How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experiences of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. Through this comparative ethnographic project, we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional ones, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip,” to more vulnerable ones, such as whispering—are main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods. Our findings suggest that strategies are context dependent and most likely vary according to numerous factors, including the history of civic organizing, policing practices, and the type of armed actor with whom they cohabitate in their neighborhood.

This article examines the social and political impacts of President Nayib Bukele’s 2023 opening of a megaprison in El Salvador by analyzing his government-funded international public relations campaign. We chronicle how the design of the prison, along with policies for arresting, detaining, and prosecuting Salvadorans for alleged gang-related crimes, offers a mirage of transparency that obstructs the visibility needed to protect the human rights of Salvadorans. Our analysis places empirical accounts of conditions in El Salvador in conversation with the largely Twitter/X-based public relations campaign announcing the new prison. We show how the campaign works to justify an alarming degradation of democratic principles and practices during the current régimen de excepción (state of exception). Bukele rationalizes an iron-fist-style approach to gang violence while simultaneously silencing political opposition and obfuscating the expanding scope of state human rights violations. We argue that the trade-offs being made in El Salvador between increased safety for some and human rights violations for others ultimately contribute to the corrosion of democracy. Moreover, we discuss how Bukele’s tough-on-crime populism simultaneously produces and exports an “authoritarian playbook” for wider regional democratic erosion in line with Bukele’s model.

El presente artículo examina el fenómeno del homicidio en Colombia y busca comprender las condiciones de vulnerabilidad que afectan al homicidio en las ciudades colombianas. A través de un enfoque teórico y metodológico basado en la vulnerabilidad se analizó dicha relación entre la violencia homicida con los mercados ilegales, los mercados laborales pauperizados y la repartición de la riqueza. La muestra se compuso de las treinta y dos ciudades capitales departamentales de Colombia. Se usaron herramientas estadísticas multivariadas (PLS-SEM) para analizar la relación entre estos factores y el homicidio. Los hallazgos sugieren que los bajos ingresos, la falta de empleo, la desigualdad y la violencia están asociados con un mayor riesgo de homicidio.

In 2008 Guatemala passed legislation criminalizing various forms of violence against women and mandating the creation of courts that would specialize in such violence. This article demonstrates that these reforms’ impacts were unevenly felt, with the most marginalized benefiting the least. It explains this gap by drawing on a historical intersectional analysis, and reveals the importance of including place alongside more commonly studied categories of difference. It also illuminates the sources of the gaps between policies and their impacts. It finds that many Guatemalan women remained marginalized from security and justice, despite attempts to protect them, for two reasons. First, the reforms isolated violence against women from other structural sources of inequality, thus undercutting their impacts for multiply marginalized women. Second, the reforms’ impacts were undermined by historically constituted patterns of state-society relations and the uneven nature of the Guatemalan state.

In several Latin American countries, social violence has risen to warlike levels. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to the extent of social violence and the new (informal) forms of governance generated by the so-called violent nonstate actors (VNSAs). Where a state’s forces fail to provide for the physical protection and social security of its citizens, some areas are governed by a mix of formal (vertical) and informal (horizontal) forms of governance, mixing state and nonstate actors. In these socially bounded spaces, nonstate actors produce and distribute public goods similarly as the state does. In this article, we explore how hybrid governance has appeared in the South American region, considering the operation of two regional VNSAs, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) in Brazil and the Bandas Criminales (BACRIM) in Colombia. We show that such VNSAs are significant agents for security governance, as they challenge preconceived notions of state authority (legitimacy).

This article examines the construction of a multifaceted collective memory through the main female protagonists in Song of the Water Saints (2002) by the Dominican American author Nelly Rosario. By bridging memory studies, Latin American studies, and Afro-Latinx studies, the book examines racial and gendered constructs, intergenerational struggles, US imperialism, and Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship to show the interconnected nature of memorial articulations for subaltern subjects. Through a literary close reading, this article dissects the lives of three generations of female characters—Graciela, her daughter Mercedes, and Graciela’s great-granddaughter Leila—and how they challenge, reinforce, and suffer racialized, political, and gendered subjectivities. By examining intersectional and historical trauma simultaneously, this study contributes to the field of memory, Afro-Latinx, and Latin American studies by showing the muddled construct of memory for Dominicans and Dominican Americans.

