Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? PDF Author: Julie Mazzei
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs). Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? PDF Author: Julie Mazzei
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs). Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.

Death Squads Or Self-defense Forces?

Death Squads Or Self-defense Forces? PDF Author: Julie Mazzei
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807833061
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
Analyzes the dynamics that facilitate the emergence and mobilization of paramilitary groups, and provides a framework to develop effective policies aimed at making these organizations less of a danger.

Self-Defense in Mexico

Self-Defense in Mexico PDF Author: Luis Hernández Navarro
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469654547
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Mexico and across other parts of Latin America local Indigenous peoples have built community policing groups as a means of protection where the state has limited control over, and even complicity in, crime and violence. Luis Hernandez Navarro, a leading Mexican journalist, offers a riveting investigation of these armed self-defense groups that sprang up around the time of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Available in English for the first time, the book spotlights the intense precarity of everyday life in parts of Mexico. Hernandez Navarro shows how the self-defense response, which now includes wealthier rancher and farmer groups, is being transformed by Mexico's expanding role in the multibillion dollar global drug trade, by foreign corporations' extraction of raw minerals in traditionally Indigenous lands, and by the resulting social changes in local communities. But as Hernandez Navarro acknowledges, self-defense is highly controversial. Community policing may provide citizens with increased agency, but for government officials it can be a dangerous threat to the status quo. Leftists and liberals are wary of how the groups may be linked to paramilitary forces and vulnerable to manipulation by drug traffickers and the government alike. This book answers the urgent call to understand the dangerous complexities of government failures and popular solutions.

Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Revised Edition

Encyclopedia of Terrorism, Revised Edition PDF Author: Cindy C. Combs
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438110197
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 497

Get Book Here

Book Description
Presents a reference guide to terrorism throughout the world, including history, terrorist groups, and notorious acts of terrorism.

Understanding Terrorism

Understanding Terrorism PDF Author: Gus Martin
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1544375883
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 852

Get Book Here

Book Description
Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary exploration of domestic and international terrorism that helps students develop the knowledge and skills needed to critically assess the underlying causes of modern terrorist violence. The Seventh Edition includes new or expanded discussions of critical topics in terrorism, such as the evolution of right-wing extremism in Western countries, as well as analysis of recent events and updated terrorist tactics, weapons, and methods. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides.

A History of Political Murder in Latin America

A History of Political Murder in Latin America PDF Author: W. John Green
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438456654
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
This expansive history depicts Latin America's pan-regional culture of political murder. Unlike typical studies of the region, which often focus on the issues or trends of individual countries, this work focuses thematically on the nature of political murder itself, comparing and contrasting its uses and practices throughout the region. W. John Green examines the entire system of political murder: the methods and justifications the perpetrators employ, the victims, and the consequences for Latin American societies. Green demonstrates that elite and state actors have been responsible for most political murders, assassinating the leaders of popular movements and other messengers of change. Latin American elites have also often targeted the potential audience for these messages through the region's various "dirty wars." In spite of regional differences, elites across the region have displayed considerable uniformity in justifying their use of murder, imagining themselves in a class war with democratic forces. While the United States has often been complicit in such violence, Green notes that this has not been universally true, with US support waxing and waning. A detailed appendix, exploring political murder country by country, provides an additional resource for readers.

The Scourge of Genocide

The Scourge of Genocide PDF Author: Adam Jones
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135047146
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Scourge of Genocide collects essays, reviews, and reportage on the subjects of genocide and crimes against humanity by Adam Jones, recently selected as one of "Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide." The volume includes a number of previously-unpublished essays, and explores a range of debates and approaches in comparative genocide studies, such as: Genocide, pedagogy, and visual representation. Gender and "gendercide." The role of media and communications in genocide. The historiography of genocide studies. "Subaltern genocide," or genocides by the oppressed. Strategies of genocide prevention and intervention. Covering a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives, as well as case studies from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Guatemala, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine, this book is essential reading for all scholars and students of genocide studies, political violence, and international relations.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism PDF Author: Immanuel Ness
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230392784
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1443

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Palgrave Encyclopedia Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism objectively presents the prominent themes, epochal events, theoretical explanations, and historical accounts of imperialism from 1776 to the present. It is the most historically and academically comprehensive examination of the subject to date.

Paramilitarism

Paramilitarism PDF Author: Ugur Ümit Üngör
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192558994
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the deserts of Sudan to the jungles of Colombia, and from the streets of Belfast to the mountains of Kurdistan, paramilitaries have appeared in violent conflicts in very different settings. Paramilitaries are generally depicted as irregular armed organizations that carry out acts of violence against civilians on behalf of a state. In doing so, they undermine the state's monopoly of legitimate violence, while at the same time creating a breeding ground for criminal activities. Why do governments with functioning police forces and armies use paramilitary groups? This study tackles this question through the prism of the interpenetration of paramilitaries and the state. The author interprets paramilitarism as the ability of the state to successfully outsource mass political violence against civilians that transforms and traumatizes societies. It analyses how paramilitarism can be understood in global context, and how paramilitarism is connected to transformations of warfare and state-society relations. By comparing a broad range of cases, it looks at how paramilitarism has made a profound impact in a large number of countries that were different, but nevertheless shared a history of pro-government militia activity. A thorough understanding of paramilitarism can clarify the direction and intensity of violence in wartime and peacetime. The volume examines the issues of international involvement, institutional support, organized crime, party politics, and personal ties.

The Salvadoran Crucible

The Salvadoran Crucible PDF Author: Brian D'Haeseleer
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700625127
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1979, with El Salvador growing ever more unstable and ripe for revolution, the United States undertook a counterinsurgency intervention that over the following decade would become Washington’s largest nation-building effort since Vietnam. In 2003, policymakers looked to this “successful” undertaking as a model for US intervention in Iraq. In fact, Brian D’Haeseleer argues in The Salvadoran Crucible, the US counterinsurgency in El Salvador produced no more than a stalemate, and in the process inflicted tremendous suffering on Salvadorans for a limited amount of foreign policy gains. D’Haeseleer’s book is a deeply informed, dispassionate account of how the Salvadoran venture took shape, what it actually accomplished, and what lessons it holds. A historical analysis of the origins of US counterinsurgency policy provides context for understanding how precedents informed US intervention in El Salvador. What follows is a detailed, in-depth view of how the counterinsurgency unfolded—the nature, logic, and effectiveness of the policies, initiatives, and operations promoted by American strategists. D’Haeseleer’s account disputes the “success” narrative by showing that El Salvador’s achievements, mainly the spread of democracy, occurred as a result not of the American intervention but of the insurgents’ war against the state. Most significantly, The Salvadoran Crucible contends that the reforms enacted during the war failed to address the underlying causes of the conflict, which today continue to reverberate in El Salvador. The book thus suggests a reassessment of the history of American counterinsurgency, and a course-correction for the future.