Semester Long Journal (50%)

Criminal Violence and Democratization in Central America:

The Survival of the Violent State

José Miguel Cruz

ABSTRACT

Why does Nicaragua have less violent crime than Guatemala, El Sal- vador, and Honduras? All these countries underwent political tran- sitions in the 1990s. Many explanations point to the legacies of war, socioeconomic underdevelopment, and neoliberal structural reforms. However, these arguments do not fully explain why, despite economic reforms conducted throughout the region, war- less Honduras and wealthier Guatemala and El Salvador have much more crime than Nicaragua. This article argues that public security reforms carried out during the political transitions shaped the abil- ity of the new regimes to control the violence produced by their own institutions and collaborators. In the analysis of the crisis of public security, it is important to bring the state back. The survival of violent entrepreneurs in the new security apparatus and their relationship with new governing elites foster the conditions for the escalation of violence in northern Central America.

Violence still reigns over Central America. According to the UnitedNations Office on Drugs and Crime, Central American nations, par- ticularly El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, “may have recently sur- passed the traditional world leaders in the number of murders commit- ted per 100,000 members of the population” (UNODC 2007, 53). Yet this violence differs from that which reigned not long ago, in the midst of civil wars and political instability.

Starting with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979, most countries in the region underwent a far-reaching process that would overthrow the authoritarian governments that had ruled Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua for decades (Torres Rivas 2001). By 1996, all these countries had developed a new set of electoral institu- tions, stopped the military conflicts that ravaged the region in the 1980s, and created institutions to enforce law and respect for human rights.

However, the transitions from authoritarian rule also yielded another type of wave, one of criminal violence, which has been flood- ing Central America since the mid-1990s. More than ten years after the transitions, this crime wave has turned these countries into the most vio- lent in the world, producing the paradox of regimes that are electoral democracies but that live under a de facto state of siege produced by

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violent crime. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have homicide rates that double or triple the Latin American average, which itself is considered very high (PNUD 2009).

Nevertheless, not all the Central American nations that underwent transitions from authoritarian regimes have become equally violent. Nicaragua stands as a special case, given its lower levels of crime in comparison with the northern subregion of Central America (PNUD 2009). Although Nicaragua has critical issues regarding public security, any comparison with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras exhibits a clear difference in terms of the prevalence of crime. Indeed, the levels of violence in Nicaragua are closer to those of Costa Rica, a longstand- ing democracy, than to those of other transitional countries (PNUD 2009; Programa Estado de la Región 2008).

Why is Nicaragua different? Why has the Nicaraguan society not produced severe levels of violence, as did those of Guatemala, El Sal- vador, and Honduras? Why, despite the long war Nicaragua suffered, the social instability that accompanied its first posttransition years, and its widespread poverty and inequality, did this nation remain less violent? To answer this question, we need to pursue three themes. First, the political conditions that made the northern part of Central America an extremely violent region; second, the importance of transforming secu- rity institutions into rule-of-law institutions; and third, the role of state institutions and agents linked to them in the reproduction of criminal violence.

In pursuing these themes, this article presents a conceptual frame- work that emphasizes the role of the state and the persistence of infor- mal brokers linked to the state in the management of public security and the reproduction of violence. Clearly, the latter affect the performance of security institutions, since they use them to obtain impunity and pro- tection. Variations in the presence of these informal brokers can be viewed largely as a function of the way political transitions were carried out. In some cases, political pacts were reoriented or ignored, weaken- ing public security institutions in order to privilege the surviving actors and institutions of the old regimes. To demonstrate this, the article focuses on four aspects of the transition processes: the continuity of vio- lent entrepreneurs who survived the transition; the relationship between the survivors and the new democratic governing elites; the variable role of civil society in the transition processes; and the role of powerful for- eign actors, particularly the United States.

In Nicaragua, despite the uncertain pace of political transformations, the long process that started with the Sandinista Revolution eroded the defining features of the authoritarian regime and set the conditions for the removal of violent entrepreneurs acting on behalf of the state. In contrast, in northern Central America, despite the appearance of water-

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shed institutional change and military withdrawal, the key features of the old security apparatus—that is, the active collaboration of private groups and civilians to enforce order (Holden 1996)—survived long after the transition was over. In other words, state institutions have con- tinued to be a significant source of violence.

CRIMINAL VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA

The violence that is currently afflicting Central America is the most com- plex this region has faced in its periods of peace. UNODC (2007) iden- tifies eight areas where the problem of violence is especially serious: drug trafficking, homicide, youth gangs, domestic violence, firearms trafficking, kidnapping, money laundering, and corruption. Without underestimating all those problems, this article focuses on the homicide issue, as murder statistics are usually considered the most reliable indi- cators of violence.

Table 1 shows some indicators of violence as of 2010: homicide rates, percentage of victims of street crime, and gang membership per one hundred thousand inhabitants. As is evident, the northern triangle of Central America, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador shows indi- cators that far exceed those of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The differ- ences are especially striking with respect to homicide rates as they have been documented by many organizations (e.g., UNODC 2007; USAID 2006). The UNDP Human Development Report for Central America 2009–2010 separates this region into two, according to crime levels: one of high criminality, which includes Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras; and other of low criminality, with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama (PNUD 2009, 85–86).

This does not mean that Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama are crimeless. Research has shown that public insecurity is also a matter of concern in these countries (Cuadra 2002; PNUD 2005). However,

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Table 1. Some Indicators of Violence in Central America, 2008–2010

Homicide rate Victims of Street Gang 2010 Street Crime Membership

(per 100,000 pop.) 2010 (%) (per 100,000 pop.)

Guatemala 41.5 23.3 111 El Salvador 64.8 24.2 153 Honduras 77.5 14.0 500 Nicaragua 13.2 19.2 81 Costa Rica 10.6 19.0 62

Sources: LPG Datos 2011; Americas Barometer database 2010.

Nicaragua, with a history of dictatorship, civil war, and profound eco- nomic problems, seems to rank significantly below the northern trian- gle in terms of homicide violence.

