when justice is criminal_lynchings in contemporary latin america

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When justice is criminal: Lynchings

in contemporary Latin America

ANGELINA SNODGRASS GODOY

University of Washington, Seattle

Abstract. Across Latin America, the 1990s saw an increase in popular lynchings of

suspected criminals at the hands of large crowds. Although it is often assumed that

these incidents involve random, regrettable, and relatively spontaneous acts of vio-

lence or throwbacks to the past, I argue in this article that these represent purposeful,

powerful, and deeply political acts. Most literature on the region tends to regard con-

temporary violence as a predominantly top-down phenomenonby state against

citizen, landowner against peasant, mestizo against Indianyet these incidents reveal

a new sort of violence that originates at the bottom. I argue that the lynchings sug-

gest an attempt by embattled communities to reassert their autonomy after decades of

repeated assault by state armies, local elites, the globalized economy, and other adver-

saries. By enacting these highly ritualized, unequivocally public displays of justice,

marginalized communities seek not only to punish and to deter criminal activity, but

perhaps more importantly, to reassert themselves collectively as agents rather than

victims. In this way, lynchings may reveal a dark side of what passes for democracyin the region.

On October 20, 2001, a crowd of peasants captured three men accused of

stealing two cases of soda, some fertilizer, and candy, on a farm in rural

Guatemala, and the following day a throng of thousands gathered to watch

them die. Residents of some 14 surrounding villages converged on Matucuy,

Purulha, Baja Verapaz, to witness the lynching of Jose Ical Xip, 34, Juan

Cuc, 23, and Rene Alfredo Cho, 15. Despite failed interventions by local

and international human rights authorities, the three were hanged and their

bodies burned. By the time the Civilian National Police arrived after fighting

off local residents who attempted to hold them at bay, the bodies had been

buried and most of those responsible for the lynching had fled.1

In Huejutla, Hidalgo, Mexico, two suspected members of a kidnapping ring

were detained by police on March 24, 1998; the following day, in sixteen

separate broadcasts, the local radio station announced that the men would

soon be set free and called on the local population to impede their lib-

eration. In a span of hours, some one thousand residents descended on the

courthouse, trapping the judge and his staff inside while they destroyed two

police cars and ransacked municipal buildings, dousing some in gasoline.

They forcibly removed the two suspects from the jail, dragged them to the

Theory and Society 33: 621651, 2004.C 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.


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main plaza, and beat them to death. The inert and bloodied body of one manwas then strung up in the plazas central gazebo. 2

Enraged by the recent murder of a 6-year old boy, residents of Mariara,

Venezuela, seized upon 41-year-old Omar Perez Gallardo on April 16, 2001.

After dragging him to the boys house, where the grieving mother claimed to

recognize him, the crowd attacked him and would likely have killed him had

the Police not arrived to save his life. Later that same night, a crowd of some

four to five hundred residentsamong them the local mayorconverged on

the small hospital where he lay recovering from his wounds, and threatened

to set fire to the entire establishment if Mr. Perez was not released. He was

subsequently beaten to death in the Plaza Bolvar; one arm was removed

from his body and hung in a tree; and the remainder of his cadaver was set

afire in the plaza amid a passionate protest against rampant criminal activityin the region. As part of this protest, locals occupied and temporarily closed

the regional highway. It was later revealed that Mr. Perez was innocent of all

charges; he had apparently been mistaken for a legendary serial killerknown

as the Monster of Mariara.3

These tales, however chilling, do not represent isolated events. In

Guatemala,from 19962002, the United Nations Mission to Guatemala

(MINUGUA) documented 482 linchamientos4 or lynchings in the

country, for an average of almost six per month.5 In Venezuela, human

rights group Programa Venezolano de EducacionyAccion en Derechos

Humanos reported 164 lynchings between October 2000 and Septem-

ber 2001.6 Anthropologist Daniel Goldstein notes that more than 30

such incidents occurred in the settlements ringing Cochabamba, Bo-livia, in 2001.7 And in Mexico, Carlos Vilas has investigated some 103

lynchings between 1987 and 1998:8 other reports have suggested many

more. Related incidents have been reported in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil,

and other countries of Latin America. This is a rural as well as urban

phenomenon; one that occurs in mestizo or ladino communities as well

as indigenous ones; and one that targets insiders, or people known

to the community, at least as frequently as it does interlopers. It is,

however, predominantly a tool of poor and marginalized communities,

whether they are the isolated rural hamlets of Southern Mexico and

Guatemala or the peripheral slums surrounding Caracas. And while

precise figures are unavailable, most analysts agree that recent yearshave seen an alarming increase in the frequency of these acts,9perhaps

in response to a generalized increase in rates of common crime and a

growing sense of citizen insecurity across the Americas.

Yet, partly because it is difficult to obtain information about lynchings,

and partly, perhaps, because they are testament to a troubling reality,

very little analysis has been conducted about this trend. In this article,


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however, I arguethat the lynchings constitute more than random, regret-table acts of violence or throwbacks to the past. While most literature

on the region tends to regard contemporary violence as a predomi-

nantly top-down phenomenonby state against citizen, landowner

against peasant, mestizo against Indianthese incidents reveal a new

sort of violence originating at the bottom, which is purposeful, pow-

erful, and political. In this essay, I focus on lynchings as indications

of an agentive moment,10 an attempt by embattled communities to

reassert their autonomy and agency after decades of repeated assault by

state armies, locally powerful elites, a shifting rural economy, criminal

bandits, and other adversaries. By enacting these highly ritualized, un-

equivocally public displays of justice, communities seek not only to

punish and deter criminal activity, but, perhaps more importantly, to re-

assert themselves collectively as agents rather than victims. In the wake

of the changes wrought by globalization, I argue, authority in matters

of criminal justice becomes uniquely contentious, and marginalized

communities often find themselves ill-poised to pose nonviolent alter-

natives to state justice systems: into the breach step lynchings, which

take on different forms in different cultural and geographic spaces but

acrossthe Americas epitomize an emergentstruggle for local autonomy

in legal and moral decision making. As John Comaroff writes, when

they begin to finda voice, peoples who see themselves as disadvantaged

often do so either by speaking back in the language of the law or by

disrupting its means and ends;11 the lynchings are a prime example.

This is, to be sure, a dangerous argument. My intention here is most

decidedly not to celebrate lynchings or to imbue these incidents with

a democratic spirit that is not their due. On the contrary, I believe

that lynchings suggest a dark side of democracy, one too frequently

overlooked in contemporary scholarship. In continuing to assume these

incidents are isolated eruptions, we fail to understand what may be their

most important message: this, too, is a form of democracy. Or more

precisely, this is the unsurprising result of the inevitably truncated,

eviscerated forms of democracy more aptly termed polyarchy12 that

contemporary geopolitics have installed in much of the developingworld.13

Methodology

This article is based on ethnographic research conducted in Guatemala

from May to August 1999, and October and November 2000, and forms


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part of a broader multi-year project investigating violence, community,and the law. During this time I interviewed over 150 people from all sec-

tors of Guatemalan society, including dozens of in-depth discussions in

one-on-one interviews and focus group settings with rural residents of

the highlands province of El Quiche, where lynchings have been most

frequent. This sample included many eyewitnesses to recent lynchings.

Here, I supplement data gathered in Guatemala with information from

secondary sources about lynchings in other countries, to posit some

tentative conclusions about the phenomenon in Latin America as a

whole.14

Conducting research on lynchings presents serious methodological

challenges. First, information about these incidents is hard to come

by, and where it exists, it is often drawn from media reports that are

unreliable at best. If anything, the available numbers are likely to un-

derstate the phenomenon. Of the small number of cases I was able to

verify personally, few were reported in the national media, and virtu-

ally none received the detailed investigative treatment necessary to get

to the bottom of what took place. The lack of comprehensive figures

goes hand-in-hand with a deeper problem: eyewitnesses reluctance to

speak. Although in some cases this stems from the illegality of the

events in question (and the ambiguity about individual informants po-

tential responsibility in them), in others it is a result of death threats

issued by thoseinstigating lynchings against anyone who would divulgeinformation about them.15 Moreover, attempts to collect first-hand in-

formation about lynchings can compromise the personal security of the

researcher because of such threats, and also, perhaps more significantly,

because the lynchings occur in the context of extreme social marginal-

ity and settings where everyday violence runs rampant; as sociologist

Carlos Vilas has put it, lynchings are far from lightning striking on a

sunny day.16

In my case, I was able to converse with residents of the Guatemalan

highlands about this very sensitive topic thanks to the collaboration

of a local human rights group

17

organizing in communities affectedby wartime violence.18 It is impossible to discount the effect that my

partnership with them may have had on the information I obtained.

Similarly, while most of my interviews were conducted in Spanisha

language I speak fluently, but not the mother tongue of most of my

highland informantsa small number were conducted in Kiche, with

the aid of a local interpreter. Although there is no substitute for first-

hand field research in analyzing these phenomena, the limitations and


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constraints under which it must necessarily be conducted should bekept in mind by the reader.

Understanding the lynchings: The commonsense consensus

The paucity of analysis on this topic may in part stem from the deep

methodological challenges inherent to such work; but in part, I suspect

it also derives from the fact that on first glance, explanations for the

phenomenon may appear obvious to many observers. After all, it is no

secret that the polyarchic regimes of postauthoritarian Latin America

are infused with lawless violence. The spread of criminal violence

fuelled, no doubt, by the proliferation of small arms and demobilized

combatants in the wake of the regions authoritarian period, and fi-

nanced by an expanding international market for trafficking in drugs,

stolen property, and migrantsis a virtually uncontested fact.19 An

expanding list of authors cites this increasing tide of criminality as

evidence of weak states inability to govern effectively, upholding the

rule of law across the national territory;20 this argument has found res-

onance among donor institutions like US AID, the World Bank, and

the Inter-American Development Bank who have devoted millions of

dollars to supporting judicial reform and rule of law initiatives in the

region.21 Lynchings, in such formulations, are assumed to be an indi-

cation of citizens desperation at this appalling situation: confrontedwith widespread crime and woefully inefficient state justice systems in

regimes crippled by legacies of authoritarianism, some people take the

law into their own hands; it may be unseemly, but ultimately, it is un-

surprising. As William Prillaman writes, The void created by weak,

inefficient and inaccessible courts has been filled by a combination

of mob action, vigilante justice, and law-and-order politicians tapping

public frustration and exposing some of the more base impulses of

society.22 Although the human tragedy inherent in these executions

should be immediately apparent, they might seem to challenge few of

our assumptions about life in what Guillermo ODonnell has called the

brown areas.

23

Why, then, should scholars focus so intently on thesegrim rites of death on the margins?

Many citizens echo this view, offering a commonsensical explanation

for the phenomenon: in Guatemala, for example, everyone told me

lynchings happen because crime is out of control and the justice system

is at a virtual standstill.24 Faced with the immediacy of the problem and

the inadequacy of the states solution, communities are forced to take


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the matter into their own hands. This position resonates in the wordsof government officials and educated residents of the capital as well as

citizens of the communities where lynchings have occurred. A mestizo

(or ladino) salesman from a lower-middle class area of Guatemala City

articulated this perspective well:

Lynchings . . . are savagery. But theyre an understandable savagery. [Los

linchamientos. . . son una salvajada. Pero es una salvajada comprensible].

A while ago in the colonia where I live, [the residents] caught a thief, they

beat him up, then let him go again and hunted him down, like a sport, and

beat him up again, then let him go again, and theyd caught him again a third

time when the police showed up. The police said, What did he steal? Where

is it? Listen gentlemen, you all can be sent to jail for this, the man doesnt

have anything on him. But wecaught him inside oneof thehouses. Whichhouse? That one, its empty. Then theres no plaintiff [parte pidiente], no

no no. Look, next time you find a thief around here, just kill him at once.

(Miren, si alguna vez encuentran otro ladronporaca,m atenlo de una vez.)

It hasa certain logic, no? Now, imagine, if you live in [the rural andprimarily

indigenous department of] Totonicapan where theres a tiny little station of

a few police who basically just patrol up and down the highway. Someone

rapes one of your daughters. You know who it was. You know you dont

speak enough Spanish to . . . be able to express yourself sufficiently before

a judge, and you know that a trial could take years, and lots of money. See

what I mean? Lynchings are an understandable disgrace. Theyre deplorable,

but understandable.

Former President Alfonso Portillo, in an interview with journalist Jose

Zepeda, explained it thus: The people are desperate because they seethat there are rapists, that there are robbers, that there are murderers,

and that the police come, they take them to court and then two weeks or

a month later theyre released for lack of evidence. So this desperation,

this anguish in the people is making them take these measures.25 A

Mayan peasant from Chimaltenango described the phenomenon to me

in similar terms: Lynchings . . . are an action that the people take when

they know who it is, and that person steals, steals, steals, or kills, kills,

kills, and the police dont do anything, so in the end the community

explodes (la comunidad se revienta).26 And the Executive Director of

CACIF, the powerful private-sector chamber of commerce and industry

in thecountry, told me,Aculture of violence sown by36 yearsof armedconflict, a very weak, very fragile judicial structure, and a vacuum of

power: its a recipe for the lynch law.27

Others, frequently alluding to the concentration of lynchings in re-

mote areasand particularly among deeply impoverished indigenous

communitiestend to regard lynchings as something of a vestigial

throwback to the pre-modern period. This argument is offered by those


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who decry lynchings, seeking to blame them on backwardness (often,but not always, by invoking unambiguously racist discourses about in-

digenous cultures and peoples), but it is also put forward by apologists

for lynchings, who would justify them as an element of local tradition

or time-honored practice of frontier justice. In Guatemala, for exam-

ple, newspaper columnists have described lynchings as an ancestral

inheritance tracing back to ancient Mayan traditions.28 And in Mex-

ico, in response to a 2001 lynching in Mexico City, the governor of

the Federal District declared, This is the Mexico that never ends, that

remains alive in its traditions and customs, above all in small towns

and communities; and with the beliefs of the people, its better not to

interfere [con las creencias del pueblo, mas vale no meterse].29

A related, though perhaps more sophisticated, argument blames the

state for its failure to provide an adequately functioning legal system

in such communities, citing the monopoly on the legitimate use of

violence as a basic precondition for the modern state and suggesting

that its absence here reflects not indigenous barbarism but state failure.

The problem, in other words, is that these communities lack access to

justice. In Guatemala, the administration of Alvaro Arzu (19962000),

for example, responded to the lynchings as primarily indicative of an

absence of state institutions in the areas where these incidents have

been concentrated.30 The chief of the UN Development Programme

noted in 2002 that the lack of presence of the justice system and ofall other state institutions in ample rural areas is a decisive influence

in the phenomenon of lynchings.31 Ultimately, whether one blames

indigenous communities for their savagery, or the state for its exclusion

of the poor and underprivileged, the answer is the same: bring in the

law, for these territories exist outside it. Lynchings are assumed to be a

vestige from an incomplete process of colonization (if one adopts the

cultural view) or state formation (if one takes the position that access

to law is the problem).

If one accepts these obvious explanations, the obvious answer lies

in improvingand extendingthe reach of the law; hence the pro-posals to counter the lynchings by constructing new courts in rural

areas, by incorporating new forms of dispute resolution into the for-

mal legal system, or by improving the delivery of legal services to the

non-Spanish speaking population through the use of interpreters. On

one level, such changes should of course be welcomed: they should

bolster the effectiveness of the states justice system, and this is unde-

niably important. Were state justice systems truly effective, lynch mobs


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would likely lack motivation to mobilize; clearly and indisputably, theseeruptions underscore the need for real reform of state structures.

But on another level, the contemporary enthusiasm for judicial reform

risks repeating the mistakes of the law and development movement

of the 1960s and 1970s, when scholars and activists rushed to mod-

ernize developing countries legal systems by exporting liberal legal

models from the United States to Africa, Asia, and Latin America.32

Although the law and development movement is today largely consid-

ered to have been a failure, one of its most important lessons was the

need to study law in its social context, to understand the laws relation

to social movements, political struggles, and its embeddedness in other

structures of power asymmetry in society.33 And it is in this regard that

I suggest the lynchings deserve closer attention. Drawing on such an

approach, I argue that the commonsense consensus on lynchings mis-

understands these acts in at least three ways: a) lynchings are not about

crime; b) lynchings are not pre-modern; and c) the answer to lynch-

ings (inasmuch as I have one) is not to apply law to this lawlessness, but

to understand the lynchings themselves as profoundly political com-

mentaries on the distribution of power and resources in these deeply

unequal societies.

