Popular Injustice: Violence, Community, and Law in Latin America - Softcover

Godoy, Angelina Snodgrass

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804753830 ISBN 13: 9780804753838

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Popular Injustice focuses on the spread of highly punitive forms of social control (known locally as mano dura) in contemporary Latin America. Many people have not only called for harsher punishments, such as longer prison sentences and the reintroduction of capital punishment, but also support vigilante practices like lynchings. In Guatemala, hundreds of these mob killings have occurred since the end of the country's armed conflict in 1996. Drawing on dozens of interviews with residents of lynching communities, Godoy argues that while these acts of violence do reveal widespread frustration with the criminal justice system, they are more than simply knee-jerk responses to crime. They demonstrate how community ties have been reshaped by decades of state violence and by the social and economic changes associated with globalization.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Angelina Snodgrass Godoy is Assistant Professor of Law, Societies, and Justice in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Popular Injustice focuses on the spread of highly punitive forms of social control (known locally as mano dura) in contemporary Latin America. Many people have not only called for harsher punishments, such as longer prison sentences and the reintroduction of capital punishment, but also support vigilante practices like lynchings. In Guatemala, hundreds of these mob killings have occurred since the end of the country’s armed conflict in 1996. Drawing on dozens of interviews with residents of lynching communities, Godoy argues that while these acts of violence do reveal widespread frustration with the criminal justice system, they are more than simply knee-jerk responses to crime. They demonstrate how community ties have been reshaped by decades of state violence and by the social and economic changes associated with globalization.

Aus dem Klappentext

Popular Injustice focuses on the spread of highly punitive forms of social control (known locally as mano dura) in contemporary Latin America. Many people have not only called for harsher punishments, such as longer prison sentences and the reintroduction of capital punishment, but also support vigilante practices like lynchings. In Guatemala, hundreds of these mob killings have occurred since the end of the country s armed conflict in 1996. Drawing on dozens of interviews with residents of lynching communities, Godoy argues that while these acts of violence do reveal widespread frustration with the criminal justice system, they are more than simply knee-jerk responses to crime. They demonstrate how community ties have been reshaped by decades of state violence and by the social and economic changes associated with globalization.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Popular Injustice

Violence, Community, and Law in Latin AmericaBy ANGELINA SNODGRASS GODOY

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2006 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5383-8

Contents

Acknowledgments.....................................................................ixPreface.............................................................................xi1. Examining Popular Injustice......................................................12. Legacies of Terror in Postwar Guatemala..........................................403. Militarization and Lynchings.....................................................764. Modernization, Crime, and Communities in Crisis..................................1015. Civil Society and the Contradictions of Neoliberal Democracy.....................1276. Convergence at the Poles ... and Not on the Polls................................150Notes...............................................................................183References..........................................................................201Index...............................................................................223

Chapter One

Examining Popular Injustice

HARROWING INCIDENTS OF MOB VIOLENCE like the one recounted in the opening to this book are not uncommon in contemporary Guatemala, where an average of nearly ten linchamientos (lynchings) per month were reported during 1999 (Misin de Verificacin de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala [MINUGUA] 2000b). Between 1996, when the government and guerrillas signed the final peace accords to bring the country's thirty-six-year civil war to a close, and the end of 2002, the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala reported 482 such incidents; many more have likely gone undocumented. In the incidents the mission was able to verify during this period, 240 people were killed and 943 injured; yet only thirty-nine defendants had been brought before the courts, twenty-four of whom were found guilty (MINUGUA 2002).

In a country the size of Tennessee, with a population of roughly 11 million, these numbers suggest the emergence of an alarming trend. Although Guatemala's history has long been scarred by violence, incidents of this sort are unprecedented; under authoritarianism, the grip of military repression made such open, independent forms of collective action simply unthinkable. The lynchings began as the war ended; in Guatemala, as in Brazil (Holston and Caldeira 1998; Caldeira 2000), South Africa (Comaroff and Comaroff forthcoming), and other parts of the postcolonial world, extralegal violence in the name of justice has been a disturbing dividend of democracy. Today, lynchings occur in urban and rural settings alike, among indigenous and mestizo (ladino) communities, and they target individuals from within the community at least as often as they do interlopers. And although in the United States the word "lynching" conjures up images of racially motivated violence, in Guatemala I found no evidence for such a dimension to the phenomenon. Indeed, although collective violence is often assumed to be targeted against members of an identifiable out group, defined in ethnic, religious, cultural, or other terms, in the dozens of Guatemalan cases I investigated the only common thread linking the victims was the accusation of criminal activity. In the context of a very serious contemporary crime wave, many Guatemalans openly support vigilante behavior: one recent survey found that 75 percent of the population expressed at least partial support for these killings in the name of "justice" (Ferrigno 1998).

I first became aware of the phenomenon on a 1996 human rights research trip to Guatemala. I was instantly curious: unlike the state-sponsored repression that had shaken the country for decades, this appeared to be a new kind of abuse-one that rose up from below. If the struggle for democracy had for so long been a battle against the oppressive state, what did it mean when previous victims of state violence were the ones doing the killing?

Of course, I quickly learned that it was not so simple. Like virtually every case of violence in Guatemala, the lynchings are open to multiple readings. By 1996, although the trend had yet to take off in earnest, there were various interpretations of early incidents swirling about, and I soon learned that the analysis offered by any one commentator often said more about his or her political sympathies than it did about the incident in question. As with so many other things in Guatemala, the hard facts were elusive, and the answer often simply came down to whose rendering of events one chose to believe.

As in other cases of human rights abuse in Latin America, the best-documented cases are often (though not always) those where the victims are foreigners from wealthier countries. When I first began asking people about lynchings, in 1996, the best-known incidents were a series of mob attacks and attempted attacks on U.S. citizens falsely accused of stealing Guatemalan babies. The most serious of these incidents involved the Alaskan environmental activist June Weinstock, who was stoned, stabbed, and beaten nearly to death by a crowd in the rural village of San Cristbal Verapaz in 1994. Accounts of her ordeal, pieced together from eyewitness accounts and two videotape recordings of the event, paint a harrowing picture. A tourist, Weinstock had spent the morning of March 29 strolling through the village market and taking pictures, including some of local children. But when a mother suddenly noticed her young son was missing, Weinstock was yanked off a departing bus by an angry crowd who accused her of stealing the baby. Not fluent in Spanish, Weinstock had no way of knowing what was brewing, but a missionary stationed in the town intervened to translate and, along with two policemen, to try to hold the mob at bay for as long as possible. These men hurried Weinstock to the local judge's office in an attempt to protect her, arriving at around 11:30 A.M., according to the U.S. Embassy. Tear gas was used in an attempt to disperse the crowd that gathered outside, and a priest from nearby Cobn attempted to mediate; one eyewitness reported that some in the crowd threw stones at him and yelled, "We don't want your blessings, we want blood." The judge eventually fled the building, as did the missionary, who was attacked and beaten twice before the police were able to escort him to safety; Weinstock was left alone to barricade herself in the bathroom. The mob shattered windows and tried to set the structure afire. Eventually, they used a bench as a battering ram, broke through the doors and, around 4:00 P.M., located Weinstock and brutally beat her with fists, feet, sticks, and stones; the attack only stopped after police convinced the crowd she was already dead. Although she was in fact still alive, her injuries were sufficiently grave that months after her return to Alaska, Weinstock had still not regained the ability to speak, walk, or respond to environmental stimuli (W. Booth 1994; Morello 1994).

Rumors of baby stealing and organ harvesting by foreigners posing as tourists have a long history in Central America (and beyond-see especially Scheper-Hughes 1996), but in these, as in many cases of violence in Guatemala, there were indications that the apparently spontaneous attacks may have been deliberately instigated to serve certain political ends. The attack on Weinstock came only weeks after another U.S. citizen,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804753830
• ISBN 13: 9780804753838
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland