American Academy of Political and Social Science

Insecurity and Violence as a New Power Relation in Latin America Author(s): Magaly Sanchez R. Reviewed work(s): Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 606, Chronicle of a Myth Foretold: The Washington Consensus in Latin America (Jul., 2006), pp. 178-195 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25097823 . Accessed: 14/09/2012 18:43
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This

article

shows

existence violence Latino

of three inherent American

activities the growing of urban violence: types

related the

to the

structural

in in the social existing inequalities radical violence, and crimi countries, more nal violence. Neoliberal generate policies inequal a and alienation, which ity, exclusion, poverty, yield and radical violence, which rising tide of criminal trig gers more state more have violence resistance a and encourages security in turn, coercion, which, from below. Violence and in the economic metropolis. kidnapping; structural arena

become the Latin

Insecurity and Violence

a New Power

characterizing

link key American

as

Keywords:

violence; security; adjustments

youths;

inequalities; groups;

paramilitary

Relation in Latin America

By
MAGALY SANCHEZ R.

has been a prominent social response to the of structural adjustment Violence application Latin America. As the nation policies throughout state has become less able to negotiate socially sectors of society, and politically with mobilized measures it has of increasingly imposed violent refers to a partic social control. The nation-state ular segment of global geography characterized distinct cultural forms, social structures, polit by and market ical alliances, societal negotiations, interventions 1978). Increasingly, (Poulantzas states have had to resort to violence to maintain order or simply to justify their own legitimacy, as indicated by the growing presence ofthe military in the streets of Latin American cities. The appli cation of state force is inherent in the politics of economic austerity, and its ubiquity throughout the region suggests that, at the very least, it con stitutes a necessary condition for the incorpora tion of nations into the global market economy under neoliberalism.
Magaly at the Sanchez Instituto She R. is a of urban sociology professor Universidad de de Urbanismo, Central at Princeton is also a senior researcher of Population

Venezuela.

University's Office work investigates America, focuses the Latino DOI:

Her Research. existing areas Latin in Urban segregated Recent street kids, and violence. research gangs, on international and the formation of migration Transnational Identity in the United States.

10.1177/0002716206288571

178ANNALS, AAPSS, 606, July 2006

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 179

it the coercive power of the state has come to be applied more widely, has affected the interests and well-being of the middle and profes inevitably in turn, have risen in resistance sional classes, whose members, along with other have been segregated that historically and excluded segments of the population in Latin America. Their opposition takes diverse forms, ranging from quiet pub to massive lic protests ofthe Plaza de Mayo) (e.g., Argentina's Mothers political in Peru) to radical expressions of mobilizations demonstrations (The anti-Toledo terrorism and armed revolt (the Zapatista uprising in Mexico). violence through A paradoxical consequence of structural reform thus appears to be that to main in the face of tain "democratic economic and fiscal policies, order" unpopular turn to force. As a result, states find themselves "democratic" regimes nominally on violence to maintain relying political control and achieve stability, contracting and human rights and ultimately their own ideology of democracy undermining their own legitimacy. As

consequence of structural paradoxical to be that to maintain reform thus appears "democratic order" economic regimes in the face of unpopular and fiscal policies, turn to force.

in Latin America occurred in three historical social expression of violence its own form of violence. each characterized First came structural moments, by the rampant economic social exclusion, and persistent poverty violence, inequality, In response came economic arising from the imposition of neoliberal policies. two other kinds of collective violence, one and the other criminal. As the political of circumstances and working-class increased, urgency facing middlepeople to successive waves of strikes, demon turned to radical violence, many leading the region. At the same time, the situa strations, and insurrections throughout tion ofthe poor and the young deteriorated, and many of them turned to criminal violence in the form of youth gangs, criminal mafias, and drug cartels. If "unstable social equilibrium" refers to the tenuous stability under which the powerful nego tiate political compromises with diverse interests to maintain social control, then violence and growing insecurity suggest a new "social and rising disequilibrium" a loss of control In the region's Latin America. progressive throughout largest cities, disorder and violence become part of daily life. The