Lynchings are not about crime

. . .or, at least, they are not only about crime. Todays lynchings occur in

the context of widespread fear of crime and a pervasive sense that the

authorities response to crime has been unsatisfactory; without either

of these conditions, there would quite likely be no lynchings. And yet,

these two factors alone cannot explain the phenomenon.

Lynchings are more a reaction to fear and insecurity than they are to

crime per se. Certainly, repeated incidents of criminal activity, or par-

ticularly brutal criminal acts, engender fear and disorder in affected

communities, and contemporary events suggest that crime may be per-haps the most potent of potential catalysts to mob justice. Yet it is

important to disarticulate widespread social anxiety from crime itself.

The tenor of communities responses to crime should not be expected

to rise and fall in direct response to the gravity and frequency of actual

criminal acts; it is a reflection of fearan eminently social product

more than it is crime itself. While the two are often related and fre-

quently conflated, they are not the same.


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First of all, the lynchings do not occur in the areas where crime isat its worst. In Guatemala, while government figures on crime are

unreliable, the problem is generally considered to be most severe in

the port areas of Izabal and Escuintla and in the capital city itself; 34

lynchings, on the other hand, are concentrated in the western highlands.

And while the poor functioning of the justice system is indisputable,

there is no reason to believe that in the areas where lynchings do not

occur, crimes are dealt with through state mechanisms. Furthermore,

an effective justice system in these areas has always been lacking;

while contemporary concerns about crime cast these deficiencies into

particularly sharp relief, in areas where most lynchings occur crime

has never been handled through state channels. The states present-

day failure to control crime, then, cannot explain the recent rise in

lynchings.

Second, there is a frequent lack of correspondence between the crimes

that contribute to the fear expressed in lynchings, and the offenses al-

legedly committed by the person(s) actually lynched. When discussing

the crime problem in their area, my respondents recounted in lav-

ish detail accounts of spectacular crimes, perpetrated with atrocious

savagery and unrelenting regularity. Yet most of those lynched were

accused, in fact, of relatively minor property crimes.35 In the case of

Mexico, Vilas notes a similar disproportionality between the gravity of

the offense and the usually-fatal outcome of the lynching;36 in Ecuador,Castillo Claudett finds that some 86 percent of those lynched were ac-

cused of theft, compared to 2.2 percent accused of murder, 3.2 percent

accused of child rape, and 6.5 percent accused of assault. 37 This fre-

quent disparity suggests a need to disentangle explanations of lynchings

from discrete incidents of real crime.

This is not to suggest that highland peasants fear of crime is out-of-

step with their actual danger of victimization (although it may be);

despite the large literature in this area, my interest lies elsewhere. As

Richard Sparks et al. have written, crime is something for which we

seek explanation and accountabilityand how we explain it and whomwe blame may be highly symptomatic of who we are and how we or-

ganize our relations with others. In this respect, crime may be one of

those forms of danger on the borders which gives form to a commu-

nitys sense of itself and its distinctiveness from others.38 Moreover,

concern about crime is often heightened at times when the commu-

nitys sense of itself is under assault, as Erikson suggests in his famous

study of crime waves in Massachusetts Bay colony.39 Lynchings take


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place in communities in crisisand that crisis is about more thancrime.40

Lynchings are not pre-modern

Sociologist Jose de Souza Martins has argued that lynchings in Brazil

occur among people on the razors edge of incomplete transition . . .

the urban and political threshold of an unfinished intersectionwhere

temporary and permanent migrants are gathered, and populations are

barred in time and space from entering the modern world.41 Yet while

lynchings indisputably occur among populations largely excluded from

the benefits of development and modernizationwhether they are res-

idents of isolated rural outposts or the ramshackle shantytowns that

ring the regions major citieswe should be careful about describing

these people or their practices as somehow trapped outside modernity.

In fact, quite the contrary is true: the communities in which lynch-

ings occur are fully inserted in the globalized political economy of late

modernityand whats more, it is precisely this insertion that causes

the social dislocations of which lynchings are a particularly painful in-

dicator. Rather than a remnant of traditional practices, then, lynchings

are evidence of their erosion.

First, there is no evidence to suggest that lynchings have their roots intraditional mechanisms of popular justice. In Guatemala, lynchings are

overwhelmingly concentrated in the Western highlands,42 where the

vast majority of the population is Mayanand there is a well-documented

history of Mayan traditional justice (known locally as justicia consue-

tudinaria, justicia Maya, orusos y costumbres) by which communities

resolve conflicts outside the state legal system.43 While specific prac-

tices vary from group to group (the Guatemalan Mayan population

comprises some 21 different ethnolinguistic groups), in general the tra-

dition revolves around restitution rather than retribution and communal

consensus-building rather than adherence to legal code.44 Mayans

have practiced traditional justice for over 500 years, but lynchings didnot occur in any regular fashion until the 1990s. Were such practices

part of traditional Mayan justice, they surely would have surfaced

earlier.

Yet in recent years, customary legal practices have increasingly come

under fire. While it is difficult to quantify the extent of their use to-

day, it is clear that the practice of Mayan justice has become much less


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common over the last 20 to 30 years.45 This has left many communitiesfaced with an institutional vacuum in terms of justice and dispute res-

olution. As the governor of Baja Verapaz province explained after the

lynching in Purulha described at the outset of this article, No one lis-

tens to them, they are affected by crime and when something happens,

they dont know whom to turn to.46

In Guatemala, this vacuum is in large part a result of the genocidal

counterinsurgency campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, and of the rav-

ages of war more generally. As a middle-aged Kiche Mayan man told

me, They say that earlier, when you did something wrong, the com-

munity itself corrected you, told you to do this or that, gave you apunishment. And if you did it again, again there would be another jus-

tice, but it never reached the point of taking away your life, because

[the communities] didnt live that way before the violence came. But

like they say, since the violence came to take away our system, now

theres no system, now theres no justice.47

In addition to thewar, however,thesechanges arealso a resultof broader

processes of modernization and development that are generalizable to

the rest of Latin America.48 In the Guatemalan highlands, as throughout

most of the country (and indeed, the continent), rural communities have

formed part of the modern political economy for the better part of a

century, if not more. Early attempts to liberalize the countrys economyand open it to international capitalism came at the end of the 1800s,

resulting in the seizure of Mayan communal lands and the legalized en-

slavement of thousands of Mayan peasants under so-called vagrancy

laws that provided forced labor to the large plantations.49 Through-

out the 1900s, successive administrations strategies for development

targeted rural communities for modernization, attributing the nations

underdevelopment either explicitly or implicitly to the isolation and

cultural backwardness of its indigenous communities.50 Beginnning in

the 1940s, the state began promoting the modernization of agriculture

through tax credits and other programs. Contemporary neoliberalisms

advocacy of market-oriented development strategies has thus markeda continuation rather than a departure from past practices. Nonethe-

less, the rapid economic changes of recent decades have accelerated the

globalization of these localcollectivities, bringing aboutfar-reaching

social changes.51

To say that lynchings occur in modern, globalized communities is not

to suggest that these settlements constitute high-tech enclaves with


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up-to-date installations, enhanced communications, or any of the otherbenefits modernity might confer; quite the contrary, lynchings often oc-

cur in rural hamlets without paved roads, electricity, or potable water,

where locals must hike for hours to reach the nearest school, court-

house, or government office. To suggest they are modern, therefore, is

in some ways counterintuitive.Yet we mustmove beyond the underlying

assumption that modernity equals material benefit, and therefore that

impoverished communities are somehow backward or un-modern.

Contemporary capitalist (under)development in peripheral nations, as

Robinson has shown,52 rests on quite another premise: to serve the

project of market-oriented capital accumulation driven by neoliberal

elites, peasant populations must be disentwined from subsistence agri-

culture andmade available as a large,mobile, andeminently replaceable

pool of inexpensive labor to be utilized in the burgeoningeconomic sec-

tors that drive growth in these nationschiefly, export processing and

commercial agriculture for export. The impoverishment and marginal-

ity of most villages in the highlands, then, is hardly a reflection of

modernitys failure to arrive; these conditions are not at all contrary to

the modernizing project as it exists today, and may even be sharpened

and reinforced by it.

