Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

Armed Actors, Violence and Democracy in Latin America in the 1990s: Introductory Notes
Author(s): Kees Koonings
Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 20, No. 4, Special Issue: Armed Actors in Latin
America in the 1990s (Oct., 2001), pp. 401-408
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3339021
Accessed: 13-02-2016 23:47 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Wiley and Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Bulletin of Latin American Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bulletinof LatinAmericanResearch,Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 401-408,2001

Armed Actors, Violence and

in Latin America in the

Democracy

1990s: Notes
Introductory

KEES KOONINGS1

Utrecht University

Democracy and violence in Latin America

In July 2001, the police forces of the Brazilian State of Bahia went on strike. For
some commentators, rather than a strike it was a mutiny. Military and civil police
officers occupied barracks and police stations, wielding their arms and wearing
face-masks that made them look rather like members of the FARC or the EZLN
(or ETA for than matter) than civil servants disputing a wage hike. As a result,
violence erupted - especially in the poorer districts of Salvador, the state capital -
and fear took hold of the city. Armed gangs roamed the streets and looted shops -
in some cases with men wearing police uniforms or insignia in their midst. After a
few days, the federal government decided to deploy army troops to restore a
minimum of order and a sense of safety for the frightened citizenry. The press
published relieved reports of confraternization between the policemen and the
federal troops; earlier, fear of a violent confrontation between the two forces had
been aired. The 'strike' in Bahia was settled, but police dissatisfaction was
spreading to other states. The federal government considered new legislation to
give the army permanent policing prerogatives throughout the national territory.2
Despite its many problems, Brazil is ranked among those Latin American
countries where democracy has taken hold. With the demise of military
authoritarianism and left-wing armed opposition, commitment to the
consolidation of democratic governance and the rule of law appears to have
become widespread throughout the region during the past decade. Already in the
late 1970s the institutional dictatorships in South America had started to show
fissures and cracks. From the mid-1980s onward, civil governments also came to
the fore in Central America, notably in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.
Although severely constrained by military tutelage and civil conflict, these new
regimes proved to be one of the factors that facilitated Central American peace

1 Associate Professorof Development Studies at UtrechtUniversity.

This author was in Brazil duringthat month. See Jornal do Brasil, 28 July2001 ('FH:
Exercito com poder policial', p. 3).
? 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies.
Published
byBlackwell
Publishers,
108CowleyRoad,Oxford OX4 1JF,UK and350MainStreet,
Malden,MA 02148,USA. 401

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Kees Koonings

agreements in the 1990s. Throughout Latin America, during the 1990s emphasis
shifted towards the mechanisms and conditions of democratic consolidation as,
with a few exceptions, elected governments regularly succeeded one another.
Any effort to strike a balance of the results of democratic consolidation in
Latin America at the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury is bound to come to
mixed conclusions. Open military rule has indeed been absent from the region
since the demise of the latter-day 'patriarchs' Pinochet and Stroessner more than
ten years ago (Fitch, 1998). The formal apparatus of democratic governance
appears firmlyin place and generally enjoys a sufficientdegree of support among
various social categories and actors within political society (Diamond, Linz and
Lipset, 1995; Dominguez and Lowenthal, 1996). And what is more, the adoption
of often severe programs of economic adjustment seems so far not to have led to
the breakdown of democratic politics (Demmers, Fernandez Gilberto and
Hogenboom, 2001; Gwynne and Kay, 1999).
But three furtherissues related to the,political and institutional dimensions of
democratisation are more problematic, at least in a number of countries (Agiiero
and Stark, 1998). First, political culture and political practice within the new
democracies of Latin America have often been criticised for retaining clear
particularistic (neo-patrimonial and personalistic) features. In addition, political
culture in many Latin American countries combines a peculiar type of neo-
populism with exclusionary technocracies and privileged and socially
conservative elites. Second, the institutional prerogatives and political power of
the military and related security forces within the domestic arena have not been
sufficiently reduced in a number of countries (Fitch, 1998; Kruijt, this volume;
Loveman, 1999; Silva, 2001). Finally, the stigma of social exclusion in various
guises (mass poverty, informality, disempowerment on the basis of class and
colour, and disrespect of citizenship rights of the underprivileged) casts serious
doubts on the more substantial qualities of democratisation as a socially
transformative proposition (Koonings and Kruijt, 1999; Mendez, O'Donnell and
Pinheiro, 1999).
Against this background the articles brought together in this volume look at
various dimensions of yet another but closely related problem of present-day
Latin America: the continuation of social and political violence and the ongoing
presence of so-called 'armed actors'. One fundamental issue with respect to
democratic consolidation - one that has been gaining more attention recently in
the international scholarly debate - is the problem of regaining and maintaining
the monopoly of the legitimate use of force by accountable, democratic
governments under civilian control. In a number of Latin American countries,
this poses a problem despite the prevalence of formal political democracy. This is
due not only to the legacy of authoritarianism and state-induced repression, (left-
wing) armed opposition, and open civil war, but also to the continuous
proliferation of armed violence by a variety of groups sometimes linked to the
state or linked to social resistance or organised crime.
In theory, full democratic consolidation not only means the subordination of
the security forces under civil rule. It requires the effective maintenance of the