180

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

This situation has created a neoliberal self-feeding cycle whereby policies generate high rates of inequality, exclusion, poverty, and alienation, which yield a rising tide of both radical and criminal violence, which triggers more state coer in turn, encourages more violent resistance from below. The end cion, which, a mobilized result is a militarized elite facing and hostile population made up not but also disaffected technical, manager just of the urban poor and unemployed classes who have found their standards eroded by the ial, and professional living devaluation of wages and the accompanying in decrease power. purchasing Under these conditions of generalized discontent and instability, the institutions of democracy lose flexibility, and the paternalistic state of old reemerges to offer of authoritarian models to establish order. violence repression and militarized to urgent leads increasingly Thus, a situation marked by poverty and exclusion circumstances and radicalized responses, and classes to intercon causing people nect and integrate in state. multiple ways to oppose the structural violence ofthe more Neoliberalism thus ends up producing and less democracy polarization than the state-centered in Latin America models prominent development during earlier periods and Hoffman as a (Portes 2003). Understanding popular violence of structural violence focuses attention away from the consequence repercussions causes. Rather than of violence toward its social and economic harsher demanding and more repressive measures to "restore law and order" and "punish lawbreakers," a structural views the reform of the state itself as the best means to perspective reduce violence and restore social but it requires policy makers to abandon stability; such as formality-informality, journalist dichotomies legality-illegality, victim-attacker, and criminal-citizen 2002). (Galtung 1998; Hernandez

From

the Formal

to the Informal

and Back Again

has demonstrated the growing polarization of Latin American from global changes that have widened the gap between those society stemming with access to and those who are excluded from its benefits. Greater technology are in the institutional struc inequalities of wealth and income expressed socially ture of the and spatially by the fragmentation of neighborhoods metropolis along the lines of class, race, and and Smith 2000; ethnicity (Castells 2000; Korzeniewicz Sanchez 2000a, 2000b). Within the past fifteen years, this structurally embedded a sequence has generated of increasingly violent phenomena. Under inequality conditions of extreme social exclusion and economic rela isolation, interpersonal tions and institutions to the realities of crime and disorder to render daily adapt violent behavior common and socially legitimate. The nations of Latin America and the Caribbean exhibit some of the highest rates of socioeconomic in the world (Hoffman and Centeno 2003). inequality with respect to income, nations throughout the region are also Highly unequal access to education, characterized health, clean water, safe food, and by divided Prior research

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION

181

in basic public services such as electricity and sewers, yielding huge disparities and voice. In the region today, the richest one-tenth of assets, opportunities, earns the poorest one-tenth families earns 48 percent of total income, whereas in 1.6 percent coincide (de Ferranti et al. 2003). Statistics and experience just that poverty and inequality are more serious problems than when revealing today the foreign debt crisis first broke out in 1982 (Pedrazzini and Sanchez 1998). are Current in the context of of violence expressions properly understood I argue that violence in structural adjustment and their consequences. policies Latin America follows directly from about by the inequalities brought underlying of street children and youth imposition of neoliberal policies. The proliferation cities are but one expression of structural exclusion, and gangs in Latin American if it continues new and more dramatic forms of violence can be expected to arise and spread, touching the lives of millions more. It is not that people are violent because they are poor. Rather, the long-term seg of concentrated regation of people within neighborhoods poverty produces, across the generations, ways of life and household that necessarily adapt to con strategies ditions of deprivation. They come to rely on violence as a basic tool for survival. The space of violence was taken up first by radicalized and disenfranchised emerging young people but has since spread to other sectors of society in the form of arms now abound in countries trading, drug trafficking, and kidnapping rings, which such as Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Brazil. These activities together consti tute a growing criminal economy Rementeria (Castells 1998; 2003). Rather than viewing violence as a personal deviation from societal norms, it is more a social to consider it a appropriate product of structural inequalities, phe nomenon actors resort to the use of violence in which multiple under similar not as isolated individuals. social circumstances and inmutually reinforcing ways, The expansion of the criminal economy occurred within a context where urban residents had already lived for generations under "illegal" circumstances, having their dwellings through informal processes of squatting and land invasion. acquired Urban slums were always considered violations ofthe legal norms of private prop their widespread de facto existence erty, title, and ownership. Despite through out Latin America, poor slum dwellers have often been repressed through forced removals and state-led redevelopment after decades of programs. Nonetheless, so common and so endemic economic crisis slums have become to the structure and organization of the Latin American metropolis that it is presently impossible to consider them as a violation; are the norm. they At the same time, in the economic sphere, informal activities expanded to com for the reduction of employment in the formal sector. In the pensate opportunities course of this shift, the boundaries between and illegal, formal and informal, legal legitimate and criminal have blurred. In many ways, informal activities now con stitute an essential and structure in Latin America. integral part of urban economic the end ofthe 1990s, the informal sector accounted for 44 percent of workers By in Brazil, 40 percent inMexico, and 41 in Venezuela (Portes and Hoffman percent In a world where formal banks currencies at set rates, 2003). exchange artificially are essential informal money to maintain formal changers liquidity. Likewise,

