Grammar of Threat: The Social Order of Criminal Messages in Colombia and Mexico

• In Event: The Politics of Illicit Economies, Organized Crime, and Extra-Legal Actors Mini-Conference: New Research in Criminal Politics: Criminal Competition and Violence

Abstract

Why do criminal organizations publicly display threatening messages? Studies of organized crime emphasize that criminal groups rely on clandestine networks of influence. Criminals communicate to allies and rivals through secretive or coded means. Studies of the “diplomacy” of threats focus on a two-player game, where threats are used to influence the behavior of a rival. We argue that public threats introduce a wider audience as a third actor. By publicizing a threat to an audience beyond the direct target, criminal groups articulate a social order, in which some people and activities are safe, and others are proscribed. To develop this argument, we construct a “grammar” of threat, consisting of five constitutive factors for a public threat. We then use this grammar as the basis for a comparison of four campaigns of public threats: two by criminal or neo-paramilitary groups in Colombia, and two by a criminal “cartel” and a self-defense group in Mexico. This analysis yields three important contributions. First, the social order articulated through public threats involves social exclusion, very often articulated in terms of cleansing. This emphasis on social cleansing integrates violence as an essential feature of a healthy society. Second, public threats also articulate a vision of a select, idealized community, and position the authors of the threats as central figures within this community. Finally, criminal actors use public threats where their position in society is uncertain or challenged. Displaying threats is a means of re-asserting criminal actors’ place and power in society.

Authors

• Philip Luke Johnson, Princeton University

• Shauna N Gillooly, University of California, Irvine