Teri L. Caraway, María Lorena Cook, and Stephen Crowley, eds., Working Through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015. Photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 296 pp.; hardcover $79.95, paperback $27.95.

Abstract

Along with the pressures of time, though, come the limits of space. While this book skillfully describes territorial controls within cities, it does not include the controls and politics in the larger metropolitan areas of which they are a part. The sprawling urban areas of Latin America share the same security challenges but are fragmented by competing governments unable to muster the coordination needed to meet them. As seen in nearly every large and medium-sized city-such as the Federal District of Caracas, where dozens of municipal police work and clash with each other and with federal forces-the structure of municipal governments in Latin America could not be more ill suited to curb the criminality that flows across the administrative and political lines that splinter them. While the geography of territorial control is a pillar of the book's theoretical framework, more centrally, it does not neatly square with the case studies in this book or with other Latin American cases. Moncada shows that increased government-business collaboration "reduces the scope of the politics of urban violence by generating a more united local ruling class able to fend off mobilization by opposing interests" from below and above (156). But as also seen in the cities of Colombia and other countries, such collaboration stems from a civil society unable to unite due to a violent fragmentation that also obstructs any policy that emerges from such collaboration. The solid recommendations that are proposed in the book's final chapters, though, address such limitations. Moncada's practical suggestions to incorporate business, focus on local order, and take other proven steps all provide focus without losing sight of security's underlying complexity. This book, deeply historical and clearly presented, demonstrates the utility of understanding the full trajectory of reform to know how it might fare in other cities. Only by clearing away illusions of security's promise can it be pared down to its most robust elements.