Terminal velocity: The speed of extortion in Guatemala City

Abstract

Guatemala City is racked by the practice of extortion: the act of obtaining goods and/or money through the threat of force. Transportation workers are a particularly vulnerable population, with a homicide rate four times the national average. While social scientists, policy experts, and asylum advocates rightly observe that extortionists control territory, lost in this literature is an appreciation for how these violent actors also govern victims’ experience of time and velocity. This article, in response, develops ethnographically the concept of terminal velocity to assess how the violent extraction of payments from transportation workers routinely presses these drivers up against the practical limits of Guatemala City. This includes the downward pull of extortion, which compels them to drive at ever-increasing speeds, and the upward drag of road congestion, poor infrastructure, and human fatigue that inevitably caps their acceleration.

Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte

“…Next to some neighborhoods, an “emergency” emoji appeared: the red siren light signified an ongoing territorial dispute. Disputes were updated in real time, alerting commuters and residents to dangers, such as shoot‐outs and police operations, as well as ensuing traffic jams, no‐go zones, bus re‐routings, and unofficial curfews that impeded students like Andreia from moving through the city (see also K. L. O'Neill 2021). A comprehensive list of the constantly shifting geography of territorial control, this WhatsApp list provided a resource that Alexandre—also from a distant favela—often marshaled to justify interns' tardiness to the CSCI administration.…”