Territories of Violence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 1-18

3. State, Space, and Territory

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 19-31

4. Territorializing the State

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 33-46

5. Violence and Crime

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 47-62

6. Marginal Youth and the Maras

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 63-81

7. Public Security and Policies

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 83-95

8. Alternatives

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 97-111

9. Geographies of Violence

   • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

   Pages 113-131

10. Epilogue

    • Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera

    Pages 133-135

11. Back Matter

    Pages 137-163

    PDF

This book examines the persistence of social violence and public insecurity in Honduras. Using a spatial perspective, the author looks at the Honduran state's security polices - known as Mano Dura - and the challenges authorities face. She points to the state's historical difficulty producing and ordering political territory and space.

• crime
• police
• violence
• latin american politics

"Developing a spatial-territorial approach to crime and applying it to Honduras - a country that suffers one of the world's highest rates of crime - Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera makes a significant and high quality contribution to the literature on crime. This is a key case study with a useful and much-needed theoretical framework." - Mark Ungar, The City University of New York - Brooklyn College, USA

"This is the first in-depth study of the structure and culture of violence in Honduras. It emphasizes the origins and the influence of organized crime, focusing in particular on the maras, the youth gangs that are the 'family' of the marginalized youth. Written with ethnographic excellence, it also demonstrates the failures of the anti-mara public policies of the Central American countries deeply affected by youth violence." - Dirk Kruijt, Emeritus Professor, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera is an Anthropologist and Political Scientist. She was Postdoctoral Researcher at the desigualdades Research Network and at the Center of Area Studies and was Adjunct Lecturer at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

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