There used to be clear rules: no one would steal in the shantytown. If and when they stole, they would do it outside the shantytown. Now, they rob you in the shantytown and everywhere.
—“Las cuatro chapas del desamparo”
The past few decades in Latin America and the Caribbean have witnessed a series of economic, social, and political transitions that have changed the patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Movements within the region, including migration from rural areas, related rapid urbanization, institutional change, and the slow growth of formal employment, reinforce the population’s historical reliance on informal mechanisms and transactions for survival. The judicial and law enforcement systems have only weakly adapted to the new challenges and continue to leave large segments of society without adequate access to justice and economic and physical security.
As Figure 10.1 shows, regional rates of homicide in some Latin American and Caribbean countries reach levels typically seen only in those areas ravaged by war. Yet the battles that are generating this carnage are taking place not in war zones, but within socially excluded communities in Latin America, fought not by soldiers and guerrillas, but by a minority that uses violence to fulfill its needs. Within such communities, residents cannot depend on those institutions designed to protect them, and violence becomes an instrument to achieve certain outcomes, such as justice, security, and economic gain through means that disrupt the life of the community. Where justice is acquired through revenge, security through violent assertion of authority, and economic gain through robbing, mugging, and intimidation, the vast majority of law-abiding residents are left without options. In such communities, people have come to recognize the person next door not as a neighbor, the policeman not as a protector, the community leader not as a consensus builder, but each as a potential threat. Many studies, ranging from anthropological fieldwork in the marginalized areas of shantytowns, favelas, barrios, and villas (Caldeira, 2000; Márquez, 1999; Goldstein, 2003) to advanced geospatial studies that record incidences of violence (Beato, 2002; Consejo de Seguridad, 2006), report that homicide rates are much higher in these neighborhoods than in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods.
Social exclusion is a contributing factor to violent outcomes, regardless of whether violence takes place in a developed Western European country or in a burgeoning Central American state. Those who resort to violent acts most often lack access to legitimate economic opportunities and the personal or social contacts required to obtain many of the services and resources available to mainstream society. When conventional methods of obtaining and working for increased social status, higher income, and wider influence are limited, as they often are in marginalized areas, some feel compelled to resort to what the mainstream considers illegitimate means, including violent acts (Reiss and Roth, 1993). Residents of socially excluded communities are well aware of the lack of options available to them and the consequences of lacking the money to pay off corrupt police and judges, the influence to avoid extortion, or the confidence to resist gang recruitment. For those with few or no prospects for economic advancement, profitable opportunities to be gained through illicit and violent means serve as a deadly magnet. As state institutions fail to provide security and justice, others—such as violent community leaders, gangs, or corrupt police—may step in to mete out alternative forms of justice and revenge.
Issues of security, authority, justice, identity, and economics are tangible in the violent acts used to secure them in socially excluded areas, beyond the influence of state institutions and mainstream paradigms of conflict resolution. The consequences are severe and further sap scarce resources from Latin American and Caribbean countries that are treading a rough road towards economic development and modernization of democratic institutions. Violence eats away at the delicate social fabric that holds communities together through difficult economic, social, and political periods and shatters the trust, security, and solidarity that take years to build. This chapter discusses how social exclusion and violence interact in a vicious circle that leaves the socially excluded in a very hostile social environment where the borders between legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate are often fuzzy and uncertain. In this environment violence is used by a minority to acquire justice, security, authority, and economic gain. The use of violence by this minority, however, affects the lives of the majority of excluded people who do not resort to violence.
VIOLENCE DEFINED
Violence is generally described as “an intentional use of force or power with a predetermined end by which one or more persons produce physical, mental (psychological), or sexual injury, limit freedom of movement, or cause the death of another person or persons (including him or herself)” (Concha-Eastman, 2002: 44). For the purposes of relating violence to social exclusion, the focus is on violence fueled by the need for power and economic opportunities. Interpersonal and domestic violence also has indirect and direct external effects that perpetuate violence throughout a community. As shown in Table 10.1, violence in Latin America and the Caribbean is most often perpetrated by family members, gangs, common delinquents, assailants unknown to the victim, or acquaintances. Other perpetrators may include corrupt policemen and extrajudicial forces. Their victims—family members, street children, acquaintances, the general population, rival gang members, or at higher levels, government or civil society leaders—are victims of abuse, homicide, injuries, assaults, and robberies (Concha-Eastman, 2002).
