Violence, crime and insecurity in Latin America from a subnational perspective

Session Submission Type: LASA Section Panel

Abstract

Crime, insecurity and violence constitute one of the foremost concerns for Latin America in the 21st century. These problems affect all countries in the region, yet they also display deeply localized dynamics within countries and show extreme variation across countries. Many forms of violence and crime are concentrated in certain countries, in certain regions within countries, and even in certain neighborhoods and streets within cities and towns. In many countries, municipal and state governments concentrate significant prerogatives regarding security issues and therefore play a central role in implementing policies on the subject.

Scholarship that uses subnational methods and perspectives is particularly well poised to assess and explain the localized dynamics of crime, insecurity, violence, and the state actions and inactions to confront these problems. Indeed subnational research has contributed to reveal puzzling variation in dynamics of conflict and violence, and on the behavior of both non-state armed actors and states. This panel showcases innovative research on violence, crime and insecurity that employs a subnational perspective. The papers explore, from different disciplines, issues like the relations between criminal violence and political competition, citizen reactions to violence, the impact of state policies and policing, and the relations between subnational rents and violence.

Sub Track

• Section Sessions

Session Organizer

• Juan C Olmeda, El Colegio de México

Chair

• Angélica Durán Martínez, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Discussant

• Richard O Snyder, Brown University

Individual Presentations

• Analysis of the Causes of the Murder of Social and Civic Leaders in Colombia - Juan G Albarracin Dierolf, Universidad Icesi

• Military Occupation and Criminal Governance: Comparative Ethnography in Complexo da Maré, Rio de Janeiro - Nicholas Barnes, Brown University

• The Subnational Links Between Oil Revenues and Armed Conflict in Colombia - Juan David Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Oxford University

• Insecurity and Migration Under CARSI in the Northern Triangle - Laura Iesue

• Sit Tight: Political Lacunas and Violence in Mexican Municipalities - Cecilia Farfán Méndez