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Violent governance, identity and the production of legitimacy: autodefensas in Latin America

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Abstract

This article examines the intersections of violence, governance, identity and legitimacy in relation to autodefensas (self-defence groups) in Latin America, focusing on Mexico and Colombia. By shifting focus from the question of where legitimacy lies to how it is produced and contested by a range of groups, we challenge the often presumed link between the state and legitimacy. We develop the idea of a field of negotiation and contestation, firstly, to discuss and critique the concept of state failure as not merely a Western hegemonic claim but also a strategic means of producing legitimacy by autodefensas. Secondly, we employ and enrich the notion of violent pluralism to discuss the pervasiveness of violence and the role of neoliberalism, and to address the question of non-violent practices of governance. We argue that the idea of a field of contestation and negotiation helps to understand the complexity of relationships that encompass the production of legitimacy and identity through (non)violent governance, whereby lines between (non)state, (non)violence and (il)legitimacy blur and transform. Yet, we do not simply dismiss (binary) distinctions as these continue to be employed by groups in their efforts to produce, justify, challenge, contest and negotiate their own and others’ legitimacy and identity.

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Notes

  1. Fragile State Index, http://fundforpeace.org/fsi/ (accessed 4 November 2017)).

  2. The US-backed Plan Colombia begun under Uribe’s predecessor and involved the provision of $7.1bn to the army, police and justice sector from 2000 to 2008. Plan Colombia embodied the remedies prescribed for a failing state, with large amounts of resources targeted at institution-building and increasing security capacity [United States Government Accountability Office 2008, http://www.gao.gov/assets/290/282511.pdf (accessed 4 November 2017)]. Here, the notion of state failure is deployed to justify external involvement in the internal affairs of a state, including the normally sensitive area of national security. A similar prescription to cure a failing state was instituted in Mexico with the Merida Initiative in 2008. Whilst on a lesser scale, the components of this initiative bear remarkable resemblance to Plan Colombia and are similarly couched in the state failure discourse. Moreover, it has a similar focus on (the further militarisation of) security and has facilitated the enhanced role that the army has played in internal security provision since 2006 (Wolf and Morayta 2011, pp. 671–672).

  3. Rompeviento, T.V. 2013. Michoacán: una lucha a muerte… por la vida [Michoacán: a fight to the death…for life], 7 November, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5RafZpdH2E (accessed 8 December 2015).

  4. Aristegui Noticias. 2013. “El pueblo que venció al crimen organizado” en Michoacán [“The town that overcame organised crime” in Michoacán], 26 July, http://aristeguinoticias.com/2607/multimedia/video-el-pueblo-que-vencio-al-crimen-organizado-en-michoacan/ (accessed 4 November 2017).

  5. Grillonautas2. 2014. Estado fallido en Coalcomán, Michoacán; Falso que ya no existe violencia [Failed state in Coalcomán, Michoacán; It is false that violence is now non-existant], 15 July, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jooVvHcvWTc (accessed 4 November 2017).

  6. The ‘Push to the South’ is a name given to part of the Plan Patriota campaign (implemented by President Uribe in 2003) whereby state security forces moved to push guerrillas out of their traditional heartlands in southern Colombia.

  7. E.g. Corrido de Nazario Moreno-Banda Juniors de Jorge Aguirre de Huetamo [The Ballad of Nazario Moreno – by Banda Junior de Jorge Aguirre de Huetamo], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIimMdDuktA (accessed 8 December 2015).

  8. Rompeviento, T.V. 2014. 2a parte de "Michoacán: una lucha a muerte… por la vida [Part 2 of “Michoacán: a fight to the death…for life], 5 February, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSgvSwgi76M (accessed 5 December 2015).

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Acknowledgements

Alexander Curry’s research was sponsored by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Doctoral Training Partnership, Grant Number AH/L503873/1. Find out more at www.lahp.ac.uk. The authors would like to thank Professor Adam David Morton for his help and support in the writing of the article. They would also like to acknowledge the European and International Studies Association and UCL Americas Research Network for allowing the presentation of drafts of this paper at their conferences in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Thanks are also due to the discussants at each of these conferences—Dr. Marsha Henry and Dr. Thomas Rath—for their helpful comments and suggestions. Finally, thanks are due to the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which were important in bringing focus to the arguments in the article.

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  1. School of Advanced Study, Institute of Latin American Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU, UK

    Alexander Curry

  2. Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

    Leonie Ansems de Vries

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Curry, A., Ansems de Vries, L. Violent governance, identity and the production of legitimacy: autodefensas in Latin America. J Int Relat Dev 23, 262–284 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-018-0145-1

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