Building a Democratic Police after War – The Role of Guatemala’s Transnationalized Security Elites

• In Event: When Historical Legacies meet Transnationalism – Security Governance and Violence in Post-War Guatemala

Abstract

After decades of military rule and a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, a transition to democracy was initiated in Guatemala in 1986. One of the central reform areas was the highly autocratic and repressive security sector, the main motor behind Guatemala’s counterinsurgent state formation since the beginning of the Guatemalan Civil war in the 1960s. The latest transnationally circulating paradigms of ‘modern’ and ‘democratic’ policing and discourses of SSR and Human Rights were introduced in Guatemala and have deeply influenced Guatemala’s transition towards a democratic form of security governance, culminating in the creation of the National Civil Police in 1997.
Against this backdrop, this paper analyzes Guatemala’s (ongoing) transition from authoritarian policing to democratic police building between 1986 and 2014, particularly the import of securocratic knowledge and practices by Guatemala’s highly transnationalized local power brokers, policing experts and members of the security establishment. By critically interrogating the processes of appropriation of and resistance to new modes of policing discourses and practices, the paper demonstrates, first, the lasting impact of post-colonial and authoritarian legacies on contemporary Guatemalan policing. Second, the paper shows that transnational security governance transfers, reinforced these historical legacies, leading to the reproduction of counterinsurgent and repressive ways of order making and security governance in post-conflict Guatemala.

Authors

• Markus Hochmüller, Freie Universität Berlin

• Bernardo L Jurema, Freie Universität Berlin