From carceral punitivism to systematic killing: The necropolitics of policing in post-Chávez Venezuela

Abstract

Since 2017, state security forces in Venezuela have been responsible for over 20% of violent deaths in the country. This represents an unprecedented period of state repression in the country’s history that demands examination. In this article, we argue that in order to understand the recent increase in violent deaths in Venezuela during the post-Chávez period, we must place at the center of our analysis the discourses and practices of an extremely privileged actor, the state, in the context of the collapse of oil prices. We propose that this upsurge of lethal violence can be understood within the historical process of militarization of citizen security. In the first phase, starting in 2009, we see an increase in carceral punitivism—the hyperreaction of the penal state. In the second, a new stage in militarized raids is launched which, over the years, gave way to a practice of systematic extralegal killings that became the fundamental strategy of social control. These raids represent a necropolitical approach to governance in a context of extreme economic and political crisis.

Intersections of Masculinity, Sexuality, Nationality, and Racial Identity in James Baldwin

“…If Vivaldo walks down the corner and gets a cop, he garners the efficient extermination machinery of the white American state. This ever-present possibility becomes a prescient recognition that it is not the state’s reproductive capacity, or its ability to “let live,” that is the basis of governance (Hanson & Zubillaga, 2021, p. 7). For Vivaldo and like-minded white Americans, the practice of killing “disposable populations” is an essential resource for the white American state to maintain its socio-economic and political power and guarantee sovereignty.…”