The Pandemic and Organized Crime in Urban Latin America: New Sovereignty Arrangements or Business as Usual?

Abstract

Using a focus on the ways that Covid-19 has impacted everyday life in urban Latin America, this article examines the shifting activities of organized criminal groups in the context of a global pandemic. Using grounded ethnographic fieldwork drawn from Brazil, it asks whether a health crisis with direct life and death consequences has empowered illicit actors, and by so doing changed longstanding relationships between illicit actors and citizens on one hand, and/or illicit actors and local authorities on the other. Its larger aim is to understand whether and how the global pandemic has impacted governance by producing new scalar and sovereignty tensions between state and non-state actors at the scale of the city, and with what implications for the legitimacy of national authorities and democratic governance more generally.

Criminal Politics and Botched Development in Contemporary Latin America

“…Together, these forces have critically reshaped the political economy of development, transforming the scope and nature of the region's extensive informal economies. For instance, the drug industry has expanded by exploiting synergies with the gig economy by developing new app-mediated micro-trafficking and money-laundering practices (Davis and Hilgers 2022). 11 The expansion of 1,311 tons in 2018, and 55 percent of seizures occurred in Latin America.…”

“…Against the backdrop of struggling states seemingly unable to address massive social problems, criminal syndicates, often perceived as more effective and responsive than authorities, augment their strength and legitimacy in underserved communities (Muggah and Dudley 2021;Davis and Hilgers 2022). Drug-trafficking influence goes far beyond marginal communities, however.…”

“…Criminal governance schemes are, therefore, pivotal, not only for organized crime operations but also for providing public goods such as conflict-resolution services and social assistance. Greater order in the streets also benefits politicians and state agents, whose operations are constrained by (relationally) weak state capacity (Davis and Hilgers 2022;Lessing 2022).…”

Urban Insecurity, Contested Governance, and Civic Resistance at the Colombia-Venezuela Border

“…), but in a more tangible sense of cross-border flows structuring the city materially, economically, politically, and socially. They often also constitute strategic hubs for transnational illicit economies and areas where state rule is contested (Jenss 2020; see also Davis & Hilgers 2022).…”