Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean
Subnational Structures, Institutions, and Clientelistic Networks

This volume examines violence across Latin America and the Caribbean to demonstrate the importance of subnational analysis over national aggregates.

Tina Hilgers (Edited by), Laura Macdonald (Edited by)

9781107193178, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 September 2017

308 pages, 6 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.6 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.55 kg

'By highlighting new relations between clientelism and violence, this book rightly draws our attention towards the power structures in which violence is immersed and to the ways in which it becomes lucrative to powerful actors … Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is built around thought-provoking questions that help revitalize the study of the problem and the potential solutions.' Alexandra Abello Colak, Journal of Latin American Studies

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.

Introduction: how violence varies: subnational place, identity, and embeddedness Tina Hilgers and Laura Macdonald
1. Not killer methods: a few things we got wrong when studying violence in Latin America Jean Daudelin
2. The clientelist bases of police violence in democratic Mexico City Markus-Michael Müller
3. Of criminal factions, UPPs, and militias: the state of public insecurity in Rio de Janeiro Robert Gay
4. The garrison community in Kingston: urban violence, policing, private security, and implications for national security and civil rights in Jamaica Yonique Campbell and Colin Clarke
5. The Salvadorian gang truce (2012–2014): insights on subnational security governance in El Salvador Gaëlle Rivard Piché
6. Guns and butter: social policy, semi-clientelism, and efforts to reduce violence in Mexico City Lucy Luccisano and Laura Macdonald
7. Subnational authoritarianism and democratization in Colombia: divergent paths in Cesar and Magdalena Kent Eaton and Juan Diego Prieto
8. Agricultural boom, subnational mobilization, and variations of violence in Argentina Pablo Lapegna
9. Patterns of violence and the dead ends of democratization in subnational Argentina Hugues Fournier
10. Clientelism and state violence in subnational democratic consolidation in Bahía, Brazil Julián Durazo Herrmann
Conclusion: learning from subnational violence Tina Hilgers and Laura Macdonald.

Subject Areas: Political geography [RGCP], Political science & theory [JPA], Crime & criminology [JKV], Anthropology [JHM], Sociology [JHB]