Introduction: Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America

Author Information

Andrew R. Smolski
Matthew Lorenzen

Date of Publication

2021 12:00 AM

Security Theme

Transnational Organized Crime

Keywords

Transnational Organized Crime, srhreports, transnationalorganizedcrime, violence, transnational organized crime, TOC, Latin America

Description

"This issue’s focus is on the structural roots of violence in Latin America and on violence’s connections with capitalism and colonialism. After decades of neoliberalization—the retreat of the state from its social obligations, the privatization of public goods and services, deregulation in favor of business, a regressive fiscal policy shifting the tax and fee burden onto the general population, and stagnation in wages and benefits—it appears that the state’s remaining function in the region is social control in the service of profit justified as a fight against crime (Lorenzen and Orozco, 2016; Paley, 2015). Critical scholarship counters this crime-fighting narrative by theoretically and empirically demonstrating that the varied expressions of violence follow from a structural and institutional arrangement to facilitate capital accumulation by subjugating workers, peasants, black people, indigenous people, and any social group deemed materially expendable by a hegemonic ideology that converts victims into deviants."

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Jan 1st, 12:00 AM

Introduction: Violence, Capital Accumulation, and Resistance in Contemporary Latin America

"This issue’s focus is on the structural roots of violence in Latin America and on violence’s connections with capitalism and colonialism. After decades of neoliberalization—the retreat of the state from its social obligations, the privatization of public goods and services, deregulation in favor of business, a regressive fiscal policy shifting the tax and fee burden onto the general population, and stagnation in wages and benefits—it appears that the state’s remaining function in the region is social control in the service of profit justified as a fight against crime (Lorenzen and Orozco, 2016; Paley, 2015). Critical scholarship counters this crime-fighting narrative by theoretically and empirically demonstrating that the varied expressions of violence follow from a structural and institutional arrangement to facilitate capital accumulation by subjugating workers, peasants, black people, indigenous people, and any social group deemed materially expendable by a hegemonic ideology that converts victims into deviants."