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ABSTRACT
Violence in Central America has become one of the reasons for leaving the region. Recent scholarship tends to understand violence within local and regional processes, while neglecting the larger transnational processes. Focusing on the case of Hondurans seeking asylum in the United States, this article argues that the phenomenon of violence that has forced Hondurans to leave is a result of a combination of local and transnational processes. Conceptually, this article draws on the notion of the ‘cycle of violence’ to understand the different forms of violence that forcibly displaces Central Americans. The notion has been used to understand how early exposure to violence is linked to future violent behaviour. However, it is limited to local processes. This article expands this notion by considering transnational factors, such as migration and the global agenda of crime control, in the contribution to the reproduction of the ‘cycle of violence’ of Central Americans.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Markus-Michael Müller, the participants of the Workshop “Criminalizing states – Law and Politics in the Making of Inequalities in Latin America", and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly helped to improve an earlier version of this manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. United Nations Refugee Agency, “Women on the Run.”
2. Rosenblum and Ball “Trends in Unaccompanied Child and Family Migration from Central America,” 3; and United Nations Refugee Agency, “Women on the Run.”
3. Rosembaum and Ball “Trends in Unaccompanied Child and Family Migration from Central America,” 2.
4. Burnett, “In Their Search for Asylum, Central Americans Find the U.S. is Closing its Doors.”
5. Menjivar, “Central America: Gender and Migration.”
6. Blanchard et al., “Shifting Trends in Central American Migration,” 61; Coutin, “From Refugees to Immigrant s,” 901–904; Coutin, “Falling Outside,” 570–71; Golash-Boza, Deported, 14–21; and García, Seeking Refuge.
7. Chappell Deckert, “Social Work, Human Rights”; Cantor, “The New Wave: Forced Displacement”; Swanson and Torres, “Child Migration and Transnationalized Violence in Central and North America,” 23–48; Galli, “A Rite of Reverse Passage,” ; and Vogt, “The War on Drugs is War on Migrants.”
8. Widom, “Cycle of Violence,” 161–6.
9. I excluded from the analysis declarations of asylum seekers from El Salvador and Guatemala because the sample was not representative.
10. Cantor, “The New Wave: Forced Displacement,” 2; and Bartram, “Forced Migration and ‘Rejected Alternatives’” 440.
11. Cantor, “The New Wave: Forced Displacement,” 2–4.
12. Erdal and Oeppen, “Forced to Leave ?” 2.
13. Bartram, “Forced Migration and ‘Rejected Alternatives,’” 444.
14. Ibid.
15. See note 8 above.
16. Ibid., 166.
17. Widom, Czaja, and Dutton, “Child Abuse and Neglect and Intimate Partner Violence, “ 2–3.
18. Widom :Cycle of Violence”, 161–166; and Widom, “Varieties of Violent Behaviour,”” 313–4.
19. World Health Organization, “Global and Regional Estimates of Violence Against Women,” 18.
20. Eswaran and Malhotra, “Domestic Violence and Women’s Autonomy in Developing Countries,” 1223.
21. Decree 23–2012, No. 33,092.
22. Observatory for Violence, “Boletin especial sobre muerte violenta de mujeres”; and Menjivar and Walsh, “The Architecture of Feminicide,” 223; Gutiérrez Rivera, “Gender, Race, and the Cycle of Violence”, 46–47.
23. Givaudan and Pick, “Children Left Behind,” 1081.
24. Blanchard et al., “Shifting Trends in Central American Migration,” 63.
25. Golash-Boza, “Deported,” 13 and 28; Riosmena and Massey, “Undocumented Migration from Latin America,” 14.
26. Widom, Czaja, and Dutton, “Child Abuse and Neglect and Intimate Partner Violence,” 11.
27. Menjivar and Walsh, “The Architecture of Feminicide,” 224.
28. Ramisetty and Muriu, “When does the end begin?” 490.
29. Nayak and Suchland, “Gender Violence and Hegemonic Projects,” 469.
30. Observatorio de la Violencia, “Boletín especial sobre muerte violenta de mujeres,” 2.
31. Menjivar and Walsh, “The Architecture of Feminicide”, 226.
32. USAID, “Gender-Based Violence Analysis for USAID/Honduras”, 32.
33. Hunnicutt, “Varieties of Patriarchy and Violence Against Women” 553–554.
34. Wolf, “Mara Salvatrucha: The Most Dangerous Street Gang?” 77; and Cruz, “Central American Maras,” 387.
35. Menjivar and Walsh, “The Architecture of Feminicide”, 222..
36. Stumpf, “The Crimmigration Crisis,” 383.
37. Ibid, 384.
38. Ibid., 376.
39. Zilberg, Space of Detention, 231.
40. Winton, “Analysing the Geographies of the ‘Transnational’ Gangs of Central America,” 142; and Gutiérrez Rivera, Territories of Violence.
41. Müller, “Punitive Entanglements,” 701.
42. Gutiérrez Rivera, Territories of Violence, 72–75.
43. Rodgers, “Slum Wars,” 969.
44. Cruz, “Central American maras,” 391.
45. Gutiérrez Rivera, “Discipline and Punish?”, 496–8.
46. Cruz, “Central American maras”, 392.
47. See note 43 above.
48. Farah and Meacham, “Alternative Governance in the Northern Triangle”; and Koonings and Kruijt, Fractured Cities.
49. Müller, “Punitive Entanglements”, 698.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera
Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She studied political science (Freie Universität Berlin) and anthropology (Universidad de los Andes- Colombia). Her research includes urban violence, contemporary prisons, youth gangs, social mobility, and state responses to crime and violence in Latin America, particularly Honduras and Colombia. She is currently working on two research projects: one is about gender and urban planning in Medellin, Colombia. The second research is based on her work as an expert witness for Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. It explores the connection between different forms of violence experienced by women and contemporary migration in Central America. Her book, Territories of Violence. State, Marginal Youth, and Public Security, was published in 2013 with Palgrave.