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VIOLENT DEMOCRACIES IN LATIN AMERICA
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2010 Duke University Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-4638-8
Chapter One
The Political and Economic Origins of Violence and Insecurity in Contemporary Latin America
Past Trajectories and Future Prospects DIANE E. DAVIS
Not very long ago optimism flowered about prospects for democracy in Latin America. The spread of political and economic liberalization throughout the 1980s and 1990s produced a wave of hope, seen most visibly in countries like Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. With their authoritarian past seemingly left behind and the advent of a reinvigorated competitive electoral system, citizens and newly elected officials faced their future with a sense of unlimited possibilities for positive change. But for many, dreams have steadily dimmed as problems of violence, crime, and insecurity emerged with a vengeance, having reached new heights by the mid- and late 1990s and continuing today (Bailey 2003; Früling and Tulchin with Golding 2003). As Susana Rotker so astutely chronicled in Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America (2002), the everyday Latin American experience is now haunted by the specters of fear, violence, crime, and police impunity, all of which permeate practically every aspect of daily life.
Elected governments seem hamstrung in their capacities to control these problems, let alone reverse them, in large part because those charged with keeping order and guaranteeing the rule of law on behalf of the state, the police and/or the military, are themselves frequently implicated in abusive practices or criminality (Hinton 2006; Leeds 1996). The result is growing cynicism, social fragmentation, and a renewed sense of hopelessness about the future and the potential of competitive political systems to deal with the deteriorating situation. The repercussions for democracy and citizenship are troubling.
Forget big ideas about democracy and about how the electoral rules of the game will lead to improvement in people's everyday lives. Forget aspirations that the embrace of liberalization will finally bring the resources and institutions to address problems of economic inequality and political polarization. Instead, growing numbers of citizens in Latin America are turning their attention away from formal politics and party-led solutions and looking for their own answers to the problems of insecurity in everyday life (Oxhorn and Ducatenzeiler 1998). The upside is that these efforts to reinvigorate civil society can at times lead to mass mobilizations against crime and insecurity. But there also is a downside. Hopelessness has become so extreme that some citizens are turning to violence themselves-whether in the form of vigilantism, seen as a last-gasp measure for achieving some sense of justice, or through the embrace of a life of crime, so as to be on the giving rather than on the receiving end of an unjust and unequal political economy-to recapture some control over their daily existence (Davis 2006c; Daniel Goldstein 2003; Moser 2004).
To be sure, violence and impunity are no strangers to the countries of Latin America, where an authoritarian past produced political torture, so-called disappearances, guerilla movements, and other forms of armed rebellion in prior epochs (Bodemaer, Kurtenbach, and Meschkat 2001; Huggins 1998). Yet contemporary problems of violence, daily conflict, and insecurity are much broader and perhaps more insidious and damaging to the quality of life than even the violent struggles over authoritarian rule in the past (Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo 2002). This is partly so because the violence in contemporary Latin America appears to be a more "garden-variety" type of insecurity that permeates the most routine of daily activities and is best seen in rising homicides, accelerating crime rates (despite a decline in reportage by victims), unprecedented levels of police corruption and impunity, and an inability to move around freely without fear of armed robbery, violent attack, or extortion (Davis and Alvarado 1999). It is these conditions that push citizens (and criminals) to take matters into their own hands, either through vigilante acts (Daniel Goldstein 2003) or, more commonly, by hiring private security guards, thereby fueling the environment of fear, exclusion, and insecurity (Smulowitz 2003).
One result is that in many parts of Latin America, mafias involved in various forms of illegal activities (ranging from drugs and guns to knockoff designer products and cds) are calling the shots (Bailey and Godson 2001; Cross 1998). Well-organized cadres involved in illicit activities often take on the functionally equivalent role of miniature states by monopolizing the means of violence and providing protection in exchange for loyalty and territorial dominion (Lupsha 1996). More often than not, these illicit activities persist with the tacit support of the police and military, who often prioritize the protection of their own institutional sovereignty and/or involvement in these black-market activities, rather than the protection of citizens who suffer in the precarious environment of an elusive rule of law. With a wide range of institutions and actors involved in crime and brutality, and with many of the key protagonists both armed and dangerous, most governments, democratic or not, have failed to keep violence and insecurity at bay.
