Transnational violence and crime in Latin America in 21st century

1. Transnational violence and crime in
Latin America

3. Gangs in Central America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy9gqOz6zdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KugmH0etmDM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mi0YGnIEAQ

4. Gangs in Central America: “Las Maras”
• Phenomenon originated by migrants in LA, USA, mostly Salvadorans, Guatemalans and
Hondurans.
• They were deported to the countries of origin. The countries were not informed on the
crimes committed by the deportees.
• Their actions rely in the systematic use of violence and a moral code of their own based on
revenge and retribution.
• They are involved in illegal activities of any kind and murdering.
• Their members identified themselves by tattoos covering the body and often the face, as well
as the use of their own sign language.
• Maras are for the group members (pandilleros) a second family. They started as group
support for young Latin migrants in the US with little possibilities to get education, jobs,
security. The nature of the “maras” has continued when relocated in Central America.
• They operated as transnational organizations.

6. Gang membership and homicide rates in Central America
Thomas C. Bruneau. 2014. "Pandillas" and Security in Central America, Latin American Research Review, Vol. 49, No. 2

7. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/behind-a-rise-in-latin-americas-violent-crime-a-deadly-flow-of-illegal-guns/
Est. 2015

8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxWArV_zEno
Drug Gangs

9. https://dianefrancis.substack.com/p/american-narco-state-capture

10. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-40480405

11. https://www.businessinsider.com/map-mexican-drug-cartels-2011-7

12. Why growing crime and violence in Latin America?
• Poverty, inequality, deficit on education and social policies, limited social mobility.
• Lack of jobs (youth unemployment), urban segregation (zones of exclusion), local
drug markets, the availability of firearms and the widespread use of drugs and
alcohol.
• Policing, criminal justice and penal systems are poorly managed and
underprepared.
• Collusion between police and criminal groups, together with corruption and
impunity.
• Punitive criminal justice approaches instead of crime prevention.
• Criminal activities are linked to transnational networks of illegal trade (production,
transshipment, and distribution of drugs). There is a whole sector of criminal
economy.
• Crime has become a socialization system (larger populations excluded from the
formal economy and society).

13. Structural Origins of Violence in Latin America
Adapted from Sanchez R., Magaly. 2006. “Insecurity and Violence as a New Power Relation in Latin America”

15. Cartel – State conflicting relationship
• Sustained armed confrontation between sophisticated and well-armed drug
trafficking organizations and state forces.
• Cartels creates a system of parallel sovereignty. They create a semi-State-
system without assuming the duties of States.
• Civilians, especially vulnerable populations living in peripheral areas often
better served by cartels than the State.
• Militarized crackdowns on cartels led to unexpected anti-state violence.
Mexico, 2006, under the presidency of Felipe Calderón
Colombia, 1984, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla launched the first
serious offensive against his country’s cocaine traffickers
Rio de Janeiro, 2007, peak on violence in the favelas

16. • Cartels are first and foremost drug trafficking
organizations, and frequently buy their
protection directly from state agents.
• Cartels operate in illegal markets that lack
legal property rights and governance, but
their overall strategic environment is
fundamentally structured by the state: by its
formal laws and policies, and by its capacity
and will (or lack thereof) to enforce them.
• Cartels are uninterested in seizing formal
state power. Unlike classic insurgencies,
cartels fight not to conquer the state or part
of its territory, but to constrain and influence
the state’s behavior in ways that benefit their
(principally economic) interests.
• Domestic political considerations shape their
strategy to influence and penetrate the state
at different levels.
• Cartels, presumably, get no inherent
pleasure from attacking the state; they do so
when the benefits outweigh the costs.
• The very act of repressing the drug trade
creates incentives for cartels to fight back.
• States face a triple deterrence problem.
i. To deter traffickers from engaging in a lucrative
economic activity.
ii. To deter traffickers from resorting to violence,
particularly violence against the state itself.
iii. To deter their own enforcers—police, investigators,
judges, and sometimes the armed forces—from
accepting bribes from traffickers in exchange for lax
enforcement.
• Politicians are constrained in their policy decisions by the
international treaties and pressure from partners States.
• Domestic factors constrain State’s actions as well:
corrupt police corps; opportunistic political rivals;
widespread public perceptions of traffickers as demonic
figures with whom negotiation and detente are taboo.
• Politicians intending on fighting the drug trade face the
dilemma of equipping law enforcement with enough
repressive capacity to deter and incapacitate traffickers,
but this very capacity can be used by enforcers to extort
traffickers for larger bribes.
• If politicians overplay their hand with unsustainable
policies, traffickers may pressure them to back off
through terror campaigns.