A prolific amount of research is available on violence, some of which has focused specifically on Latin America (e.g., Concha-Eastman, 2002; Dowdney, 2005; Morrison, Buvinic´, and Shifter, 2003; Reiss and Roth, 1993; Fajnzylber, Lederman, and Loayza, 1998; Londoño, Gaviria, and Guerrero, 2000; Moser and McIlwaine, 2000, 2001; Rotker, 2002; Riaño-Alcalá, 2006; Moser, Winton, and Moser, 2003). Those who study violent outcomes generally agree that a large number of factors contribute to the problem. Various structural and cultural characteristics present in a community may interact with both individual and social factors to produce a set of behavioral outcomes, both among individuals and throughout the community. Crowded housing conditions, high levels of migration in and out of a community, increasing numbers of single-parent households, and economic decline may all significantly affect the amount of violence in a community by contributing to the breakdown of social capital (Morrison, Buvinic´, and Shifter, 2003; Reiss and Roth, 1993). Availability of guns, media portrayals of violence, the aftermath of civil war, and changing cultural norms all play a part in inducing violence in a community (Morrison, Buvinic´, and Shifter, 2003). Age, socioeconomic level, employment status, drug or alcohol abuse, early exposure to aggressive stimuli or violence, and experience as a victim of or witness to physical or psychological abuse can also predispose individuals towards violent acts (Morrison, Buvinic´, and Shifter, 2003).
Economic conditions factor into the incidence of crime and delinquency in a community, including the average income, the income distribution of the society in which the community is embedded, and the level of education (Fajnzylber, Lederman, and Loayza, 1998). Gender also has a significant effect on an individual’s propensity to use violence, as males may be predisposed to more violence for a number of physiological, cultural, or situational reasons, such as higher rates of alcohol and drug use and economic pressure to provide for their families.
In socially excluded communities, including some indigenous communities, fieldwork has shown that these areas suffer more from violence than those at higher socioeconomic levels (Caldeira, 2000; Heinemann and Verner, 2006, citing Borjas, 1995; Katzman, 1999, quoted in Buvinic´, Morrison, and Orlando, 2002). A study in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte showed that socially excluded areas such as slums, where “several social welfare and life quality indicators . . . were considerably inferior [in comparison] to other [areas] of the city,” had higher numbers of homicides (Beato, 2002: 3). Such areas had higher percentages of employment in the informal sector, higher child mortality and illiteracy rates, and poorly developed urban infrastructure. Peixoto, Moro, and Viegas Andrade (2004) also found that homicides in Belo Horizonte are concentrated in less-developed areas such as favelas and are correlated with ecological factors such as social and physical disorder. Homicide rates are negatively associated with the level of infrastructure development and positively associated with longer police response time. Agencies that record death statistics in São Paulo reported in 1995 that those areas with the highest rates of murder (between 75 and 96 murders per 100,000 inhabitants) were some of the poorest in the region, while those with the lowest rates were located in richer areas (Caldeira and Holston, 1999). Surveys of Bogotá, Mexico City, and Santiago, Chile, show that the poorest and most marginalized areas of these cities report the highest homicide rates (Consejo de Seguridad, 2006; Fundación Mexicana para la Salud and Centro de Economía y Salud, 1998; Silva Lira, 2000).
THE ROLES OF VIOLENCE: JUSTICE, SECURITY, AUTHORITY, AND ECONOMIC GAIN
In socially excluded communities in Latin America, violence emerges with diverse causes and distinct aims. This section addresses the aims of violence, including for what and how it is used in these communities. An important note should be made here: while violence is pervasive in many marginalized areas and has a serious impact on the lives of most residents, the majority of people living in these areas do not resort to and use violence. The media, politicians, and residents of the middle and upper classes often sensationalize reports of violence and label communities as dangerous (in what Moser and McIlwaine [2000: 68, 2001: 106] call “area stigma”), leaving the impression that most, if not all, residents in these areas resort to constant aggressive behavior. This is far from the case. Most residents, including young males, try to avoid and ignore violence for fear of the consequences of becoming involved and escalating the dangers present to them. Nonetheless, many residents succumb to the feeling that they have no power to stop violence.
For those residents of these communities who do resort to violence, several factors contribute to their decision to do so. In the absence of a strong, legitimate, and equitable state presence and of opportunities available to mainstream society, communities must locally construct alternative means of satisfying their needs and ensuring a sense of order. When crime increases or employment opportunities decline, the population of such communities suffers from a lack of physical and economic security. When this is combined with the pressures of globalization, consumerism, and inequality, community residents may view alternative forms of authority, work, and control as the means to assuage insecurity and may resort to taking matters into their own hands (Caldeira, 2000). In some cases, residents of marginalized communities have been able to work together to ensure public safety and the provision of public services, as in the widely noted case of Villa El Salvador in Lima (Woolcock, 2005).[1] In other circumstances, however, those who take control do so with intentions or means not in the community’s best interest.
