. Underworld

Dragons

Crime

Storm

Rubbish

Evil

Corruption

Lumpen

Part III. Justice. Community

Sovereignty

Apocalypse

Trust

Futures.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Carter, Jon Horne Gothic Sovereignty

ISBN:

9781477324172

OCLC:

1288428053