Introduction: Conceptualizing Criminality in Latin America

Robert Buffington

Titles aie a tricky business. Too often they are chosen in haste with more than seem])' attention and given a catchy phra.se la mode. Our title chosen in the hall between sessions at a Latin American Siudies Associa-tion annual meeting -was no exception. As the cognoscente probably suspect, the inspiration came directly from Martin J. Wiener's excellent Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture. Law, and Policy in England, 1830-1914 even though we knew then that this volume would bear only a pass-ing (if suggestive) resemblance to its namesake. To make matters worse, the choice was both hurried and uninformed since, at that lime, we had only a vague notion of which essays the volume would come to include. Still, 11:- title sounded good and so wc kept it. At least for the time being.

Laterarticles chosen, consciences pricked, minds focusedwc re-considered, To our surprise, the title still worked despite its und istinguished selection process. Once assembled, it turned out that all the collected es-says addressed, albeit very differently, the social construction of crime, criminals, and criminality in Lalin Americathe way in which differ cm Latin American societies al dilirent times in their respective histories viewed, described, defined, and reacted lo "criminal" behavior. Like Wiener, we those "reconstruction" over "construction" to acknowledge that concerns about criminality were not voiced (or constructed) in a vacuum but developed in social, cultural, and historical context. Writing from his Fascist prison cell, Antonio Grarosci argued ihat political ide-ologies, rather than developing new ideas, particulate old ones: in effect pouring old wine into new bottles,' We would argue that the same process informs the reconstruction of criminality For us (Wiener stops at 1914), ihe gerund "reconstructing" reflects the uneven, incomplete, ongoing na-tureof the recoitsiruciion processindeed, for Lalin America a discernable end is not yet in sight. One slight deviation: we Have preferred "criminal-ity" in order 10 stress the constructed, categorical nature of "'the criminal"

u

..-, ,':" ..'U: f!,'M which is present but ambiguous in Wiener's English usage (although not in the Spanish lo criminal).

Our title's claim to represent "Latin America" needs justification as well. With some distinguished exceptions, research on crime in Latin America is still in its infancy. Only two of these essays (Michael C. Scardavillc and Alma Guillcrmoprieto's) have been previously published in English and only one (Pablo Piccato's) in Spanish. Under the circum-stances, spotty coverage of the region is unavoidable, if regrettable. For ihis reason too, Mexico and Argentina arc overrcptcsented because the bulk of the research on crime is being done by historians of these coun-tries. In spite of this obvious limitation, wc believe that the themes and trends presented in these essays have regional application. Wc do, how-ever, acknowledge the dangers of facile generalization. Economic histo-rians in the 1970s made a cottage industry out of dependency theory; the devastating impact of neoliberal economics offers them similar oppor-tunities in the 1990s. But they suffered inevitable and often justified criticism for daring a regional analysis in the face of Latin America s un-deniable diversity. Nevertheless, most scholars would agree that these at-tempts were and will continue to be more useful than not. We hope our attempt is equally so.

Effective regional periodization is the thorniest problem of all Again, this is especially true for Latin America, where historical and cultural differences between Argentina, Brazil, Colombia. Peru, and Mexico arc much greater than among other en-colonial societies like Australia, Canada, and the United Stales (although probably not India, Zimbabwe, and Jamaica). Nevertheless, wc canlike dependency theorists before ussketch in the broad outlines of a Latin American reconstruction of criminality. In fact, the projects are directly related. As Colin MacLachlun demnstrales in Spain 'x Empire in the New World, colonial and neocolo-nial relationships can never be just economic but must also include the ongoing transmission of an entire cultural matrix that links economic struc-tures to systems of political and social control.2 Thus, understanding the Western European (and to a lesser extent North American) connection is crucial to any attempt to periodize the reconstruction of criminality in Latin America. More to the poini, while the jury is still out on ihe histori-cal origins, causes, and local applications of the "reconstruction" pro-cess, for Western Europe at least, there is some consensus as to general historical trends.

Most scholars agree on the broad historical context for modern at-tempts at social engineering; the expansion of capitalist relations of pro-duction, the consolidation of bourgeois political hegemony, the rise of modern nation-states. Historically oriented social theorists as different

Introduction xiii

(even antagonistic) os Michel Foucault and /urgen Habermas, lo cite only (he most influential, have argued for a profound epistemolgica! shift in European notions of political authority and social control that began with the eighteenth century's Age uf Enlightenment. For our purposes, their different approaches provide useful and complementary insights into I'.r.lightenmeni-inspiced social reconstruction.' As the essays that follow make clear, at some fundamental level the contested theoretical field mir-rors the complex, confused, and even contradictory nature of the histori-cal "reality,"

