La Mano Dura and the Violence of Civil Society in Bolivia

Abstract

Vigilante violence has become a common practice of creating 'security' in the marginal barrios that surround the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Surprisingly, this violence and the human rights violations it entails are appearing simultaneously with the expansion of civil society in Bolivia. This apparent contradiction, it is argued here, suggests that analysts must expand their definition of 'civil society' to include violent social groups and actors as well as peaceful ones. This article suggests that a fuller understanding of the nature of civil society in Bolivia and other Latin American countries requires us to broaden our understanding of what civil society includes, and so recognize that some acts originating in civil society may restrict rather than deepen and expand individual rights in neo-liberal democracies.

Institutional Ineffectiveness, Illegitimacy, and Public Support for Vigilantism in Latin America

“…Goldstein et al. (: 52) argued that support for mano dura and violent vigilantism in the barrios of Cochabamba, Bolivia, “exhibits a distinctive us‐versus‐them, insider‐outsider quality, in which anyone unknown to you is a stranger and hence a potential threat to your security.” They contended that this distrust of outsiders is pervasive throughout all social strata but particularly in the cities where migration from rural villages is changing the social fabric of urban communities. In Central America, mano dura discourses surrounding gangs and gang members have painted a picture of “good” versus “evil” citizens (Rodgers, ), effectively dehumanizing young men thought to be associated with gangs and justifying the use of violent legal and extralegal coercion (Hume, ).…”

Ecuador's “black site”

“…In Brazil, Bolivia, and El Sal-vador (cf. Caldeira 2001;Goldstein et al 2007;Moodie 2010;Risør 2010), recent work demonstrates that political-economic elites and marginalized urbanites, if anything, share one ideological element in common: an unflappable belief in the state's inability to successfully police its own corruption or to protect its own citizens from crime and physical assault. Latin American urbanites' consensus that crime is now the primary threat to state sovereignty has indeed, in recent years, given rise to a discourse of security as the proper domain of citizens' interests qua the guarantees and protections of state citizenship (Goldstein 2010).…”

Denuding Surveillance at the Carceral Boundary

“…After nearly forty years of state privatization and spiking rates of incarceration as a result of mano dura, urban policing that purportedly safeguards individual and multina tional commercial interests, punitive enclosure has been established as part and parcel of national security state strategy-despite its multiple failures to contain non-or parastate violence (Goldstein et al 2009;Moodie 2010). Negotiating with cell-block leaders to "pacify" entire urban zones, however, regrounds the very political and moral architecture of the demo cratic state.…”