182

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

subcontract jobs to informal service workers, and manufacturers organizations rely on In the end, obtained and illegal channels. inputs through informal, unofficial, it is difficult to know the exact origins of most products, and the informal blends into the formal. Seemingly innocent goods and services may thus be tied directly or resources. not to though visibly violently criminally obtained A in Latin structural for imposing programs key justification adjustment is the America of the free market, and in an open market anything and ideology is conceivable of links and possible, countless everything yielding examples institution between the formal and the informal. Over time, these links became alized as a regular feature of the social structure. Relationships with shady char acters and criminal elements that once seemed became impossible socially and valid among those forced to interact with them as a matter of eco acceptable seven out of ten to data from the United Nations, nomic survival. According jobs in Latin America between in the informal sector; 1990 and 1997 were created and by the year 2000, nearly three-fifths of all urban workers were (59 percent) to a two decades earlier (Briceno-Leon of 40 percent informal, compared figure and Zubillaga 2002). con cities not The new spaces that have been created in Latin American only stitute economic niches but also operate as socialization systems. Socialization into the beliefs, practices, and values of surrounding people and groups is inherent to is violent, there the surrounding social environment the human condition. When so. it will themselves those coming of age within be violent, often more fore, Children born into popular urban barrios typically lack birth certificates, making in their own land. Without them technically "undocumented" identification docu cannot receive state services, notably health care and education, and ments, they come to be identified as are thus to learning on streets where they relegated not fit within the "established order" of the state, "predators" because they do which has no way of taking them into account (Pedrazzini and Sanchez 1992/1998). official Under conditions of prolonged informality and illegality, and without new the structural violence of neoliberalism documentation, expressions produced as the "reason" Street boys point to their lack of legal documents of violence. they on the streets rather than as "violate the law" and live "dirty and uneducated" of no documents school. Among teenagers and adults, the combination attending rise of more advanced and radicalized and concentrated poverty explains the forms of violence (Sanchez 2002). The spiral of violence iswell indicated by the homicide rate. In recent years, it has for every hundred risen dramatically The regional average is now twenty murders thousand people, making Latin America one ofthe most violent regions in the world the leading cause of (Portes and Hoffman 2003). By 1998, violence had become death for those aged fourteen to forty-four in Latin America and the Caribbean and Zubillaga 2002). 1999; Huggins 2000; Briceno-Le6n (World Health Organization to histor its relationship in context, without violence eliding Only by studying can we evaluate and analyze the issue. If we can distinguish ical processes, justly in the various types of violence and relate them to specific positions between to and expands how it proliferates then we can understand social structure,

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 183

FIGURE 1 STRUCTURAL ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE

IN LATIN AMERICA

Structural

Violence

Social

Expression

y^^^ ^^\ GlobalMechanisms\

Malandro

Gangs

Street Children

\
V

Structural
Adjustments y

New Model Radicalization of

_ Socialization
q j^.

Reject to
the Poverty >w

/
\

^crrzir^.

A ^ Inequality\ " "^ Childrenand Social I p rtv

Poverty / r ^ Youths Urgency

Social \

XExclusidn/

Expression of Violence Socially Legitimazed

\.

5""
POLARIZED Tech.

2 S
urgency

"**~

*
Growing Poverty High I_Youth

/ Children And

Migration

SOCIETY

t0

The Streets

an infinite of larger numbers of people variety of forms. The exclusion from the formal economy and society in the wake of neoliberal reforms gave authorities fewer options to achieve social and political control. The usual mech a anisms of integration were no growing number of people longer relevant because lived within chaotic spaces outside of government influence, within which any form or is of radicalization anarchy possible. is illustrated in of the structural origins of violence My conceptualization con 1. Owing to the of income distributions and the geographic Figure skewing centration of poverty, spaces within the city have become less and less "control lable." As inequality has deepened, differences between have neighborhoods in chaos and exclusion grows, become extreme. Each day, the number of people it ever more difficult to control them using traditional mechanisms. The making unstable equilibrium ofthe past is breaking down. In the age of information, inte cannot be maintained old formulas; new mechanisms of social gration using inclusion need to be developed. one means of Until now, schools offered authorities and control?discipline is class formation?but this mechanism and is being rejected by presently failing a are forced to devote growing number of young people who by circumstances their time to survival and work, and not study. The situation of exclusion facing children in the Latin America metropolis forces them to incorporate from early

assume

184

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

into violent public spaces to work and exchange. As a result, violent deaths become concentrated among youths living in the poor urban increasingly barrios and Sanchez In Caracas, 1992/1998; (Pedrazzini 2004). Zubillaga for example, violence accounted for the loss of life of 1,057 adolescents Venezuela, between 2002 and August 2003 (Periera 2003). September ages have

As over

elected public arise

governments

lose control

security, private groups to take their place.