With deep intellectual roots in Marxist theory, Habermas not surpris-ingly grounds post-Enlightenment social engineering in sociological and historical processes. "The concept of modernisation," he informs us, "re-fers to a bundle of processes that are cumulative and mutually reinforc-ing: to the formation of capital and (he mobilization of resources: to ihc development of the forces of production and ihe increase in the produc-tivity of labor; to the establishment o f centralized political power and the formation of national identities; to the proliferation of the rights of politi-cal participation, of urhan forms of life, and of formal schooling; lo the secularization of values and norms; and so an."' Bound up in these politi-cal, economic, and Social Changes v..;s a r.ul-cally new model of "huiir geois" politics that rejected established political authority especially the symbolic person of the monarch for an impersonal, "rational" authority mediated by private individuals operating freely in the newly developed "public sphere."5 This decisive shift in the fundamental nature of author-ity demanded new forms of legitimation, which in turn required new ide-ologies and technologies of social control based on reconstructed notions of citizenship and criminality,

Once reconstructed, however, these notions were "naturalized" and thus, removed from public contestation. In the laic seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century liberal capitalist phase, political theorists had linked legitimation to marketplace metaphors of free exchange whether of com-modities or ideas. With the advanced capitalist phase beginning in the late nineteenth century, a depoliiicized, technocratic society gradually replaced the historically-contingent bourgeois public sphere. "The quasi-autonomous progress of science and technology," Habermas insists, "then appears as an independent variable on which the most important single system variable, namely economic growth, depends. Thus arises a per-spective in which the development of (he social system seems to be deter-mined by the logic o scientific-technical progress . . . [and] Ihc process of democratic decision-making about practical problems loses its func-tion and 'must' be replaced by plebiscitary decisions about alternative sets of leaders of administrative personnel."' Habermas thus divides the

;irV Introduction

post-Enlightenment historical field into two parts: the first characterized by public debate (at least among the bourgeoisie) about the goals and methods of social reconstruction, the second by lop-down, technocratic social engineering.

Foucault's causation and periodization are similar although, as a phi-losopher of language, he emphasizes the discursive-imaginative aspects of the Enlightenment epistemolgica! shift: "In the eighteenth century, Ihe development of demographics, of urban stmcturcs, of the problem of industrial labor, had raised in biological and medical terms the question of human 'populations,' with their conditions of existence, of habitation, of nutrition, with their birth and mortality rate, with their pathological phenomena, , , , The social 'body* ceased to be a simple juridtco-political metaphor . . . and became a biological reality and a field for medical intervention."' Not surprisingly perhaps, this medica I /ed di-.course :;iv.::. perception) encouraged and indeed shaped a general reconstruction of crime and punishment determined, as Habermas would have it, by the "logic of scientific-technical progress." In the dramatic introduction to Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison for example, Foucault jux-taposes a shockingly graphic description of the public drawing and quar-tering of the regicide Damiens and an absurdly bland private prison timetable written eighty years later. He argues that the discursive-cognitive shift that occutied in the years between these two cultural arti-facts reflected a redistribution of "the entire economy of punishment" from publie spectacles that demonstrated the power of political authority (thai is, the king) to an impersonal carcral system that disguised its dis-ciplinary mechanisms (and will to power) behind a facade of "scientifico-iegal" knowledge.' Ihe ultimate requit, Le concludes, is a rnicrophysics of power that:

presuppose (hit the power exercised on the body is conceived not as properly, but as a stnlegy, that ils effects of domination arc attributed not to 'appropriation', but to dispositions, manoeuvres, luetics, tech-niques, funciionings. , . , In short, this power is exercised rather than possessed; it is not the 'pnvileje'. quired or preserved, of the domi-nant class, bul the overall effect of its strategic positions. . . . Further-more, this power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who 'da not hive it'; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through them; it exerts pressure upon them, just Ihey themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it his on tbem.*

In other words, as Foucault sees it, the modern subject simultaneously per-petuates and resists the carcral system that constituted it in the first place.

So, although he might agree with Habermas about the causes and effects of the epistemolgica! shift, there are important interpretive dif-

Introduction XV

fcrcnccs. In particular, Foucault's periodization differs from Habermas's because he evinces little interest in Ihe brief emergence of a public sphere that is quickly if tragically overcome by the will 10 knowledge/power of technocratic elites. Tnus his explanation examines the germination, growth, and flowering of the ideologically-charged seeds of a naturalizing social science that over the course of ilbe niueteemh and twentieth centuries sent its deep and hidden roots into every nook and cranny of modern society (including the "individual" subject). The fundamental difference here is ideological- for Habermas, in spite of its many flaws, the Enlightenment project provides a model the bourgeois public spherefor liberation; for Foucault, in spite of its many merits, it produces a model the carcral system for repression.

But what does all this mean for the periodization of Latin American reconstructions of criminality? Quite a bit, as il turns out.

