Security and Citizenship in Latin America

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel brings together five papers that collectively grapple with central questions of governance and citizenship amidst high levels of violence in Latin America. Between them, the papers grapple with how both states and citizens negotiate the power of criminal groups, and seek to reduce their risk of exposure to violence. Lindsay Mayka and Angelica Durán-Martinez focus on why states might use certain strategies to confront violence and implement security policies. Drawing on evidence from Bogotá, Colombia, Lindsay Mayka explores why state officials might strategically use human rights discourses to frame urban security projects. Angelica Durán-Martinez thinks through how different configurations of state and criminal capacity map onto different security policies in Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador and Belize. Eduardo Moncada centers his analysis on competition between criminal groups, asking how the nature of this competition affects civil society’s ability to mobilize. Drawing on original fieldwork in several Mexico City neighborhoods, he brings granular data on how citizens respond to and perceive danger to our discussion of the dynamics of mobilization. Both Yanilda González and Janice Gallagher focus on the power and potential of citizen mobilization in violent contexts. González analyzes how Brazilians from disadvantaged sectors of society reclaim agency and embody resilient citizenship - and are in turn able to affect state policy and practice. Gallagher looks at citizen mobilization in northern Mexico, where amidst contexts of state collapse civil society, led by victims’ collectives, are navigating relationships between armed actors and state officials. Taken together, these papers bring original data and novel analyses to the study of governance amidst violence in Latin America.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Individual Presentations

• Urban Securitization in the Name of Human Rights - Lindsay Rose Mayka, Colby College

• Rebuilding Citizenship after State Violence - Yanilda Maria Gonzalez, Harvard University

• Governance in Brown Areas & Hot Spots: Civil Society & State-Building in Mexico - Janice Kreinick Gallagher, Rutgers-Newark

• Criminal Competition and Collective Political Mobilization - Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University

Chair

• Rebecca Bell-Martin Tecnologico de Monterrey

Discussant

• Santiago Anria Cornell University