As violence in the social it has also has become more important sphere, become more central to the urban economy. The and kidnapping of indi robbery viduals with money, the practice of contract killing for a price, and carjacking and as have and security services to abductions have become big business, protection the wealthy of violence are not these threats. These manifestations against guard random acts by isolated individuals but actions taken by organized social groups, often connected networks of information at both the national through important and international of capital. It is free levels, at times yielding great accumulations to with funding from illegal sources that reproduces and continues enterprise in Latin American cities. generate violence in nations such as Colombia, The kidnapping industry has become widespread It generates and Brazil. Venezuela, Mexico, significant profits for abduction with the quantity demanded per kidnapping now at an average of $180,000. rings, in the newspaper of newspaper articles Diaro de la Nacion My canvassing in revealed that from 2000 to 2002, a total of thirty-four persons were kidnapped eleven regions of Venezuela, and only seven of the victims were ever freed. One was freed extensive negotiations businessman prominent Venezuelan only after with one of Colombia's most powerful paramilitary groups and the payment of a sum of money, the formal relations of power and completely bypassing large over the This triumph of the paramilitary offered by the nation-state. security state additional kidnapping, which became ever more frequent. only encouraged a way to extort traditionally offered individual criminals kidnapping Although a new practice of sums of money from wealthy families, kidnap relatively large to extract money from the middle institutionalized ping has evolved and become classes on a regular and ongoing basis. Known popularly as "express kidnapping," it involves the abduction of random citizens from the streets and then taking their daily them to the nearest ATM where they are forced at gunpoint to withdraw if in some isolated neighborhood. limit in cash before being dumped Sometimes, and then is late in the day, victims will be held until midnight the abduction

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 185

FIGURE 2 PERSONS KIDNAPPED IN SAO PAOLO AND RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL, IN THE 1990s

140 i 120-

/^*\

/^\

8040-

y/ 60-V-^ ^\ /

> CIDeV-^
X^X

20 0 Hi i i i i i i i i

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994 0 Total

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

SOURCE:

Secretaria

do Estado

de

CIDE = Fundagao CIDE

Seguranza

Publica;

Anuario

Estadistico

do Rio

de

Janeiro;

(Centro de Informagoes e Dados do Rio de Janeiro).

forced to withdraw the next day's limit as well before being abandoned. The remark in Sao Paolo and Rio de able frequency of such kidnapping Janeiro is illustrated in Figure 2. Coinciding with peaks in the economic crisis, kidnapping surged to a fre quency of 120 in 1992 and 130 in 1995 before declining during the late 1990s. the number of abductions was once again on the increase Nonetheless, by 1999. the different forms of violence in different contexts Identifying generated enables us to understand what kind of insecurity and danger they produce. When a social is no longer a violence the system's equi solitary act but phenomenon, librium is indeed under threat. Violence a and its sequela have become major business and led to the creation and expansion of private activity police forces, militias, and soldiers of fortune, yielding even more instability and violence along with terror. It is thus essential to discern differences in the historic processes that in Latin American have generated the violence cities and in the past. today as a social dimension, To it is crucial to understand it in social, study violence terms. It is important to view and and ideological its con political, acknowledge tent not in terms of the act alone but in all of its dimension and social reper only cussions. This is the an isolated is no violence only way to know whether longer act but part of a social that directly affects the of the estab cycle equilibrium lished social order. Contemporary cannot be understood inequalities solely in terms of traditional contradictions and oppositions 2000). Current (Schteingart new extremes of social tension, such social antagonisms within Latin America yield that the "unstable equilibrium" of the system is in center and danger of losing its
generating even more violence.