For one ihing, as Benedict Anderson notes, Latin Americans were the "Creole pioneers" of modern nationalism, one of the driving forces be-hind post-Enlightenment social reconstruction.'* So, although most of Latin America at independence(ID 10-1821 in most of Spanish America, 1824 in Brazil, IS9S in Cuba and Puerto Rico) lagged behind Western Europe and the United Slates in several sociological characteristics (hat Habermas and Foucault associate with modernizationcapital formation, incipient industrialization, free wage labor, etc.Latin American elites nevertheless participated

Introduction tvil in Augustin Ylcz's "village of black-robed women" cannoi be dismissed simply as elite propaganda." These were much heralded and, more importantly, directly experienced liberations, Thus, even as it served to Legitimate capitalist relations of production, centralized national govern-ments, and expanded state power, the impersonal "rule of law" had real advantages. And Ihe low'er classes, usually on the receiving end of both crime and elite anlicrime efforts, often recognized the benefits of reform projects (Scardaville), lamented iheir failure (Piceato, Guillermoprieto), or sought to turn ihcm to their advantage (Bliss). Efforts to police women shared this ambiguous character, relieving and intensifying repression at the same lime (Ruggiero, Bliss). Elite-driven or not, social reconstruc-tion promised (and sometimes even delivered) benefits to all sectors of Latin American society. As Habermas reminds us, forgetting the liberator)' pole of this double movement would be a huge mistake. The recent "de-mocratization" of Latin America and especially the widely proclaimed role of nongovernmental organizations in voicing the concerns of mar-ginal groups suggest to optimistic analysts a potential reopening of a "pub-lic sphere" after decadessome wwtd say centuriesof often brutal repression.

This said, Foucault's pessimism provides a necessary corrective. As all the essays in this volume demonstrate, over the past two centuries the state has greatly increased the scope and intensity of its intervention into Latin American societies, sometimes with disastrous results. The process began in earnest toward the end of the nineteenth century with the wide-spread dissemination of positivism and social Darwinism which privi-leged "scientific" expertise and favored an uncontested, top-down style of social reform all in the name of "Order and Progress" (Ruggiero, Piceato). In countries like Brazil (Holloway) and Argentina (Kalmano-wiccki) for example, national police forces turned (and continue to turn) the liberating potential of the Enlightenment project completely on its head by systematically and brutally repressing any "criminal" group that opposed (opposes) the status quo. In Medellin, "self-defense" groups took (and continue to take) the law into their own hands (Guillermoprieto). These cases reaffirm Foucault's contention that "power is not exercised simply as an obligation or a prohibition on those who 'do not have it'; it invests them, is transmitted by them and through ihcm; it exerts pressure upon them, just as they themselves, in their slrugglc against it, resist Ihe grip it has on them.""' Rule of law promises liberation and social justice; institutionalized power runs the risk of obliterating both.

Put simply, the enlightenment project both liberates and represses precisely because the liberating act itself unleashes social forces that newly constituted (liberated) elites need to control in order to ensure their own

xWii Introduction surv ival. "That the elites and their c I ients wou Id define these social forces as criminal is hardly surprising. Nonetheless, the malleability of discur-sive reconstruction(he penchant for criminalizing any opposition to authorityis especially distressing in light of Latin America's recent past, conflicted present, and uncertain future. Many questions confront Latin America in the twenty-first century: Will ihe Enlightenment project fi-nally fulfill its democratic promises? Will ihe painful restructuring de-manded by economic modernization eventually bring social justice to Lalin America? Or will widespread repression in the name of "Order and Progress" again cast its authoritarian pall over the region? Like Habermas and Foucault, Ihe essays in this book suggesl any number of possible out-comes, some hopeful, others not. "Time is forever dividing itself toward innumerable futures." the criminal in a Jorge Luis Borges detective story is warned, "and in one of them 1 am your enemy,"1 '

Notes 1. See for example Chantai MoulTe, "Hegemony and [neology in Gramsci," in

Ton) Bennett et al., Culture, Ideology, and Social Process: A Header (London: The Open University Press, I9SI), pp. 219-34.

2. Colin MseLachlan, Spain 's Empire in lire New World: The Hole of Ideas in Institutions! and Social Change lESericlcv- Univcisity of California Press, I9R8J

3. On their philosophical differences sec Jiirgen Hibermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Vnelve Lectures, trans: Frederick Laurence (Cambridge: MIT Press. 1967), chapters 9 and 10.

4. Ibid., p. 2, 5. Jiirgen Habermas, "The Public Sphere," in Chandra Mukerji and Michael

Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley: Umversuy of California Press. 1991), pp. 401-2.

6. Jiirgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), p. 10S. His italics.

7. Miche: Foucault, "The Diugcruui Individual," in Lawrence C. Kritznian, d., Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviens uni) Other Writ-ings, V?77-/9.r< New York: Ruutkdje. I98). p. 134.

8. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Mew York: Vintage BouVi, 1974), p. 7. Our Italics.

9. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, pp. 26-27. 10. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and

Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. {New York: Verso, 199II. chapier 4. 11. MacLachlan, Spain's empire in the ,Ve- World, p. 131. 12. See especially William H. Bcczky. Cheryl E. Martin, and William E. French,

euY, Rituals of Rule, Rituals of Retistanc-e. Public Celebrations and Popular Culture in Mexico (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1994); Gilbert M. Jo-seph and Daniel Nugent, eds.. Everyday Forms of Slate Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule In Modern Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press,