Publication

This report looks at postwar violence in Guatemala. It analyzes three forms of violence typical of Guatemala: political violence, the maras and lynch law. The author goes on to examine their causes. She claims that factors such as perpetuation of a culture of violence, racism, poverty, income inequality do not have a causal effect upon violence and offers an alternative explanation. This explanation distinguishes between enabling structures which make violence possible, such as regime hybridity and rent economy, and the structures that might prevent it, such as the performance of the state security sector and of civil society in the same sphere.