As has been documented elsewhere, in Guatemala53 and more generally

in Latin America as a whole,54 the adoption of neoliberal or market-

oriented policy prescriptions has brought about increased rural poverty.This leads peasant communities to experience what Alain de Janvry and

colleagues have called the double (under-)development squeeze, as

many are forced to abandon subsistence agriculture and seek sources

of cash income, even as the opportunities for off-farm employment

dwindle.55 This prompts a number of resourceful survival strategies

on the part of affected peasants, and many subsequent changes in the

social structure.

First, in Guatemala, a steadily growing number have been forced to

migrate. Many peasants undertake seasonal migrations to work on the

large coastal plantations to the south, such that in many villages sizablesectors of the economically active population are absent from the com-

munity for long stretches during key harvest periods. In other cases,

migrations involve permanent or semipermanent relocations to other

areas of the Guatemalan national territorymost particularly to the

capital city, where entire neighborhoods of migrants have sprung up

in recent decades, in many cases under extremely precarious living

conditions; but also to a lesser extent, to newly settled frontier areas


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carved out of the rain forest.56 Still others have relocated to Mexico,the United States, or other destinations.

Second, among those who choose not to migrate, many participate in

new commercialized activities in or near their communities of origin.

Some have become involved in contract farming, using their subsis-

tence plots to cultivate snow peas, broccoli, or cauliflower for export

rather than traditional corn and squash for local consumption. Others

work as field laborers on larger farms producing export crops.57 Still

others have become active in nonagricultural employment, particularly

in the expanding maquiladora sector and in putting-out activities.58

Lastly, improvements in communications have led to whatmany Mayan

leaders describe as a virtual assault by western culture through televi-

sion, movies, and other media. Sometimes migrants later return home,

bringing new customs, clothes, and habits. Highland communities re-

main geographically remote, but today are increasingly enmeshed in

a transnational network of relations that facilitates the transmission of

not only resources (remittances from abroad have become the nations

number one source of revenue, and a vital support for highland families

struggling to scrape by), but also information, ideas, and culture.59

These changes have altered the social fabric of highland communities

in many ways. The increasing mobility of the population, of course,contributes to instability in community relations and weakens the hold

of traditional forms of authority.60 The abandonment of traditional

agricultural activities, many of which play an integral role in Mayan

cosmology, which is deeply tied to corn, land, and relations with nature

and the ancestors61 likewise alters the fabric of community life. In

many cases, contact with other cultures and lifestyles has opened a

generation gap within Mayan families.62 For the first time, countless

respondents told me, their communities are dealing with drugs, gangs,

and teenagers who may not want to follow in the footsteps of their

forefathers.

Of course, not all of these changes are bad; globalization is neither

an absolute evil, nor its antecedent an absolute good. In many ways,

contemporary changes have created openings for Mayans to redefine

their culture and identity in new contexts, to explore opportunities for

education, employment, and self-advancement through avenues not

available to older generations.63 Recent years have seen a revitaliza-

tion of Mayan culture.64 And highland communities have historically


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been poor, marginalized, and marked by other injustices: many custom-ary practices exclude women from decision making roles, for example.

Long ignored by state policy, highland Mayan villages have suffered

inter-ethnic conflicts over land, endemic illnesses, illiteracy, and a host

of other problems; contemporary ills must not be attributed to moder-

nitys pollution of some imagined romantic past.

Whatever new opportunities recent changes have created for Mayans,

however, they have also weakened the hold of the traditional insti-

tutions, norms, and practices by which these communities governed

themselves semi-autonomously for centuries. And they have made

painfully apparent the contradictions of capitalism: while globaliza-

tion produces polarization, it also pulls the poles together in geographic

proximity, making the markers of exclusion sharper as many realize the

depth of their own deprivation. It is not only the poverty and the disrup-

tion of community engendered by globalization, but also the attendant

revelation of its deep divides that lays the groundwork for lynchings.

In Guatemala, then, the fear that fuels lynchings is provoked by what

has been termed globalization anxiety in other contexts. In my con-

versations with residents of highland communities, I found that their

concerns, while nominally about crime,oftenradiated outinto a broader

sense of insecurity. Forced to confront so many rapid social transfor-

mations even as they were stripped of their traditional means for doingso, residents of these communities told me not only about crime, but

about a diffuse lack of control and autonomy:

You see,Im from Aguacatan [Huehuetenango], and therewe seethe increase

in crime with great concern. And just now, about a week ago, they buried a

young man who was killed in a village, and it caused a kind of scandal, an

experience that hadnot been lived beforein that area, andthat, well, it ledthe

community to reflect about whats going wrong. This kind of thing creates

instability within the communities. And it also creates disintegration within

the family. The young people that areliving in the communities, its like they

dont have . . . they dont value the principles that their families have, so they

dont listen to their parents, and theyve learned other principles that dont

go with theprinciples of the community. So this creates instability within the

family, and also within the community. And the indigenous communities,

like I say, maybe we havent lived through things like this before, but now

were living it.

ASG: How is this related to the end of the war?

. . .Well,its related, but the warisntthe onlyfactor. There aremany otherfac-

tors that also haveto do with thecrime wave. For examplein thecommunities,


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they also see it in the sense that many have gone to other countries, for ex-ample to the United States, to work, and theyve brought with them ways,

customs of life that were unknown in the communities, and this, according

to the communities, has had a great deal of influence. On the other hand, the

media; if you go to one of these communities in the interior they will tell

you that the media has too much influence. And although it sounds, well,

maybe not so acceptable, but theres also the idea that its education which

has caused our children to be this way. . . . But I see it more related to the fact

that many young people have to move to the urban areas, to the municipal

centers, to study for example middle school (el nivel b asico), and there they

live with young people from that area, and its like these attitudes are con-

tagious, so then later they return to the communities with different attitudes

than they hadbefore. . . .Im talking about what Ive seen in Aguacatan.Even

in the case of this last experience that we had, and another one where they

killed a young man with such cruelty (sana) that it seemed so incredible,

the body appeared in a river, but it appeared with the head destroyed as if

someone had pounded it with a rock, and there were remains of the scalp on

a nearby rock, and . . . and . . . and they had stabbed him, they had opened

his mouth and stabbed him in the mouth, its a kind of thing that until now

we could never imagine, we had never known. Later it was discovered that

there was a group of young people who did drugs, they were drug addicts,

and that this had been a vengeance between them. Thats why I tell you,

many of those who have gone to other countries have brought these customs

and have influenced other youths. So, what they say now is that there has to

be some kind of training, or some kind of activity of consciousness-raising

[concientizacion] for young people, but also for their parents, so that they

exercise more control over their children, because, for example, whats a

young person doing outside on the street at 11 at night? Many people areasking themselves this. Why dont the parents impose more rigid discipline

on their children? Maybe in the citiesit wascommon to see that sort of thing,

but in the municipalities it wasnt common at all, but now you see it more

every day, you see young people in groups, or standing on street corners

together, at 11 at night. So nowadays were realizing that the parents have to

assume their responsibilities.65

Here the speaker traces the origins of the crime wave to the social

transformations affecting his community. Other interviewees echoed

this sentiment, often bemoaning young peoples purported wayward-

ness more than crime itself. A Mayan woman from Chichicastenango

told me,

In our community we have many problems with drugs, with violence, with

crime, [thats] the situation were in now. . . Sometimes I hear noises at night

and I go out and look in the street, I want to see what kind of people it is,

and theyre young people, youngsters, 15 years old. Whos teaching them?

Who has led them into this? And where does it come from? Where?66

For sociologists, the lynchings resonance with Durkheimian themes

is inescapable. In many ways, the Guatemalan lynchings resemble


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Durkheims classic description of repressive justice in primitivesocieties: they are administered by very nearly the whole society,67

through violent, passionate acts;68 and furthermore,they exhibit certain

quasi-religious characteristics.69 Yet as Durkheims analysis insists,

these acts of public punishment are only peripherally about the crime

that precedes them; at their heart lies the goal of repairing ruptured

solidarities and reinforcing bonds among the non-criminal members

of the community.

As Durkheim suggests, these community rites often taken on a quasi-

religious character. Although press accounts of lynchings often fo-

cus on the uncontrollable exaltation of enraged crowds, underscor-

ing the frequent assumption that such acts occur spontaneously, many

lynchings, when examined, reveal this violence to be both methodical

and meaningful. In Guatemala, as MINUGUA has shown,70 would-be

lynchers frequently detain victims for days prior to their execution, us-

ing this time to assemble the community, hold trials or popular votes,

administer physical punishments sometimes aimed at producing con-

fessions, and summon crowds for the execution itself.71 Furthermore,

in many cases the process is clearly premeditated: in many commu-

nities, residents told me security committees had been constituted to

handle crime, and in some cases collections had been taken up among

all residents to purchase gasoline in advance, so it would be available

should the need arise. The methods of execution, too, suggest a de-liberate attempt to invoke religious symbolism: in Guatemala victims

are generally burned alive, or their bodies set fire after death; other

methods include stoning and hanging, although less visually symbolic

forms such as shooting or beating also occur. Corpses are sometimes

displayed for some time after the execution. The moment of death is

often accompanied by further ritual, including symbolic tortures and

forced confessions on the pyre. In Mexico, Vilas notes that victims

were sometimes forced to participate in a so-calledpaseo, walking (or

in some cases being dragged by a vehicle) through the village while

community members spit on them, insulted them, hit them, and other-

wise abused them, before finally facing their death.

72

Castillo Claudettalso documents the use of symbolic sanctions in Peru, including cru-

cifixions, hair-cutting, and forced public undressing.73

I argue that rather than spontaneous eruptions of expiatory fury, lynch-

ings constitute a deliberate attempt by embattled communities to

reaffirm values they see as threatened. In this sense, lynchings may con-

stitute a form of generative violence, recalling Rene Girards discussion


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of acts of violent unanimity aimed torestore harmony to the commu-nity, to reinforce the social fabric.74 By overlaying violence with ritual,

communities affirm that theseunlike the savage acts of criminals

are acts ofmeaningful, legitimate violence. Although at first blush they

may seem to be spontaneous acts of collective outrage about crime, on

a deeper level lynchings are purposeful, deliberate acts that reassert

community values in response to widespread anomie stemming from

a broad set of social transformations, of which the rising incidence of

criminality is but a single symptom.

Lynchings are acts of (perverse) political empowerment

At the same time, however, contemporary lynchings depart in a sig-

nificant way from the primitive practices described by Durkheim

and Girard. Rather than the predecessors to a modern justice system

as Durkheim and Girard describe acts of collective violencetodays

lynchings are explicit indictments of this system. The overtly judi-

cial nature of many lynchings suggests that the state, courts, and legal

procedures are clear reference points for lynch mobs. Lynchings of-

ten follow certain steps that crudely parallel formal legal procedures:

suspects are detained and held while investigations are carried out;

any evidence is brought before the decision making body; suspects are

questioned and confessions sought (often under torture); a sentenceis decided upon; sometimes, proceedings are recorded for future ref-

erence. There is a deliberate attempt to mimic the functioning of the

official justice system, in effect to construct an alternate system subject

to the controls of the community. This suggests that lynchings reveal a

conflict not only between community members and criminals, but also

between communities and the statea conflict over whose authority

prevails in matters of life and death.75 In this way, communities who

lynch struggle to regain control over notjust crime, butdecision making

authority in issues of vital import to their day-to-day lives. Lynchings

are, seen in this light, defiant expressions of local autonomy.

This intention is evident in the actions that often accompany these exe-

cutions. First, participants often seek to project news of the proceedings

far and wide, using the mass media and even human rights groups to

carry their message. I spoke to one UN worker in Guatemala City who

told me how he had been present at various lynchings, invited by the

community as a witness and forced, once there, to videotape the acts.

A similar eagerness of lynch mobs to be filmed is discussed in the case


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of Peru by Eduardo Castillo Claudett.76 And as Carlos Vilas notes,in August 1996, a videotape of a lynching in Tatahuicapa, Playa Vi-

cente, Veracruz, Mexico, was sent to a human rights group in the state

capital.77 Rather than shrinking from the spotlight, the communities

engaged in these acts often actively seek the attention of outsiders and

the mass media.

In calling attention to these acts, communities are careful to legitimize

their participation on the basis of unanimity and popular support in

order to avoid potential prosecution. In some cases, lynch mobs have

signed documents affirming their unanimous intention to lynch, as if

to preempt charges that a single person or group was responsible; thesedocuments are presented to the authorities as evidence that the actions

taken were legitimated by the popular will. In one dramatic case, fol-

lowing the execution of eight suspected criminals in 2000 near Chichi-

castenango, Guatemala, the nations President made an unprecedented

visit to the region, purportedly to ensure that the instigators were appre-

hended. He was confronted with a petition affirming the communities

intention to continue lynching as necessary, and later by a crowd of

thousands who told him, You cant arrest anyone, Mr. President, be-

cause [if you do] the people will move and destroy what we encounter

in our path.78

Furthermore, lynchings are often accompanied by public protestsagainst the authorities, including the destruction of municipal prop-

erty, the occupation of buildings and highways, and occasionally the

hostage-taking of local authorities who oppose the mob. In Guatemala,

judges and policemen themselves have been lynched. In Venezuela, as

part of the lynching described at the beginning of this article, residents

of Mariara took over the Central Regional Highway as part of their

reported rebellion against insecurity and pronounced their intention

to carry out further protests as long as the intolerable levels of crime

continued.79 These acts underscore communities intention to force au-

thorities to take their concerns seriously. As one interviewee told me,

I dont know with what intentions [lynchings] are done. Possibly todemonstrate to the authorities that they have to do something.80

If lynchings are in part a collective rite aimed at fostering cohesion

among community members, they are also in part a politically charged

expression of popular will through violence, aimed squarely at out-

siders and the state. In Durkheimian terms, they do constitute messages

aimed within, at the healthy consciences of the noncriminal members


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of the community, affirming shared values and repairing the damagesto solidarity occasioned by the offending act; but they also, in an im-

portant departure from Durkheim, constitute unequivocal reactions to

the state.

Under some circumstances, then, lynchings may constitute expressions

of resistance and local autonomy. In the case of Guatemala, this is not

an unproblematic assertion. Many lynchings have occurred there as

a lingering remnant of authoritarianismmost specifically, as actions

directly instigated by former civil patrollers or military commissioners,

in which individual community members are forced to participate out

of fear for their lives. The United Nations 2000 report on the topic

and various reports by human rights groups highlight this perspective;

my own research has uncovered considerable evidence to substantiate

claims that ex-paramilitary groups are often involved in instigating

lynchings, and furthermore, that these acts sometimes target personal

or political enemies of these groups rather than purported criminals.

To view lynchings of this sort as expressions of popular will would

be woefully inaccurate (and unfair). However, I also found that many

populations unequivocally support lynchings.81 In this sense, I argue

that at least some lynchings may be construed as acts of local democ-

racy in the sense of actions taken in representation of the will of the

people.

Furthermore, the frequency of lynchings in Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador,

Brazil, and so many other Latin American countries underscores the in-

adequacy of explanations that attribute the Guatemalan lynchings only

to ex-military or paramilitary forces. Clearly, lynchings enjoy some

measure of popular support in many communities where they occur.

While it is important (particularly in post-conflict settings) not to take

the appearance of mass participation in lynchings at face value, it is

also important not to adopt analytical lenses that may unwittingly deny

these communities any agency in their actions, defining everything they

do as reactions to past victimization.