186

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

A rising tide of violence not only engulfs the excluded but also those who possess lose control over public wealth, power, and social control. As elected governments arise to take their place. The inability of the state to con security, private groups trol public violence accounts for the emergence of private security groups, whose services are to protect the wealthy from themselves increasingly purchased by criminal predators. Throughout Latin America, private security firms have become a not huge economic activity, only including legitimate groups that provide security services for buildings, shopping centers, and urban residential areas, but also para Private security enterprises military groups with ties to the criminal economy thus be formal or informal, legal or illegal. may A Forces is the five-thousand-strong led Self-Defense United good example one of the most Carlos Castano of Colombia, important paramilitary groups in by the nation, one that has been accepted and substantially legitimized by the state to international of the while connected (Resource Center companies being Americas 2001b). However, when elite groups in rural areas hire private security from other paramilitary forces to protect themselves forces, they often only tend to be domi the cycle of violence. Rural areas of Latin America reproduce in the commercial of cattle or nated by large landowners production engaged to say exactly when cash crops. It is impossible and violence began to insecurity in the of social relations, as many other fac function meaningfully reproduction once in the process tors intervened However, simultaneously. paramilitary groups in rural of drugs became established linked to the production and distribution a vacuna from reach by requesting areas, they sought to expand their economic but colloqui local cattle ranchers. Literally translated, a vacuna is a vaccination; to money that ranchers have to pay for each head of cattle to "pro ally it refers for tect" them from harm at the hands of thieves or rustlers. These side payments with the normal costs much as $1 per head per month?combine protection?as costs that risked pricing many of feeding and raising cattle to yield production in an farmers out of the market. Facing a never-ending cycle of payoffs expand hired their own paramilitary ranchers and landowners racket, ing protection cost. forces to protect them at lower marginal is thus the region, calling into question the legit Violence expanding throughout as agents of social control. The pro imacy and relevance of the police and military life occurs liferation of insecurity and the criminality as basic features of economic in For example, in many areas rural campsesinos (country people) multiple ways. are no in traditional agrarian activities. They receive much better longer interested of traditional rural pay from the cultivation of narcotics than for the production small-scale become have increasingly Rural workers entrepreneurs products. new relations of a and within production larger global drug trade, establishing with new centers of private power. Even when peasants continue to reproduction it is the cultivation of drugs that provides produce traditional agricultural products, as a social class. most of their income and allows their reproduction formal and informal con The picture today is thus very complex, with multiple so that it is difficult to nections between and illegal groups, distinguish legal firms and paramilitary between groups running protection security legitimate

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION

187

rackets. The drug industry clearly contains criminal elements, but it also incor actors at all levels of society, ranging from small porates otherwise legitimate who cultivate coca leaves to large landowners who rent their land entrepreneurs a multitude of workers for coca production, and embracing and independent in transport, packaging, protection, and street sales within cities. agents engaged the region, activities associated with the production, distribution, Throughout of drugs are gaining economic and social space. Although and commercialization in and private security groups began operating initially paramilitary organizations to the urban sector to create closer ties rural areas, they have progressively spread in the city. It with arms traffickers, kidnappers, thieves, pirates, and extortionists is here to derive the precise dimensions of the current situation with impossible is important is to note that activities respect to illegality and criminality. What to to increase violence and arms trafficking interact dynamically connected drugs and insecurity in other venues of social life. Private groups moving back and forth a new between the formal and informal, legal and illegal worlds thus constitute nexus of power in Latin America.

Children

without

a Future

or a Return

A growing number of children are born and raised in impecunious conditions and live on the streets of Latin American cities under conditions of social exclusion. In the information age, the process of economic is associated with a globalization toward the social exclusion of the planet's youngest inhabitants (Castells tendency are characterized Countries 1996,1997,1998). throughout the region by this dual networks that are at once transnational yet at the same time excluded ity, yielding so situated may from the core economy and society, although the share of people from country to country (Castells 2000). In Latin American countries, espe vary cially, the conditions of poverty and social urgency are severe, precluding millions of young people from formal participation in society while and per simultaneously versely pushing them closer to radical actions, crime, and death (Sanchez 2002). Children growing up under conditions of concentrated poverty and social iso lation become differentiated from the rest of society culturally, socially, and tech are alienated from the new technologies of information and nologically. They blocked from the formal mechanisms of participation within society. The growing of street children is most dramatic phenomenon perhaps the expression of struc tural violence. Their "undocumented" condition illustrates their incongruent situ in society but unable to return to it socially because, ation, being physically lacking access school, health care, or formal sector formal documents, they cannot jobs. Laws passed to deal with the children have so far been problem of undocumented unable to solve the problem because they overlook the inability of children raised on the streets to to formal institutions upon adapt entry. Policies need to be trans formed and thought from a new perspective. through When the number of street children was small, efforts to suppress them and remove them from a reformist spaces by force might have constituted public but current numbers render this and infeasible, for position, strategy impractical

188

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

some estimates street children in the millions. place the number of Latin American to a recent report by UNICEF (2002), as of 2002, 83 million Latin According American children younger than the age of twelve lived in poverty, representing 59 percent of that age group. Among adults aged twenty to thirty-four, the rate of poverty was only 44 percent. Although most of these poor children do not live on the street, the sheer number of poor children indicates the scale of potential the problem.

Generations

growing

up on the street

lack

aforeseeable future and thus, totally rejected by the conventional world of work and family,
they work a dream to earn cash and live quick that never quite arrives.

