Talk by Enrique Desmond Arias

Organized Crime and Neighborhood-Level Politics in Latin American and the Caribbean

Tuesday, February 18, 2014 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EST
Johnson Center, Meeting Room B

 

Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean reports have emerged of powerful criminal organizations dramatically increasing crime and violence and rendering cities ungovernable.  Indeed the Pentagon released a report in 2009 saying that Mexico was in danger of becoming a failed state.  Despite these pervasive fears there have been few detailed studies of the role of armed actors in managing spaces.  This study focuses on the activities of different types of organized crime groups in managing territories and population.  This presentation will examine how armed groups in Medellin, Colombia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Kingston Jamaica, seek to govern the territories they operate in.  Professor Arias will show how the different types of armed actors generate different types of local governance patterns.

Biography

Enrique Desmond Arias is Associate Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2001.  His research interests concern social mobilization, the politics of crime, human rights, and security and politics in developing societies. He is the author of Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks, and Public Security (University of North Carolina 2006) and is the co-editor of Violent Democracies in Latin America (Duke University Press 2010). The United States Fulbright Commission, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism funded this research.  His writings have appeared in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, Qualitative Sociology, Studies in Comparative International Development, Policing and Society, and Comparative Politics.

Hosted by Center for Justice Leadership and Management.