17. Alternative policy approach: Sometimiento
• 1990: Incoming Colombian president César Gaviria introduced a policy facilitating voluntary surrender.
Within a few months, three of the country’s top drug lords had surrendered under the new policy.
• 2007: Pacification in Rio de Janeiro involved pre-announced militarized occupations of favelas,
permanent installation of “Pacifying Police Units (UPPs)” and an explicit shift in priorities away from
eradicating drug traffic toward minimizing violence and the armed presence of traffickers. By 2013,
some 200 favelas were under Pacification, and deaths from cartel–state clashes had fallen by almost
70 percent.
By conditioning repression on cartel behavior, reform policies created counter-incentives that led
cartels to eschew anti-state violence. Backed into a corner, cartels fight; given an attractive alternative
to conduct their business in less violent ways, most do.
It is fragile once implemented.
Overall state repression expanded with the implementation of these reform policies, and Pacification
involved unprecedented increases in police manpower and deployment of federal armed forces.

18. Increases in the degree of
repression create incentives
for anti-state violence, while
increases in the conditionality
of repression create
disincentives.
State-policy ideal types
I. Laissez-Faire: The State makes little effort to
rein in the activities of traffickers, and does
not try to dissuade them from violence.
II. Active Management: The State is more
concerned with making cartels follow rules
than in eliminating them; this requires
enough repressive force to punish rule-
breakers, but in practice such punishment
can be quite rare (police corruption is usually
involved).
III. Unconditional Crackdowns: The State
maximizes its efforts to destroy or hurt
cartels regardless of their use of violence
IV. Conditional Crackdowns: The state is on a
war footing but cartels can earn a reprieve
from repression if they eschew anti-state
violence.

21. 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping
On September 26, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College were forcibly
taken and then disappeared in Guerrero, Mexico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4mX4ksPXDQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65X-tdocnwE

22. Tlatelolco massacre
• On October 2, 1968, in the course of permanent students' mobilization
(supported by workers, farmers, housewives, merchants, intellectuals, artists and
teachers), paramilitary groups together with the police and the army opened fire
to protesters gathered in a public square.
• The movement aroused from July–October 1968 in the context of the buildup to
the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City and protests in France and in the
United States.
• Students demanded political and civil liberties, the reduction of inequality and
the resignation of the government, among other social demands.
• Estimations established the number of deaths in a range from 200 to 1500.
• The first students’ massacre conducted by the Mexican State happened in 1942.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V-KbX3VPNM

23. States are likely to punish anti-state
violence at least as much as any other
forms of violence

24. Migration trafficking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHyeQ5HQpo

25. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cq5vervp894o

26. Violence in Latin America: a systemic/structural problem
• In 2014 at the 2nd Summit of CELAC in Havana, Latin America and the Caribbean was
declared as a Peace Zone.
• Even if the region is free of wars, violence is a main concern for Latin American
societies.
• Latin America is home to 33 % of world homicides (home of 8% of world population).
• Four countries, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela, account for a quarter of all the
murders.
• Of the 20 countries in the world with the highest murder rates, 17 are Latin American,
as are 43 of the top 50 cities.
• Violent crime spikes in a handful of places. The regions suffers from pockets of violence.
• Homicide rates are especially concentrated among the youth population. Latin
America´s youth homicide rate is more than three times the rate of the general
population (46% of all homicide victims are between 15 and 29 years old).
https://igarape.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Citizen-Security-in-Latin-America-Facts-and-Figures.pdf

27. Violence in countries and against civil society actors
• In Latin America, crime tends to concentrate in place, time and among specific people.
• In Mexico, 144 journalists have been killed from 2000 until 2018.
• In Colombia, according to the Defensoría del Pueblo Office, 164 social leaders and human
rights defenders were murdered in 2018, and 226, according to Indepaz. Between 2016 -
2018, at least 400 social leaders and human rights defenders were assassinated, most of
them indigenous, peasants and Afro-descendants. In 2019, the number rose to 107
accounted by NGO Front Line Defenders (other estimates suggested around 250).
• Honduras, is the most dangerous country for ecologist activists. Since 2010, 123 activists
have been killed. According to the NGO Global Witness, about 60% of murders recorded of
ecologist activists are registered in Latin America.
• Brazil is the country where more people from the LGBT community die from violence. The
life expectancy of Brazilian transgender person is only 35 years. Every 19 hours an LGBT
person is murdered in Brazil (445 murders in 2017).

28. https://www.ibtimes.com/49-journalists-murdered-2019-2887085

29. https://www.defensoria.gov.co/es/public/contenido/7399/Homicidios-de-líderes-sociales-y-defensores-de-DDHH.htm

30. Violence against social leaders
Marielle Franco was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human
rights activist for the afro descendent and LGTB communities.
As city council member, Franco fought against gender violence,
for reproductive rights, and for the rights of favela residents.
On 14 March 2018, Franco and her driver were shot multiple
times in Rio de Janeiro.
Franco had been an outspoken critic of police brutality and
extrajudicial killings.
Berta Cáceres was a Honduran environmental activist,
indigenous leader and co-founder and coordinator of the
Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras (COPINH).
She was assassinated in her home by armed intruders,
after years of threats against her life, on 2 March 2016.
Her murder was followed by those of two more activists
within the same month.