Download or read book Crime Violence and the Crisis in Guatemala written by Hal Brands and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-10-02 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In numerous Latin American countries, organized crime and violence are corroding governance and imperiling democratic legitimacy. This phenomenon is most severe in Guatemala, which is currently experiencing a full-blown crisis of the democratic state. An unholy trinity of criminal elements-international drug traffickers, domestically based organized crime syndicates, and youth gangs-have dramatically expanded their operations since the 1990s, and are effectively waging a form of irregular warfare against government institutions. The effects of this campaign have been dramatic. The police, the judiciary, and entire local and departmental governments are rife with criminal infiltrators; murder statistics have surpassed civil-war levels in recent years; criminal operatives brazenly assassinate government officials and troublesome members of the political class; and broad swaths of territory are now effectively under the control of criminal groups. Guatemala's weak institutions have been unable to contain this violence, leading to growing civic disillusion and causing marked erosion in the authority and legitimacy of the state. This problem cannot be addressed through police measures alone; combating it will require a holistic strategy that combines robust enforcement and security measures with sustained efforts to broaden socio-economic opportunities, combat corruption, and, above all, to build a stronger and more capable state. HAL BRANDS currently works as a defense analyst in Washington, DC. He is the author of From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (2008), as well as recent Strategic Studies Institute monographs on drug trafficking and radical populism in Latin America. His next book, Latin America's Cold War, will be published in late 2010. Brands has written widely on U.S. grand strategy, Latin American politics and security, and related issues. Dr. Brands holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University.

Download or read book Crime Violence and the Crisis in Guatemala written by Hal Brands and published by Strategic Studies Institute. This book was released on 2010 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Guatemalan Vigilantism and the Global Re Production of Collective Violence written by Gavin Weston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-23 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book grounds an understanding of lynching as an increasingly globalised phenomenon through an examination of two cases in Guatemala. The chapters cover issues of migration, tourism, gangs, inter-generational conflict, media, gossip, and rumour to understand national and global patterns of mob-based vigilantism and how diverse factors are funnelled into singular acts of violence. Gavin Weston critically engages with the discussion of Guatemalan lynchings as a form of post-conflict violence alongside other less direct chains of causation. Lynchings have complex, tiered causations based in contestations regarding ideas and provision of justice. Underlying social problems and similarities in the way lynchings spread through talk and media make them relatively anticipatable in certain contexts and suggest possible spaces for mitigation against their viral spread. This volume will be relevant to Latin Americanists and those interested in the anthropology and sociology of violence, post-conflict violence, and peace studies.

