Markus-Michael Müller

The rise of the penal state in Latin America

The recent work of Loïc Wacquant identified the emergence of the penal state as a core feature of the global expansion of neoliberalism and the neoliberal government urban marginality. Drawing on Wacquant’s theoretical and conceptual reflections, this article analyses the emergence of a Latin American form of penal statecraft. By taking an in-depth look at the increasing criminalization of urban marginality in contemporary Latin America as well as the related developments in the local prison system, the single most important institutional expression of the Latin American penal state, important commonalities and differences between the penal statecraft experiments throughout Latin America and the countries of the ‘developed world’ are highlighted.

The Securitization of Urban Space and the “Rescue” of Downtown Mexico City Vision and Practice

One important feature of the neoliberalization of urban governance around the world has been the rise of an urban entrepreneurialism promoting projects of urban renewal and the upgrading of historic city centers. These developments contribute to an increasing securitization of urban space and the eviction of “undesirables” from the renewed and upgraded areas. An examination of these processes in the implementation of the “rescue” of Mexico City’s historic center and the related securitization of urban space in the neighborhood of La Merced reveals that the implementation and sustainability of this local urban renewal project is constantly challenged and modified by the presence of powerful illegal actors and informal practices of negotiation. Una característica de la neoliberalización de gobernabilidad urbana en el mundo ha sido el acenso de un empresarialismo urbano el cual promueve la renovación urbana y mejoramiento de los centros históricos. Estos procesos contribuyen al incremento de la segurización del espacio urbano y a la expulsión de “indeseables” de la áreas de renovación y mejoramiento. Un examen de estos procesos en la implementación del “rescate” del centro histórico de la Ciudad de México y la relacionada segurización del espacio urbano en el barrio de la Merced pone en relieve que la implementación y sostenibilidad de este proyecto de renovación urbana se encuentra retado constantemente por la presencia de actores ilegales y poderosos y prácticas informales de negociación.

Governing (in)security in a postcolonial world: Transnational entanglements and the worldliness of ‘local’ practice:

While analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the contemporary postcolonial world features prominently in current debates within the field of security studies, most efforts to analyse and understand the relevant processes proceed from an unquestioned ‘Western’ perspective, thereby failing to consider the methodological and theoretical implications of governing (in)security under postcolonial conditions. This article seeks to address that lacuna by highlighting the entangled histories of (in)security governance in the (post)colonial world and by providing fresh theoretical and methodological perspective for a security studies research agenda sensitive to the implications of the postcolonial condition.

Penal Statecraft in the Latin American City Assessing Mexico City’s Punitive Urban Democracy

This paper applies Loïc Wacquant’s work on penal statecraft to analyze the growing punitiveness of urban politics in contemporary Mexico City. It demonstrates that the intersection of the urbanization of neoliberalism and the democratization of local politics contributed to the emergence of a punitive regime of governing urban marginality in the city. This indicates the consolidation of a punitive urban democracy in which despite the formal legal empowerment of the city’s residents during the last two decades, those at the urban margins face a reverse process of punitive exclusion that takes the form of a criminalization of poverty. In taking a closer look at the situation within the local penal apparatus, the paper furthermore shows that these exclusionary tendencies are reinforced by informal institutional practices inside the local law enforcement bureaucracies.

Encountering knowledge production: the International Crisis Group and the making of Mexico’s security crisis

After nearly seven years of ever-escalating violence related to the Mexican ‘war on drugs’, in 2013 Mexico entered the International Crisis Group’s (icg) ‘observatory’ of countries facing a violent crisis. In this article we critically interrogate this ‘Mexican turn’ of the icg, as well as its accompanying forms of crisis knowledge production. By applying analytical insights from critical policy analysis and postcolonial security studies, we highlight the Western-centrism embedded in the icg’s perspective on Mexico’s security crisis. In analysing this perspective on questions of drug trafficking, statehood and indigenous justice, we demonstrate how this Western-centrism produces a de-politicising and overly technocratic crisis narrative. The article concludes that, through its Western-centric ‘Mexican turn’, the icg has been able to reaffirm its standing as a uniquely influential and internationally recognised crisis expert by showcasing its awareness of newly emerging crisis situations, as well as its possession of the necessary crisis-solving expertise.