Members of socially excluded communities who employ violence do so in order to achieve one or more of the following aims: asserting authority and visibility, acquiring cultural identity, enforcing security, meting out vigilante justice, or achieving economic goals. In areas where social capital has eroded and insecurity is prevalent, some people build literal and figurative walls between themselves and their communities, utilize private forms of security, support vigilante groups, or turn a blind eye to private and illegal acts of extrajudicial vengeance (Caldeira, 2000). Others may abandon conventional standards of working in formalized labor sectors, as the opportunities available to socially excluded people are substandard, stagnant in the sense of offering no prospect for use as a stepping-stone to better opportunities, or nonexistent. Within this context, some individuals may view the use of violence as a superior method of meeting certain tangible needs.
The Informal Privatization of Justice
A key aim of violence in socially excluded communities is the provision of justice, most often through some form of violent punishment. The lack of a fair and functional judicial system, including adequate legal representation, unbiased rulings, due process of law, and preservation of human rights, may force citizens to abandon justice through normative institutional means and instead take the law into their own hands or to depend on others to resolve conflicts for them (Concha-Eastman, 2002). For many socially excluded members of society, courts, judges, juries, and a fair trial are beyond the means of their connections and beyond their expectations.
Even among the Latin American population as a whole, there is little confidence in the judicial system. Figure 10.2 shows the results of a 2005 Latinobarometer question that found that two-thirds of those surveyed expressed little or no confidence in the judicial system in their country, while only 22 percent reported having “some” confidence in the judiciary. Only 9 percent of respondents reported having “a lot” of trust in their country’s judicial system. Given that this survey included people in the middle and upper classes, who generally have adequate access to judicial institutions, it may be reasonably hypothesized that the percentage of the population reporting confidence in the judicial system would be even lower in socially excluded communities.
When judicial systems fail to adequately serve certain segments of the population, citizens may be inclined to formulate their own standards of justice and devise their own methods for meting it out. An international study conducted by Children in Organized Armed Violence found that in those areas characterized by a weak state presence, armed groups tended to oversee and judge disputes within their communities, even among those residents unaffiliated with their groups (Dowdney, 2005). In her fieldwork in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Goldstein (2003) describes the use of revenge, homicide, and brutal punishment by various actors—gangs, bandits, police, and individuals—as a substitute for an absent or nonfunctioning judicial system. When the state fails to provide security and services in the favelas, gangs may intervene as a mediating force and provide a form of justice to which community members are willing to turn a blind eye (Goldstein, 2003). While these gang members engage in illegal activities, they also fill in for the justice system, and this dual role often induces neighboring citizens to tolerate and excuse their actions.
Fieldwork in socially excluded and impoverished communities in Colombia also reveals the use of vigilante measures and violence as a means of achieving justice. Reporting the results of a series of interviews with young men, Moser and McIlwaine (2000) note their frequent utilization of force and violence, often referred to as the “law of the strongest” and the “law of knives.” A different study by the same authors revealed that in many cases of violence and force, residents felt that taking the law into individual or group hands was the only means available to them, given the lack of available alternatives, their mistrust of state institutions, and rampant corruption (Moser and McIlwaine, 2000). Statistics collected by authorities in Bogotá throughout 2005 consistently reveal that the most common reason behind homicides is revenge, covering both murder due to honor and that related to debt (SUIVD, 2006).
The use of extrajudicial means of conflict resolution may have adverse consequences for the community as well as those actors who resolve conflict through violence. High death rates of young males in socially excluded areas may be explained by cycles of revenge among rival gangs or the escalation of interpersonal conflicts among those who do not see the justice system as having an active role (Goldstein, 2003). Community residents who want to avoid violence and resolve conflicts through institutional means may be afraid to do so, as it could put their own safety in jeopardy. One young woman in an Argentine neighborhood expressed her concern about reporting drug dealers on the street to the police for fear that she would suffer retaliation. She explained in an interview that she was “scared to talk to the police because [she] could be killed” and that recording criminal acts with a camera “would be [her] death or the death of [her family].” Given this fear, she instead chose silence.[2]
The lack of institutionalized forms of justice allows various actors to step in and provide justice for a select few in their own interests and for their own gain. Those who may be opposed to these actors or have little or no access to a legitimate judicial system are left with few options. The failure on the part of the state to adequately provide justice not only affects those who deserve legal rights and judicial action, but also forces community residents to submit to the adverse informal institutions created and maintained by vigilante actors.