402 forLatinAmerican
? 2001Society Studies

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Armed Actors in the 1990s

state's monopoly of the means of coercion and its deployment to secure public
order, the rule of law, and citizenship rights on the basis of accountable norms
and procedures. This ideal-type is far from established in many Latin American
countries. Instead, social and political violence appears to have been maintained
even in countries where democracy as a political form has made considerable
headway. It is hardly necessary to elaborate upon the relevance of this problem
for the long-term prospects of democratic governance. Wielding an effective
monopoly over legitimate coercion is at the core of the modern nation-state.
Democratic politics cannot be sustained unless the basic condition of the rule of
law is upheld. Without it, governance becomes arbitrary and ineffective; support
for any such regime, and indeed for the public cause itself, will be jeopardised
even if democracy prevails in the electoral sense. In addition, democratic politics
imply, by definition, a peaceful encounter of diverging social interests through
institutional channels. The principle of non-violence is crucial for guaranteeing
voice, mobilisation and effective influence over policymaking.
Elsewhere we have referred to this phenomenon as the 'new violence',
although many of its manifestations are in fact far from new (Kruijt and
Koonings, 1999: 12). This notion can make sense, at least as a heuristic tool, in
delineating this specific configuration referred to above. The basic empirical
characteristic of the new violence is that it is increasingly available to a variety of
social actors and no longer solely a resource of elites or security forces. Its
'newness' lies first and foremost in its contrast with the norms and expectations
derived from the democratisation process currently underway. Another clear
characteristic is its variety: different forms of violence and conflict are subsumed
under this notion, such as everyday criminal and street violence, riots, social
cleansing, private account settling, police arbitrariness, paramilitary activities,
post-Cold War guerrillas, etcetera. By definition, the new violence implies the
failure of the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force. Instead, a variety of
actors takes to coercion and violence to pursue certain goals or simply to
reproduce their own existence and way of life, or to pre-empt the usufruct by
others of rights acquired through participation in the democratic process.

Armed actors and the politics of coercion

This implies that Latin American democracies have not been able to free
themselves completely, or at all, from the presence of such armed actors. This
presence means that political procedures, interest mobilisation, and the build-up
of civil society within the canon of democratic governance may be - and often
has been - disrupted by the use of extra-legal and non-legitimate force. In this
particular panopticum, different types of armed actors play out their part. I
propose a simple typology.3