Punitive Entanglements: The “War on Gangs” and the Making of a Transnational Penal Apparatus in the Americas

This paper analyses the export-import business of penal policies that accompanies the “war on transnational street gangs” between the United States and Central America. It argues that far from being a unidirectional export of punitive politics from the United States towards Central America, many of these punitive exports travel “back home”. This creates transnational punitive entanglements that contribute to the contingent convergence of punitive geopolitics and domestic politics in the guise of a transnational penal apparatus that integrates law enforcement agencies and military forces, securocratic epistemic communities and national political entrepreneurs into a functionally cohesive but decentred transnational security structure engaged in a multilayered punitive containment of transnational street gangs across the Americas.

Das politische System Mexikos

Als sich am 1.1.1994, genau an dem Tag, als das nordamerikanische Feihandelsabkommen (NAFTA) in Kraft trat, im sudlichen mexikanischen Bundesstaat Chiapas indianische Bevolkerungsgruppen gegen die mexikanische Regierung erhoben, war dies ein weithin deutliches Zeichen, dass auch in Mexiko das Regieren des Staates nur in begrenzter Reichweite stattfindet. Dabei hatte es viele Jahre so ausgesehen, als ob das politische Regime, welches uber 70 Jahre an der Macht war, das Land im Griff hatte. Geht man jedoch weiter in die Geschichte zuruck, so wird deutlich, vor was fur eine schwierige Aufgabe die Sieger der Mexikanischen Revolution gestellt worden waren. So war bereits das zum spanischen Kolonialreich gehorende Territorium nur partiell vom kolonialen Verwaltungsapparat durch-drungen worden. Die politische Kohasion wurde in den Augen viele Historiker weniger von einem zentralisierten politischen Herrschaftsapparat aus gewahrleistet, sondern war das Ergebnis eines network of interests, welches die verschiedenen Regionen untereinander und mit dem Zentrum (Mexiko-Stadt) verband. Dieses Interessensnetzwerk bestand auch nach der Unabhangigkeit im Jahre 1821 fort, gelang es doch auch danach nicht, eine das gesamte Land durchdringende staatliche Zentralmacht zu konstituieren. Wesentlich hierfur durfte in den ersten Jahrzehnten die grose politische Instabilitat gewesen sein, von der diese Periode gepragt war. Sie manifestierte sich in: der Errichtung und dem Sturz eines mexikanischen Kaiserreichs unter Augustin de Iturbide (1822–1823); den burgerkriegsahnlichen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Liberalen und Konservativen, dutzenden von Regierungswechseln; im Krieg zwischen den USA und Mexiko (1846–1848), welcher mit dem Verlust der Halfte des mexikanischen Territoriums an die USA endete;

De-monopolizing the Bureaucratic Field Internationalization Strategies and the Transnationalization of Security Governance in Mexico City

Through the lens of Bourdieusian field theory, this article examines the transnationalization of the urban security field in contemporary Mexico City. It demonstrates that while the local bureaucratic field has held a monopoly over the definition of security issues, previously marginalized actors situated outside of the local security field used the political opportunity created by the intersection of the democratization of local politics, the neoliberalization of the Mexican economy and rising crime rates since the mid-1990s to deploy “internationalization strategies” to confront the bureaucratic field’s definitional authority over urban security. While the resulting struggles within the urban security field undermined the dominance of the bureaucratic field and contributed to a growing transnationalization of urban security governance, the analysis shows how, because of the “two-tiered” nature of the transnational urban security field, these processes did not improve the overall security situation in the city.

Addressing an Ambivalent Relationship: Policing and the Urban Poor in Mexico City

This article analyses citizen–police relations in the marginalised Mexico City borough of Iztapalapa. It demonstrates that despite predominantly negative perceptions about and experiences with the police, local residents do not abandon state institutions as security providers. The article claims that as formal and informal access to the legal and coercive powers of the police provides an important resource for local residents needing to resolve individual or collective security problems and conflicts in their favour, local police forces continue to be addressed and imagined by residents as relevant security actors.

Locating Guatemala in Global Counterinsurgency

Abstract Guatemala, a country that during the 1980s experienced one of the most lethal counterinsurgency (COIN) campaigns during the Cold War, is currently witnessing a revival of counterinsurgent order-making within the context of the global renaissance of COIN. Against this background, this article locates Guatemala within the context of the ‘global counterinsurgency’. It highlights how contemporary COIN, through depoliticizing and criminalizing forms of counterinsurgent knowledge production that frame Guatemala as a country facing a transnational ‘criminal insurgency’, becomes increasingly integrated into externally supported and community-centered ‘democratic’ police reform and neoliberal development agendas, promoted within the context of the Central America Regional Security Initiative. This integration, the article highlights, increasingly blurs the boundaries between war-making, law enforcement, peacebuilding, and development, thereby contributing to the reappearance of counterinsurgent order-making in post-conflict Guatemala.