thrower, norman. 1996. maps and civilization cartography in culture and society

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Urban Surges

Power, Territory, and the Social Control of Space in Latin America

byAlfonso Valenzuela Aguilera

Translated by Mariana Ortega Brea

Delinquency and organized crime have a direct impact on territory. Nonetheless, the dominant form of analysis in urban Latin America has focused on their social, economic, and institutional dimensions. The limited success of regional government responses over the past decade that have privileged occupations, surveillance, panoptics, coercion, territorial con-trol, and urban fortification leads to consideration of alternative strategies focused on social development, the strengthening of institutions, and the improvement of living conditions. Recent Latin American initiatives to address organized crime and drug trafficking with force have weakened state institutions while simultaneously increasing violence.

La delincuencia y el crimen organizado tienen un impacto directo en el territorio. Sin embargo, en las ciudades de Amrica Latina el anlisis predominante se ha centrado en las dimensiones sociales, econmicas e institucionales como claves de lectura. A partir de los magros resultados obtenidos en la ltima dcada de los gobiernos de la regin, los cuales han privilegiado las ocupaciones, la vigilancia, panptica, la coercin, el control territorial y la fortificacin de las ciudades, se contemplan estrategias alternas centradas en el desar-rollo social, el fortalecimiento institucional y el mejoramiento de las condiciones de vida de los ciudadanos. Las recientes iniciativas por solucionar las cuestiones del crimen orga-nizado y el narcotrfico mediante la fuerza por parte de los estados latinoamericanos han tenido como resultado tanto el debilitamiento de las instituciones estatales como el escala-miento de la violencia.

Keywords: Territories, Power, Control, Militarization, Violence, Latin America

Violence in Latin American cities has become territorial in nature. The spatial dimension of the fight against crime is essential to any theory addressing the transformation of urban space into a battlefield involving military operations, armed clashes, informal curfews, territorial occupations, roadblocks, and arrests. Territory has become a central actor, giving a spatial dimension to issues of urban security in which cities become military objectives, dominated territo-ries, and areas under state or criminal control. Drawing on Edward Sojas (1996) theories regarding the importance of space in the construction of reality, I posit that space is socially produced at the same time that it molds our behavior and way of thinking, thus revealing our identity (Ehrenfeucht, 2002: 10). According to Soja (1996: 23), as a society we can produce oppressive and constraining spaces directly affecting our quality of life, and therefore communal control over space production becomes a political objective of the utmost importance.

466834LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X12466834LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVESValenzuela Aguilera / SOCIAL CONTROL OF SPACE IN LATIN AMERICA2012

Alfonso Valenzuela-Aguilera is a professor of urban planning at the State University of Morelos. Mariana Ortega Brea is a freelance translator based in Canberra, Australia.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 189, Vol. 40 No. 2, March 2013 21-34DOI: 10.1177/0094582X12466834 2013 Latin American Perspectives

at PONTIFICIA UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE CHILE on January 21, 2015lap.sagepub.comDownloaded from

22 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

If the current urban Latin America landscape is oriented toward the fortification of territory, military occupation, and armed confrontation, it may be up to the citizenry to recover urban social space and exercise its rights to the city.

For some scholars (Souza, 2008: 5; Wacquant, 2008: 5674), the militarization of cities is a direct effect of the socioeconomic polarization caused by the appli-cation of neoliberal policies to marginalized populations. Issues of race, social status, poverty, and impunity also play a leading role in the strengthening of a punitive state. The neoliberal economic environment generates economic polarization and greater spatial differentiation, and this leads to a symbiosis between informality, illegality, and violence (Parnreiter, 2003: 174). Meanwhile, illicit activities generate more state coercion, repression, and violence, largely on a territorial level. Latin American cities, however, are immersed in a com-plex sociopolitical transition in which alternatives for a social solution to the problem appear alongside repressive forces.

