Democracies at War Against Drugs: The Military Mystique in Brazil and Mexico

ISBN-13: 9783031113260 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022

Anaís Medeiros Passos

Opis

This book provides an in-depth account of military operations against drug gangs and organizations in two of the biggest countries in Latin America: Brazil and Mexico. Recent studies on drug wars have detailed case studies on the war on drugs but do not focus on the role of the army in such policies. Publications that do drive attention to the military in such situations are usually from human rights organizations or the press and are therefore not scholarly works. There are therefore no recent academic books dealing with the role of the military in the fight against drugs in Latin America. This book aims to fill this gap. It also offers an empirical and theoretical examination of the issue of the role of the military (rather than the police) on national soil—the army being generally devoted to interventions abroad, and the police, to law enforcement on the national ground. The book is also the first work to look at high-level negotiations between military and civilian elites that define the conditions for the use of force during military operations. It provides a theoretically informed understanding of contemporary security politics in Brazil and Mexico.

Spis treści

1. Introduction

 1.1 Blurring the Divide Between Police and Military Missions

• 1.1.1 Contributions to this Book
• 1.1.2 Concepts

 1.2 Key Elements

• 1.2.1 Case Selection
• 1.2.2 Book Overview

2. The Armed Forces and Domestic Missions in Brazil and Mexico (1960-2000)

 2.1 El Ejercito del Pueblo Serving the PRI's Regime

• 2.1.1 The Dirty War (1965-1975)
• 2.2.2 Democratic Alternation in Baja California, Drugs and Crime (1984-2000)

3. The Politics of Militarization

 3.1 Military and Political Elites' Preferences for Militarization

 3.2 The Trigger: Burgeoning of Violence or Fear of Crime? 

• 3.2.1 When Violence Crosses the Lines of the Favelas
• 3.2.2 When Violence Victimizes the Businessmen

4. The Military Mystique

 4.1 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Tijuana

• 4.1.1 Municipal Police and Organized Crime
• 4.1.2 An Iron Fist Will Solve the Problem?

 4.2 "Stateless" Areas in Rio de Janeiro 

• 4.2.1 Local Accounts of State and Non-State Actors' Affairs
• 4.2.2 Favelados' Perceptions of Police and Military Forces

 4.3 Military Forces Reorganize Society

• 4.3.1 Secure Hotlines and Secure Listeners?
• 4.3.2 Networking with State and Non-state Actors
• 4.3.3 Correcting Behavior

5. The Military Agency Patterns

 5.1 The Legal Normalization of Military Intervention in Anti-Crime Activities 

• 5.1.1 Military Courts
• 5.1.2 Establishing the Rules for Intervening in Security

 5.2 Interaction Between the Police and the Military

• 5.2.1 Limpiando la Casa: Reforms in the Municipal Police
• 5.2.2 Military Rule Over Police Bodies in Rio de Janeiro

6. The Use of Violence by Military Personnel

 6.1 Between Control and Autonomy

• 6.1.1 Comparison of Structures of Civilian Control at the National Level
• 6.1.2 Limited Civilian Control in Rio de Janeiro

 6.2 Urban Pacification in Rio de Janeiro

• 6.2.1 Challenge to Authority and Restrictions on the Ground
• 6.2.2 Protesting in a Militarized Area
• 6.2.3 Limits to Civilian Control: "Reasonable" Use of Force

 6.3 Zero-Tolerance Policing in Tijuana

• 6.3.1 Dirty Means and Good Ends
• 6.3.2 Policing as Warfare
• 6.3.3 Uncontested Authority

Conclusions

O autorze

Anaís Medeiros Passos is Associate Professor of Political Science in Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil.

Blurb

“In an era when violence in Latin America remains widespread, we still lack a sufficient understanding of military crime fighting in the region. Anais M. Passos’s well written and richly detailed study helps fill the gap. This is an excellent study that deserves to be widely read and debated.”

—David Pion-Berlin, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of California, Riverside, USA

This book provides an in-depth account of military operations against drug gangs and organizations in two of the biggest countries in Latin America: Brazil and Mexico. Recent studies on drug wars have detailed case studies on the war on drugs but do not focus on the role of the army in such policies. Publications that do drive attention to the military in such situations are usually from human rights organizations or the press and are therefore not scholarly works. There are therefore no recent academic books dealing with the role of the military in the fight against drugs in Latin America. This book aims to fill this gap. It also offers an empirical and theoretical examination of the issue of the role of the military (rather than the police) on national soil—the army being generally devoted to interventions abroad, and the police, to law enforcement on the national ground. The book is also the first work to look at high-level negotiations between military and civilian elites that define the conditions for the use of force during military operations. It provides a theoretically informed understanding of contemporary security politics in Brazil and Mexico.

Anaís Medeiros Passos is Associate Professor of Political Science in Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil.