Criminal Violence, Political Violence, and the Politics of Line-Drawing in Latin America

Abstract

This thesis sews together stories from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, in which the line between criminal violence on the one hand, and political violence on the other, has been drawn over the 2000s. It focuses on two dimensions: firstly, the line-drawing practices of governments who justify increasing military roles in public security, as well as of military officials themselves as they implement these operations; and secondly, the practices of governments and civil society organizations establishing truth-seeking mechanisms to clarify patterns and cases of violence in the past and in the present. Two sets of metaphors are mobilized as analytical devices to make sense of these processes, in connection with different meanings of the verb to draw: on the one hand, the act of inscribing a trace over a surface; on the other hand, the act of pulling a thread over three-dimensional space. I argue that the drawing of that line has been central to the treatment of organized violence by governments and civil society organizations, in three countries which have seen both an increase in military deployment against criminal actors and the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms devoted to victims' right to truth, frustrating expectations associated with the standards of "peace" and "democracy" -two trends which have, however, taken place against markedly different historical contexts of democratization and peacebuilding, as discussed in the thesis. The stories gathered here will be informed by an analysis of sources as varied as government documents, truth commissions' reports, interviews with experts and activists of all three countries, and scholarly literature. Attending to how distinctions, connections and (dis)continuities are drawn between criminal violence and political violence in these Latin American countries allows us to critically assess conditions of possibility for the reproduction of violent patterns and the prospects for their positive transformation, as well as the elements and limits of a political imagination for which these "violent peaceful democracies" have emerged as a puzzle in the first place.