Download or read book Enduring Violence written by Cecilia Menjívar and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A rare and groundbreaking contribution to the study of everyday violence. Richly textured by the experiences of Ladino women in eastern Guatemala, Enduring Violence is not only informed by, but serves to inform, cutting-edge theoretical debate which links multiple aspects of personal abuse and rights violations with broader structural and institutional factors. Menjívar's scholarly and sensitive monograph makes a profoundly persuasive case for an holistic conceptualisation of violence that positions women's human rights at the centre of development in 'post-conflict' and other developing states. A 'must read' for all interested in issues of gender, ethnic and other forms of social, economic and political injustice."—Sylvia Chant, London School of Economics and Political Science "Violence in Guatemala can be a mind-numbing, though urgent and necessary, topic of study. Horrific data mount—from state sponsored genocide in the 1980s, to feminicide, lynchings and shadow state violence today—but clarifying analysis does not always follow. This insightful and beautifully crafted monograph is a welcome exception. Rather than recognizable interpersonal or overtly political acts, Menjivar focuses on the mundane insults and indignities that women endure, violence so 'normalized' that it often fades from view; she then turns standard causal reasoning on its head, arguing that these 'misrecognized' processes of daily dehumanization are profoundly diagnostic, an unexamined key to why the horrific data keep mounting. Though somber in content, Menjivar's book offers inspiring confirmation that innovative, engaged scholarship on intractable social problems can make a difference."—Charles R. Hale, University of Texas at Austin "Enduring Violence is of great scholarly importance as it fills a gap in the literature about Guatemala and allows for a nuanced understanding of the ways that women live with violence in their everyday lives. Menjivar's focus on women's discourses of illness, surveillance and endurance is particularly insightful since these narratives symbolize the multiple levels of violence in women's lives and the often imperceptible practices through which a daily life with violence is mediated."—M. Gabriela Torres, Wheaton College "Menjivar's deep commitment to shedding light on the many forms of violence that women experience is evident throughout her book. She effectively shows how the violence faced by women goes beyond physical violence and has structural origins as well in various forms. This is a great and informative work that needs to be read to understand the structural causes that bring injury to Guatemalan women."—Nestor Rodriguez, University of Texas at Austin "In Enduring Violence, Cecilia Menjivar presents a perceptive and powerful account of the multiple and entwined layers of violence that permeate the lives of diverse women in Guatemala. The book offers both a valuable theoretical lens and a textured ethnographic analysis, which brings into sharp focus not only the most egregious forms of gender-based physical violence, but also a range of invisible injurious practices rooted in pervasive structures of inequality. Written with empathy, while retaining a critical edge, this accessible and insightful volume sheds light on complex political, economic, and social processes shaping the violent realities of many women in Latin America."—Barbara Sutton, author of Bodies in Crisis: Culture, Violence, and Women's Resistance in Neoliberal Argentina "So much has been written about the spectacular agony of Central America's recent history. In Enduring Violence, Cecilia Menjivar seeks to understand the structures that gird no only the publicly visible violence but also the unspectacular, slow, often silent suffering that defines so many lives in the region. Her moving ethnography may explore the painful particulars of gendered existence in eastern Guatemala, but it also does so in such a way that reveals how deeply embedded inequalities can contort all human relations."—Ellen Moodie, author of El Salvador in the Aftermath of Peace: Crime, Uncertainty, and the Transition to Democracy

Download or read book The Persistent Power of Human Rights written by Thomas Risse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-07 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique combination of quantitative and qualitative research arguing for the persistent power of human rights norms.

Download or read book Examining Crime and Justice around the World written by Janet P. Stamatel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-11-04 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thorough and timely investigation of both well-established and emerging crime and punishment issues, this book provides readers with compelling examples of how different countries around the world confront these problems. This book offers a detailed look at 10 "hot topics" in crime and punishment that are shared by many countries. Some of these topics are well-established within the field of criminology, such as patterns of criminal behavior, juvenile delinquency, drug trafficking, policing, and punishment; others are emerging topics that have not been well studied across a variety of countries, such as violence against women, hate crimes, and gun control. Within each topic, the book explores how eight countries experience the issue, highlighting similarities across different places as well as unique treatments of the problem. The chapter on punishment addresses the widespread use of incarceration as criminal punishment but also considers different philosophies with respect to the purpose of incarceration and whether or not this strategy is effective in the face of large-scale criminal events, such as mass atrocities. The country narratives provide historical context for understanding the particular crime or punishment issue, current trends, and relevant statistical data for describing the extent of the issue and changes over time, in addition to contemporary examples of the issue.

Download or read book Homicidal Ecologies written by Deborah J. Yashar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why has violence spiked in Latin America's contemporary democracies? What explains its temporal and spatial variation? Analyzing the region's uneven homicide levels, this book maps out a theoretical agenda focusing on three intersecting factors: the changing geography of transnational illicit political economies; the varied capacity and complicity of state institutions tasked with providing law and order; and organizational competition to control illicit territorial enclaves. These three factors inform the emergence of 'homicidal ecologies' (subnational regions most susceptible to violence) in Latin America. After focusing on the contemporary causes of homicidal violence, the book analyzes the comparative historical origins of weak and complicit public security forces and the rare moments in which successful institutional reform takes place. Regional trends in Latin America are evaluated, followed by original case studies of Central America, which claims among the highest homicide rates in the world.