Security
Beyond the aims of imparting informal forms of justice, violence is also used in socially excluded communities as a means of acquiring security. The absence of state-provided security and the high degree of mistrust of the police subsequently forces communities to resort to alternative sources of protection. Violence is employed for resistance against competing actors and interests, including corrupt policemen, extrajudicial forces, rival gangs, and common vandalism in the community. In some favelas of Rio de Janeiro, drug lords and gangs involved in organized crime provide community members with security and other services, such as money to pay for food, medicine, or child care, creating incentives for residents to refrain from reporting their actions to the authorities. Since the state is unable to provide these services—and those state entities responsible for providing such services act as a “corrupt,” “repressive,” or mistrusted force—the services are valuable to residents who otherwise would not have them (Moser, Winton, and Moser, 2003: 73). Widespread mistrust of institutions such as the police is common throughout the region. The Latinobarometer annual survey of public opinion consistently reveals little or no public confidence in the police. Figure 10.3 shows that in 2005, 61 percent of Latinobarometer respondents have “little” or no confidence in the police. Moser and McIlwaine (2000) note that the police are the least-trusted institution in many Colombian barrios, where many of their interviewees believed the police to be unreliable and likely to exacerbate conflict. Fieldwork in Caracas, Venezuela, exposed similar perceptions of the need to acquire security—especially to defend the community from the police forces. One Venezuelan youth who had spent considerable time living on the streets of Caracas explained that while he believed the police used to be less violent, “Now they catch you on the streets and in front of everybody they throw tear gas at your face. They also beat and kick you . . . as if you were a dog” (quoted in Márquez, 1999: 213).
Lack of faith in and frustration with the police is also evident in a number of interviews conducted in 2006 in various neighborhoods in Argentina. Interviewed residents often responded that the police rarely or only weakly responded to threats facing their community. One 17-year-old male complained that “The police don’t come or they come and do nothing. There is so much crime. . . . I want the police to come and do something.”[3] Lack of faith in the police discourages many victims of crime from turning to them for help. The 2000 Latinobarometer asked interviewees to whom they turn after a criminal or violent incident; as Figure 10.4 shows, less than half (44.6 percent) indicated they turn to the police, while 40.5 percent said that they do not report their victimization to anyone.
Given such lack of confidence in the police and the absence of institutions that adequately ensure security and peace within Latin American and Caribbean countries—and more so in socially excluded communities—it is no wonder that there is friction within these areas as others step in. When the police are viewed as no better than the criminals they are supposed to protect against, citizens feel they have no options but to remain silent or take matters into their own hands.
Authority through Visibility
Violence may also be used to assert authority in situations where it is lacking and to demand the visibility of socially excluded individuals. In areas where state institutions are absent and police are corrupt or perceived as having little authority, members of the community and various social groups may step in with the intention of exerting power, influence, and control. Caldeira (2000: 91) reported, based on her fieldwork in Rio’s favelas, that “Crime is a matter of authority. The people . . . think that the increase in crime is a sign of weak authority, be it of the school, family, mother, church, government, police, or justice system.”
The need to vent frustration and to acquire a feeling of authority and visibility through attention—albeit negative attention—may also induce certain individuals to resort to violence. After a former street child from Rio de Janeiro took passengers on a public bus hostage for a number of hours, an incident that eventually ended in his violent death (CNN, 2000; Padilha, 2002), sociologist and former Brazilian Minister of Public Security Eduardo Soares commented:
A boy with a gun can make us feel . . . fear. . . . He can recover his visibility and affirm his social and human existence. . . . It’s a pact: the boy exchanges his future, his life, his soul, for . . . the small glory of being acknowledged [and] valued. (quoted in Padilha, 2002)
Those who either assert their power in the absence of legitimate institutions or who feel the need to externally force themselves upon society to assuage their feelings of invisibility use violence in order to establish their authority, power, and influence. Riaño-Alcalá (2006) notes that violence among youth in Colombia is directly related to social exclusion and the invisibility of those who come from poor areas. Such youth have little connection with society and are excluded from those mainstream areas and public spaces where social interaction generally occurs. Instead, these invisible youth begin to engage in “territorial practices of civil protection and policing” (160–61), which is, for them, a form of expressing their citizenship and establishing a connection to the community. The aim of violence, as employed by youth, is to assert and reinforce their connection to the community, thus becoming visible. In this context, violence is used by excluded youth as a means of communication with and participation in a community that otherwise ignores them.