This gap between Nicaragua and the northern triangle has increased in the decade since the end of the conflicts. The trends for homicide rates from 1990 to 2010 show that murders increased in all countries but the northern triangle levels soared (figure 1). Nicaragua tells a much dif- ferent story, with a much smaller homicide rate in the immediate post- war period, a brief increase in the early 1990s and then a slow decline until 2001, followed by relative stability.1 Nicaragua’s relatively lower violence is traceable from the 1990s and possibly dates back to the 1980s. However, the posttransition period has only widened the gap, suggesting distinctive sociopolitical mechanisms behind the crime trends (Moser and Winton 2002; PNUD 2009). Moreover, Guatemala, Hon- duras, and El Salvador are set apart from Nicaragua not only in terms of overall violence; they also suffer more serious problems of organized crime and street gangs (USAID 2006).

In Guatemala, direct state-sponsored violence, although reduced after the peace treaty, has been an important source of public insecu- rity, along with organized crime, youth gangs, routine crime, and public lynchings (Godoy 2006; Peacock and Beltrán 2003; Schirmer 1998). In

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Figure 1. Homicide Rates 1990–2006 in Postwar Central America (per 100,000 population)

Sources: Chinchilla 2003; LPG Datos 2011; PNUD 2009; Raudales 2006; UNODC 2007.

postwar El Salvador, state-sponsored violence, although present (Amnesty International 2008), has not been as noticeable as in Guatemala; organized crime, youth gangs, and street crime constitute the main features of violence (Moser and Winton 2002; UNODC 2007). In Honduras, youth gangs, organized crime rings, and drug-trafficking cartels have been accompanied by systematic violence against street children and youth, committed by state-affiliated death squads (Amnesty International 2003; U.S. Department of State 2008). Meanwhile, Nicaragua, the least violent postwar society, had to deal with the activ- ities of armed bands of demobilized combatants during the early years of the posttransition and then with an increase in common crime, drug- related crimes, and drug trafficking on the Atlantic coast (Moser and Winton 2002; PNUD 2009; UNODC 2007).

What explains these varying levels of homicidal violence in Central America? The literature points to diverse factors behind the crime surge in the region. Poverty and inequality have consistently been recognized as key variables behind crime (Chinchilla 2003; Moser and Winton 2002; PNUD 2009; UNODC 2007). Economic globalization and the 1990s implementation of neoliberal reforms exacerbated the effects of those variables (Benson et al. 2008; PNUD 2009). They also produced social disruptive processes of unemployment and migration (Rocha 2006; Zinecker 2007), dynamics of translocation and segregation of urban spaces (Baires 2003; Lungo and Martel 2003; Rodgers 2009), and the rise of private security companies (Ungar 2007). Another set of factors com- monly cited are war legacies. These range from the disbanding of former combatants (Chinchilla 2003; Cruz 1997; Cuadra 2002) to the pro- liferation of arms in the postconflict era (Godnick et al. 2002; Moser and Winton 2002) to the continuation of a sort of culture of violence (Cruz 1997; Godoy 2006). The rise of criminal economies around the transna- tional drug business, state weakness, and the existence of a predomi- nantly young population have also been pointed to as driving factors behind Central American violence (PNUD 2009; UNODC 2007).

All these factors play important roles, as the various research agen- das have shown, but they do not really account for the differences between Nicaragua and the northern triangle. After all, Honduras, which did not face internal conflict, has higher levels of violence than Nicaragua, which suffered a decade of internal war. Nicaragua is also considered one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region (Programa Estado de la Región 2008), and many of its problems regard- ing economic transformation, disruptive and segregating urbanization, privatization of public security, arms availability, and young population are to be found in the other countries as well (Lungo and Martel 2003; PNUD 2009; Zinecker 2007). None of these factors—not even the drug- trafficking enclaves that operate along Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast

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(Orozco Betancourt 2007; UNODC 2007)—have made Nicaragua as vio- lent as the north. To be sure, there are specific processes that may enhance some variables in one country and not in another, but none of the previously quoted factors seems to render a definitive explanation about the gap between Nicaragua and the rest.

One theory that has gained momentum and that taps into the dif- ferences between Nicaragua and the northern triangle puts the blame on the development of U.S.-type street gangs, locally known as maras. According to this argument, maras are largely responsible for the sky- rocketing levels of violence in northern Central America (Arana 2005; Boraz and Bruneau 2006), and their activities may explain the notice- able differences between these countries and Nicaragua, where maras have been unable to gain a foothold. In 2007, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated 70,000 gang members roaming the streets of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. These groups, made up of two large gang networks, the Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13) and the Eigh- teenth Street Gang (la Dieciocho), have gained notoriety as the most powerful youth gangs in the region. However, their role in the overall levels of crime is a matter of contention. While the Comisión de Jefes y Jefas de Policía de Centroamérica y el Caribe (2003) claims that gangs might be responsible for most extortions committed in Guatemala and El Salvador and up to 45 percent of homicides in Honduras and El Sal- vador, the UNDP contends that no more than 15 percent of felonies can be credited to maras in northern Central America (PNUD 2009).

Contention about figures aside, youth gangs are important actors of violence in Central America (Jutersonke et al. 2009), and their role in the reproduction of crime is more significant in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala than in Nicaragua (USAID 2006). Dennis Rodgers (2006a) has documented the evolution of Nicaraguan gangs from youth barrio groups to a more economy-driven type of criminal organization and has shown that gang violence in Nicaragua is more prominent than usually presumed.

Even so, any comparison between northern maras and Nicaraguan pandillas yields a blatant difference not only in terms of the number of gang members, but also the violence wielded by these groups (UNODC 2007). Different authors (Rocha and Rodgers 2008; USAID 2006) have ascribed these divergences in gang growth to the distinct flows of returned migration and deportation in Central America. MS-13 and Dieciocho have flourished in the northern triangle, this argument goes, because of the deportation and voluntary return of migrant youths from the United States to their home countries. There, they have formed new cliques and spread U.S. gang culture. Conversely, in Nicaragua, gangs have not been affected by youth deportation from the U.S. because most of Nicaragua’s poor migrant communities have settled in Costa Rica and,

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to a lesser degree, South Florida, where they have not joined street gangs (Rocha 2007).

Although return migration certainly plays a part in the development of gangs in northern Central America in contrast to Nicaragua, it is mis- leading to blame the growth of maras and the prevalence of violence in the northern triangle mostly on migration. If we accept the argument of migration as it is usually raised, we cannot explain why, after years of Mexican cyclical migration and deportation from the United States, maras—and particularly la Dieciocho, which was formed by Mexican immigrants long ago—have not gained a foothold in Mexico as they did in Central America.2 As argued elsewhere (Cruz 2010a), it is important to consider the domestic conditions that made Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras fertile ground for powerful gangs, but not Mexico or Nicaragua.