Download or read book Hidden Power written by James Cockayne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-01 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should we make of the outsized role organized crime plays in conflict and crisis, from drug wars in Mexico to human smuggling in North Africa, from the struggle in Crimea to scandals in Kabul? How can we deal with the convergence of politics and crime in so-called 'mafia states' such as Guinea-Bissau, North Korea or, as some argue, Russia? Drawing on unpublished government documents and mafia memoirs, James Cockayne discovers the strategic logic of organized crime, hidden in a century of forgotten political--criminal collaboration in New York, Sicily and the Caribbean. He reveals states and mafias competing - and collaborating -- in a competition for governmental power. He discovers mafias influencing elections, changing constitutions, organizing domestic insurgencies and transnational terrorism, negotiating peace deals, and forming governmental joint ventures with ruling groups. And he sees mafias working with the US government to spy on American citizens, catch Nazis, try to assassinate Fidel Castro, invade and govern Sicily, and playing unappreciated roles in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Download or read book State of Disaster written by Maria Cristina Garcia and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-08-10 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in this critical history of U.S. policy on migration in the Global South, there is actually no such thing as a "climate refugee" under current U.S. law. Most initiatives intended to assist those who must migrate are flawed and ineffective from inception because they are derived from outmoded policies. In a world of climate change, U.S. refugee policy simply does not work. Garcia focuses on Central America and the Caribbean, where natural disasters have repeatedly worsened poverty, inequality, and domestic and international political tensions. She explains that the creation of better U.S. policy for those escaping disasters is severely limited by the 1980 Refugee Act, which continues to be applied almost exclusively for reasons of persecution directly related to politics, race, religion, and identity. Garcia contends that the United States must transform its outdated migration policies to address today's realities. Climate change and natural disasters are here to stay, and much of the human devastation left in their wake is essentially a policy choice.

Download or read book Qualitative Research in Criminology written by Jody Miller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-02 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume investigates the significant role qualitative research plays in expanding and refining our understandings of crime and justice. It features seventeen original essays that discuss the relationship between methodology and theory. The result is a theoretically engaged volume that explores the approaches of qualitative scholars in the collection and treatment of data in criminological scholarship.Among the key issues addressed in the volume are methodological rigor in qualitative research; movement between method, theory building, theoretical refinement and expansion; diversity of qualitative methodologies, from classic field research to contemporary innovations; and considerations of the future of qualitative criminological research.Qualitative research use has expanded rapidly in the last twenty years. This latest volume of Advances in Criminological Theory presents a cogent appraisal of qualitative criminology and the ways in which rigorous qualitative research contributes to theorizing about crime and justice."

Download or read book State Society Relations in Guatemala written by Omar Sanchez-Sibony and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By embedding Guatemala in recent conceptual and theoretical work in comparative politics and political economy, this volume advances knowledge about country’s politics, economy, and state-society interactions. The contributors examine the stubborn realities and challenges afflicting Guatemala during the post-Peace-Accords-era across the following subjects: the state, subnational governance, state-building, peacebuilding, economic structure and dynamics, social movements, civil-military relations, military coup dynamics, varieties of capitalism, corruption, and the level of democracy. The book deliberately avoids the perils of parochialism by placing the country within larger scholarly debates and paradigms.

Download or read book The Limits of Judicialization written by Sandra Botero and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve policy disputes, and enforce and expand civil, political, and socio-economic rights. Almost forty years into this experiment, The Limits of Judicialization brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to assess the role that law and courts play in Latin American politics. Featuring studies of hot-button topics including abortion, state violence, judicial corruption, and corruption prosecutions, this volume argues that the institutional and cultural changes that empowered courts, what the editors call the 'judicialization superstructure,' often fall short of the promise of greater accountability and rights protection. Illustrative and expansive, this volume offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis of the limits of judicialized politics.

Download or read book The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide written by Roddy Brett and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book rigorously documents and explains the genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan state against indigenous Maya populations within the context of its counterinsurgency campaign against leftist guerrillas between 1981 and 1983. In doing so it brings to light a genocide that has remained largely invisible within both academic disciplines and the practitioner sphere. In May 2013, former de facto president of Guatemala, General Efrain Rios Montt, was for ten days indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity within Guatemala’s domestic courts. Based upon over a decade of ethnographic research, including in survivors’ communities in Guatemala, this book documents the historical processes shaping the genocide by analysing the evolution of both counterinsurgent and insurgent violence and strategy, focusing above all on its impact upon the civilian population. The research clearly evidences the impact of political violence upon non-combatants; how military and insurgent strategies gradually implicate civilians in conflict and the strategies civilians may adopt in order to survive them. Convincingly framed within key theoretical scholarship from genocide studies and comparative politics it speaks to a broad audience beyond Latin Americanists.

