Download or read book Linking Political Violence and Crime in Latin America written by Kirsten Howarth and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-03-10 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Crime Violence and the State in Latin America written by Jonathan D. Rosen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this succinct text, Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab explore the linkage between weak institutions and government policies designed to combat drug trafficking, organized crime, and violence in Latin America. Using quantitative analysis to examine criminal violence and publicly available survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to conduct regression analysis, individual case studies on Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua highlight the major challenges that governments face and how they have responded to various security issues. Rosen and Kassab later turn their attention to the role of external criminal actors in the region and offer policy recommendations and lessons learned. Questions explored include: What are the major trends in organized crime in this country? How has organized crime evolved over time? Who are the major criminal actors? How has state fragility contributed to organized crime and violence (and vice versa)? What has been the government’s response to drug trafficking and organized crime? Have such policies contributed to violence? Crime, Violence and the State in Latin America is suitable to both undergraduate and graduate courses in criminal justice, international relations, political science, comparative politics, international political economy, organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence.

Download or read book Violence and Crime in Latin America written by Gema Santamaría and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Violent Democracies in Latin America written by Enrique Desmond Arias and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-19 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Violence in the Americas written by Jonathan D. Rosen and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many countries throughout Latin America have experienced high levels of corruption, drug trafficking, and violence, which has created elements of fragility. The book is comprises case studies that explore the nature of violence in countries throughout the region. Moreover, it seeks to address some of the ways in which governments have sought to address violence. The cases examined in this volume are quite diverse, illustrating different types of violence as all of the countries in Latin America are not the same. Countries like Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico have high levels of drug trafficking and organized crime. Strategies designed to combat drug trafficking organization, particularly in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, and counter-gang strategies in Central America have help foment violence as these various criminal organizations have responded to such government policies. Yet other countries, like Peru and Bolivia, have much lower levels of violence. However, the perception of insecurity is quite high despite the fact that Peru has one of the lower homicide rates in the country. On the other hand, the nature of violence in Bolivia is quite different. This country does not have a homicide rate like El Salvador, but the country has witnessed public lynchings and other forms of violence. This volume is an effort to better understand the major trends in political violence in this particularly violent region.

Download or read book How Political Violence Helps Explain Organized Crime written by Alanna Fulk and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis examines research from the disciplines of political science and criminal justice to develop a theory that explains geographic variation in violence related to organized crime. Large-scale organized crime violence exhibits characteristics of both ordinary crime violence and political violence, but these subjects are generally analyzed separately. However, as large-scale organized crime has become more prevalent and violent in recent years, most notably in Latin America, studies, including this one, have attempted to cross disciplinary boundaries in order to better explain trends in organized crime onset, termination and violence. This thesis argues that although the overall goal of organized crime groups is not to take control of a country, both organized crime groups and insurgent groups confront the state’s monopoly on violence, leading to evident similarities in the way they use violence to attain their goals. They both use violence to maintain control over resources, take control from other groups and retaliate against the government. Previous literature has demonstrated that control is directly linked to geographic variation in political violence and through case studies of organized crime violence in Honduras and Brazil, as well as negative binomial regression analysis of organized crime violence in Mexico, this thesis finds that control is also directly linked to geographic variation in organized crime violence.

Download or read book Encounters with Violence in Latin America written by Cathy McIlwaine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America is both the world's most urbanized fastest developing regions, where the links between social exclusion, inequality and violence are clearly visible. The banal, ubiquitous nature of drug crime, robbery, gang and intra-family violence destabilizes countries' economies and harms their people and social structures. Encounters with Violence & Crime in Latin America explores the meaning of violence and insecurity in nine towns and cities in Columbia and Guatemala to create a framework of how and why daily violence takes place at the community level. It uses pioneering new methods of participatory urban appraisal to ask local people about their own perceptions of violence as mediated by family, gender, ethnicity and age. It develops a typology which distinguishes between the political, social, and economic violence that afflicts communities, and which assesses the costs of consequences of violence in terms of community cohesion and social capital. This gives voice to those whose daily lives and dominated by widespread aggression, and provides important new insights for researchers and policy-makers.

Download or read book Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America written by W. Ascher and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of Violence in Latin America explores the links between Latin American governments' economic policies and the nature and dynamics of inter-group violence. Based on the patterns of ten countries, the contributions to this volume trace the remarkable transformation from open ideological conflict to the explosion of social (seemingly apolitical) violence, the upsurge of urban crime, and the confrontations over natural resources and drugs across the region spanning from Mexico to Argentina. The variations in economic success and in conflict prevention and transformation can guide policymakers, development professionals, and activists committed to conflict-sensitive development.