Likewise, the problem with ascribing the increasing levels of criminal violence to youth gangs is that it obscures the institutional features behind the development of youth gangs and the reproduction of violence. To be sure, gangs produce violence, but the rise of maras is not the main factor behind the differences in the increase of crime, because the same condi- tions that enabled gang growth have also facilitated the spread of crimi- nal violence in general. In the analysis of violence, we have to bring back another variable. We have to bring state institutions back.

Rather than internal war or poverty, one of the fundamental under- lying differences between northern Central America and Nicaragua is the manner in which these states have dealt with public security and have responded to problems of violent crime. Violence and maras are partly consequences of such management. That management is articu- lated not only in the institutional capacities and policies carried out by the state, but also in the utilization of informal violent entrepreneurs and armed civilian collaborators to deal with crime and disorder.

These plans are the result of the specific mode of transition experi- enced by each country. In the northern tier, the parallel security agents and the elites who supported them substantially survived the transitions, and they have continued to operate long after the transitions concluded. Nicaragua is a distinctive case because the complex interplay of condi- tions set by its historical process, beginning with the 1979 revolution, followed a different path of institution building in the security appara- tus, one that insulated it, to some extent, from criminal organizations and enabled it to construct a different relationship with the population.

TRANSITIONS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF INSTITUTIONS OF SECURITY

Six ideas are fundamental to understanding the importance of the tran- sitions in shaping public security in Central America. The first is that

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building democracy entails not only the construction of institutions intended to ensure transparent electoral processes, thus fulfilling the minimalist Schumpeterian requisite; it also entails the construction of institutions intended to promote the rule of law and citizens’ basic rights (O’Donnell 2004). As Diamond (2008, 46) states, “The most urgent imperative [for effective democracy] is to restructure and empower the institutions and accountability and bolster the rule of law.”

Security and justice institutions are fundamental in the development of democratic governance (Karstedt and LaFree 2006), particularly in societies that are emerging from authoritarian regimes, because they help to provide the basic conditions to make governance possible. Fol- lowing Koonings (2001), the biggest challenges for a democratic gov- ernment trying to escape its authoritarian past lie not only in subordi- nating security forces to civilian rule, but also establishing the public monopoly on legal force in order to secure order, the rule of law, and citizenship rights based on accountable norms and procedures.

As Karl (1990) notes for the modes of democratic transitions, the formal arrangements are negotiated by elites; that is, those who wield power. The agreements are conditioned not only by organized interests (Haggard and Kaufman 1997), but also by the context of political inter- actions produced by the transition itself. They shape new notions of cit- izenship and stateness (Yashar 1999). In this phase, those interactions will shape how the intended pacts are carried out and what their effects will be on the security apparatus, as the latter is a key asset in the polit- ical bargains. Popular mobilization and external influence also take part in those interactions, reinforcing or eroding previous institutional pat- terns (Stepan 1988).

Following Charles Tilly (2003) in assessing the politics of violence, we know that regime interactions entail violent entrepreneurs. The pacts made during the transition and immediately thereafter are conditioned by agents who hold power derived from their capacity for violence (army, police, paramilitaries, etc.), from their links to networks of inter- est mediation and masses, and from their relationships with external states. Some of these agents survive the transitions to constitute legal players in the new institutional arena, while others do not. However, some others maneuver and use their connections to colonize shadowy areas within institutions and state bureaucracy, whereby they keep operating (Cruz 2007).

The survival of authoritarian, violent entrepreneurs with connec- tions to the new regime means that the state’s participation in the gov- ernance of security may involve not only formal institutions but also ille- gal armed actors; that is, private and informal agents who, in some cases, may mutate into criminal operations using state institutions as a cover-up (Davis 2009; Schlichte 2009). Paramilitaries, vigilante groups,

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death squads, and partisan gangs connected to state apparatus are some of these groups. The participation of these actors, which do not fully abide by the rules, are part of what Guillermo O’Donnell (2004) calls the “brown areas” of rule.

Last but not least, the state’s use of informal collaborators to manage violence is a practice long embedded in the relationship between Cen- tral American governments and their populations. As Robert Holden asserts, pretransition security institutions achieved an extraordinary autonomy in the use of violence “by a correspondingly high level of tol- erance for and collaboration with the state’s agents of repression, among nonmilitary agents of the state and within civil society itself” (1996, 459). In other words, it is impossible to understand Central American state violence in the past without recognizing that violence was wielded not only by formal institutions but also by informal groups acting in collab- oration with the state (Alvarenga 1996). The democratic transitions did not wipe out this important feature in some countries. Illegal groups and rogue agents linked to the state contributed to the dynamics of violence in posttransition Central America.

REGIME CHANGE IN CENTRAL AMERICA: THE THREEFOLD FOUNDATIONAL TRANSITIONS

The key feature of Central America’s recent history is the widespread internal wars and peace processes experienced by Guatemala, El Sal- vador, and Nicaragua. In contrast to most of Latin America, which did not face civil wars, the entire isthmus was influenced by these conflicts. Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua were ruled by author- itarian regimes for most of their history. In the late 1970s, political unrest led to the intensification of armed conflicts between leftist guerrillas and military governments in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. How- ever, the victory of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua was followed by a counterrevolutionary war (Booth et al. 2010). Liberal democracy came not only with the celebration of relatively free and fair elections but, more important, with the end of armed conflicts in the 1990s.

There has been a great deal of discussion on when the transitions started and ended in the region. This is an important debate, but chronology is not the main interest of this article. Instead, the transitions can be framed around three types of events: authoritarian breakdown through military coups and popular uprisings; the electoral process fol- lowing the breakdowns; and institutional reform aimed to transform the security apparatus. This classification facilitates comparison and helps to underline the importance of two dimensions of democratic transitions: elections and the rule of law. These dimensions do not always concur, and their separation has critical consequences in creating what some

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have called “democratization backwards”: democracies that have intro- duced free elections before establishing the basic institutions of rule of law and civil society (Rose and Shin 2001).