Download or read book Peace Operations and Organized Crime written by James Cockayne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-05-10 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peace operations are increasingly on the front line in the international community’s fight against organized crime; this book explores how, in some cases, peace operations and organized crime are clear enemies, while in others, they may become tacit allies. The threat posed by organized crime to international and human security has become a matter of considerable strategic concern for national and international decision-makers, so it is somewhat surprising how little thought has been devoted to addressing the complex relationship between organized crime and peace operations. This volume addresses this gap, questioning the emerging orthodoxy that portrays organized crime as an external threat to the liberal peace championed by western and allied states and delivered through peace operations. Based upon a series of case studies it concludes that organized crime is both a potential enemy and a potential ally of peace operations, and it argues for the need to distinguish between strategies to contain organized crime and strategies to transform the political economies in which it flourishes. The editors argue for the development of intelligent, transnational, and transitional law enforcement that can make the most of organized crime as a potential ally for transforming political economies, while at the same time containing the threat it presents as an enemy to building effective and responsible states. The book will be of great interest to students of peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, organised crime, Security Studies and IR in general.

Download or read book Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala written by John P. Hawkins and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The possibility of violence beneath a thin veneer of civil society is a fact of daily life for twenty-first-century Guatemalans, from field laborers to the president of the country. Crisis of Governance in Maya Guatemala explores the causes and consequences of governmental failure by focusing on life in two K’iche’ Maya communities in the country’s western highlands. The contributors to this volume, who lived among the villagers for some time, include both undergraduate students and distinguished scholars. They describe the ways Mayas struggle to survive and make sense of their lives, both within their communities and in relation to the politico-economic institutions of the nation and the world. Since Guatemala’s thirty-six-year civil war ended in 1996, the state has been dysfunctional, the country’s economy precarious, and physical safety uncertain. The intrusion of Mexican cartels led the U.S. State Department to declare Guatemala “the epicenter of the drug threat” in Central America. Rapid cultural change, weak state governance, organized crime, pervasive corruption, and ethnic exclusion provide the backdrop for the studies in this volume. Seven nuanced ethnographies collected here reveal the complexities of indigenous life and describe physical and cultural conflicts within and between villages, between insiders and outsiders, and between local and federal governments. Many of these essays point to a tragic irony:the communities seem largely forgotten by the government until the state seeks to capture their resources—timber, minerals, votes. Other chapters portray villages responding to criminal activity through lynch mobs and by labeling nonconformist youth as gang members. In focusing on the internal dynamics of poor, marginal communities in Guatemala, this book explores the realities of life for indigenous people on all continents who are faced with the social changes brought about by war and globalization.

Download or read book University of Chicago Law Review written by University of Chicago Law Review and published by Quid Pro Books. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading law review offers a quality eBook edition. This first issue of 2013 (Winter 2013, Volume 80) features articles and essays from internationally recognized legal and immigration policy scholars, including an extensive Symposium on immigration and its issues of policy, law, and administrative process in the United States. In addition, the issue includes articles by scholars and student-editors on other issues of law and policy. The issue serves, in effect, as a new and extensive book on cutting-edge issues of immigration law and policy in the United States by renowned researchers in the field. It is presented in modern eBook format and features active Tables of Contents; linked footnotes and URLs; careful digital presentation; and legible tables and images.

Download or read book Geopolitics written by Bert Chapman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise introduction to the growth and evolution of geopolitics as a discipline includes biographical information on its leading historical and contemporary practitioners and detailed analysis of its literature. An important book on a topic that has been neglected for too long, Geopolitics: A Guide to the Issues will provide readers with an enhanced understanding of how geography influences personal, national, and international economics, politics, and security. The work begins with the history of geopolitics from the late 19th century to the present, then discusses the intellectual renaissance the discipline is experiencing today due to the prevalence of international security threats involving territorial, airborne, space-based, and waterborne possession and acquisition. The book emphasizes current and emerging international geopolitical trends, examining how the U.S. and other countries, including Australia, Brazil, China, India, and Russia, are integrating geopolitics into national security planning. It profiles international geopolitical scholars and their work, and it analyzes emerging academic, military, and governmental literature, including "gray" literature and social networking technologies, such as blogs and Twitter.