So what accounts for this distressing state of affairs? My aim in this essay is to answer this question with a focus on Latin America's developmental history and its current political and economic patterns. Three questions guide the narrative: (1) In what ways has the political, social, and economic history of Latin America laid the foundation for contemporary patterns of violence and insecurity, especially those involving the police and military? (2) Why has relatively successful political transition from authoritarian rule to democracy not produced a significant break from this coercive and violent past and a strengthening of the rule of law? And finally, (3) what can be done about this state of affairs in a democratic and increasingly global context in which the international scale of the problem fails to match the local or national scale of the available solutions?
I answer these questions with evidence primarily drawn from the Mexican case, although I proceed under the assumption that the general developmental challenges facing Mexico in the first half of the twentieth century resembled those faced by other large industrializers in Latin America. That is, despite the peculiarities of Mexican history, the story recounted here has been crafted to reflect larger dynamics relevant to many of the large countries on the South American continent.
The first half of this essay examines the history of political and economic development and how it set problems of violence in motion. It focuses on three distinct but interrelated processes: contested state formation, the institutionalization of an authoritarian political apparatus and its coercive arms, and industrialization-led urbanization. It argues that the combination of these three developments led to state-sponsored violence, reflected first in growing levels of police and military impunity and the rise of so-called political policing against enemies of the state, and later in a weakened rule of law. These outcomes generated an environment of violence and crime in which the police and military were routinely implicated, a state of affairs that helped institutionalize corruption within the police force, the military, and the entire administration of the justice system.
The second half of the essay examines recent trends of political and economic liberalization and their impact on politics and society in the current democratic period. It argues that the recent transformations have reinforced-rather than reversed-past patterns of impunity and violence in such a way as to limit the capacities of formally democratic mechanisms and civil society to counter the situation of growing insecurity. It focuses on new actors empowered by global trading patterns, on the challenges facing newly democratic party systems, and on nonstate developments within civil society, all of which have led to the growth of a large informal sector riddled with violence and illegality, a growing private security apparatus, and a delegitimized state. I argue that the combination of these changes has been more likely to limit, rather than facilitate, the democratic state's efforts to stem violence and a deteriorating rule of law.
Overall, my essay not only advances the claim that continuing violence in newly democratic Latin America is traceable to the path-dependent consequences of past political decisions about economic development, state formation, and industrialization; it also suggests that the current intensification of long-standing problems of violence owes as much to the wholehearted embrace of liberalization, both political and economic, as to the weight of history, however paradoxical this may appear at the outset. Specifically, in the context of a slow but steady democratic transition that does not necessarily make a clear break with the institutional structures and practices of the past, in which coercive elements implicated in authoritarian rule have remained in the picture, and in which new global patterns of trade support the informal and illegal economy as much as the formal, violence and the "unrule" of law have and will continue to persist.
Contested State Formation and the Historical Roots of Violence and Impunity
For large portions of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth, most Latin American countries suffered through continuous conflicts over sovereignty, seen initially in struggles for independence from Spain (or Portugal), in civil wars and other similarly weighty regional conflicts, and, in a few cases, in revolution or other protracted battles leading to a major political rupture with a colonial or liberal past. Mexico is one of just a handful of Latin American countries falling into the revolutionary category. Even so, it shares a common profile with many of its Southern Cone counterparts: a history of center-region tensions over the mercantilist nature of the national economy and the efforts to centralize power; long-standing battles between agrarian and industrial elites about the nature of the state and the direction of the economy; pervasive social uprisings and rebellion on the part of the nation's most impoverished citizens, whose exclusion from the governing pact fueled their collective ire; and the emergence of a professional military linked to the power elite (regionally, nationally, or both). All these conflicts gave life to a single important fact about Mexico in particular, and about Latin America more generally: ongoing struggles over the nature, character, and direction of state power (Knight and Pansters 2005; Oszlak 1981).
While the roots of contestation over the state may be initially traced to the colonial period, struggles persisted beyond formal independence and marked the political and economic landscape of Latin America even in the twentieth century, producing a highly conflictive political environment in which an abusive state apparatus, untrammeled coercive power, and violence all flowered. In the case of Mexico, the 1910 revolution and its aftermath proved a key historical juncture, setting these dynamics in motion. In an effort to advance and protect the revolutionary cause, the state wielded considerable coercive power against real and potential enemies (Knight 1986). These practices, dating to the postrevolutionary era, ultimately helped institutionalize police corruption and the coercive power of an authoritarian state whose pervasive use of violence and disregard for the rule of law permeated civil society as well.
Complicating matters, during this early twentieth-century period, most Latin American states-whether newly formed in revolution, as in the case of Mexico, or those merely struggling to hold onto power-also faced the challenges of rapid economic expansion, or better said, of fostering industrialization. This meant that in addition to consolidating state power vis-à-vis political or ideological enemies, most Latin American states found it essential to manage if not control a nascent working class and/or organized agrarian elites, both of which were relatively well mobilized to act against the wishes of industrial capitalists (see French 1992). Having a strong military and police force was essential to undermining such opposition and to achieving larger industrial development aims. In this sense the economic development aims built on regime consolidation aims to reinforce the coercive power of the state.
Finally, and just as important for strengthening coercive aspects of the authoritarian state (while also institutionalizing corruption and impunity), the dual challenges of consolidating state power and expanding the economy frequently unfolded in the context of rapid urbanization, precisely because economies of scale and consumer markets concentrated most industrial development in a few cities, key among them capital cities that also served as seats of political power (see Davis 1998). In this environment police were as significant as the military in fulfilling the state's political, economic, and social aims, thereby extending the coercive arm of the state into the everyday life of large portions of the nation's citizens. This was so not only because large cities served as home to much of the industrial working class and to the owners of industrial establishments that the police sought to protect (Lear 2001). Police also became central actors because the rapidly urbanizing locales of Latin America required additional forms of control and regulation-relating to the production and consumption of new goods and services, the provision and management of transportation and traffic, the inspection of markets, and the monitoring of the urban unemployed and indigent, to name but a few-necessary to grease the wheels of commerce, keep the local economy growing, and guarantee social order in an environment in which rural migrants, informal-sector workers, and other new social actors appeared on the scene in droves (Bliss 2001; Piccato 2001; Meade 1997).
In this complicated environment of rapid urbanization, industrialization, and state formation, the power of the police expanded by leaps and bounds, often to the point of tension vis-à-vis the military. With the police becoming increasingly involved in everyday urban life, and the military struggling to keep its privileged position as the arm of the state used to root out enemies and defend the national interest, tensions emerged within these coercive arms of the state as well as between them and the citizenry. Both the military and the police-as individuals and institutionally-were given extraordinary leeway and operated with very little state-imposed discipline (Pereira 2005; Ungar 2002). This established the foundations for abuse of power on the part of the state's key coercive apparatuses, a legacy that persisted long beyond the successful achievement of the state's urban, political, and economic developmental goals. How this unfolded in early twentieth-century Latin America can be evidenced through a more focused discussion of the Mexican experience in the decades following the 1910 revolution.
The 1910 Mexican Revolution: Setting the Cycle of Impunity in Motion
From early on Mexico's police and military were drawn into ongoing tensions and political battles among and between revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries, and, later, opposition groups that sought to reform or widen the revolutionary state's project. It is understandable that both forces were used to police counterrevolutionaries, tasks that were most intense from 1910-18 and focused in the capital, Mexico City. This was so not only because, in an unstable postrevolutionary environment, the newly founded Mexican state was not yet well institutionalized due to internal tensions in the revolutionary family and because the military was not united behind the revolutionary leadership (which itself was divided). The situation was also owing to the fact that the judiciary was dominated by political conservatives and others who remained sympathetic to the counterrevolutionary elite and had limited sympathy for the revolutionary project. Both conditions drove the revolutionary leadership to create new police institutions and powers that could be used to thwart the efforts of judges employing their power against revolutionary loyalists, as well as to keep the overwhelming power of the military at bay.
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