Central America’s transitions were actually conducted within signif- icant political constraints, such as civil war or military oversight (Karl 1995). Elections led to alternation in power in the 1980s, but the reforms that were aimed at guaranteeing full observance of human rights and the rule of law did not come about until the 1990s, as a result of polit- ical pacts. Table 2 shows the road to liberal democracy in each country, highlighting the key events and the complexities of regime change. Some authors (e.g., Torres Rivas 2001) have seen these regime changes as comprising three parallel transitions: from war to peace, from military to civilian rule, and from authoritarianism to democracy.

From War to Peace

The transition from internal wars to political peace is the main charac- teristic of democratization in the region. In Guatemala and El Salvador, peace was intrinsically linked with reforms included in the formal treaties; whereas in Nicaragua, the 1988 Sapoá Treaty established the conditions that led to the 1990 watershed elections (Torres Rivas 2001).

In Guatemala, the end of the war came in 1996 as a result of a series of peace accords between the government and the URNG (Unidad Rev- olucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca) guerrilla forces. However, since the

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Table 2. The Road to Liberal Democracy in Central America

Preceding First Regimea Starting Point Election Ending Point

Guatemala Military Military coup 1984 Peace Accords authoritarianism (1983) Regime Reforms

(1996)

El Salvador Military Military coup 1982 Peace Accords authoritarianism (1979) Regime Reforms

(1992)

Honduras Military Elections (1980) 1980 Reforms in public authoritarianism security

(1995–99)

Nicaragua Traditional Revolution 1984 Reforms as result dictatorship (1979) of 1990 elections

aWith the exception of Honduras, the characterization of the preceding regime is from Mahoney 2001.

military had virtually defeated the guerrillas by the mid-1980s through a campaign directed against rural and indigenous communities (Schirmer 1998), the outcome was a treaty that did not diminish the real power exercised by the military forces and the political elites associated with them.

The resolution of the war in El Salvador is best described as a mil- itary and political stalemate. Despite solid support from the United States, the Salvadoran government was unable to defeat the FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) guerrilla forces. The international context and pressure generated conditions that led to the 1992 Chapultepec Accords. Given the virtual stalemate, the Sal- vadoran peace treaty was the most ambitious in terms of state reform and democratization (Karl 1995).

The Nicaraguan civil war was the product of a counterrevolutionary effort driven mostly by U.S. financial and strategic support. After the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship by the Sandinistas in 1979, the United States helped to organize the National Resistance (Resistencia Nacional), a force integrated by former Guardias Nacionales, Misquitos (indigenous people from the Atlantic coast), and peasants. Although the Sandinistas had practically won the war by the end of 1988, the perma- nent U.S. blockade, the enormous human cost, and a shattered econ- omy forced the regime to negotiate peace in 1988. The opposition won the 1990 elections, and a long process of pacification started.

By 1996, political peace was the common feature in Central Amer- ica. However, wars shaped the conditions under which political elites negotiated the transitions and impinged on the quality and depth of the peace agreements. State security apparatus, the military and police, were substantially reinforced during the conflicts. Repressive institutions gained an unprecedented political leverage, given their role in protect- ing the regime. Even in warless Honduras, the U.S. utilization of the country as a platform to project military assistance in the region led to an enormous increase in military influence. Paradoxically, all this was taking place at a time when electoral processes were promoted as sig- nals of democratization. Consequently, the end of the wars was intrinsi- cally tied to the need to confront military influence (Torres Rivas 2001).

From Military to Civilian Rule

Whether because of the internal wars or the authoritarian character of the Central American regimes, the military played a central role in gov- erning these countries. The military’s initial withdrawal from executive offices in the early 1980s did not reduce its political power; instead, by the end of the decade, Central American armed forces were wealthier, more powerful, and more autonomous than ever before. For that

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reason, political transitions aimed to demilitarize the internal security apparatus. Even in Nicaragua, the conspicuously partisan military that emerged from the revolution was as powerful as the former Guardia Nacional. As Kruijt has argued, the counterinsurgent campaigns of the Sandinista army endowed the military with enough power to start “func- tioning as an autonomous entity, avoiding any direct control by the Dirección Nacional and the party” (2008, 123).

Honduras is an illustrative case. Prompted by internal and external pressures for democratization in the late 1970s, the Honduran military relinquished the presidency and allowed elections in 1980. However, it retained formal control of the security apparatus and unleashed its own autonomous repressive operations (Kincaid and Gamarra 1996). Although military repression did not reach the levels seen in neighbor- ing countries, the military was responsible for several abuses. Peace agreements in El Salvador and Nicaragua spurred various political actors, including the United States, to shift gears and push for reforms in the security arena. By 1992, then–Honduran president Rafael Callejas appointed the Ad Hoc Commission for Institutional Reform to examine the role of the Dirección Nacional de Investigaciones (DNI). The DNI was the investigative arm of the security apparatus, responsible for more than one hundred deaths and disappearances during the 1980s. The commission’s report started a long and rocky process of purges and reforms that ended in 1998, when a constitutional reform subordinated the armed forces to the direct control of the president. By 1999, Hon- duran civilians controlled not only elected offices but also the security institutions (Meza 2004).

In Guatemala and El Salvador, where the military directly controlled the state before the 1980s, wars gave the armed forces autonomy and political power over civilians through exclusive control of the internal security apparatus. This was expressed at two levels: by direct control of the police and the intelligence bureaus, and by reinforcing networks of clientelistic collaborators among civilians, who helped as counterin- telligence sources and as agents of repression. In El Salvador, these net- works were known as civilian defenses, with roots dating back to the early twentieth century (Holden 1996; Stanley 1996). During the civil war, they recruited up to three hundred thousand members, mostly in the countryside (Stanley 1996). In Guatemala, the Autodefense Civilian Patrols (PACs) had an enormous impact both on the course of the war and on community dynamics. With nearly one million members, the PACs engaged about 20 percent of the adult Guatemalan population in tasks of dirty warfare (Torres Rivas 2001). Peace accords removed the military from the security realm in both countries, forcing them to relin- quish the internal security institutions and to dissolve civilian partisan networks (Sieder 2001).