This article analyzes the institutional response to growing insecurity and violence in three Latin American countries that have opted for the military approach: Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. While each of these cases has its indi-vidual features, there are important parallels in terms of the fragility of institu-tions, the hardening of the governmental response, and the existence of a citizenry that demands alternatives for change. According to Lupsha (1996), crime may combine with institutional corruption in a symbiotic relationship in which organized crime becomes part of the structures of the state, with the two sometimes operating as a unit. In addition to this, the deterioration of the rule of law fuels instability that, along with living conditions, the uncontrolled flow of weapons, and the constant demand for drugs in the illegal U.S. drug market, maintains a structure through violent methods drawn from the illegal circuit of the economy. With the deterioration of a culture of legality and the rule of law, organized crime becomes part of the state, and it is no longer clear who is within the law and who is outside it (Chabat and Bailey, 2011).

The first section discusses Brazil, a state with clear signs of militarization. Here I focus not on the industrial prison system described by Wacquant (2008) but on the territorial effects of elite military occupation of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro vis--vis social initiatives such as Viva Rio and environmental improvement pro-grams. I next look at the strategies implemented in Colombia, where Bogot mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Pealosa managed to reduce criminality substantially, although this trend will depend on the continued operation of social welfare programs. The final case explores how ordinary crime joined with organized crime in Mexico City, where corrective measures have alternated with populist ones. The insecurity in this city is now exceeded by the violence across the rest of the country, where military occupations now take place on a daily basis. The last section establishes parallels among the three cases, emphasizing the spatial and territorial implications of current security policies.

Brazil and The OccupaTiOn Of Marginal urBan TerriTOry

Brazil has an extensive history of authoritarianism arising from numerous military dictatorships (the last one ended in 1985); the police are used to operating


Valenzuela Aguilera / SOCIAL CONTROL OF SPACE IN LATIN AMERICA 23

outside the law. During the 1990s, violence soared in Latin America, giving way to a culture of fear. At a time when no distinctions were being made among causes, symptoms, and effects, reactive paranoia transformed parts of urban space into bunkers, citadels, or gated communities. In the favelas of Rio, com-pensatory mechanisms would eventually be diluted by the entry of large-scale organized drug traffickers who assumed power over the favelas by controlling the drug market. According to Ventura (1994: 14), the current violence in Brazil is not civil war but a postmodern war contingent upon both the military arts and market forces. In his view, no force operation will make sense unless the expulsion of the criminal minority is accompanied by a citizens action that incorporates the mass of the excluded. The excluded or marginalized have become the target of rampant urban militarization, and, according to Wacquant (2008: 56), they are the product of a lack of state intervention in the economic and social realms.

Extreme socioeconomic polarization has a long history in Brazil and particu-larly in Rio de Janeiro, where in the 1930s the chief of police, General Amaury Kruel, set up a combat organization against the marginalized called the Special Proceedings Service, which had carte blanche to employ drastic measures in its campaign against bandits and criminals. This group, also called the death squad, combined police corruption, impunity, and violence in its efforts to clean up the city (Misse, 2010: 30). According to the secretary of the civil police, Nilo Batista, the culture of extermination is alive in the pores of the police and emerges at night like a beast ready to kill (Ventura, 1994: 67). The army occupied the city during the 1992 environmental summit in Rio, and the presence of the military in the streets stopped visible urban violence for a few months. During the conference, favela occupation became a way of restoring parts of the city and bringing them under the rules of the city of asphalt. The whole army was mobilizedmilitary police, civil police, army, air force, and navy, totaling about 15,000 troops. Areas adjacent to the summits headquar-ters were militarily occupied, and troops remained there later, accompanied by civic associations and citizen defense groups. The experiment lasted two weeks, during which there were only a few reported incidents. Nowadays, military police enter the favelas of Brazilian cities through combat operations in which territories are occupied with an unusual display of force. The recovery of ter-ritories held by drug gangs generates fear among residents, transfers the prob-lem to adjacent favelas, and helps feed the spiral of violence in areas that are already morally, economically, and socially degraded (Koonings and Veenstra, 2007: 631).