Implications for democracy

If we accept that lynchings do constitute, under some circumstances,

expressions of local autonomy, this forces us to confront some dis-

turbing questions about the nature of democracy in such contexts. Cer-

tainly, the suggestion that widespread violence threatens the stability of


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contemporary Latin American democracies is nothing new. In the wakeof recentdevelopments,a numberof scholars have begunto identify this

area as an emergent priority for future research. Felipe Aguero defines

the weak rule of law as among the principal fault lines of demo-

cratic consolidation in Latin America.82 Juan E. Mendez, Guillermo

ODonnell, and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro devote considerable attention to

the topic of lawless violence in a recent volume detailing challenges

to democracy in Latin America.83 Larry Diamond suggests that this

danger has been largely overlooked by theorists of democracy, despite

its gravity: crime destabilizes democratizing societies, discourages the

expansion of their embattled economies, and dismantles the rule of

law, encouraging illegal behavior by the state and its citizens.84

Undoubtedly, all of this is true. Lynchings, clearly, are a symptom of the

(un)rule of law that ODonnell and others have identified. Yet they are

testament to more than merely the extraordinary violence of everyday

life in highly marginalized communities. They also serve as indicators

of a struggle between citizens and the state, a struggle in which com-

munities use collective action to impose their authority and assert their

autonomy in affairs about which they are extremely concerned, but on

which the state has been utterly unresponsive. The problem is that the

spreading sense of citizen insecurity unfolds in the context of near-

total illegitimacy of state lawboth its criminal justice functions and

its representative democracy functionsand simultaneously, shatteredlocal solidarities and norms. As a result, the angry atomization of

ODonnells vision85 gives rise to angry association, and collective

violence emerges as a perverse form of community empowerment.

Crime is a serious and urgent problem in Latin America. But so are the

social conditions under which crime becomes a crisis. A large body of

sociological literaturefrom the classical work of Durkheim to more

contemporary scholars writing from a range of research settings and

intellectual traditions86 pushes us to consider crime itself as a so-

cial product. Rather than an exogenous force threatening to undermine

democratic structures, crime (or more precisely, fear of crime) may infact be a reflection of the functioning of those structures. Yet although

scholarly interest in Latin American justice systems is growing, much

of todays rule of law approach effectively depoliticizes crime, taking

it largely at face value as a naturally-occurring fact. Perhaps because

most of those tackling this topic are lawyers, jurists, or practitioners

seeking tangible solutions to a very pressing problem, much of the

literature tends to depict crime as largely exogenous to the political


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system, focusing on concrete ways to reform state structures to combatit better: modernization of justice systems, professionalization of po-

lice and judges, institutional streamlining, and other measures.87 Little

attention is given to the social and political causes (or ramifications) of

the perceived crisis. Where lynchings or other forms of vigilantism are

mentioned, it is only to underscore the urgency of justice-sector reforms

like those currently underway;88 it is assumed, in other words, that the

lynchings express discontent at precisely the deficiencies identified by

international assistance programs. But ethnographic inquiries into how

those who engage in lynchings view the law suggest otherwise. I argue

that rather than merely a technical question of the maladministration

of justice, these trends are a bitter manifestation of the neglected in-

tersection of law and politics as it plays out in situations of extreme

polarization.

Among the lessons learned from the failure of the law and develop-

ment movement, Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth tell us, was that

law cannot be considered merely a matter of technology to be ac-

quired off the shelf as the best or most efficient practice.89 Yet such

an off-the-shelf approach to law often seems to underlie contem-

porary judicial reform/rule of law programs. While a strong and pre-

dictable legal framework (particularly as regards property rights) is the

bedrock for the private investment and economic growth necessary to

transform underdeveloped societies, a selective strengthening of cer-tain legal mechanisms is not the same as ensuring justice for all. To

suggest that the solution to the widespread exclusion of marginalized

populations is to grant them access to the institutions of state law

the very institutions that, in lynchings, they often attack quite literally,

with fists and feet and torcheswhile at the same time reducing state

spending for social policies and limiting the opportunities for political

mobilization, is to propose a law-centered vision of social and political

change.

It is, upon closer inspection, a vision that coincides neatly withthe same

neoliberal vision of governance espoused by the very lending institu-tions who often bankroll rule of law reforms. This is a vision in which

problems like poverty and social exclusion are to be resolved through

market mechanisms, not remedied by redistributive state policy. The

formal legal system remains available to redress egregious wrongs,

of course; but it is not intended, nor even empowered, to promote

an activist vision of social change. Individual disputants can and do

come forward with rights-claims, but in the absence of other forms of


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political mobilization, litigation itself is ill-equipped to achieve far-reaching social change.90 So while some Latin American jurists have

applauded the rising protagonism of the courts in their countries

(Jorge Correa Sutil, for example, touts the trend as the first sign of

modernization91), others suggest that this law-centered vision of so-

cial justice, sometimes called the judicialization of politics, only

thinly conceals the failure or abdication of other institutions charged

with important democratic functions.

Boaventura de Souza Santos argues, for example, that the legitimacy

of political leaders as reliable representatives of the popular will has

today been eroded by increasing awareness of powerful corporate in-

fluences, corruption scandals, and the like; with the welfare state ly-

ing in ruins, fewer and fewer everyday citizens see the executive or

legislative branches of government as truly responsive to their needs.

The downsizing of the welfare administrative sector [has led] to the

upsizing of the judicial system, Santos writes. . . .[But] by becom-

ing more active in the area of administrative law and the protection

of rights, courts contribute to diffusing the conflict that may arise

in the process of dismantling the welfare state. The judicial system

thus injects legitimacy into the democratic social pact of a state en-

feebled by the erosion of the conditions that had hitherto sustained

it. This judicialization of politics is not without problems: caught

in the dilemma of having all the independence to act but no pow-ers to enforce, the promise of court activism may soon prove to

exceed, by far, its delivery. When that occursif it occurscourts

will cease to be part of the solution to become precisely part of the

problem.92

Enhancing the effectiveness of the courts while reducing the scope of

state involvement in other aspects of social justice thus promotes a

vision of law unlikely to confer more meaningful benefits on marginal-

ized communities. Lynchers do not clamor for the vindication of

their individual rights. What they seek is a broader transformation

of their world, a fairer system in which the marginalized have avoice. This is not a call for more law, but a cry for justice. For in

mimicking the states law, lynchings denounce it; they clamor for

order, but deliberately subvert the order that is premised on their

exclusion. In their defiance they reveal the yawning gaps between

the promise and reality of democracy in these deeply divided so-

cieties, and the inability of lawany lawto bridge a chasm so

wide.


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Conclusion

Seen in this light, lynchings constitute evidence of a distinct sociolog-

ical rupture in community life, stemming from both genocidal state

violence, as in the Guatemalan case, and the social dislocations associ-

ated with economic transformations in marginalized areas, as is evident

more broadly. When stripped of traditional institutions of social con-

trol and dispute resolutionin the Guatemalan case, both of informal

networks based on trust, kinship, and tradition, and institutions for

adjudicating disputes, such as Mayan justiceand placed under the

stress of a contemporary crime wave, communities turn to ritualized

violence as a desperate expression of autonomy and self-defense in the

face of multiple assaults. Violence becomes both the offending force

and the means of expressive response as embattled communities, seek-

ing to reappropriate control of their lives, become ensnared in a cycle

of violence and counterviolence.

As Richard Sparks et al. write, in speaking of crime, people routinely

register its entanglement with other aspects of economic, social, and

moral life; attribute responsibility and blame; demand accountability

and justice; and draw lines of affiliation and distance between us and

various categories of them.93 In lynchings, communities speak as

loudly about the difference between themselves and criminals as they

do about the distance between themselves and the state. In the wakeof dismantled militarism, violence is no longer the exclusive province

of the powerful: it can be used not only top-down, but side-to-side,

and even bottom-up. The lynchings in many Latin American countries

show that, in many post-transition regimes, the state-dominated pat-

terns of social interaction have been discarded but violence remains

the universal language.

For this reason, lynchings speak to more than death on the margins;

they provide a window into the possibilities for civic life in a region

struggling to weather dramatic social changes while preserving, for

the most part, an economic and political system controlled by a very

few. This is a story of fragmented solidarities, of identities and insti-

tutions under assault and enduring values that rise in violence in re-

sponse to specific perceptions of power and powerlessness. It is a story

told through lynchings, yet also spokenvery differentlythrough

other bottom-up eruptions of anger at historic iniquities throughout

the postcolonial world: attacks on foreign banks and government insti-

tutions in Argentine riots;94 witch-burning in the new South Africa;95


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ethnic cleansing abetted by state inaction in India.96 The lynchings aresimply one local manifestation of the increasingly contentious global

politics of community belonging and control in settings of institution-

alized mistrust, one site at which the meanings of justice and security

are negotiated in the increasingly polarized world that is characteristic

of our times.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to numerous colleagues and friends for their comments on

earlier versions of this article, including Michael McCann, Lucy Jarosz,Arzoo Osanloo, Jamie Mayerfeld, Katherine Beckett, Steve Herbert,

Denis Goulet, John Comaroff, Luis Pasara, Guillermo ODonnell, and

Erik Olin Wright; and to the Theory and Society Editors and reviewers,

including William I. Robinson. Lastly, I am deeply indebted to the

many people in Guatemala who aided me in this research, yet whom I

cannot identify for security reasons; to the UC Berkeley Human Rights

Center and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for grants that made this

research possible; to Peter Evans for tireless mentoring throughout the

project; and to the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

at the University of Notre Dame, where I served as a visiting fellow

while developing this work. Although this work has benefited from

the contributions of many people, all responsibility for any errors oromissions resides solely with me.