Download or read book Politics and History of Violence and Crime in Central America written by Sebastian Huhn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book highlights historical explanations to and roots of present phenomena of violence, insecurity, and law enforcement in Central America. Violence and crime are among the most discussed topics in Central America today, and sensationalism and fear of crime is as present as the increase of private security, the re-militarization of law enforcement, political populism, and mano dura policies. The contributors to this volume discuss historical forms, paths, continuities, and changes of violence and its public and political discussion in the region. This book thus offers in-depth analysis of different patterns of violence, their reproduction over time, their articulation in the present, and finally their discursive mobilization.

Download or read book Resisting Violence written by Morna Macleod and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on emotional engagement in academic research with victims of violence and testimonial documentation in Latin America. It examines the recent history of resistance to violence and political repression in Latin America, highlighting the role of emotions in the political sphere. The authors analyse the role of researchers committed to social change and question the mandate of distance and neutrality in academic research in contexts of extreme violence. They use case studies of social resistance to political violence in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia and Chile.

Download or read book Murder and Violence in Modern Latin America written by Eric A. Johnson and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by leading scholars from the Americas and Europe, this is a thorough assessment of state-supported murder and violence in Latin America. Examines the trajectory of murder and violence in the region over the past two centuries and elucidates theories and trends regarding violence since the end of colonial rule Covers topics such as “the disappeared,” the rise of drug cartels and narco-violence, physical violence against wives, the judging and sentencing of violent crimes, genocide, and state terrorism Explains and applies macro-level theories regarding the rise of civilization, state building, and violence to contemporary Latin America Demonstrates the complexity of an issue at the forefront of life and politics in the region today

Download or read book State Violence and Genocide in Latin America written by Marcia Esparza and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-09-10 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Crime Violence and Justice in Latin America written by Carlos Solar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-23 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book asks why crime and violence persist in Latin America at extreme levels and why the states have not been able to more effectively solve this problem that dominates the lives of many millions of Latin Americans. Informed by diverse disciplinary backgrounds, the book brings together a team of regional experts to discuss research-based explanations on some of Latin America’s most pressing criminal and violent issues distressing the rule of law. First, it examines old and new forms of observing crime upon perpetrators and victimized communities. Second, it explores the geographies of urban and rural violence and the entangled politics following organized criminality. Third, it questions how the transfer of policy knowledge and expertise reshapes local security governance, and, more importantly, critically examines the problems in implementing foreign models and paradigms in the Latin American context. Finally, it exposes the everchanging scenario of policy-making and prosecuting crime and homicide. Crime, Violence, and Justice in Latin America provides new themes and novel trends on what crime and violence mean in the eyes of observers, perpetrators, policymakers, governmental officials, and victims. It is an important acquisition for policy makers and academics alike.

Download or read book Politics and Violence in Central America and the Caribbean written by Hannes Warnecke-Berger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-05-23 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a comparative study on violence in Jamaica, El Salvador, and Belize based on a theoretical approach, extensive field research, and in-depth empirical research. It combines the Caribbean and Central America into a single comparative research that explores the historical (from the conquista onwards) as well as contemporary causes of violence in these societies. The volume focuses on forms of violence such as gang violence, police violence, every day forms of violence, vigilantism, and organized crime. The analysis provides a theoretical perspective that bridges political economy as well as cultural approaches in violence research. As such, it will be of interest to readers studying development, violence, political, Central American, and Caribbean studies.

Download or read book Crime and Violence in Latin America written by H. Hugo Frühling and published by Woodrow Wilson Center Press. This book was released on 2003-06-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers timely discussion by attorneys, government officials, policy analysts, and academics from the United States and Latin America of the responses of the state, civil society, and the international community to threats of violence and crime.

Download or read book Resistance to Political Violence in Latin America written by Oriana Bernasconi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-05-22 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Tina Hilgers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is no longer perpetrated primarily by states against their citizens, but by a variety of state and non-state actors struggling to control resources, territories, and populations. This book examines violence at the subnational level to illuminate how practices of violence are embedded within subnational configurations of space and clientelistic networks. In societies shaped by centuries of violence and exclusion, inequality and marginalization prevail at the same time that democratization and neoliberalism have decentralized power to regional and local levels, where democratic and authoritarian practices coexist. Within subnational arenas, unique configurations - of historical legacies, economic structures, identities, institutions, actors, and clientelistic networks - result in particular patterns of violence and vulnerability that are often strikingly different from what is portrayed by aggregate national-level statistics. The chapters of this book examine critical cases from across the region, drawing on new primary data collected in the field to analyze how a range of political actors and institutions shape people's lives and to connect structural and physical forms of violence.