The control of the favelas by organized crime cannot be understood without considering the close collaboration of the criminal, prison, and police systems. The symbiosis mentioned by Lupsha (1996) creates an invisible structure shared by criminal organizations and the state. Another element of the Rio de Janeiro situation is the existence of militias whose power is concurrent with or parallel to that of the state. The militias are extralegal groupings made up of active police officers and firefighters (as well as former agents from various corporations), paramilitary units that undertake informal coercive measures. They charge money for protection, and, since they exist on the margins of the law, they assume a peculiar legitimacy because they are trained agents with insider information on illicit activities and the territory, fueling and igniting



unprecedented violence. A recent study (Cano and Carolina, 2008) shows that militias are currently competing for territorial control in the favelas. It would be reasonable to attribute the existence of these groups to the inefficacy of the state, but both they and the traffickers operate outside the law, commit serious crimes, and extract protection money from traders and residents alike.

According to Souza (2008), neighborhood improvement projects in the fave-las have met with external financial or institutional obstacles and formidable internal hindrances to their implementation. The increase in crime and the feel-ing of insecurity, the deterioration of the social climate, and the fragmentation of the urban fabric have worsened the favela environment beyond the prevail-ing socioeconomic conditions. Spatial structure is of the utmost importance to traffickers, who seek to block the main roads and privilege alternative routes that allow a quick escape from law enforcement. Therefore, a neighborhood improvement program such as the Favela-Bairro, which seeks to improve access and circulation and integrate the favela into the urban fabric, is bound to meet with opposition from criminal groups. Given the threats posed to workers, the authorities generally negotiate with traffickers to make the upgrading works possible (thus legitimizing the traffickers to the detriment of urban planning). In this context, the existence of a permanent and active com-munal police force threatens the control that criminal gangs have in the fave-las. Souza (2008: 115) refers to a story in O Globo reporting that a city ended up negotiating the completion of the Favela-Bairro improvements with the head of a drug cartel. In the same vein, a project for a cultural center at the top of a hill was vetoed by the neighborhood associations (including the areas small-scale drug traffickers) because it was a strategic observation and control point (Souza, 2008: 120). At the same time, we have improvement programs in an anti-neoliberal context such as the so-called Chavista missions in Venezuela, in which social programs directly funded by oil resources and employed within a patronage system have nevertheless attempted to improve the conditions of the population (Penfold-Becerra, 2007: 70). However, although the missions program served to achieve specific electoral goals, it failed to temper the grow-ing violence in Caracas that earned it the title of murder capital of the world in 2008 (Foreign Policy, 2008).

In July 2000, inspired by the experience of the Earth Summit, the Ministry of Public Security of the state of Rio de Janeiro and the Viva Rio Association launched an initiative to create a division of the military police called the Special-Areas Policing Group, which had as its objective the reduction of vio-lence through the confiscation of weapons, the banning of child participation in drug trafficking, and the elimination of violence and corruption in the police force. To achieve this, the police were to identify with social values of the com-munity. Members of the group were to be recruited from the regular ranks and, after a 90-day training course, would be responsible for patrolling the labyrinthine streets and alleys day and night, exposed to all kinds of attacks. However, the groups activities were to be linked to those of another, radically different group, the Special Police Operations Battalion, which would special-ize in armed confrontations and wear black uniforms with the symbol of a skull crossed by two machine guns.

After a revolt in a complex of favelas known as Cantagalo-Pavo-Pavozinho in the heart of the touristic area between Copacabana, Ipanema, and Lagoa and



