The violence work of transnational gangs in Central America

Abstract

According to international relations scholars, an important change taking place in the post-Cold War context concerns the lethality of non-state armed groups (NSAGs). Underlying this observation is the conventional assumption that non-state violence is intrinsically illegitimate. This article shifts the analysis of violence away from the terrain of legitimacy, which tends to moralise the difference between state and non-state forces, and towards the terrain of work, where their violence features as part and not separate from a shared political economy. I propose the notion of violence work as a resourceful analytic into the dialectics of everyday violence and the complex processes of value production in social life. Against the background of the extreme cruelty attributed to transnational gangs in Central America, I argue that their violence work is expressive of prevailing modes of accumulating wealth in the region. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I show how gang violence work animates a system of economic cooperation that engages a wide array of subjects who traverse state/non-state and legal/illegal divides.

Keywords:

• Non-state armed groups
• transnational gangs
• violence
• labour
• Central America
• illicit political economy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Randolph Persaud and Narendran Kumarakulasingam for organising the special issue of which this article is a part, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback. An earlier version of this piece was presented at the International Studies Association’s Annual Convention in Baltimore in 2017. I thank Nivi Machanda for her discussant comments and everyone on the panel and in the audience for their critical questions. I also owe gratitude to my advisor Raymond Duvall, Patrick McNamara, Robert Nichols, Christina Ewig and Himadeep Muppidi for offering priceless comments on previous versions of this draft.

Notes

1 Mandel, Global Security Upheaval, 45.

2 Labrador and Renwick, “Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle.”

3 Comaroff and Comaroff, “Law and Disorder in the Postcolony,” 6–10.

4 Dudley, Transnational Crime in Mexico, 7–11.

5 Wolf, Mano Dura, 10.

6 US Department of State, “Security Turbulences to World Order.”

7 Labrador and Renwick, “Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle.”

8 Rodgers and Muggah, “Gangs as Non-State Armed Groups,” 301.

9 Mandel, Global Security Upheaval, 46.

10 My use of this term is inspired by Huggins et al.’s exploration of ‘violence workers’ under Brazil’s dictatorship. See Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo, Violence Workers.

11 See Manwaring, Street Gangs.

12 Valencia, “30 de abril de 2014” (my translation and emphasis).

13 Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, 152.

14 Englehart, “Non-State Armed Groups,” 172.

15 Marx, Capital, vol. 1.

16 Ibid., 280.

17 See Van der Meulen, Durisin, and Love, “Introduction,” 17–20.

18 Cox and Federici, Counter-Planning from the Kitchen.

19 Author’s interview with journalist Enayda Argueta, San Salvador, El Salvador, February 12, 2018.

20 Soyapango, El Salvador, July 16, 2016.

21 Wolf, Mano Dura, 9–12.

22 Denning, “Wageless Life,” 96.

23 Ibid., 87–8.

24 Augustin et al., Central America Urbanization Review, 3.

25 Wolf, Mano Dura, 11.

26 Author’s interview, Támara, Honduras, June 31, 2016.

27 Ferguson and Li, “Beyond the ‘Proper Job,’” 1.

28 Labrador and Renwick, “Central America’s Violent Northern Triangle.”

29 Author’s interview, San Salvador, El Salvador, May 8, 2018.

30 Tilly, “War Making and State Making,” 170.

31 International Crisis Group, “Mafia of the Poor,” 16.

32 Argueta, “Transformaciones de las pandillas,” 111.

33 Author’s interview, Ixtepec, Mexico, March 31, 2018.

34 Author’s interview with journalist Edgar Romero, San Salvador, El Salvador, February 12, 2018.

35 Author’s interviews with human rights defender Benjamín Cuéllar, San Salvador, El Salvador, July 22, 2016; Marco Castillo, director of Grupo Ceiba, a youth violence prevention NGO, Guatemala City, Guatemala, July 27, 2016; and sociologist Eugenio Sosa, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 23, 2018.

36 Author’s interview, Támara, Honduras, June 30, 2016.

37 Author’s interview with Wilfredo González of DEMOS, Central American Institute for the Study of Social Democracy, Guatemala City, Guatemala, July 26, 2016; José Mejía, Director of the Transnational Anti-Gang Center, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 31, 2018.

38 Author’s interview, Ixtepec, Mexico, March 12, 2018.

39 Author’s interview, Támara, Honduras, June 31, 2016.

40 Author’s interview with journalist Thelma Mejía, Tegucigalpa, Honduras, February 5, 2018.

41 In Guatemala, see the case of an army colonel who laundered extortion money for MS-13: Puerta, “Arrest of Colonel.” For extortions committed by elite police units in El Salvador, see InSight Crime, “El Salvador Special Police Unit.”

42 This phenomenon has been documented in Honduras. See Mencía, “Maras y Violencia,” 20.

43 Author’s interview, Guatemala City, Guatemala, February 20, 2018.

44 Hume, Politics of Violence, 144.

45 Gutiérrez, Territories of Violence, 7.

46 Author’s interview, Ixtepec, Mexico, March 31, 2018.

47 According to Carlos López, a former B-18 member and violence prevention worker, gangs have been employed by organised criminal groups for these purposes (author’s interview, Guatemala City, Guatemala, February 20, 2018). Also see Dudley, Transnational Crime in Mexico, 3.

48 For the use of gangs to suppress unions in the Salvadoran garment industry, see The Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Unholy Alliances, 24–6. Prof. Marcelo Colussi claims that gangs are also instrumentalised for union-busting purposes in Guatemala (author’s interview, Guatemala City, Guatemala, February 15, 2018).

49 Nateras, Vivo por mi Madre, 284. It is important to note that not all gang members sell their labour in this way and that some do it without the consent of the gang.

50 Author’s interview, Ixtepec, Mexico, March 26, 2018.

51 Arteaga, “Decapitaciones y mutilaciones,” 475–8.

52 The reputation for cruelty varies across gangs. In Honduras, citizens perceive B-18 to be more ‘sadistic’ than MS-13; and in El Salvador, Israel Ticas, forensic investigator at the Attorney General’s Office, contends that specific gang chapters engage in methods of dismemberment that other groups do not employ (author’s interview, San Salvador, El Salvador, May 4, 2018).

53 Author’s interview, San Salvador, El Salvador, July 13, 2016.

54 Stanley, The Protection Racket State, 23.

55 Ibid., 6.

56 Ibid., 42.

57 Gutiérrez, Territories of Violence, 38.

58 Cruz, “Criminal Violence and Democratization,” 15–8.

59 Author’s interview, Támara, Honduras, June 30, 2016.

60 See Fontes, “Extorted Life,” 608.

61 Argueta, “Transformaciones de las pandillas,” 122.

62 Author’s interview, Guatemala City, Guatemala, February 20, 2018.

Additional information

Funding

This research was assisted by the Dissertation Development Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Andrew Dickinson Fellowship with funds provided by Dr Catherine Guisan and Mr Stephen Dickinson; and a Dissertation Research Fellowship with funds provided by the Political Science Department at the University of Minnesota.

Notes on contributors

María José Méndez

María José Méndez is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her publications include ‘The River Told Me: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 29, no. 1 (2018), and a co-authored article with Quỳnh N. Phạm: ‘Decolonial Designs: José Martí, Hô' Chí Minh, and Global Entanglements’, Alternatives 40, no. 2 (2015).