Vigilantism and collective violence

In recent decades, Latin America has witnessed a transformation in the modes, actors, and intensities of violence. During the periods following the military dictatorships, while its use as a means of resolving political conflicts has declined,

Violence becomes heterogeneous and complex.

As a result of neoliberal economic transformations, strategic risk-containment responses have emerged from segments of civil society that employ collective violence. Lynchings and other forms of vigilantism—understood as collective responses to crime and violence that are extra-institutional in nature, whether preventive or punitive (Huggins, 1991)—occur where citizens perceive the rule of law and justice as inadequate and within a context of abrupt structural transformations, profound inequality, racial conflict, insecurity, and high levels of impunity. Thus, lynchings and collective violence cannot be understood as a peripheral or circumstantial phenomenon. On the contrary, these events reflect historical processes of nation-state formation and political subjectivities, as well as their contemporary transformations.

In Latin America, collective violence has become integrated into a repertoire of legitimate actions, where groups and communities react defensively to protect property or people from acts considered harmful to their integrity, while simultaneously imposing precautionary measures against insecurity independently of state security institutions. A comparative study of these phenomena in different Latin American countries will allow us to investigate the common elements that have led to their regional spread and to contrast the local ways in which these actions impact and reshape their surrounding environments, thus enabling an understanding of the formation of political participation outside the framework of the state, where regulating insecurity through violence proves to be an effective strategy.

The systematic comparison of cases will focus on the relationship between insecurity and regional democratic consolidation, as well as citizen participation in shaping safe civil spaces. This approach contributes to the theoretical understanding of violence in contemporary societies and aims to identify alternatives that can be translated into public policies to mitigate the effects of various violent social conflicts.

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