3 The following draws in part on Koonings (forthcoming).

? 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies 403

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Kees Koonings

First, there are those armed actors that belong squarely in the public domain:
the military, the security forces, and the police. Under ideal-typical
circumstances, these forces are the tools of the use of legitimate coercion by
democratic states, externally, against possible military opponents, and internally,
against infractors of the rule of law and public order. As is shown by Kruijt in
this volume as well as by others (Koonings, forthcoming), these state-related
armed actors have in a number of cases been instrumental for the erosion or
'freezing' of full democratisation. The military and the security and intelligence
forces have been doing this mainly through the preservation of semi- or extra-
legal constraints on civil rule. The police, in many Latin American countries, is
still prone to arbitrariness in targeting social 'enemies' rather than upholding the
rule of law, and to the use of violence rather than operational competence and
respect for citizens' rights (Chevigny, 1995; Soares, 2001).
Second, we see the proliferation of 'extra-legal violence' in the name of 'law
and order' but in the shadows and the interstices of the state, that is often used by
private interests to pursue their goals (Huggins, 1991). In many cases a murky
symbiosis has developed between the official security forces and paramilitary and
vigilante-type actors. This is clearly the case in the Colombian and Guatemalan
conflicts, the Peruvian pax fujimoriana, or the particular methods of law
enforcement against the 'marginal classes' in large Brazilian and other countries'
cities (Pinheiro, 1996). In the specific case of rural 'self-defence' patrols peculiar
combinations of subordination to state terrorism, particularism of local
powerholders, and more ore less justifiable instances of community defence,
have emerged in countries such as Guatemala and Peru.
Third, old and new forms of guerrilla forces or opposition social movements
may still employ violence as one of their options. Conventional guerrilla groups
have become scarce in post-Cold War Latin America (Wickham-Crowley, 1992;
Gaspar, 1997) Shining Path and the guevarista Tupac Amaru revolutionary
movement in Peru have been significantly weakened, while the Central American
guerrillas have been transformed into political forces after the peace settlements
in the region. Only in Colombia do left-wing guerrilla armies still bring
considerable military power to bear against the state and paramilitary forces. The
typical post-Cold War and 'post-modern' guerrilla movement of the EZLN in
Southern Mexico has hardly done any fightingat all and should rather be seen as
a guerrilla-turned social movement pursuing basic social and political reforms,
alongside greater dignity for Mexico's long-ignored indigenous populations.
Nevertheless subcomandante Marcos and his colleagues qualify as armed actors
because their initial show of force and their permanent use of guerrilla symbolism
have been an important aspect of their overall strategy.
Fourth, we have the phenomenon of 'uncivil society' (Payne, 2000). In some
instances, social or political movements have shown a potential to radicalise, or
in other words, have discovered that the use of force may be employed to back up
economic or social claims. Violence is employed to make sure that particularistic
interests will not have to yield before the common good or because of the
operation of legitimate procedures. Clear examples are the tactics of the landless

404 ? 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Armed Actors in the 1990s

workers' movement in Brazil or Ecuador's indigenous movement in the 1980s and

1990s.4 It is not surprising that these movements have been cited among the new
security threats identified by the military and the military police in these
countries. In a number of cases there has been right-wing counter-reform violence
as well, most notably in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Colombia and Brazil.5 Here,
there is obvious room for different opinions on the acceptability of the use of
force depending on political or ideological preferences. For instance, many may
deem the coercive tactics of the MST in Brazil acceptable given the huge power of
the landed elite and the application of blind repressive force by the military police
against the actions of the movement. It has become clear, however, that the use of
violence always tends to erode the wider support for even the worthiest cause and
is always prone to divert the orientation of such armed actors away from
constructive politics.
Finally, large- and small-scale organised crime, linked to the international
drug trade or to local racketeering, has managed to mount parallel systems of
violence and order on a national scale in countries such as Colombia and Mexico.
This logic has been reproduced on a smaller scale by the drug bosses and their
gangs in the Brazilian favelas or by the maras, the criminal youth gangs in several
Central American countries (Leeds, 1996; Peralva, 2000). In close relation to this
perversion of the rule of law, a myriad of armed actors already alluded to earlier
have come to the fore within the realm of everyday violence and the failure of the
overall rule of law These include street criminal gangs, vigilante and mob justice,
civil patrols in poor neighbourhoods and rural communities, as well as the
arbitrary and sometimes even criminal actions of police forces.

The contributions: armed actors in Guatemala, Peru and

Colombia6

These manifestations of the new violence and armed actors involved can be found
in varying degrees across the region. Throughout Latin America armed actors
continue to put democratic political institutions and civil society under strain. Still,
important differences in kind and degree exist among the countries of the region. In

Hammond (1999) makes this point with respect to the Brazilian landless workers'
movement (MST).
See the thoroughanalysis by Payne (2000) of the Brazilian Rural Democratic Union, a
landowners association with paramilitarydimensions set up to counter the threat of
land reformand MST invasions after1985. She also refersto the Nicaraguan Contras
in the same study.
The contributions(with the exception of Kruijt's article) were originallypresentedas
researchpapers at the session 'Armed Actors: SecurityForces, Militias, and Guerrillas
in Latin America during the 1990s', organised by this author within the XXII
International LASA Congress in Miami, March 2000. I am grateful to the LASA
ProgrammeCommittee for facilitatingthe session and to the Netherlands Foundation
for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) and Utrecht Universityfor
providing funds for the contributors'participation in this event.