Existing work on state building focuses on the creation of modern bureaucracies and institutions for education and taxation but generally neglects to point to communal property regimes as tools of statecraft. Political science scholars who focus on ethnic communal lands in the Americas emphasize the rise of formal multicultural institutions, including Indigenous land rights, but are skeptical about governments’ willingness to title large extensions of land to Indigenous or other ethnic groups because of opposing economic interests. Focusing on the titling of 12 percent of Honduras’s territory between 2012 and 2016, this article uses semi-structured elite interviews, land titling data, field notes from three months in rural and urban sites in Honduras, and drug-trafficking reports to examine the motivation of officials in the central government. Evidence suggests that the central government views and uses ethnic land titling as a strategy to reclaim territorial dominance in contested locations that lack state presence.

Este artículo analiza las representaciones centradas en la víctima del conflicto armado interno peruano que propone el documental Tempestad en los Andes (2014), de Mikael Wiström. A partir de este objeto cultural, se examinan las limitaciones y posibilidades que presenta la memoria victimista en el posconflicto peruano. El análisis parte de los significados contrapuestos que el filme articula para Augusta La Torre (líder de Sendero Luminoso) y Claudio Gonzales (estudiante universitario desaparecido). Por un lado, se reflexiona sobre el posicionamiento reconciliador que esta película sostiene en torno a la búsqueda de una víctima neutral merecedora de compasión, la reconstitución de un supuesto mundo andino devastado por la guerra y el énfasis identificatorio con el sufrimiento padecido. Esta interpretación del pasado reciente fuerza una reconciliación (un perdón normalizante) que no permite comprender las complejidades surgidas y, por el contrario, las sutura en vías de alcanzar una cura y unificación del cuerpo social fragmentado con la guerra. Sin embargo, por otro lado, también se analizan las posibilidades de reconocimiento, esas renegociaciones y apropiaciones que suceden desde los márgenes de este proyecto audiovisual: una reivindicación, breve pero real, que intenta reparar el olvido.

In 2013, people in Michoacán and Guerrero, especially from rural areas, armed themselves against criminal cartels. Although their movements emerged from comparable contexts, their leaders and organizational forms differed in ways that affected their tactics and targets, as well as the timing of de-escalation. Whereas Guerrero’s leaders understood their struggle as defensive, Michoacán’s leaders were businessmen who saw themselves engaged in an offensive campaign. This partly explains why fatalities were greater there than in Guerrero. I further demonstrate that movement fragmentation led to lethal violence, and their organizational forms also contributed to dynamics of escalation or de-escalation in ways not fully appreciated by scholars. Specifically, the organizational form of Michoacán’s patron-sponsored autodefensas made them more vulnerable to lethal violence than were Guerrero’s community-sponsored organizations.

El artículo analiza cuál es el tipo de conocimiento o verdad que se construye en el marco de un proceso penal por violaciones a los derechos humanos cometidas en un contexto dictatorial, y cómo este aporta al existente sobre los crímenes, sus víctimas y los responsables. La intención es analizar el proceso de larga duración en el que se juzgan los crímenes cometidos durante la última dictadura en Argentina (1976–1983). Particularmente, la causa penal por los delitos de la Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), donde funcionó uno de los más grandes centros clandestinos de detención del periodo. Se analizarán el segundo y tercer juicio de la causa (2009–2017) y la producción de conocimiento en relación a tres temas: 1) la violencia de género; 2) la división de los sobrevivientes y su utilización como mano de obra esclava; 3) los vuelos de la muerte. Se partirá del supuesto de que, si bien los crímenes cometidos en la ESMA fueron ampliamente descritos en los mecanismos transicionales del país y en materiales posteriores, los avances en las investigaciones y las condiciones de la producción de la evidencia en un proceso penal contribuyeron a que existan aportes específicos y novedosos.

