Street Urban Peace in Contested Informalities: The Hidden Face of Colombia’s War on Drugs

Abstract

Law enforcement interventions in drug markets require policy coordination to prevent collateral outcomes that might harm vulnerable people under criminal control and spread crime across places. This paper analyzes street-level peace building in the inner city at the frontline of the ongoing urban war on drugs in Colombia. Building on the emergent literature on criminal governance and using crime script models, the paper argues that behind the chaos that in appearance prevails in open-air drug markets, illegal economies in Colombia's urban centers are ruled by schemes that set parallel mechanisms of order, social control, and distribution. Furthermore, the paper addresses the ways in which street-level bureaucracies and therapeutic policing interventions can become a way of building urban proximity, connectedness, and trust in the context of contested informalities.

Gobernanzas criminales

“…En el caso de Colombia, la presencia de poderosos grupos armados ilegales durante décadas, sumada al importante papel que ha jugado el narcotráfico en la vida económica, social, política y cultural de este país, convierte al país en un terreno fértil para el florecimiento de contextos de gobernanzas criminales. Así, diferentes trabajos exploran el papel de bandas criminales colombianas como determinantes en la cotidianidad de procesos sociales, al margen o en connivencia con las autoridades locales (Doyle, 2021;Mantilla, 2021;Sáenz et al, 2020).…”

Ruling Violently

“…Criminal organizations can generate complex spaces of self-governance in extensive territories, in which they establish statutes of coexistence between crime and society by force, and even create models of parallel justice (see Willis, 2015;Richmond and Ferreira, 2021;Ferreira and Gonçalves, 2022). While criminal governance does not always breed excessive violence (Mantilla, 2021), the CJNG has been known for a particularly violent type of governance exercised through a quasi-military organization (Henkin, 2020), and with lesser willingness to negotiate agreements.…”

Criminal Governance in Latin America

“…In the 2010s the literature on criminal governance in Latin America expanded greatly by venturing into new dimensions. These include the governance of illegal markets including the use of violence (Arias, 2017;Dewey, 2015;Durán-Martínez, 2018;Mantilla, 2020;Trejo & Ley, 2017), the war on drugs (Andreas, 2019), the governance of prisons and inmate populations (Biondi, 2016;King & Valensia, 2014;Lessing & Willis, 2019), and state-criminal arrangements at borders (Idler, 2019;Pinzón García & Mantilla, 2020). Together, these works have helped further our understanding of why and how ANSAs enforce formal and informal institutions and how they negotiate and/or dispute space with states.…”