A History of Political Murder in Latin America

W. John Green

Description

This expansive history depicts Latin America's pan-regional culture of political murder. Unlike typical studies of the region, which often focus on the issues or trends of individual countries, this work focuses thematically on the nature of political murder itself, comparing and contrasting its uses and practices throughout the region. W. John Green examines the entire system of political murder: the methods and justifications the perpetrators employ, the victims, and the consequences for Latin American societies. Green demonstrates that elite and state actors have been responsible for most political murders, assassinating the leaders of popular movements and other messengers of change. Latin American elites have also often targeted the potential audience for these messages through the region's various "dirty wars." In spite of regional differences, elites across the region have displayed considerable uniformity in justifying their use of murder, imagining themselves in a class war with democratic forces. While the United States has often been complicit in such violence, Green notes that this has not been universally true, with US support waxing and waning. A detailed appendix, exploring political murder country by country, provides an additional resource for readers.
Preface and Acknowledgments
Map of Mexico and Central America
Map of South America
Key Terms and Acronyms by Country
Introduction: A Political Culture of Murder

Part I. The Practice of Political Murder in Latin America

1. Targets and Victims

2. Dirty War Mechanics

3. Bodies of the Slain

Part II. Justifications, Associations, and Consequences

4. Dirty Warriors on Dirty War

5. International Collaborations and the Conflicted Roles of the United States

6. The Enduring Appeal and Continuing Challenge of Political Murder in Latin America and Beyond

Appendix—Political Murder in Latin America: Individual Country Narratives

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• 20th century
• Americas
• Latin America
• History of the Americas
• Caribbean

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 27 avril 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438456652
• Langue: English

Extrait

A H ISTORY OF P OLITICAL M URDER IN L ATIN A MERICA
SUNY series in Global Modernity