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The process of demilitarization and reduction of the Ejército Popu- lar Sandinista (EPS) in Nicaragua did not occur because of agreements between Contras and Sandinistas, but from negotiations between Presi- dent Violeta Chamorro and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) after the latter’s electoral defeat in 1990. The internal security system was dismantled by closing the intelligence bureaus in the Min- istry of Interior, by disbanding the Milicias Populares Sandinistas (MPS), and by reducing and renaming the Policía Sandinista and the EPS. Although the Sandinistas developed the MPS into a civilian defense net- work, this organization did not have the violent character of its coun- terparts in the northern countries: “Systematic abuse of human rights was never a feature of the Nicaraguan military after 1979” (Dunkerley and Sieder 1996, 70).

From Authoritarian to Democratic Regimes

Regional scholars have engaged in lively debates about the type and quality of these four new Central American democracies (e.g., Karl 1995; Sieder 2001), but one point does not seem to be contested: none of them had experienced democracy in the past. Third Wave transitions in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua led to the first serious sustained attempt to build democracy (Sieder 2001). They are what Torres-Rivas (2001) has called “foundational democracies.” These polit- ical transitions required the replacement of the permanent military-oli- garchic regimes with the electoral democracies that emerged during the civil wars. This very newness presented an additional challenge. New institutions had to be created, requiring not only legal frameworks but also social structures and political agents to make them work.

By way of a summary overview, the Salvadoran transition has been generally viewed as the most successful in an institutional perspective. The military was removed from politics; security institutions were reformed and put under civilian command; and rules for open and fair elections were crafted (Call 2003). The Honduran transition is viewed as less successful than the Salvadoran. Even without internal war, the mil- itary has held considerable power and control over decisionmaking institutions, despite civilian control (Meza 2004). The 2009 coup d’état is a gloomy confirmation of the transition shortcomings. Guatemala was usually seen as the least promising case. There, the military, despite the “civilianization” of the security apparatus, continued to wield significant power, which it used to supervise the civilian settlement and to shape political dynamics at the local level in the indigenous and rural com- munities (Schirmer 1998; Sieder 2001).

Nicaragua is a particular case. The most important institutional trans- formations took place after the triumph of the revolution and during the

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first years of the Sandinista government. For Philip Williams (1994), the overthrow of the dictator Anastasio Somoza and the victory of the San- dinistas set the conditions for an opening in the political regime and a sort of democratic exercise from the bottom up. But the Contra war and the overlap between the FSLN and state institutions put limits to such “popular democracy.” The outcome of the 1990 elections did not bring the creation of new institutions, but it did generate reforms substantial enough to shape them in a more traditional “liberal democracy.”

So how can we explain the varying levels of violence, which are resurgent in Central America? In addition to socially focused factors, such as the legacies from war, economic adjustments, or gang behavior, it can be argued that we should also focus on the political processes that gave way to institutions and groups that continued reproducing vio- lence from the state. We should focus especially on the dynamics allow- ing former violent entrepreneurs and political brokers from the old regimes to survive the transitions, become illegal armed groups, and meddle in the new institutions so as to retain some leverage over the security agenda.

THE AFTERMATH: THE TWISTED PROCESSES

The high levels of violence faced by the northern Central American countries reveal that something went awry in the transitions’ aftermath. Despite the new internal security institutions, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have serious problems of common and organized vio- lence. Conversely, Nicaragua, even with its increasing security prob- lems, has emerged as the least violent postwar country. Why is this so?

It can be argued that in the northern triangle, the roles played by different actors in relation to the political pacts created conditions that allowed old regime powerbrokers to limit the scope and implementa- tion of the reforms. Particularly important, the new security institutions were weakened and, in some cases, were rapidly “recorrupted” because some of the surviving violent entrepreneurs remained in place, some others transformed themselves into criminal actors, and still others formed illegal armed groups, operating with the consent of the incum- bent rulers. Therefore, state institutions remained a significant source of criminal violence in the northern triangle. In contrast, Nicaragua’s tran- sition, involving first a popular revolution and then a liberalization of the political regime, transformed institutions in a way that reduced the involvement of state agents and cut the use of civilian collaborators in the production of illegal violence. The active U.S. involvement in press- ing for the removal of Sandinista holdovers and a more forceful engage- ment from civilian organizations constrained the old regime’s violent entrepreneurs. Those with the potential to become criminal agents using

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state institutions as cover-ups were more effectively removed and con- trolled than in the north.

The Reversals in Northern Central America

Four factors characterized the failure to reform the security apparatus in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. First, in all countries, elites actu- ally allowed some military personnel, now disguised as civilians, to remain in the police and to keep on employing authoritarian practices. Second, paramilitary groups, vigilante-type squads, and civilian self- defense groups were not completely dismantled. Armed groups contin- ued to operate covertly, reviving past criminal operations or initiating new ones as a way to subsist in the postwar ideological void. More important, these groups continued to have links with state institutions, sometimes even at the highest levels of the government (Beltrán 2007).

In addition, new institutions were created, burdened with the past human rights violations of military leaders and rank-and-file security personnel who evaded accountability. Amnesty laws protected former violators of human rights (Sieder 2001), and some of these same per- petrators mutated into criminal entrepreneurs who used state institutions to obtain impunity (Gavigan 2009). Finally, many of the institutional transformations were byproducts of complex political bargains. Thus, institutions avoided vertical accountability to the public and prevented horizontal accountability within state institutions. The following discus- sion provides schematic accounts of how these events materialized in each country.

Guatemala. Arguing the need to prevent a postwar criminal wave, the political leadership decided that the new Guatemalan civilian police should be composed of nearly 60 percent of the old militarized National Police (Spence 2004). Those individual officers merely changed from military to civilian police uniforms, transferring their old tactics, doc- trine, and institutional culture to the new institution. Yet the flaws of Guatemala’s security reforms involved not only the police. According to the report Guatemala: Never Again (ODHAG 1998), after the peace accords, the perpetrators of human rights abuses continued to strike fear into the populations affected by past abuses as they remained in the communities and held powerful positions in the government.

Some of these actors integrated informal networks, known as “hidden powers” (Peacock and Beltrán 2003, 5), which were part of state structures, and used “their positions and contacts in the public and private sectors both to enrich themselves from illegal activities and to protect themselves from prosecution for the crimes they commit.”