At this point, at least two generations of Latin American children have grown up on the streets?young boys and girls, teenagers, and adolescent mothers with is required to live in abject misery, and new legislation babies. These children their status, grant them last and first names, and provide them with regularize to enable the integration of laws and constitutions legal identification. Amending is to misery at birth because those who are condemned they lack documentation is an urgent priority; reforms must be enacted before yet another generation forced to grow up in irregular circumstances (Sanchez 2002). is part ofthe knowledge learned In the informal life ofthe streets, improvisation in response to the impossibility of a formal way out. Children get from childhood into the alternative world by the urgency of their situation as well as by hooked socialization. Ultimately, however, the informal sector offers them the only realistic Their school is the street corner, as itwas for possibility for long-term employment. the child's "family," and them. The gang becomes and siblings before parents sale and distribution of any type of "work" involves "dealing" of some sort?the for money and survival. arms, drugs, or stolen property that can be exchanged a recent innovation In addition to theft, kidnapping, robbery, and carjacking, is an institution known as the sicariato, derived from the Latin word sicarius, in ancient Rome referred to young people hired to kill with a dagger or which as a social form during the 1980s by leaders knife. The sicariato was established schools to train sicarios to kill for of the Medellin cartel, who established drug the region to refer to any in usage throughout a wage. The sicariato has extended sicarios because Street children become form of paid homicide. they know from

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 189

over them as a shadow of life and that the future an early age that death looms exists only in the present time (Salazar 1992). on the street lack a foreseeable future and thus, Generations growing up the conventional world of work and family, they work to earn totally rejected by a dream that never quite arrives. The dire circumstances of quick cash and live create a unique sense of urgency within youth in urban and homelessness poverty and peripheral slums, a sense that yields an alternative path of neighborhoods with the street associated socialization 1999; 1998; Anderson (Bourgois The street corner substitutes for the class and Sanchez 1992/1998). Pedrazzini room and overrides of family, school, and work. Formal edu traditional models in the formal cation is irrelevant to children who lack practical opportunities in the illegal economy. sector and who see many more possibilities cities learn the tricks of the trade early, Youth in the barrios of Latin American and violent world that they the signs and codes of the impoverished mastering encounter. In the street, they encounter their first opportunities and potential for social mobility; and in the streets, they live their teenage years and their short adult live in urban lives. In Latin America, 35 million persons aged thirteen to nineteen zones with unfavorable conditions. Assuming that 90 percent of these teenagers in crime, that still leaves somehow engaging satisfy their basic needs without to a violent life. In Caracas, Venezuela, 27 percent 3.5 million youths vulnerable ofthe teenagers aged fifteen to eighteen neither work nor go to school (Briceno Leon and Zubillaga 2002). to integrate poor chil The process of social exclusion and the lack of means a crime becomes dren socially yields a perverse process of integration wherein a ofthe criminal economy and entering the labor force means becoming part job of inclusion are not created, the only inte (Castells 1998). If new mechanisms that will take place will be in the only sector where gration integration is possible: the informal and criminal economy. For poor children growing up in zones of exclusion, job networks extend not to trades or factories, but to illegal and violent increase the risk of injury and death. activities that dramatically

Violence
The streets have given

as a New

Dimension

of Power

set of power relations. Social inequality sometimes and spatial fragmentation generate specific kinds of social violence, sometimes of this violence endangers the not, and the expression legitimate and of sectors that control power, resources, At the same and businesses. security sectors of the safety and security of the most vulnerable time, it also threatens the unsta society. The inability of the state to control this violence and maintain of prior negotiations ble equilibrium has led to the privatization of security, which has only served to reinforce boundaries between the excluded and the included and created new spaces for insecurity, violence, and terror to flourish. a program known as Direct Commercial The U.S. government administers to permit private groups in that issues licenses to Trading specific countries

rise to a new

190

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

arms freely from American companies without purchase In 1997, countries in Latin America and the Caribbean licenses valued at nearly $1.1 billion. For example, in Venezuela, chases worth $711,891,695 $125,439,680 in Mexico, in Argentina, and $75,941,338 $81,579,485 Peru,

between and Ecuador purchased Colombia, (Isacson and Olson 1999). The privatization of social control is associated with considerable corruption. In some cases, governments have been known to sell security services to private their own security business, retired officials interests, police officers manage as licensed for work guards, and retired police officers and soldiers discharged are to clandestine prior infractions security groups. Private security incorporated roam the agents also work with military officials to create "death squadrons" that to eliminate view as threats, at times and patrol the city countryside people they a organizing bounty for dead street children (Resource "hunting parties" that pay Center ofthe Americas 2000). In this way, violence generated by the juvenile groups to defend their ter seeking and control space for "dealing" has been augmented by an alarming amount ritory of private violence undertaken with the approval of the states, thereby generating most vulnerable members. After the jobs for "para-police" while terrorizing society's in Venezuela for private security outbreak of violence 1999, the demand during increased by 20 percent, and the number of private security guards increased to two hundred thousand guards. Table 1 draws on several reports prepared by the to estimate the number of private Resource Center ofthe Americas (2000, 2001b) security guards in selected countries. In addition to the two hundred thousand in two hundred thousand in Mexico, Venezuela, we find fifty thousand in Argentina, the number of private security and four hundred thousand in Brazil. In Argentina, officers is double the number of public police. The privatization of public security is consistent with an ideology thatWacquant (2001) has labeled "punishing the poor." From the private forms of security to the most organized military groups interna new violence. are targets and victims ofthe tionally, the poor disproportionately the informal economy The emergence of private security groups has expanded a to of profits; but simply by existing, private security yield large accumulation to guarantee As with any the incapacity ofthe nation-state confirms public order. new often incorporating economic the security industry generates activity, jobs, In many cases, young street children those who are violent as well as excluded. to join private militias. are recruited from corners in poor neighborhoods As the private security for the wealthy grows, so does the demand for arms and Sales of guns, alarm systems, and vehicles with tinted wind security devices. shields increase. As never before, public spaces and traditional neighborhoods are transformed into secure fortresses surrounded by walls and gated check defenses to Huggins such as these can add up (2000), private points. According the pri costs of living for middle class families. With to 20 percent ofthe monthly social control class as well as the wealthy, vatization of security for the middle unstable as private interests increasingly conflict with within the system becomes

intervention. governmental were approved for import the program allowed pur in Guyana, $146,671,738 in Brazil. Together Chile, and $40 million $20 million

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 191 TABLE 1 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECURITY SECTORS IN SELECTED NATIONS OF LATIN AMERICA, 1999
Groups Security or Firms Country Number Private of Number Public of Officers

Guards

Venezuela

N/A Argentina N/A Mexico 7,000 Brazil 1,200

Resource Center ofthe Americas

200,000

50,00025,000 N/A N/A 200,000 N/A 400,000

2001a).

SOURCE:

(2000,

the state in preserving

public

order and serving

the interests

ofthe

private

sector

activities linked to private security is directly In sum, the growth of economic in society, which are them to the degree of poverty and exclusion proportional to activities in the illegal economy, yielding an ongoing cycle of selves connected in a vicious and stratification cycle. Among daily violence that reproduces poverty the affluent, public security is replaced by private security, while the middle class arms and barricades itself and the poor create their own violent gangs in response. In this scenario, the strongest prevail, and the power and legitimacy ofthe nation zones of state is further diminished. Within and violence, new arenas delinquency are created where new social forces networks of organized expanding develop, crime and illegal activities to further isolate impoverish poor communities (Bricefio Leon and Zubillaga 2002).

(Huggins 2000).

Violence

and

International

Migration

to migratory processes The dynamics of insecurity and violence are connected as well, for sometimes is the only means of escape from urgent circumstances The structural violence and ensuing insecurity associated with physical departure. of a growing number of private militias have brought about the forced migration from their places of origin. For example, the extreme violence displaced people in 2.7 million since 1985 has resulted that has taken place in Colombia forced are forced to leave their to 400,000 new migrants and some 300,000 migrants; homes each year. This involuntary migration has made available to military groups abandoned lands while bringing about an agglomeration of displaced agricultural within urban areas (Piedrahita 2003). people not only seek in cities; some and persecution refuge People fleeing violence to migrate and seek legal asylum or undocumented attempt entry internationally into other countries 2003). In 1999, along the border (Van Selm and Newman were between Colombia and Venezuela, left fifty thousand agricultural workers or any a livelihood of return because without forces paramilitary possibility

192

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

and fenced in their lands, causing them to seek refuge across the appropriated to return to their lands due to the paramilitary frontier. They had no possibility claim of that territory with fences. Likewise, along the border between Colombia and Ecuador, fifty thousand agricultural workers were forced to leave their lands to eradicate cocaine as a result of massive (Terra 2003). fumigation effort to rising some of the who leave their country in response Of course, people nations to adjacent nations but go to developed levels of violence do not proceed in Europe or North America, with the leading destination for Latin Americans being to to try their luck in the north are willing States. Those who migrate the United in "E/ Norte." face serious obstacles for what they see as considerable opportunity at home, they view U.S. metropolitan Owing to the urgency of their circumstances as well areas as ideal for advancement places that provide significant opportunities as an immediate the exit from danger. Violence and exclusion are by no means or even the most to the United factors explaining emigration important, only, States; but in the age of information, values from the north are spread massively southward to offer desperate young people the dream of "making it" in the north (Hernandez Leon 1999). States as undocumented to enter the United However, migrants attempts border. Some migrants the Mexico-U.S. leads to other forms of violence along as are in one form of concentrated poverty for another, trapped they simply trade in Mexican border cities such as in areas of concentrated and violence poverty of Juarez, for example, 320 women were Tijuana and Juarez. In the border region killers (El Paso Times 1993 and 2002, 90 of them by professional killed between 2002a, 2002b, 2002c, 2003). measures stems from the extreme Another security imple type of violence in 1987 but accelerating U.S. authorities along the border. Beginning mented by a massive militariza after 1993, the U.S. Border Patrol undertook dramatically the number of border increased that dramatically tion of border enforcement resources at their disposal. The and financial patrol agents and the physical in at the busiest border crossings effort was naturally concentrated enforcement to cross the urban areas of Tijuana and Juarez, forcing undocumented migrants sections ofthe Rio in more remote areas in the mountains, deserts, and untamed Grande River. As a result, the number of violent deaths thirst, (from drowning, the border has skyrocketed, with and accidents) heat exhaustion, exposure, along and Malone 1993 and 2000 (Massey, Durand, the rate of death tripling between at the University of to data from the Border Death 2002). According Project the number of deaths at the border Houston's Center for Immigration Research, in climbed from 175 in 1993 to around 375 in 2000, an increase of 114 percent seven years (Eshbach, Hagan, and Rodriguez 2003). just in arrive from urban backgrounds Latin American immigrants Young that set them apart from their rural cities with important knowledge American were born and raised in an informal migrants Urban-origin origin counterparts. world where "adventurer" was a part of the routine associated with most survival was a fundamental activities, part of their behavior repertoire, and improvisation traits that serve them well in the was for daily subsistence, ingenuity required labor markets of urban America. segmented

INSECURITYAND VIOLENCE AS A NEW POWER RELATION 193

a kind of human "informal knowledge" represents capital that migrants to advance their interests in the United States. At the same time, the may apply in which they are embedded offer a rich source of social capital, social networks these two forms of capital facilitate access to jobs, services, and and together in poor of U.S. cities other benefits 1995). (Fernandez-Kelly neighborhoods in U.S. labor markets, the informal world of work and experiencing Learning into the formal systems ofthe north. Street migrants slowly become incorporated are no less undocumented abroad than at home, children who become migrants for and the dynamic economy of urban America offers them more opportunities economic and less exposure to violence and insecurity. advancement move In essence, from a nonfunctional and informal Latin America they to a that lacks services and employment fully functional U.S. city. The metropolis and the streets, as well as the identification with others in poor neighborhoods of improvisation cultural background they bring with them from Latin American the difficulty cities, yields an important advantage that enables them to overcome in a new city, where and signs are in an unfamiliar of achieving mobility symbols do not prevent radicalized youth from Latin language. But these obstacles in the United States. They America from integrating into jobs and neighborhoods move from a and insufficiency insecurity, violence, daily space of improvisation, to an urban space of demand, and work. Identity conflicts services, opportunity, are less of new transnational identities that important because of the emergence to root migrants simultaneously places of origin and destination. As a result, emigration from the Latin American and the Caribbean continues to in the United States grows grow larger, and the importance ofthe Latino population not only because of the presence of Mexican migrants but also because of steadily, newer arrivals who are inGuatemala, Nicaragua, fleeing violence and urban poverty El Salvador, Haiti, the Dominican Honduras, Republic, Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador Venezuela, (Portes and Hoffman 2003). This new immigration from below and is part and parcel of the broader interna represents globalization tionalization of the economy and internationalization (Portes 1996). Globalization et al. 1998). has truly generated "worlds in motion" (Massey This

Conclusion:

Possible

Scenarios

scenario for the future follows from the indefinite continuation The grimmest a decline in security not of current conditions?with only for those already struc excluded but also for professional and technical sectors that are turally becoming to militarize their societies as the only way to excluded, forcing nation-states maintain order and continue of structural adjustment. The criminal policies to both domestically and internationally and will economy will continue expand involve larger swaths of the formal (in addition to the informal) economy. The as well as number of migrants will grow and move to internationally internally create new transnational institutions and complex multinational identities, trends that are already in evidence. These new social forms will overcome international to transform social, cultural, and boundaries in receiving as identities political

194

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

well as sending nations. The continuous loss of population, especially young people nations to find the capacity of Latin American and professionals, will undermine away out of the current crisis, and will become more deeply mired in poverty they that already exists. and violence, the cycle of disadvantage reinforcing A second possible scenario is less dramatic and envisions a reconsideration and in the region while ofthe structural adjustments renegotiation fortifying the nation state to establish new alliances and more direct political interventions that provide young people with options other than the informal or illegal economy. These inter to bring about the inclusion of ventions will need to be innovative and effective a urban youth and deflect them away from lives of crime. They will comprise street set of state actions to the status of undocumented broad-based regularize children, grant tide to the de facto inhabitants of urban land, enroll students in in the formal economy schools and health clinics, and finally provide employment

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