Arif Dirlik, editor
A H ISTORY OF P OLITICAL M URDER IN L ATIN A MERICA
K ILLING THE M ESSENGERS OF C HANGE
W. J OHN G REEN
Cover art: Masacre en Colombia by Fernando Botero, courtesy of the Museo Nacional de Colombia.
Map images © Brian Wrigley
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Green, W. John, 1963–
A history of political murder in Latin America : killing the messengers of change / W. John Green.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in global modernity)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5663-8 (hardcover : alkaline paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5665-2 (e-book)
1. Political violence—Latin America—History—20th century. 2. Murder—Latin America—History—20th century. 3. Assassination—Latin America—History—20th century. 4. Disappeared persons—Latin America—History—20th century. 5. Massacres—Latin America—History—20th century. 6. Political persecution—Latin America—History—20th century. 7. State-sponsored terrorism—Latin America—History—20th century. 8. Political culture—Latin America—History—20th century. 9. Latin America—Politics and government—20th century. 10. Latin America—Social conditions—20th century. I. Title. F1414.G75 2015 306.2098—dc23 2014027596
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
C ONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments
Map of Mexico and Central America
Map of South America
Key Terms and Acronyms by Country
Introduction: A Political Culture of Murder
P ART I THE PRACTICE OF POLITICAL MURDER IN LATIN AMERICA
1 Targets and Victims
2 Dirty War Mechanics
3 Bodies of the Slain
P ART II JUSTIFICATIONS, ASSOCIATIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES
4 Dirty Warriors on Dirty War
5 International Collaborations and the Conflicted Roles of the United States
6 The Enduring Appeal and Continuing Challenge of Political Murder in Latin America and Beyond
Appendix—Political Murder in Latin America: Individual Country Narratives
Notes
Bibliography
Index
P REFACE AND A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
On the morning of November 17, 1991, I went for a hike that began along the Circunvalar, a winding road that threads its way through the Parque Nacional on the eastern edge of Bogotá, where the city crowds against Mount Monserrate. After rounding a secluded bend, my companions and I saw a group of military police milling about a grassy bank. Spread upon it lay the bodies of two young men, neatly arranged side by side. Each had been shot in the chest several times and obviously moved there later. As we passed, one of the soldiers joked, “No están durmiendo.” (“They’re not sleeping.”) Before I left Colombia in late July 1992, I ran across the publically displayed bodies of people violently killed on two other occasions.
The early to mid-1990s were the final years of the bloody and highly successful offensive by paramilitary groups against the leftist Unión Patriótica party, a political organization with ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the FARC, Colombia’s largest guerrilla army. One might say that this project began with those sightings, but it also grows out of my long-term research interest in popular political mobilizations and the repression they often face. My first book explored Colombian Gaitanismo in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, a populist movement that ended with its leader’s assassination in 1948 and the violent suppression of its adherents in the years that followed.
This venture is, admittedly, ambitious in its scope. I examine the phenomenon of political murder throughout modern Latin America, focusing on many different countries in some depth, with quicker but significant glances at most of the rest. Given the number of such killings in Latin America, the aim is necessarily more thematic and comparative than encyclopedic. I build on an expansive literature composed of monographs on individual countries and their regions. And though a growing number of excellent collections now compare and contrast the various “dirty wars” since the late 1960s, they are multiauthored and invariably structured as a series of separate country studies that sometimes seem like an exercise in parallel play. In contrast, this book flips the focus from country histories to political murder itself, pulling the broader literature together to let the various cases illuminate the phenomenon in concert and thematically. Obvious disparities exist among the different countries’ experiences, but what really jump out are the similarities. This is important to recognize because many specialists tend to see “their” country or subregion (Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, the Andes, the Southern Cone, Brazil) as unique or the “worst” case, while others might insist that their countries are “not as bad.” This project is, therefore, a regional history that should be of use to the wider scholarly community, yet it is also aimed at a general audience. I present a broad portrait of political murder in Latin America and offer a unified thesis about its causes and practices. My goal is comparative synthesis.
Many Latin Americanist scholars attest to the value of comparative history, but few actually attempt it. One explanation for this situation, as Charles Bergquist noted in his own ambitiously comparative Labor in Latin America , is that historians revere studies rooted deeply in primary sources, and rightly so. But this laudable preference can unfortunately reinforce a tendency toward excessively focused specialization, with contentious territorial undertones, even in an interconnected field like Latin American studies. The result is a palpable timidity regarding forays onto other people’s turf. Not surprisingly, most works of history dealing with the postindependence period still revolve around the nation-state. It is also true that many “big” comparative books can have problems. Some are better at presenting lots of details and entertaining vignettes than at outlining a coherent interpretation, while others are long on interpretation but short on evidence. Both of these undesirable outcomes dissuade authors.
Finally, historians can be divided broadly by disposition into splitters and lumpers. The more extreme splitters object to overarching comparisons. They want to focus on the individual cases, separate regions, and very different countries during neatly defined periods. As with the insistence on primary documents, this healthy impulse can also be taken to absurd levels. Regional history is more unwieldy, to be sure, but Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, etc., are themselves large, complex, culturally and regionally diverse nations. Given that all political boundaries are to some degree artificial constructs, should we also avoid talking about them as “wholes”? Another extreme that would be absurd in the present circumstance is seeing every murder and massacre as a separate, unique, atomized occurrence, unrelated and uncomparable. Certainly the timing, scale, or intensity of political murder is tied to the individual political story of a country or one of its regions. The details and context matter. But even giving the splitters their due, we can recognize parallels and similarities. Whether consistent or sporadic, recourse to political murder across the region reveals a broader phenomenon. Countries with intense histories of political murder turn out to be examples of a larger experience rather than exceptional cases. The splitters love monographs on narrow topics. So, in fact, do lumpers, but they see them as building blocks, and believe that we should use them to construct larger interpretive structures (ones that can stand straight and true, of course).
I should also note that despite the importance of political murder, and my own fascination with the topic, I feel a certain trepidation about writing such a book as this one. A real danger exists that readers with little or no personal experience of Latin America will come away with an unduly negative image of the region, or have old stereotypes reinforced. This problem came up the first time I taught this material to undergraduates, at the University of South Carolina at Columbia, where no one in that particular class had ever traveled in the region. Subsequent classes at Hampden-Sydney College and Washington and Lee University confirmed my fear that people who have not been to Latin America are more likely to develop a negative impression, though I should also point out that these were all popular classes, and students from each expressed desires to go there when the courses were completed.
The compelling beauty of Latin America’s varied locales and the hospitality of its peo