as a result of local discontent regarding the alleged execution of five teenagers by members of the local police, the government decided to undertake the first military occupation of a favela under the new model. The housing complex had nearly 15,000 inhabitants to be guarded by 100 police, exceeding the possible number of trafficker soldiers. The strategy included visits by the commander of the special police division to schools, churches, and community associations to announce the police program. Two months later, the special-operations police entered with an impressive display of force, in broad daylight, to dis-courage any armed resistance. Once they had occupied the territory, the special-areas policing division came in and remained in the favela to prevent the return of traffickers and create a community council through which prob-lems could be addressed and solved in monthly meetings. During the first two years of the program, homicides were reduced to zero and drug traffickers either moved to other favelas (of which Rio has an estimated 700) or adapted to the new circumstances. Nonetheless, it is worrisome that 70 percent of offi-cers originally assigned to the operation had to be punished and removed from the program for corruption or excessive violence (Huguet and Szab de Carvalho, 2008). The program was weakened with subsequent changes in the government, demonstrating the fragility of such initiatives in an environment as corrupt and dysfunctional as the Brazilian one. In addition, achieving a real transformation of degraded urban areas through mere coercion is impossible; this must be accompanied by social actions that foster support among the citizenry.

cOlOMBia and The pOliTics Of ciTizen securiTy

Colombia also has a long history of violence, armed groups, and military confrontations. Standouts in recent history include the dismantling of the drug cartels during the 1990s and the war against drug trafficking and terrorism (including the guerrillas) known as the Plan Colombia, which had a severe impact on urban safety and quality of life.

The reconstruction of legality may be best exemplified by the strategy adopted in Bogot during that period, when the mayor personally supervised police performance and sought to harmonize formal laws with informal con-trols (such as social and moral norms) and the personal convictions of indi-viduals. In a context of serious social disintegration and little respect for life, the administration of Antanas Mockus (19951997 and 20012003) developed a civic culture program based on voluntary compliance with standards, mutual, peaceful, and spontaneous regulation among citizens, and other actions whose symbolic content maximized their pedagogical outcome. One of the biggest challenges was to reverse public indifference toward violence and criminal activities through the strengthening of civic culturethe mores, actions, and shared rules that generate a sense of belonging, facilitate urban coexistence, and produce respect for . . . the rights and duties of all citizens (Mockus, 2001: 7). The mayor was determined to educate the citizens while using Bogot as a social laboratory to test his theories involving symbolic action, humor, and metaphor and the creation of social capital through communal action. Relying on Jrgen Habermass (1984: 82) communication theory, in which dialogue creates social



capital, and the ideas of economics Nobel prizewinner Douglas C. North (1990: 37) with regard to the tension that exists between formal and informal rules, Mockus developed a strategy for recovering civic values in a general framework within which citizens would relate to each other in the future.

Mockus had the support of key actors in the private sector and civil society to bring the formal rules closer to the moral and cultural orientations of citi-zens. Public workshops explored alternative methods for the settlement of dis-putes. For instance, statistics regarding violent nighttime accidents led to a ban on the sale of alcohol after one in the morning. This was accompanied by the womens night initiative, which sought to question both machismo and the fact that men were the main perpetrators of violence. Another, more imagina-tive initiative was the implementation of a vaccine against violence: some 50,000 residents met with medical specialists to address acts of violence com-mitted by them or against them and received a symbolic injection.

Along with a major police reform, other initiatives such as the public safety schools (Acero, 2002: 464) educated the public on the obligations and opera-tion of police forces (in 2004, almost 37,000 citizens participated in these schools). Mockus worked on citizen attitudes and civility but also on opera-tional matters such as the creation of 7,000 community police groups and dis-armament campaigns, lowering the murder rate from 80 to 28 per 100,000 inhabitants during his second term (20012003). While Mockuss leadership and discourse played an important role in giving credibility to these proposals, the transformation of the police system and its link to the citizenry must also be highlighted. A new organic statute for the city was needed so that these security and coexistence initiatives could be implemented and institutions could be cleaned up to provide a good starting point for following administra-tions. Mockus began his administration prioritizing the defense of life and took reducing urban insecurity as a personal responsibility, using a mechanism of lateral reform (Moncada, 2009). He used criminological statistics as a politi-cal tool, collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information and amassing it in the then newly created Observatory for Violence and Crime, in addition to allocating more funds to a wide range of projects. He situated his antiviolence campaigns in a public health framework, calling for reduced consumption of alcohol, family dispute resolution, attention to youths at risk, accident preven-tion, disarmament, etc.