) 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies 405

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Kees Koonings

the three countries examined in particular in this volume, Guatemala, Peru and
Colombia, the consolidation of democratic politics is facing the challenge of
dealing with the fragmentation of armed actors that is reproducing situations of
violence and fear, causing uncertainty as to the prospects of peace building and
democratisation. The cases embrace a variety of such situations. Not only do we
face the legacy and ongoing perversion of regimes - and states - by their own
security forces, arbitrary rule, and terror (notably Peru and to a lesser degree
Guatemala), but also the continuing presence of armed actors who challenge the
political status-quo or have been undermining the institutional make-up of the
polity (Colombia and Peru). Notably in Peru and Guatemala, regimes of violence
have created new armed actors within the rural communities who continue to
influence post-conflict reconstruction efforts.In Colombia the overall proliferation
of violence not only consumes the body politic from the inside, but is also putting
hard-fought-foradvances in terms of specific and localised entitlements in danger.
The contribution by Dirk Kruijt gives a vivid account of the persistence of the
political clout of official security forces in both formal and informal ways. He
makes a basic distinction between two scenarios, that of gradual democratisation,
and that of the emergence of neo-authoritarian regimes. In the latter cases, notably
in Peru and Colombia, self-legitimisinginterferenceof the security forces in formal
democratic politics tends to lead to its eventual perversion (see also Koonings and
Kruijt, 2002) and submission to shady armed actors embedded in the core of the
polity. In a slightlydifferentway, the continuation of the institutional weight of the
military in Guatemala has led to a permanent situation of tutelage and to ruthless
actions in order to protect the interests of the corporation (as in the case of the
recent investigation of the Gerardi murder).
Of the three countries, Guatemala also stands out because of the 1996
comprehensive peace agreement that seeks to reform, inter alia, the security
forces, most notably the police. The article by Marie-Louise Glebbeek provides a
critical assessment of this reform effort.Through looking at the overall results of
the reform as well as at the details of the new recruitment and training practices
of the Policia Nacional Civil, founded after the Peace Accords of 1996, she points
at the difficulties involved in the transformation of the police into an armed actor
that can support peace-building, democratic governance and the rule of law.
The deployment of a new kind of police force in Guatemala, when effective,
may be an important prerequisite for restoring a more peaceful and lawful order
at the local level. During the height of the civil war, local-level violence had been
amplified by the proliferation of self-defence patrols. Simone Remijnse shows in
her contribution that, while the rural self-defence patrols were set up by the
military to bolster their control over the countryside, they also played a role in
local patterns of resource appropriation and political power, usually under the
sway of leading local ladino families. The patrols were widely involved in
arbitrary violence throughout the western highlands. Personal accounts recorded
in the municipality of Joyabaj bring these episodes to life. At the same time, for
many people, the memory or the threats of resurrection of the patrols continue to
instil fear and mistrust, despite their dismantling.

406 ? 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Armed Actors in the 1990s

Peasant patrols in Peru possibly had even more complex and more diverse
origins and trajectories than their Guatemalan counterparts. Mario Fumerton
shows in his article that the early manifestations of rondas campesinas can to a
large extent be explained by growing peasant dissatisfaction with the coercion
and violence inflicted upon them by Shining Path. When the state, in particular
the military, realised the potential of the peasant patrols, the latter were actively
promoted and incorporated in the official counter-insurgency strategy. Still, in
many cases these patrols continued to act as semi-autonomous armed actors;
efforts to control them met with limited success, and patrol commanders took on
local prominence in many communities. In the current 'post-conflict' context,
many patrols have sought to re-invent themselves as local developmental
committees (once again with the active support of the security forces). These
committees find themselves at a disadvantage, however, vis-a-vis other local
actors such as the conventional authorities or NGOs.
Unlike Guatemala and Peru, nothing remotely resembling a post-conflict
process seems to be imminent in Colombia. With the generalised violence of the
late 1980s and 1990s, the institutional integrity of the state, the legitimacy of the
political process, and the effectiveness of public policies, have been on (or past)
the point of collapse. In Colombia, the use of raw force to further past interests
has been rampant. The state proved either incapable of stemming this tide or has
been actively involved, e.g. through alleged ties of politicians with the drug mafia
or of the military with paramilitary violence and their strategy of social cleansing
on the basis of indiscriminate terror. Mieke Wouters shows that this spiral of
violence has started to clash head-on with initiatives to secure certain rights
through peaceful and legal means. The black rural population of the western
department of the Choco has been gaining collective land titles on the basis of
extensive mobilisation, making use of constitutional reforms established in 1991.
These collective entitlements have been the object of paramilitary and guerrilla
violence since the mid-1990s up to the present day. The violence not only
jeopardised the effective appropriation of communal resources but also the
organisational effort of the peasants and their nascent sense of ethnic identity
that lies at the very heart of the entitlement.
Taken together, the contributions in this volume disclose multiple ways in
which the prevalence of armed actors and the legacy and continuation of violence
cast shadows over democracy, the rule of law, and peaceful citizenship in Latin
American countries. Today, the biggest challenge for civilian, elected
governments lies not so much in the maintenance of civil rule itself or in the
subordination of the formal security forces to democratic principles, although
this continues to be unfinished business in a number of countries. It lies rather in
the effective construction of the public monopoly of legal force, to be used to
pursue human security through the indiscriminate rule of law. Only in this way
can the current everyday arbitrariness and extra-legal violence inflicted by armed
actors on their own people be dealt with.

>2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies 407

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Kees Koonings

References

Chevigny,P. (1995) Edge of the knife.Police violence in the Americas. New York: The
New Press.
Demmers, J., A. Fernandez Gilberto and B. Hogenboom (eds) (2001) Miraculous
metamorphoses. The neoliberalizationof Latin American populism. London: Zed.
Diamond, L., J. Linz and S. M. Lipset (eds) (1995) Democracy in developing countries:
Latin America (vol. 4). Boulder and London: Lynne Riener and Adamantine Press
(2nd edition).
Dominguez, J. I. and A. F. Lowenthal (eds) (1996) Constructingdemocraticgovernance-
themesand issues, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.
Fitch, J. S. (1998) The Armed Forces and democracy in Latin America, Baltimore: The
JohnsHopkins UniversityPress.
Gaspar, G. (1997) Guerrillas en America Latina. Santiago: FLACSO-Chile (Nueva Serie
FLACSO).
Gwynne, R. N. and C. Kay (eds (1999) Latin America transformed;globalization and
modernity.London: Arnold.
Hammond, J. L. (1999) Law and Disorder: The Brazilian landless farmworkers'movement
Bulletinof Latin American Research 18(4), pp. 469-489.
Huggins, M. K. (ed.) (1991) Vigilantismand the state in modernLatin America. Essays on
extralegal violence. New York: Praeger.
Koonings, K. (forthcoming)Political armies,securityforces,and democraticconsolidation
in Latin America. In R. Luckham G. Cawthra (eds) Governinginsecurity.London:
Zed.
Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt (eds) (1999) Societies of fear. The legacy of civil war, violence
and terrorin Latin America, London: Zed.
Koonings, K. and D. Kruijt (2002) Militarypolitics and the mission of nation building. In
K. Koonings and D. Kruijt (eds) Political armies. The militaryand nation buildingin
the age of democracy. London: Zed (in press).
Kruijt,D. and K. Koonings (1999) Introduction:violence and fearin Latin America. In K.
Koonings and D. Kruijt (eds) Societies of fear: The legacy of civil war, violence and
terrorin Latin America, pp. 1-30. London: Zed.
Leeds, E. (1996) Cocaine and parallel politics in the Brazilian urban periphery:constraints
on local-level democratization.Latin American Research Review 31(3), pp. 47-84.
Loveman, B. (1999) For la patria; politics and the armed forces in Latin America.
Wilmington:SR Books.
Mendez, J. E., G. O'Donnell and P. S. Pinheiro (eds) (1999) The (un)rule of law & the
underprivilegedin Latin America. Notre Dame: Universityof Notre Dame Press.
Payne, L. A. (2000) Uncivil movements. The armed rightwing and democracy in Latin
America. Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.
Peralva, A. (2000) Violencia e democracia: o paradoxo brasileiro.Sao Paulo: Paz e Terra.
Pinheiro, P. S. (1996) Democracies without citizenship in Injustice for all. Crime and
impunityin Latin America. NACLA Report on the Americas 30(2); pp. 17-23.
Silva, P. (ed.) (2001) The soldier and the state in South America. Essays in civil-military
relations. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Soares, L. E. (2000) Meu casaco de general. Quinhentos dias no frontda seguranca publica
do Rio de Janeiro. Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
Wickham-Crowley, T. P. (1992) Guerrillas and revolution in Latin America. A
comparative study of insurgents and regimes since 1956. Princeton: Princeton
UniversityPress.

408 ? 2001Society
forLatinAmerican
Studies

This content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 on Sat, 13 Feb 2016 23:47:03 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions