The Intersection of Gender, Criminal Violence, and Politics in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The five papers in this panel explore critical issues with respect to everyday violence in contemporary Latin America: intersectionality and criminal violence; criminal governance; extralegal justice; women’s police stations; and civil society responses to gender-based violence. The first three papers examine the impacts of criminal violence on pre-existing social hierarchies, state capacity, and support for extralegal justice. Barham proposes and tests a theory of intersectional vulnerability to criminal violence in Mexico; she argues that women’s lack of recourse due to political exclusion and community failure to protect women from criminal violence exacerbates their vulnerability relative to men in patriarchal, high-crime settings. Tiscornia et al. analyzes the strength of criminal governance, arguing that it is conditional to state strength and illicit markets in Uruguay. Baron examines the relationship between communities that threaten and enact lynchings and state agents in producing local order, and the determinants of state intervention in lynching events. The final two papers examine attitudes towards remedy and redress following gender-based violence and women’s police stations. Torres-Beltran investigates individuals’ justice preferences following gender-based violence in Mexico. Córdova examines the effects of specialized police stations in El Salvador. Taken together, these papers address pressing issues in the relationships between state institutions, criminal violence, ordinary citizens, and especially vulnerable populations in contemporary Latin American politics.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Intersectional Vulnerability to Criminal Violence - Elena Barham, Columbia University

• Lynching and the State in Mexico - Hannah Baron, Tulane University

• Criminal Governance in Contexts of Relative State Strength - Lucia Tiscornia, University College Dublin; Verónica Pérez Bentancur, Universidad de la República; Ines Fynn, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Gustavo Diaz, McMaster University

• Attitudes toward Specialized Police Stations to Address Violence against Women - Abby B. Cordova, University of Notre Dame

• Justice Provision in Gendered Settings: Evidence from Mexico - Angie Torres-Beltran, Michigan State University

Chair

• Yanilda Maria Gonzalez Harvard University

Discussants

• Jessica Zarkin Claremont McKenna College

• Isabel Laterzo-Tingley University of Texas, Austin