The Institutional Legacies of Wartime Predation: Evidence from Guatemala

• In Event: The Political Legacies of Violence

Abstract

In April 2015, Guatemalan and UN investigators uncovered a massive customs fraud scheme known as La Línea, which implicated dozens of high-ranking officials, including the country’s sitting president and vice president. Though the case was unprecedented in contemporary Guatemala, the perverse institutional practices encompassed by La Línea were not; they instead have much deeper historical roots in illicit activities developed by military intelligence officials at the height of the country’s 36-year civil war in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Curiously, the scheme continued despite sweeping measures to purge and reform the customs service following the signing of peace. In light of this puzzle, this paper asks: what explains the postwar persistence of these predatory state practices despite significant institutional overhaul? In examining the twenty-year trajectory since the end of conflict, I find that actors central to wartime customs fraud practices, while formally displaced from the state sphere, continued to exert influence through informal channels from without, thus preserving the dominant elite coalition deriving benefits from the illicit arrangements. Thus, despite adhering to classic postwar reform prescriptions, efforts to remake the Guatemalan state had a limited effect in dismantling the perverse, alternative rules that took shape within the customs administration during civil war. Overall, these findings suggests the need to move beyond state-centered approaches to postwar reconstruction and instead focus on the broader coalitions that underpin and perpetuate criminal practices once the fighting has ceased.

Author

• Rachel A Schwartz, Tulane University