In the case of Guatemala, Peacock and Beltrán have identified three types of groups. Current and retired military officers, who wield signif-

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 15

icant power over some state structures and whose leadership has been accused of involvement in organized crime during the posttransition era, comprise one. Two separate, well-known rings in Guatemala that fit this description are La Cofradía and El Sindicato (Hernández-Pico 2002). The second type of group, now no longer operative, occupied the highest executive office, the Presidential General Staff (Estado Mayor Presiden- cial, EMP). This was an intelligence unit that provided protection and logistical support to the president and at the same time served as a clan- destine center to launch criminal operations, like the assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998 (Peacock and Beltrán 2003). The EMP was formally disbanded on November 2003, but many of its members were kept on in government offices, where they had the capacity to resume operations.

The third type of group that survived the transition and has contin- ued to wield a significant amount of local power is the Civil Defense Patrols (Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, PAC). Although these paramilitary groups were formally dismantled, they continued to operate on their own to terrorize portions of the population, in some cases with the approval of regional military commanders (Godoy 2006). Such groups have been involved in lynchings and public executions. The use of mobs as a way to punish criminals goes back to the internal military conflict. This strategy entailed the infiltration of native informers to control com- munity life and to encourage people to punish those persons seen as dangerous. Despite the end of the war, the use of informers seems to have continued in the rural indigenous areas, cheering on communities to “apply the people’s rule” against alleged criminals (Godoy 2006).

The impunity of some army officers, however, was best reflected in an amnesty law protecting military and guerrillas alike from prosecution for war crimes. Although the courts tried some officers for crimes, the Guatemalan government managed to appoint other officers with a sus- picious past to key posts in the police, the Public Ministry, and the EMP.

All this was possible partly because no effective political opposition existed in Guatemala. With some exceptions, neither the URNG nor the United Nations nor Guatemalan civil society could counter the maneu- vering of the military and its allies (Gavigan 2009). Furthermore, in the electoral arena, the transition found an alienated and distrustful public. The only political force that had built a significant link to segments of the population was, paradoxically, a sector of the military through the PACs and the FRG Party (Frente Republicano Guatemalteco). This pre- cluded the possibility of grassroots pressures to promote implementa- tion of security reforms.

El Salvador. Observers of the Salvadoran process reported that during reform implementation, the government first opposed disband- ing the internal security institutions. When pressure by the FMLN and

16 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 53: 4

the United Nations forced it to disband them, the government attempted to incorporate personnel from the old security institutions into the new police. One tactic was to sneak them into the groups that made up the pacted quotas for new law enforcement officers. Another was to place trusted holdovers from the old institutions in key posts to control the new structures, excluding independent civilians (Stanley 1993). Despite the presence of a strong opposition party and the active role of the UN, some of these tactics succeeded, because the guerrilla leadership bar- gained with the government to obtain some concessions in the electoral arena, such as speeding up the process of legalizing the guerrilla force as a political party (Spence 2004).

In the end, although the military formally relinquished control of the internal security apparatus, no senior military official mentioned in the Truth Commission Report on major war crimes was subjected to court proceedings.3 The report named several top officials as responsi- ble for most of the human rights abuses perpetrated during the war (Comisión de la Verdad 1993). In response, the government passed a broad amnesty that prevented the prosecution of military officers. This level of impunity extended to all ranks of the army and civilian collab- orators, some of whom formed the new police (Spence 2004). In the early postwar years, killings of former guerrilla leaders prompted the creation of another independent commission, called the Joint Group for the Investigation of Illegal Armed Groups with Political Motivation in El Salvador. The commission found evidence that some death squads remained operational; it also found that such groups had switched to criminal activities, preserving close links to state structures, including the new civilian police (1994).4

According to the report of the Joint Group, in rural areas, informal armed groups, formerly linked to paramilitaries, continued to protect traditional power structures (Beltrán 2007). These groups were also part of electoral machines of the ruling party during electoral campaigns. No one in these groups was ever captured or prosecuted as a result of the commission report, partly because the government was run by the polit- ical party associated with the death squads in the early 1980s, and also because the national elites managed to resist the United Nations pres- sure. These groups later transformed into “cleansing” and vigilante groups, such as La Sombra Negra, which carried out extermination cam- paigns against youth gangs throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s (Tutela Legal del Arzobispado 2007). Moreover, civil society, largely dis- engaged from party politics during the early postwar years, expressed few general demands for justice (Wood 2005).

Honduras. Despite the absence of internal military conflict, the institutional consolidation of the security apparatus was no less prob- lematic here. By the mid-1980s, the military were not only responsible

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 17

for human rights abuses; they also were involved in the growing drug- trafficking rings on the Atlantic coast (Rosenberg 1988; Ruhl 2000). Reforms in the security apparatus came as a result of internal and exter- nal pressures. Internally, such pressures came from business associa- tions, human rights organizations, student groups, and the Catholic Church; externally, from the United States, which no longer feared the leftist expansion in the region.

The report of the Ad Hoc Commission, published in March 1993 (Kincaid and Gamarra 1996), prompted reforms that sought the creation of new policing institutions and the prosecution of military officers involved in human rights abuses and criminal activities. In spite of these efforts, the members of the new institutions came fundamentally from the ranks of the old ones. Personnel from the former military-controlled police were merely transferred to a newly named institution (Meza 2004; Neild 2002). Police functions were separated into two different police bodies: the Departamento de Investigación Criminal (DIC), which undertook the investigative function; and the preventive police, which held the preventive and surveillance functions. Although the DIC made significant advances in investigative techniques, and oversight mecha- nisms incorporating civil society organizations were put in place (Castel- lanos and Salomón 2002), police forces were rapidly weakened by the Security Secretariat’s tendency to benefit some units and officers based on political criteria. Indeed, an attempt to deepen the reform process in 1998 was cut short by the Security Ministry when it opposed dismissing police for disciplinary reasons and intervened in internal investigations. Former units of the old police implicated in human rights abuses were left intact (Beltrán 2009; Neild 2002) and even shielded by the authori- ties (Borjas 2011).

Within the military, officers avoided prosecution by taking refuge at army bases, shielding themselves from civilian authorities. Meanwhile, paramilitary groups linked to the military targeted some civilian leaders, and even then-president Carlos Reina. He was not able fully to subor- dinate the military; his successor, Carlos Flores-Facussé, succeeded in doing so in 1998 only with strong backing from the U.S. embassy and after granting amnesty to military officers prosecuted for human rights abuses in the 1980s (Ruhl 2000).

During the reform period, in 1994, the Honduran government announced the creation of civilian “community watch” groups, aimed to prevent crime and assist the police. Some of these groups rapidly evolved into vigilante-type groups, some employing heavy weapons and police communication equipment. Facing a general outcry, these groups were officially dismantled, but some Honduran human rights organizations feared they were not completely eliminated (Kincaid and Gamarra 1996).

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Nicaragua. There are two critical moments in the Nicaraguan case. The first set of transformations stemmed from the triumph of the San- dinista revolution in 1979. The revolution toppled the Somoza dynasty and introduced significant changes in society and political institutions. One change was the eradication of all vestiges of the security apparatus of the old regime, the creation of a new army (the EPS), a new police force (the Policía Sandinista Nicaragüense), and a new intelligence serv- ice under the control of the Ministry of Interior. The other major change was the mobilization of mass organizations that would play an active political role in Nicaraguan society (Williams 1994).

When the Sandinistas were defeated in the 1990 elections, the insti- tutions and agents of the old dictatorship were all largely gone. The San- dinista security apparatus was not necessarily democratic, as it responded to the FSLN; but the relationship it developed with the pop- ulation, especially the urban classes, was significantly less repressive than that of the Somoza regime or its northern neighbors (Booth et al. 2010). Much of the basis for the posttransitional development of the police forces had been planted between 1979 and 1990 (Orozco 2009).

The second critical moment in the Nicaraguan transition took place around the 1990 elections. The outcome of the elections prompted another wave of transformations in the security realm. The key point of these changes was the attempt to remove the Sandinistas from security institutions and their submission to elected authorities.

The newly elected government, a broad and fragile alliance of dif- ferent opposition groups headed by Violeta Chamorro and called Unidad Nicaragüense Opositora (UNO), faced the challenge of negoti- ating with a party (the FSLN) that was stronger and that controlled the key posts of the security apparatus (Spalding 1999). Eighty percent of the military officers were active militants of the FSLN. Chamorro agreed that Humberto Ortega, the head of the Sandinista Army, would remain as commander-in-chief, but in exchange, he would have to resign from the FSLN and accept a drastic reduction in the size of the army. Chamorro also agreed with the Sandinistas that most of the police struc- ture would remain intact (Spence 2004), but in exchange, some top offi- cials would be removed and new rules and regulations for its internal management would be established. These pacts generated strong divi- sions within Chamorro’s ruling coalition and prompted enormous U.S. pressure on the government to reduce Sandinista influence. In response, the army and the police took several measures to demonstrate their autonomy from the FSLN and their loyalty to the regime, such as fight- ing veterans of the former Sandinista Army, who rose up in arms to demand land and benefits (Cajina 1996).

The end of the war left many former combatants from both sides without a plan for reinsertion into society. Some ex-Sandinistas and ex-

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 19

Contras formed armed groups, called Recompas and Recontras, which operated in the countryside as a way to pressure the government to attend their demands. Such groups were responsible for the early increase in the levels of violence (see figure 1) (Cuadra 2002). The Chamorro government engaged in multiple negotiations with small re- armed groups or local strongmen over resettlement benefits (Spalding 1999). When negotiations failed, the army launched military operations, even against former Sandinistas. The aim of the army and the police was not only to stop the consolidation of irregular armed groups, but also to convey the message that the state would not tolerate parallel armed groups, even with links to state institutions (Cuadra Lacayo 2009).

In the meantime, the Sandinistas’ leverage over the government was frustrated by the intervention of external actors. The U.S. Senate cut off nearly $100 million in aid to Nicaragua after information was leaked in July 1993 suggesting that the Sandinista-controlled intelligence services were allowing criminal organizations to operate in Managua. Two months after that, Chamorro announced the removal of Ortega as army chief (Cajina 1996). The effort to professionalize and separate the police and the mili- tary from the party was deepened in large part because the Sandinistas saw institutionalization as the only strategy that could allow them to survive after the Sandinista electoral defeat (Orozco 2009; Vivas Lugo 2009).5

Nicaraguan security institutions faced problems of corruption and criminal infiltration in the early 1990s. However, the enormous and mul- tipronged U.S. pressure on economically devastated Nicaragua, through government agencies and also through multilateral organizations (the IMF and the World Bank), helped to steer Nicaraguan institutions away from rogue elements in a timely manner. It pushed Nicaraguan law enforcement organizations to commit themselves to a transformative process of institutionalization.6

The United States, however, was not the only force driving the San- dinistas to institutionalize. Significant (and more important) pressures from grassroots organizations boosted the transformations. Popular organizations, a legacy of the revolutionary experiment, funneled public demands through two types of mechanisms. Former pro-Sandinista grassroots organizations would target demands to Sandinista officials serving in the new government; popular groups also advanced street demonstrations that challenged the regime. In this context, the police had to exercise a delicate balance to enforce the law. They had to comply with the laws and decisions of the new regime, but without alienating or excessively repressing the former Sandinista base. Institu- tional deepening and nonpartisanship were the only way to go. Accord- ing to Orozco (2009), for an important period, the institutionalization of the police precluded different administrations, especially that of Arnoldo Alemán, from using the police for partisan or personal purposes.7

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In sum, the mode of transition in Nicaragua was significantly differ- ent from those of northern Central America, particularly regarding public security. In the north, elements of the old regime managed to block or subvert some of the essential institutional features, evading the public accountability contained in the agreements. This was possible partly because the political operators were not confronted by forceful opposition. In all three countries, the external push for reforms was inconsistent and unsustained. Only in El Salvador did the United Nations observer mission, called ONUSAL, play an important role to enforce parts of the agreement, but pacts between the two former rivals left ONUSAL without enforcement authority in many areas.

Conversely, in Nicaragua, the revolution destroyed the Somoza regime, and all its violent agents were removed from power. Then the Sandinistas built an important popular base that would support the role of security institutions. When the FSLN lost the elections in 1990, the Sandinistas strengthened the security institutions as a way to legitimate their role; at the same time, the UNO regime had to negotiate with the FSLN in order to prevent political turmoil. Even in electoral defeat, the Sandinistas retained the largest active social base among the population. The integration of some of the Sandinista leadership into the postrevo- lutionary oligarchy also underpinned this process (Rodgers 2006b); but the need to survive of some political operators helped to create institu- tions in which old regime violent entrepreneurs were inhibited from developing parallel structures and launching extralegal violence.