Notes

1. Angel Martn Tax, Baja Verapaz: Intentan Linchar a Tres Delincuentes, Prensa

Libre 22 October 2001; Teresa Lopez, Teresa. Turba Lincha a Tres, Prensa Libre

23 October 2001.

2. Por radio incitaron a sacarlos de la carcel; desoyeron al gobernador, La Jornada

27 March 1998; for a more detailed account of this lynching, see Sam Quinones,

True Tales From Another Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,

2001).3. Comunidad de Mariara se rebela contra el alto ndice de inseguridad,El Univer-

sal, 18 April 2001; Apresado el violador y homicida de Mariara, El Universal

14 May 2001; Mariara de todos los monstruos, El Universal13 May 2001.

4. Although the term lynchings often connotes a particular practice in the U.S.

contextreaders may have in mind the racially-motivated killings, by hanging,

in the post-bellum U.S. southin the Latin American context the methods of

execution are many and there does not appear to be any consistent link to racial

domination. For purposes of this article, lynchings are defined as incidents of


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physical violence committed by large numbers of private citizens against one ormore individuals accused of having committed a criminal offense, whether or

not this violence resulted in the death of the victim(s). Therefore, confrontations

between armed groups, military actions, disputes over land that may result in

murders, individual settling-of-accounts or vengeance killings, and other types

of violence are not considered lynchings. The numbers of lynchings cited here

reflect the numberof incidents, not the number of victims; in fact, many lynchings

involve multiple victims.

5. This figure includes incidents occurring from the beginning of 1996 to the end

of 2002. See Mision de Verificacion de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala

(MINUGUA), Los Linchamientos: Un Flagelo Contra la Dignidad Humana

(Guatemala: MINUGUA, 2000); and MINUGUA, Los Linchamientos: Un

Flagelo que Persiste (Guatemala: MINUGUA, 2002).

6. Programa Venezolano de Educaciony Accion en Derechos Humanos (PROVEA),

Informe Anual 2001. http://www.derechos.org.ve/.

7. Daniel M. Goldstein, In our own hands: Lynching, Justice, and the Law in

Bolivia, American Ethnologist 30/1 (February 2003): 2243.

8. Carlos M. Vilas, (In)justicia por Mano Propia: Linchamientos en el Mexico

Contemporaneo, Revista Mexicana de Sociologa 63/1 (2001): 131160.

9. Eduardo Castillo Claudett, La Justicia en Tiempos de la Ira: Linchamientos

Populares Urbanos en America Latina, Ecuador Debate 51 (2000): 207226; D.

Goldstein, In our own hands, concurs with the view that these incidents are on

the rise.

10. See Valentine Daniel, Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of

Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 189192.

11. John L. Comaroff, Foreword in Contested States: Law, Hegemony and Resistance,

M. Lazarus-Black and S.F. Hirsch, editors (New York: Routledge), xii.

12. The term polyarchy was first coined by Robert Dahl 9 (see Robert A. Dahl, Pol-yarchy: Participation and Opposition [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971])

to refer to a system of government whereby popular participation is confined to

the expression of preferences in elite-controlled electoral contests; citizens vote,

but a small group of powerful elites rules. Many theorists, similarly, have accepted

variations on a Schumpterian definition for democracy whereby the establish-

ment of free elections signals the point at which democracy is considered to have

been achieved; yet in my view, the mere establishment of political institutions

in which elites vie for leadership is not synonymous with the creation of a sys-

tem truly for the people, See Robert Dahl, for an excellent discussion of the

relationship of polyarchy to democracy, see William I. Robinson, Promoting Pol-

yarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1996).

13. By locating these democraciesin thedeveloping world, I do not mean to imply that

advanced industrial countries democracies are somehow above reproach; quite

the contrary, I believe examining the cases of extreme democratic dysfunction in

the periphery may shed light on related, yet perhaps less apparent, deficiencies in

core democracies as well.

14. There are problems, no doubt, in letting research conducted in a single country

serve as our window on this broader phenomenon; I am not unaware of these

shortcomings. But without some initial attempts to illuminate these phenomena,

based as they admittedly are on incomplete, partial information gleaned from


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glimpses of a very complex and contentious reality, we will never begin to under-stand this very important pattern of justice that is, itself, criminal. Here, I have

focused on elements of the Guatemalan case that are generalizable to other con-

texts. For a more detailed treatment of the particularities of the Guatemalan case,

see Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, Lynchings and the Democratization of Terror in

Postwar Guatemala.

15. This is particularly a problem in Guatemala, where a number of lynchings have

been instigated by former members of the paramilitary civil patrols, many of whom

rely on their de facto authority to continue to impose fear among the residents

of their communities. For more on paramilitary involvement in lynchings, see

Godoy, Lynchings.

16. Carlos M. Vilas, (In)justicia por Mano Propia.

17. I have chosen not to identify this group because of the political sensitivity of this

topic in the volatile and often violent settings in which they work.

18. I have chosen not to identify this group by name because of security concerns

arising from the political sensitivity of this topic in the volatile and often violent

settings in which they work.

19. See Robert L. Ayres, Crime and Violence as Development Issues in Latin Amer-

ica and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1998); Mayra Bu-

vinic, Andrew Morrison, and Michael Shifter, Violence in Latin America and

the Caribbean: A Framework for Action, Inter-American Development Bank,

March 1999. Hugo Fruhling and Joseph S. Tulchin, editors, Crime and Violence

in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State (Washington, DC:

Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003).

20. See, for example, Guillermo ODonnell, On the state, democratization and

some conceptual problems: A Latin American view with glances at some post-

communist countries. World Development 21/8 (1993); Guillermo ODonnell,

Polyarchies and the (Un)Rule of Law in Latin America: A Partial Conclu-sion, 303337 in The (Un)Rule of Law & the Underprivileged in Latin Amer-

ica, Juan E. Mendez, Guillermo ODonnell, and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, editors

(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999); Guillermo ODonnell,

Democracy, Law, and Comparative Politics. Studies in Comparative Interna-

tional Development 36/1 (2001): 736; William C. Prillaman, The Judiciary

and Democratic Decay in Latin America (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000); Juan

Mendez,Problems of Lawless Violence, chapter 1 in The (Un)Rule of Law &

the Underprivileged in Latin America, Juan E. Mendez, Guillermo ODonnell,

and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, editors (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,

1999).

21. See Edmundo Jarqun and Fernando Carrillo, editors, Justice Delayed: Judicial

Reformin Latin America(Washington: Inter-American Development Bank, 1998);

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Law and Democracy: (Mis)trusting the Global Re-

form of Courts, 253281, in Globalizing Institutions: Case studies in Regulation

and Innovation, Jane Jenson and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, editors (Aldershot,

England: Ashgate, 2002).

22. Prillaman, The Judiciary, 172.

23. See G. ODonnell, On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Prob-

lems.

24. Regarding Guatemala, both of these statements are indisputably true. On the

crime rate: in 1997 the World Bank estimated Guatemalas homicide rate at 150


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per 100,000 population, more than fifteen times the comparable rate in the UnitedStates (See Buvinic, Violence in Latin America, 3). On the justice system: a

recent USAID study of the justice system found its inefficiency in prosecuting

criminal cases catastrophic; of an estimated90,000 cases brought to the attention

of the Public Ministry per year, virtually none is tried by the courts. (See Steven

Hendrix, Lessons from Guatemala: Renewing US Foreign Policy on the Rule of

Law, Harvard International Review (Winter 2002): 1418.