The administration of Enrique Pealosa, Mockuss successor, put greater emphasis on the transformation of urban space through compelling projects that generated divergent reactions among citizens. Inspired by former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Pealosa implemented strategies that encouraged pub-lic intervention to recover urban space. Among the most publicized interven-tions were Avenida Caracas (where one of the first lines of the Transmilenio urban rapid transport was installed) and the Third Millennium Park, established in the area known as El Cartucho (The Cartridge), which housed illicit activities such as small-scale drug dealing and the black market as well as the marginal population of the city. At the same time, Pealosa focused on public works as a way of creating social capital and increased the effectiveness and punitive capac-ity of the authorities. While security costs doubled during his administration, law enforcement mechanisms also became more efficient: there was a 500 percent increase in detentions of wanted criminals, and weapons confiscation tripled.



During these three administrations (including a second term for Mockus) the national police force underwent an important reform that sought to bring it closer to the citizenry, creating sources of local security through community policing programs and neighborhood watches. It is possible that the greatest contribution of the Bogot experience was reversing social indifference to vio-lence and crime and encouraging citizen participation in the construction of safe spaces.

The harmonization of basic individual regulatory systems (law, morality, and culture) represents a significant contribution both as a conceptual frame-work within which to locate violence and as the basis for the design of inclu-sive public policies. Mockuss police reform was supported by the creation of the Unified System of Information on Violence and Crime, which replicated the epidemiological approach to crime implemented by the former mayor of Cali, Rodrigo Guerrero (19921994). Making crime incidence statistics avail-able to the public was a landmark in terms of police transparency and commit-ment to the plausible improvement of urban security (Guerrero and Concha-Eastman, 2001).

Although there were changes in the institutional structure of security and management improvement during the Mockus administration, the success of the program was based on changing the attitudes of citizens and making them aware of their responsibility for maintaining the quality of urban life. Apparently, the mayors decision to implement a policy of security and coexistence, along with his security council and a specialized office, was instrumental in reducing crime rates. Concurrent measures such as curfews on the sale of alcohol to reduce accidental deaths, training of police officers in human rights, and active disarma-ment campaigns fostered a culture of abuse denunciation, vindication of police conditions and labor rights, and, of course, the purging of corrupt members.

One of the focal points regarding human coexistence was the construction or rehabilitation of more than 3,000 parks in the past decade, allowing citizens to reclaim urban space while strengthening a sense of belonging through the per-ception of a safer city. The Third Millennium Park, in the neighborhood of Santa Ins in Bogot, recovered a downtown area that had become popu-lated by indigents in the mid-twentieth century. The area was remodeled fol-lowing a neoliberal logic on how to enhance the value of the land while, at the same time, making quality space available to citizens.

MexicO and The MiliTarizaTiOn Of lOcal and naTiOnal TerriTOry

In 2002 the left-wing mayor of Mexico City, Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, hired the Giuliani Group as consultants on the subject of the fight against crime. On the one hand, the ideological distance between the leaders did not seem to affect the way in which the problem of insecurity was to be framed, and, on the other, the US$4.3 billion costs were largely covered by Carlos Slim Hel, the owner of much of the real estate in the downtown urban area, which was already a laboratory for the Giuliani Groups model (Davis, 2007: 640). State security strategy in Mexico allowed entrepreneurs such as Slim and public and political officials of the most varied types to rally around social control strategies that are



often justified using the most disparate arguments. The pursuit of short-term results and Lpez Obradors presidential ambitions seemed to dictate the public safety agenda; projects were not coherently structured to overcome the condi-tions that generate crime (Valenzuela, 2005: 27).

While Giulianis recommendations were not directly applied as public poli-cies, they had a direct impact on security-related legislation and served to frame the problem from the point of view of effects rather than causes. The citizen response to Giulianis recommendations was to portray them as decontextual-ized solutions lacking the necessary perspective for a problem so complex and territorial. The secretary of public security, Marcelo Ebrard, had some reserva-tions about the Giuliani report and sought the advice of a New Yorkbased non-governmental organization specializing in human rights (the Lawyers Committee for Human RightsLCHR), which issued an expert opinion on it. It hailed the initiative to modernize proposed operations but warned that the rec-ommendations did not constitute a strategic plan in themselves. It also high-lighted the fact that the report presented a limited view of community participation and did not provide the public-information components needed to ensure the confidence of the people. The assessment also stressed that the Giuliani proposal should be subjected to significant public debate. In view of its contro-versial nature, consideration of alternatives and a careful assessment of the pos-sible effects of its application in Mexico were both suggested (LCHR, 2003). At the same time, once the Giuliani recommendations had been dismissed as not viable for application, territorial occupations began to take place in conflictive areas, street vendors were harassed, and the Law of Civic Culture was enacted. All of this hinted at an authoritarian attitude. In the same vein and during its first year, the Ebrard administration announced the imminent hiring of 4,000 police officers to patrol the urban streets and the purchase and installation of 12,000 CCTV cameras across the length and breadth of the Federal District, turning the capital into the most surveilled city in the world (Lagunas, 2008).

According to Wacquant (2002: 7), the adoption of policies based on theories such as broken windows or programs such as zero tolerance entails a coer-cive approach to crime in response to recent state-based structural transforma-tions. While the root causes have been framed as a matter of total government responsibility, other sectors identify crime as the responsibility of the individ-ual, without any regard for structural issues such as power and wealth asym-metries, unemployment, or the progressive disappearance of the most basic social services. Wacquant (2002: 10) goes even farther to suggest that, as a direct result of the delegation of public functions to private companies, a punishment industry has been established, subverting the original meaning of the penalties and sentences issued to violators of the social order. The promotion of the pri-vate security market is related to the concept of the prison-industrial complex, whereby a network of interest groups engaged in the construction, mainte-nance, and operation of the prison system promotes the expansion of a coercive police state (Schlosser, 1998).

Coercion and monitoring trends in Mexico appear to be leading to a punitive police state, especially since the 2006 presidential election, when President Felipe Caldern declared a unilateral war on drugs and assigned a budget of almost US$46 billion to it during the first three years of his administration



(Arteaga and Jimnez, 2010). In fact, early presidential pronouncements regard-ing severe cuts in social spending and significant increases in the security bud-get did not surprise political analysts or citizens in general. Although the international media initially highlighted Calderns actions as necessary, his methods are still being questioned in the light of ongoing corruption and inter-ests involving the structure of organized crime.

Using a strategy inspired by Plan Colombia, Caldern immediately launched a frontal attack on some of the cartels in cities of strategic impor-tance for the drug trade (Tijuana, Jurez, Culiacn, Monterrey, and others). As in Colombia, these interventions failed to reduce either violence or the demand for narcotics but demonstrated apparent military control over the territory and may have concentrated the market into a reduced number of increasingly violent and more powerful cartels. Caldern took the Colombian antidrug strategy as a model, to such an extent that in 2011 thousands of Mexican soldiers and police officers were being trained by their Colombian counterparts as, funded by the government of U.S. President Barack Obama, they learned techniques for fighting subversive groups (Forero, 2011). The militarization of the struggle against drug trafficking has been interpreted as a territorial control mechanism meant to legitimize an administration ques-tioned from the beginning. In this regard, it is interesting that the subsequent mayor of Mexico City, the progressive Ebrard, adopted control patterns sim-ilar to those of Caldern, even under a socialized agenda, promoting high-impact operations, coercion, surveillance, and incarceration as means to recover parts of the capital.