En Chile, desde los inicios de la república, las amnistías después de guerras civiles y conflictos violentos fueron el fundamento de la reconciliación política. La transición política iniciada en 1990 se propuso establecer la verdad sobre las violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas durante la dictadura, reconocer y reparar a las víctimas y hacer justicia en la medida de lo posible, a pesar de la vigencia de la amnistía de 1978. En este artículo se analiza la evolución de diversas instancias del proceso de justicia transicional y la lucha contra la impunidad que es la experiencia de las víctimas de la tortura y sus familias. El caso de Haydee Oberreuter nos permite examinar las posibilidades, resultados y limitaciones de los procesos judiciales en relación con las demandas de justicia y reparación de las víctimas de tortura.

This essay reviews the following works:

The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia. By Teo Ballvé. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. Pp. 228. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781501747540.

Paramilitarismo. Balance de la contribución del CNMH al esclarecimiento histórico. By Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH). Bogotá: Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, 2018. Pp. 234. Free e-book. ISBN: 9789585500051.

Agrarian Capitalism, War and Peace in Colombia: Beyond Dispossession. By Jacobo Grajales. New York: Routledge, 2021. Pp. 190. $44.95 paperback. ISBN: 978036775707.

Clientelistic Warfare: Paramilitaries and the State in Colombia (1982-2007). By Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2019. Pp. 480 pages. $72.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9781787073654.

Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia’s War. By Annette Idler. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 496. $29.00 paper. ISBN: 9780190849153.

Organized Violence after Civil War: The Geography of Recruitment in Latin America. By Sarah Zukerman Daly. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. 344. $25.00 paperback. ISBN: 9781107566835.

Despite persisting impunity, over the past several years Guatemala has made important strides in prosecuting war crimes committed during the internal armed conflict (1960–1996). This article provides an ethnographic account of the 2018 Molina Theissen trial, which resulted in the conviction of four senior military officials for crimes against humanity, aggravated sexual violence, and forced disappearance. An ethnographic study of this critical human rights trial can help us understand how a country with a relatively weak judicial system and well-organized spoilers has managed to hold the intellectual authors of wartime atrocities responsible for their acts. It also contributes to a richer understanding of the construction, meaning, and impact of human rights prosecutions for victims and the broader society, and what role they play in broader public debates over the historical memory of conflictual pasts.

En el marco de la Comisión para el Acceso a la Verdad, el Esclarecimiento Histórico y el Impulso a la Justicia de las Violaciones Graves a los Derechos Humanos Cometidas de 1965 a 1990, creada en 2021 en México por decreto presidencial, entre los años 2022 y 2024 se organizaron foros regionales donde se presentaron diversos testimonios sobre la violencia política infringida durante dicho período histórico. Desde un enfoque que comprende a los mismos como prácticas narrativas de memoria y resistencia que son significadas desde el presente, este artículo aborda los testimonios narrados durante el Diálogo por la Verdad en el Estado de Chiapas. El análisis muestra formas de visibilización de la agencia política indígena en contexto contrainsurgente.

The scholarship seeking to explain the ineffectiveness of violence against women (VAW) laws has focused on the lack of resources or will to implement these laws. Less attention has been given to how these laws are crafted and positioned in the legal hierarchy, which may undermine them from the start. This article focuses on four cases from Central America, a region where fifty-five laws to protect women from violence were passed between 1960 and 2018, yet VAW continues. It finds that the legal positioning and language of these laws prioritize family unity while undermining women’s rights to protection; thus, these laws fail by design. The article identifies four legal placements that delay (El Salvador), undermine (Honduras), diminish (Nicaragua), or render abstract (Guatemala) the effectiveness of VAW laws in the context of penal and judicial codes. This work has direct policy implications and broader relevance beyond the cases examined here.

This essay reviews the following works:

Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence–and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets. By Thomas Abt. New York: Basic Books, 2019. Pp. 304. $30.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781541645721.

MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang. By Steven Dudley. New York: Hanover Square Press, 2020. Pp. 352. $28.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781335005540.