25. http://www.rnw.nl/informarn/html/act001010 laviolencia.html

26. Personal interview with Mayan man from Chimaltenango, 6/25/99.

27. Personal interview with Ricardo Ardon, Executive Director of CACIF, 6/17/99.

28. Catherine Elton, Guatemalas Lynch-Mob Justice, in The Christian Science

Monitor, December 1, 2000; Las amargas realidades de la justicia popular,

Prensa Libre Sept 19, 1997.

29. Lopez Obrador Justifica Linchamiento, El Diario de Mexico July 28, 2001.

http://www.diariodemexico.com.mx/2001/jul01/280701/fotos/primera.pdf

30. See Siglo Veintiuno (no byline), Flores Asturias: Mas Policias para Reducir Lin-

chamientos, 24 December 1998;Guatemala Flash (no byline), Faltade Juzgados

Motiva a Pobladores a Tomar Justicia por Mano Propia, 24 March 1998.

31. Roberto Montoya,Linchamientos, un flageloque sacude Guatemala. Masde 500

personas fueron vctimas de esta alarmante practica en las comunidades indgenas

desde 1996, El Mundo del Siglo Veintiuno, December 18, 2002: 28.

32. On this point, see Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, The Internationalization of

Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American

States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

33. See especially David Trubek and Marc Galanter. Scholars in Self-Estrangement:

Some reflections on thecrisis in law anddevelopment studies in theUnited States,

Wisconsin Law Review (1974): 10621102.

34. Centro de Investigaciones Economicas Nacionales (CIEN), Paz urbana: per-cepciones de la violencia en Guatemala. Sondeo Urbano Participativo. Colo-

nia Santa Marta, Esquipulas, Chiquimula, and Canton El Mosquito, San Pedro

Sacatepequez, SanMarcos, unpublished ms,June 1999; CIEN,Diagnosticode la

Violencia en Guatemala: Aproximacion Cuantitativa y Cualitativa, unpublished

ms. n/d, on file with author.

35. In Guatemala, this may be partly because those carrying out the more sensational

crimes belong to more sophisticated criminal organizations, many of them com-

posed of demobilized former combatants with lingering ties to the state and thus

a measure of guaranteed impunity, beyond the reach of a ragtag band of peas-

ants armed with gasoline; in part it may be because such crimes, while atrocious,

are more frequently talked about than they are actually experienced, and thus the

stories outpace the action opportunities in terms of lynchings.

36. C. Vilas, (In)justicia por Mano Propia.

37. Castillo Claudett, La justicia.

38. Richard Sparks, Evi Girling, and Ian Loader, Fear and Everyday Urban Lives.

Urban Studies 38/56 (2001): 888.

39. Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New

York: John Wiley and Sons, 1966).

40. Furthermore, if weconsider contemporary Latin American lynchings in compara-

tive and historical perspective, the naivete of equating their eruption to self-help

criminal justice is yet clearer. For example, in the late nineteenth and early


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twentieth century, lynchings in the U.S. South were often justified by participantsand in the local press as necessaryto ensure swift, certain justicefor black criminals

in light of a slow, ineffective, andlenient criminaljustice system; yet a wealth of re-

cent scholarship has conclusively shown that these acts corresponded to boundary

management of quite a different sort. While there are many important differences

between the U.S. case and contemporary Latin American ones, and a thorough

comparison of the two falls outside the scope of my project here, a passing famil-

iarity with the literature on lynchings elsewhere should lead observers of Latin

America to be cautious about uncritically accepting presumed connections be-

tween crime and contemporary vigilantism. (For more on lynchings in the United

States, see, for example, Stewart E. Tolnay and E.M. Beck, Racial Violence and

Black Migration in the American South, 1910 to 1930, American Sociological

Review 57 (1992): 103116; S. Tolnay and E. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An

Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 18821930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1995); S. Tolnay, G. Deane, and E.M. Beck, Vicarious Violence: Spatial Ef-

fects on Southern Lynchings, 18901919, American Journal of Sociology 102

(1996): 788815; Edward Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment

in the Nineteenth Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press,

1984); H. Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to

Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988); W. Brundage,

Lynching in the New South, 1993).

41. Jose de Souza Martins, Lynchings Life by a Thread: Street Justice in Brazil,

19791988, 2132,in Vigilantism and the Statein Modern LatinAmerica: Essays

on Extralegal Violence, Martha K. Huggins, editor (New York: Praeger, 1991),

22.

42. Some commentaries on the Guatemalan phenomenon, including the frequently-

cited United Nations Mission to Guatemalas 2000 report on the topic, use

province-by-province breakdowns, which show that almost as many lynchingshave occurred in the capital city as in rural El Quiche, as a way to dispel the myth

that lynchings are somehow a Mayan phenomenon. Such arguments are mis-

leading, however, because the numbers are not weighted for population; it is not

surprising that in an area with a much larger population, more lynchings would

occur. Per capita statistics show a more pronounced concentration of lynchings in

the Western highlands.

43. Of course, these traditional, Mayan justice practices are themselves shaped

by the legacies of colonialism, an outcome of the intersection of multiple forms

of legal ordering called interlegality by Boaventura de Souza Santos (and legal

pluralism by others). By saying such practices unfold outside the formal legal

system, I do not mean to suggest they are ever fully autonomous from it.

44. See Defensora Maya,SukBAnik.Administracion de JusticiaMaya. Experiencias

de Defensora Maya (Guatemala:Defensora Maya,1999); Coordinacion de Orga-

nizaciones del Pueblo Maya de Guatemala, (SAQBICHIL-COPMAGUA). Mas

Alla de la Costumbre: Cosmos, Orden, y Equilibrio (Guatemala: COPMAGUA,

2000); Rachel Sieder, Recognising Indigenous Law and the Politics of State

Formation in Mesoamerica, 184207, in Multiculturalism in Latin America: In-

digenous Rights, Diversity and Democracy, Rachel Sieder, editor (Hampshire,

England: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002); Raquel Yrigoyen Fajardo, Pautas de Coor-

dinacion entre el Derecho Indgena y el Derecho Estatal (Guatemala: Fundacion

Myrna Mack, 1999).


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45. In recent years, however, several Mayan organizations have undertaken signifi-cant (and in many cases, very successful) efforts to recover such practices and

encourage communities to resume their use. See Defensora Maya, SukBAnik.

46. Teresa Lopez. Turba lincha a tres, Prensa Libre 23 October 2001.

47. Personal interview, 10/26/00.

48. My intention here is not to downplay the importance of the war in this process;

quite the contrary, I consider it to be fundamental. But because I have explored

it elsewhere (see Godoy, Lynchings), I devote primary attention here to other

aspects that are more generalizable to other countries of Latin America.

49. George W. Lovell, Surviving Conquest: the Maya of Guatemala in Historical

Perspective, Latin American Research Review 23/2 (1998): 2537.

50. Edward F. Fischer, Induced Culture Change as a Strategy for Socioeconomic

Development: The Pan-Maya Movement in Guatemala, 5173, in Maya Cul-

tural Activism in Guatemala, Edward F. Fischer and R. McKenna Brown, editors

(Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1996).

51. Furthermore, while the economic transformation of the highlands continued

throughout the armed conflict, in some communities its effects are being felt

most keenly now that the war is over, simply because the pressures of military

occupation have receded.

52. SeeWilliam I.Robinson,PromotingPolyarchy;and W. Robinson, Neoliberalism,

the Global Elite, and the Guatemalan Transition: A CriticalMacrosocial Analysis,

189206, in Globalization on the Ground: Postbellum Guatemalan Democracy

and Development, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Susanne Jonas, and Nelson Amaro,

editors (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

53. See Linda Green, The Localization of the Global: Contemporary Production

Practices in a Mayan Community in Guatemala, 5165, in The Third Wave of

Modernization in Latin America: Cultural Perspectives on Neoliberalism, Lynne

Phillips, editor (Wilmington, Del.: Jaguar Books, 1998); and Carol A. Smith,The Militarization of Civil Society in Guatemala: Economic Reorganization as

a Continuation of War, Latin American Perspectives 17/4 (Fall 1990): 841.

54. William M. Loker, Grit in the Prosperity Machine: Globalization and the Ru-

ral Poor in Latin America, 939, in Globalization and the Rural Poor in Latin

America, William M. Loker, editor (Boulder, CO.: Lynne Ri

when justice is criminal_lynchings in contemporary latin america

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