In this context, while some sectors of the population welcomed the replace-ment of 3,000 police officers with soldiers in 1997, today the trend it set appears to have aggravated the prevailing conditions. On the one hand, the militariza-tion of police forces was based on the assumption that only the army could reestablish order and discipline. However, a militarized regime generally responds to the authoritarian sectors of society, for which social control must be applied through coercive means rather than through negotiation. On the other hand, while the police target citizens who act outside the law and must be punished, the military identifies an enemy (there are no citizens) that must be neutralized or eliminated. It is no wonder, then, that the strategies used in the fight against crime in recent years have been based on blitzing, raids, and territorial occupations of which the local authorities are unaware, given the corruption prevailing throughout the chain of command. These operations are often a response to some event that has caused popular outrage. The underly-ing rationale is that, given the extensive network of corruption and complicity across all levels of the command structure, it is necessary to act categorically and unpredictably.

In one of the diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks (Cable 228419 2009-10-05 20: 26: 00/Embassy Mexico/Classification: Confidential), a senior U.S. Embassy official in Mexico noted that the army acknowledged that the Mexican government had no control over several parts of the country, which were in the hands of the cartels. However, the territorial dimension has been present for several years and became evident for the first time during the military mobili-zations in Michoacn in 2006, which included occupation by 5,000 troops,



checkpoints, searches, arrest warrants, and the dismantling of plantations and drug sales points. At the time, the former minister of the interior stated that one of the three priorities of the administration of the President of the Republic, Felipe Caldern Hinojosa, was to strengthen the security of the Mexican people and their families in all regions of the country. This would immediately recover the public spaces organized crime has taken over, and this recovery would put an end to the impunity so far enjoyed by offenders who endanger the health of the youth and communal peace (Residencia Oficial de los Pinos, 2006). The operation was to serve as a basis for a comprehensive strategy for the preven-tion of crime.

The mobilization of tens of thousands of people on August 20, 2008, to pro-test crime and the institutional inability to curtail it testifies to the urgency civil society feels with regard to this matter and its importance for the consolidation of the emerging Mexican democracy. While the most audible questioning has come from entrepreneurs and members of the upper class who have been vic-tims of serious crime (e.g., the kidnapping of the children of Fernando Mart, Nelson Vargas, and Isabel Miranda de Wallace), most of the victims of drug trafficking belong to the lower-income classes (Bergman and Azaola, 2007). The widespread demand for concrete and effective action to deal with crime has taken two forms. The first is the demand for the toughening of sentences for criminals and an increase in police powers to investigate and prevent crime. The second is the transformation of the organizational structure that makes impunity and corruption possible.

cOnclusiOn: TOward a MiliTarizaTiOn Of laTin aMerican ciTies

The cases of Rio de Janeiro, Bogot, and Mexico City intersect on the follow-ing points: power and legitimacy, the strengthening of coercive responses, social control, and the territorialization of violence.

pOwer and legiTiMacy

Power is exercised in order to control the environment, behavior, and socie-ties. It uses force as an instrument of authority that may or may not be per-ceived as legitimate. Charles Tilly (1985: 173) argues that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate force is a mere social and cultural conven-tion. During state-formation processes, the distinction between such forces is not completely recognizable, and several groups claim the right to use vio-lence. Once the state is consolidated and claims a monopoly of violence, the distinction between the two types of violence emerges. Tillys point is that vio-lence creates states and maintains and perpetuates them as long as the popula-tion considers the application of force legitimate. Power is not only held by the state; the citizenry and criminal groups may exercise it with different levels of effectiveness, legitimacy, and social control. Latin American cities are undergo-ing a process of accelerated social disintegration in which violence, fear, and murder are becoming everyday and socially accepted practice. If we assume



that isolation leads to fear, then to come to terms, one must understand what fear means: what it implies and what it rejects. It implies and rejects the same fact: a world where murder is legitimate, and where human life is considered trifling (Camus, 2002 [1986]: 50).

