Organized Violence

Capitalist Warfare in Latin America

Dawn Paley, Simon Granovsky-Larsen

• Publisher: U of R Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780889776128
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Official stories from media centers in New York and Mexico City say that most violence in Latin America is a product of the drug trade. Organized Violence exposes how that narrative serves corporate and state interests and de-politicizes situations that have more to do with coal, oil, or rare wood extraction than with cocaine. Global capital and violence reinforce conditions that fortify the current economic order, and whether it be the military, police, or death squads that pull the trigger, economic expansion benefits from the violent elimination of the opposition, who are most often dispossessed Indigenous people.

Organized

Violence

Capitalist Warfare
in Latin America

Edited by

Dawn Paley and
Simon Granovsky-Larsen

© 2019 University of Regina Press

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means — graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or placement in information storage and retrieval systems of any sort shall be directed in writing to Access Copyright.

Printed and bound in Canada at Friesens. The text of this book is printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper with earth-friendly vegetable-based inks.

Cover design: Duncan Campbell, University of Regina Press
Text design: John van der Woude, jvdw Designs
Copy editor: Kirsten Craven
Proofreader: Rhonda Kronyk
Indexer: Jenn Harris

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Organized violence : capitalist warfare in Latin America / edited by Dawn Paley and Simon Granovsky-Larsen.

Names: Paley, Dawn, 1981- editor. | Granovsky-Larsen, Simon, editor.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190055898 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190056010 | isbn 9780889776289 (hardcover) | isbn 9780889776104 (softcover) |
isbn 9780889776111 (pdf) | isbn 9780889776128 (html)

Subjects: lcsh: Violence—Economic aspects—Latin America.

Classification: lcc hn110.5.z9 v5 2019 | ddc 303.6098—dc23

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

University of Regina Press, University of Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, s4s 0a2
tel: [phone] fax: [phone]
web: www.uofrpress.ca

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada. / Nous reconnaissons l’appui financier du gouvernement du Canada. This publication was made possible with support from Creative Saskatchewan’s Book Publishing Production Grant Program.

Contents

List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

Maps: Conflict Sites Featured in the Book

Introduction: Organized Violence and the Expansion of Capital

Simon Granovsky-Larsen and Dawn Paley

Part I: Central and South America

Chapter 1: Extreme Energy Injustice and the Expansion of Capital

Mary Finley-Brook

Chapter 2: “The Most Dangerous Country in the World”: Violence and Capital in Post-Coup Honduras

Tyler Shipley

Chapter 3: Under Siege: Peaceful Resistance to Tahoe Resources and Militarization in Guatemala

Luis Solano

Chapter 4: Deadly Soy: The Violent Expansion of Paraguay’s Agro-Extractive Frontier

Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete

Chapter 5: “And Then the Palm Farmers Came”: Violence and Women’s Resistance in the Colombian Afro-Pacific Region

Paula Balduino de Melo

Chapter 6: Coal and Conflict: Transnational Investment, Violence, and the Extraction of Mineral Resources in Colombia

Rosalvina Otálora Cortés

Part II: Mexico

Chapter 7: Oil, Gas, and Guns: War, Privatization, and Violence in Tamaulipas, Mexico

Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera and Carlos Daniel Gutiérrez-Mannix

Chapter 8: Legal and Illegal Violence in Mexico: Organized Crime, Politics, and Mining in Michoacán

Ana Del Conde and Heriberto Paredes Coronel

Chapter 9: Criminal Violence and Armed Community Defence in Mexico

Antonio Fuentes Díaz

Chapter 10: Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán: From Mining Enclave to Global Hub

Patricia Alvarado Portillo

Chapter 11: Elites, Violence, and Resources in Veracruz, Mexico

Michelle Arroyo Fonseca and Jorge Rebolledo Flores

Chapter 12: Punitive Dispossession: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Road to Mass Incarceration

Elva F. Orozco Mendoza

Conclusion: Violence, Expansion, Resistance

Simon Granovsky-Larsen and Dawn Paley

Acknowledgements

About the Contributors

List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

Table 1.1. Tenets of Energy Justice

Table 1.2. Assassinated Anti-Dam Activists by Country, 2000–2016

Table 1.3. Comparative Analysis of Three Dams

Table 1.4. Review of ifc Oversight of Dinant Corporation, Honduras

Table 1.5. Comparative Analysis of Toxic Hotspots

Table 1.6. Local Energy System-Conflict Interactions

Table 1.7. Energy Injustice, Structural Violence, and Conflict Triggers

Table 4.1. Paraguay, Land Surface Dedicated to Soy Production by Department (Hectares), 1991–2015

Table 7.1. Homicides in Tamaulipas, 2000–2017

Figure 1.1. Anti-Dam Activists Murdered in Latin America, 2008–2015

Figure 7.1. Homicides in Tamaulipas, 2000–2017

Figure 10.1. Methamphetamine Interdiction and Iron Mining Production, World and Michoacán, 2006–2014

Illustration 5.1. Location of Tumaco, Colombia, and Surrounding Rivers

Illustration 7.1. Tamaulipas: A Strategic Mexican Border State

Illustration 7.2. Hydrocarbons in Tamaulipas i

Illustration 7.3. Hydrocarbons in Tamaulipas ii

Illustration 7.4. New Infrastructure in Tamaulipas

Illustration 7.5. Violence in Tamaulipas

Maps

Map 1: Featured Conflict Sites in Mexico and Central America

Map 2: Featured Conflict Sites in South America

Introduction

Organized Violence and the Expansion of Capital

Simon Granovsky-Larsen and Dawn Paley

In early 2007, a public prosecutor in a suit with short, spiky hair, backed by hundreds of police and dozens of individuals with their faces covered to prevent identification, entered the lakeside lands occupied by Indigenous Q’eqchi’ people near the town of El Estor, Guatemala. Conflict had been ongoing for generations (Grandin 2004), and it came to a head again after local people grew tired of subsisting on tiny lots, and began to build houses on farmlands claimed at the time by Vancouver-based mining company Skye Resources. The lands had lain fallow for decades before Syke Resources attempted to reactivate the project, which was sold to Hudbay in 2008 and again to the Solway Group in 2011.

Filmmakers and journalists—including one of the editors of this volume—documented the evictions, which escalated from forced removal of community members by hired labourers, to the participation of soldiers and the burning of houses the next day, to the gang rape of eleven women in a more remote community days later. Following the dramatic and painful incidents in 2007, Adolfo Ich Chamán was shot and hacked to death by company security guards in 2009, and Germán Chub was shot and paralyzed in the same incident (see chocversushudbay.com).

The spectacular and organized violence set off against Q’eqchi’ people near Lake Izabal ten years ago was intended to clear the way for a nickel mine: Skye Resources planned to restart the Fénix Project, first floated by the Canadian mining company Inco in the 1960s. An array of state and non-state armed actors has participated in repressive violence in the region since the first arrival of Inco. During the evictions in early 2007, Guatemala...