When segments of society are ignored, subject to prejudice, and unable to either benefit from or contribute to society, the need for existence and recognition in the face of stigmatization can have adverse consequences (Padilha, 2002). Socially excluded individuals lack visibility, recognition, and authority within society in the way that they are treated and are able to treat others. For the minority that uses violence, it may be seen as a method of re-establishing control and authority in the face of social exclusion.
Economics
Beyond the needs to ensure security, mete out justice, and assert authority, the consequences of social exclusion may induce some to use violence for economic gain. In communities where residents have trouble meeting their needs through formal and mainstream mechanisms, the lure of gangs, drug trafficking, or acts of individual violence such as robbery may be stronger. Latin America has one of the highest levels of economic inequality in the world (Székely and Hilgert, 1999). The inability to acquire needed or wanted goods and the awareness that hard work will rarely amount to significant improvements in one’s quality of life may prove a selling point for some that violence through criminal acts presents a more profitable outcome. The proliferation of organized crime and the increasing connections between it and neighborhood pandillas[4] or naciones[5] is a significant contributor to the spread of criminal and violent activities; in many countries with organized armed groups, crime is the leading form of economic gain, followed by drug dealing (Dowdney, 2005). Violent acts, including armed robberies and kidnappings, are common methods for economic profit among these groups (Dowdney, 2005). The importance of territory as a space in which to conduct illicit activities and to secure a profit often leads to violent disputes between rival gangs (Dowdney, 2005).
The economic situation of many in marginalized areas may often be unstable, desperate, and exploited, and their economic opportunities are often limited and informal. Without skills or the means to acquire them, many are forced into unemployment or street vending. In interviews in 2005, many young men in Rio de Janeiro who joined gangs described their experiences working on the city’s streets as a “degrading” experience. To them, “selling candy on the streets or on a bus, or selling water at intersections . . . [was] seen as desperation, not as jobs that provided a solid sense of identity and respect. In this context, invitations from gang-involved friends or colleagues became attractive. For some young men, gang involvement was the only stable employment they ever had, or the first or only opportunity to enter the ‘work’ market” (Barker, 2005: 73; see also Dowdney, 2005). In Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, many young males interviewed felt “despondent about their prospects for low-paying wage labor” and indicated that while gangs “rule through violence, fear, and terror, they often provide the only economic stimulus available to poor communities” (Goldstein, 2003: 169).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The lack of security, access to justice, and economic opportunities in marginalized communities has contributed to the proliferation of violence in Latin America and the Caribbean in recent years. In order to combat social exclusion and the consequent challenges of violence, policymakers must find a balance between the need for control (including the state’s monopoly on force, the preservation of citizen rights and security, and the maintenance of law and order) and the need to refrain from exacerbating violence by threatening human rights and alienating segments of the population.
In the short term, policymakers in the region must respond to violence through an increased law enforcement presence in affected communities and the monitoring of high-risk repeat offenders.[6] In the longer run, policymakers must create programs that will resolve the underlying issues fostering social exclusion and violent outcomes. Such policies should target weaknesses in judicial, law enforcement, and educational systems and labor markets to provide access for socially excluded individuals, discourage the use of violent methods to satisfy certain needs, and protect members of marginalized communities who are affected by others’ use of violence. With respect to police-community relations and law enforcement, programs such as the Youth and the Police project in Belo Horizonte, which set up workshops and seminars involving police and youth groups, have been shown in some preliminary evaluations to improve relations between communities and the local police (Ramos, 2006). Police forces should also be trained to show more respect to arrested offenders and youth. In parallel to improvements in law enforcement techniques and relations, communities should be encouraged to set up policing programs coupled with community town hall meetings to set priorities (Moser, Winton, and Moser, 2005). Placing responsibility and power in the hands of community residents may increase security and reduce feelings of vulnerability in those neighborhoods affected by violence.
It is additionally imperative to address the weaknesses and disorganization of judicial systems in the region and ensure due process of law and fair treatment to individuals without connections or money. Improving the capacity and availability of public defenders and increasing the availability of legal representation is essential. Crackdowns on corruption within judicial systems will limit the ability of those with money to buy their way out of trouble. The state of prisons and rehabilitation programs must be improved—rehabilitation programs that train former offenders in vocational skills have proven effective, as have those that provide risk-focused treatments to allow these people to successfully reintegrate into society (Moser, Winton, and Moser, 2005).
Policies to combat social exclusion and to integrate all members of society are difficult to target and to implement. However, given the exclusion and violence prevalent throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, policymakers must strive to ensure that institutions and policies work to include these vulnerable segments of the population and protect them from the devastating effects of violence.