All three cases have a recent past of governmental authoritarianism, corrup-tion, and impunity and mistrust of institutions. They entail, to a greater or lesser degree, symbiotic relationships wherein organized crime has merged with the structures of the state (Lupsha, 1996: 480). While the corruption of the forces of order in Mexico and Brazil is evident, Colombia also has weak insti-tutional control over paramilitary groups in various areas of the country (Organizaciones Sociales y de Derechos Humanos Europeas, 2009). Ultimately, the effective reduction of violence accomplished in Bogot by Mockus and Pealosa is conceivable only in the framework of the legal and administrative changes in the police force and the justice system.

The sTrengThening Of cOercive respOnses

Latin American countries are mostly building what Wacquant calls punitive states, in which institutions of power can engage in large-scale acts of legiti-mate violence in more effective and efficient ways and with the support and collaboration of both their citizenry and neighboring organizations and coun-tries. This hardening of government response is evident in Mexico, where at least 60,000 deaths have been tied to drug trafficking in the past five years, while Colombia and Brazil have a complex history of paramilitary groups, militias, and cartels. Mayors have also succumbed to the temptation of using force to control territory: while Marcelo Ebrard based his strategy on electronic surveillance, increased policing, and blitzing, Cesar Maia won election in Rio de Janeiro with a discourse of adherence to law and order and implemented the military occupation of the favelas. As a counterpoint, Antanas Mockus employed the alternative strategy of harmonizing formal and informal laws, agreements, and the recognition of shared rules.

dissOciaTiOn BeTween The pOliTical class and The ciTizenry

A dissociation between citizen-based pacifist or reconstruction movements and politicians, who exhibit limited sensitivity and tend to address the issue of security to advance their careers, is also noteworthy. Ebrard, Mockus, Pealosa, and Lpez Obrador have all sought the presidency, while Maia was reelected three times in Rio de Janeiro; progress on security issues is often subject to the political capital the issue can attract. Although Maia has promoted the Viva Rio and Favela-Bairro initiatives, his administration has also been criticized for increasing corruption and impunity. According to Hannah Arendt (1993 [1958]), societies in which the individual is characterized by separateness, lack of identity, and lack of social relations are totalized societies. Violence leads to citizens retreat from the public space, the atomization of social relations, isolation, and, therefore, the weakening of the social ties that counterbalance the states control and power of coercion. Totalitarianism depends on social disintegration. The fewer the links among citizens, the broader the field of



maneuver for repressive governments seeking to justify the autocratic proce-dures conferred on them in absentia.

sOcial cOnTrOl and The TerriTOrializaTiOn Of viOlence

Social control consists of mechanisms for regulating individual and societal behavior, establishing agreements and codes of conduct that allow coexistence. Promoting the recognition of common standards and laws in an environment with high levels of state corruption and contempt for life was a substantial achievement of Bogots Mockus. Citizens regained control of territory, and social action substantially lowered crime rates. In contrast, Pealosa initiated territorial occupations through authoritarian interventions and with little con-sensus. In the case of Brazil, the militarized option is gaining strength, but the former head of Rio de Janeiros police has stated that there has never been a medium- or long-term security policy, that military interventions in the favelas are merely for show, and that traffickers are not enemies of the state but part of it (Etchichury, 2010). In Mexico, crime plays a very powerful economic role, even ranking above remittances from the United States (National Drug Intelligence Center, 2010), and the struggle for territorial control between the military and organized crime has tilted toward the latter.

The weakness of the urban social fabric does not allow for the prolonged existence of safe territories; on the contrary, criminal groups find a desirable space to control and manage, and there is not enough social cohesion to recover these territories. In this regard, it is important to note that organized crime in Latin America has a territorial structure. Criminal organizations supremacy is demonstrated by their appropriation of different plazas, and this has become a transnational phenomenon in places held by criminal networks in both Latin and North America (Ayres, 1998).

Lenin characterized the twentieth century as one of wars and revolutions, one in which violence became the common denominator. However, at the end of World War II, Albert Camus called it the century of fear (Camus, 2002 [1986]). The burgeoning twenty-first century may be casting itself as the century of anxiety, one in which the collapse of institutions and a changing, volatile envi-ronment without rules could undermine individual security. Nowadays, the legitimacy of state violence remains an open question.

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