U.S. Latino Immigrant Attitudes on Policing and Militarization in Latin America

• In Event: Latest Trends in Latina, Latino, and Latinx Politics

Abstract

How do Latino immigrants perceive politics in their home country long after they have migrated? This project investigates the political attitudes of U.S. Latino immigrants toward policing and militarization in Latin America. U.S. Latino immigrants and their descendants are exposed to the politics of crime and policing between two countries. In the United States, politicians evoke violence in Latin America to justify hardline immigration policies. Growing immigration enforcement especially in cooperation with local law enforcement has had a deleterious effect on Latino communities in the United States. The issue of policing has gained even greater relevance in recent years due to recent mass mobilization against police brutality against black and brown men.

At the same time, crime has rivaled the economy as the most important issue in Latin America. A growing body of research finds that Latin Americans find militarization of police or use of military to combat crime justifiable given the high level of violence and victimization. The growing militarization in Latin America has raised concerns for democratic backsliding across the region. The issue of police militarization and use of the military for public security has gained greater salience due to repressive reactions to anti-government protests in Nicaragua, Colombia, and Cuba.

Existent research has highlighted the transnational aspects of violence and militarization in Latin America. Violence has been a major driver of internal displacement and international migration. It is worth noting that the countries with the highest levels of violence are also those with large diasporas in the United States such as Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Recent research shows that transnational households in Latin America have shown greater disappointment in democracy and tolerance for anti-democratic behavior. However, how Latin American immigrants abroad process recent events in their home country remains as a major void in this literature.

In this paper, we specifically ask: how does exposure to crime and violence in Latin America influence U.S. Latino immigrants support or opposition to military intervention in their home countries? We rely on a pre-registered conjoint experiment to assess how exposure to information on perpetrators of criminal activity, type of victims, scope of violence, and consequences of such violence either lead to greater support for usage of the military and armed forces or support for non-military options to address episodes of violence. This paper not only investigates on how Latino immigrants perceive the politics of policing and crime in their home countries long after migrating, but it also sheds light on how attitudes toward policing and militarization in their home countries might impact their views on policing in the U.S.

Authors

• Jesse Acevedo, University of Denver

• Angela Ximena Ocampo, University of Texas at Austin