Mortal Doubt: Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City. By Anthony W. Fontes Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. 332. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520297098.

El Niño de Hollywood: Cómo Estados Unidos y El Salvador moldearon a un sicario de la Mara Salvatrucha 13. By Óscar Martínez and Juan José Martínez. Mexico City: Debate, 2018. Pp. 272. $16.95 paperback. ISBN: 9786073169004.

La tropa: Por qué mata un soldado. By Daniela Rea and Pablo Ferri. Mexico City: Aguilar, 2018. Pp. 336. MXN339.00 paperback. ISBN: 9786073177795.

Gangs of the El Paso-Juárez Borderland: A History. By Mike Tapia. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019. Pp. 200. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826361097.

Carta desde Zacatraz. By Roberto Valencia. Madrid: Libros del K.O., 2018. Pp. 381. $20.00 paperback. ISBN: 9788416001866.

State of War: MS-13 and El Salvador’s World of Violence. By William Wheeler. New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2020. Pp. 150. $15.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781733623728.

La mayor parte de las mujeres traficadas para el comercio sexual por la frontera suroeste de Estados Unidos proceden de México y Centroamérica. Esta investigación, fundamentada en una metodología cualitativa, que incluye entrevistas en profundidad con cincuenta y dos traficantes de mujeres y ochenta y seis dueños de negocios de prostitución en México, analiza los vínculos entre los diferentes actores involucrados en el tráfico de mujeres de México y Centroamérica para el comercio sexual en Estados Unidos. Concluimos que estos actores ocupan lugares estratégicos dentro de una cadena de mando que tiene el propósito de proporcionar a los patrones estadounidenses una remesa ininterrumpida de mujeres. Los traficantes reclutan y transportan mujeres, mientras que los dueños de centros nocturnos de Estados Unidos se benefician de la explotación de la prostitución. Asimismo, esta actividad depende de la participación de madrotas y padrotes mexicanos, que reclutan y dan cobijo a mujeres en tránsito al norte.

From the moment it launched its armed insurgency in 1980 until the death of its former leader in September 2021, Peru’s Shining Path mesmerized observers. The Maoist group had a well-established reputation as a personality cult whose members were fanatically devoted to Abimael Guzmán, the messianic leader they revered as “Presidente Gonzalo.” According to this narrative, referred to here as the “Gonzalo mystique,” Shining Path zealots were prepared to submit to Guzmán’s authority and will—no matter how violent or suicidal—because they viewed him as a messiah-prophet who would usher in a new era of communist utopia. Drawing on newly available sources, including the minutes of Shining Path’s 1988–1989 congress, this article complicates the Gonzalo mystique narrative, tracing the unrelenting efforts by middle- and high-ranking militants to challenge, undermine, disobey, and even unseat Guzmán throughout the insurgency. Far from seeing their leader as the undisputed cosmocrat of the popular imagination, these militants recognized Guzmán for who he was: a deeply flawed man with errant ideas, including a dubious interpretation of Maoism, problematic military strategy, and a revolutionary path that was anything but shining.

This essay reviews the following works:

Vulnerabilidad y violencia en América Latina y el Caribe: Paisaje cultural y diseño urbano. Edited by Markus Gottsbacher and John De Boer. Mexico City: Proyectos Estratégicos Consultoría; Siglo Veintiuno, 2016. Pp. 432. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9786070307447.

Violence and Resilience in Latin America Cities. Edited by Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt. London: Zed Books, 2015. Pp. ix + 195. $28.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781780324562.

The Punitive City: Privatized Policing and Protection in Neoliberal Mexico. By Markus-Michael Müller. London: Zed Books, 2016. Pp. vii + 179. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781783606962.

Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics. Edited by Gema Santamaría and David Carey Jr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 320. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780806155746.

Votes, Drugs, and Violence: The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico. By Guillermo Trejo and Sandra Ley. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xix+ 349. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781108795272.

Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America. By Deborah J. Yashar New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. xvii + 250. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781316629659.

Endangered City: The Politics of Security and Risk in Bogotá. By Austin Zeiderman. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 290. $27.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780822361626.