THE UPSHOT

The processes depicted here yielded state institutions that in Nicaragua, in comparison to the northern triangle, have pursued completely differ- ent approaches when dealing with public security. In particular, they have determined the degree to which state institutions have been involved in the direct reproduction of violence. This involvement may be classified as three different types: legal violence, extralegal violence, and criminal violence.

Legal violence refers to the state’s legitimate use of force and its capacity to expand its limits in order to fight crime. It can entail the alteration of laws to provide discretionary powers to state institutions. The enactment of mano dura policies in northern Central America exemplifies this type of expansion. Particularly in El Salvador and Hon- duras, the mano dura laws dictated the criminalization of youth by ban- ning any “street group,” the expansion of police power by providing the police with discretionary faculties, and the limitation of civil rights (Cruz et al. forthcoming; Ungar 2009).8 This resulted in prison overcrowding and a significant rise in homicides. By the end of the zero-tolerance pro-

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 21

grams, murders in northern Central America had increased by more than 70 percent (PNUD 2009). In contrast, except for a crackdown attempted in the late 1990s, Nicaraguan authorities followed a preventive approach. According to several agencies, this can be explained because the police developed an institutional culture based more on community needs and stressed the need for investigation and criminal intelligence at the community level (PNUD 2009; Programa Estado de la Región 2008; USAID 2006).

In a critical analysis of the Nicaraguan police, Rocha Gómez (2007) argues that police operations on the ground are more repressive than usually professed, and that the image of a professional institution con- ceals the political economy of a conflict-ridden police. Such conflict revolves around political loyalties; that is, one group of the police offi- cers being more aligned with the Sandinista agenda than the rest.

This analysis, nevertheless, does not contradict the information that portrays Nicaraguan policing as less prone to tolerate excessive violence from within its own ranks than its peer institutions to the north. Nor does it preclude the praise the Nicaraguan police have received for their reforms and approaches to violence from organizations such as the UNDP (PNUD 2009, 187–89) and USAID (2006, 128–30). Analyses of northern triangle police institutions have also revealed contradictory and profound divisions across vested interests within the police bodies (Amaya 2006; Meza 2004); but in those cases, the internal dynamics, burdened with unrestrained brokers from the old regimes, have driven the institutions toward more militarized and repressive means than in Nicaragua.

Extralegal violence refers to the activities carried out by state oper- ators or illegal armed groups linked to state institutions, which clearly exceed any legal framework in the fight against crime. This type of activity can include extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the police or the military and the formation of death squads, vigilantes, and cleansing groups associated with state institutions. In northern Central America, the prevalence of these types of groups and activities has been exten- sively documented. In El Salvador, research conducted by the Harvard University International Human Rights Clinic (2007) found that cleans- ing groups comprising police officers and civilians were responsible for the killing of many gang members. The existence of these groups within the new civilian police goes back to the mid-1990s with the activities of the infamous Sombra Negra death squad and other groups (IDHUCA 1997), which have remained operational into the 2000s (Tutela Legal del Arzobispado 2007).

In Honduras, the chief of the Police Internal Affairs Unit exposed the existence of death squads within the police in 2002 and pointed out their involvement in many extrajudicial killings of children and youth

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(Ungar 2009). Indeed, according to several human rights reports, since 1998, cleansing groups associated with the police have murdered hun- dreds of street children and suspected gang members (Amnesty Inter- national 2003; Casa Alianza Honduras 2006; U.S. Department of State 2008). In Guatemala, no fewer than 80 extrajudicial killings and disap- pearances perpetrated by the National Civilian Police were reported to the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman between 2004 and 2005 (Samayoa 2007), and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has repeatedly reported the involvement of state agents in extralegal killings (UNHRC 2009).

Conversely, sources in human rights organizations do not report the existence of death squads or cleansing groups entrenched in Nicaraguan state institutions. According to a human rights consortium report, eight murders were committed by state officials between 2005 and 2008; all of them were attributed to police or military excessive use of force. In all cases, the perpetrators involved were identified, and in most cases taken to court. The report praises the absence of an institutional culture of abuse and torture in the Nicaraguan police, but it expresses concern about some cases of “disproportional use of the police force when apprehending suspects” (Centro Nicaraguense de Derechos Humanos et al. 2008, 29).

A review of the Amnesty International reports comparing the four countries can best illustrate the differences between Nicaragua and the rest (Amnesty International 1991–2009). Table 3 shows, for each coun- try, the percentage of yearly reports that actually mention the occur- rence of extrajudicial killings, or killings by illegal armed groups asso- ciated with the state, over the total number of reports since the country transition took place. For example, there are 19 AI annual reports since the Nicaraguan election in 1990. Seven out of the 19 state the occur- rence of extralegal killings in Nicaragua. That represents 37 percent of the AI reports on posttransition Nicaragua. In contrast, in Honduras, 64

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 23

Table 3. Percentage of AI Reports on Extralegal Killings in Central America

Extrajudicial Killings, Death Annual Reports Reviewed Squads, or Cleansing Groups

(Number) Associated with the State (%)

Nicaragua 1991–2009 (19) 37 El Salvador 1993–2009 (17) 59 Honduras 1999–2009 (11) 64 Guatemala 1997–2009 (13) 77

Source: AI Human Rights Annual Reports 1991–2009.

percent of the AI annual reports since 1998, the year when the security reforms were concluded, denounce killings by state forces.

It is important to note that in the case of Nicaragua, most extralegal killings perpetrated by the state or parastate forces occurred during the first six years after the defeat of the Sandinistas, whereas in northern Central America, it is still possible to find reports of extrajudicial killings and activities of death squads for the years 2006 to 2009. In other words, although Nicaragua is plagued with problems and excessive use of police force is common, the magnitude of extralegal violence by the state and its collaborators has been far lower than in Guatemala, El Sal- vador, and Honduras.

In February 2007, members of the Guatemalan police killed and burned the bodies of four Salvadorans in a remote rural area in eastern Guatemala. Three of the victims were members of the Central American Parliament. Investigations revealed that the perpetrators were officers of the Criminal Investigations Division linked to a criminal ring operating within the police. The alleged perpetrators were arrested and sent to a maximum security prison. Some days later, a commando unit stormed the prison and killed them. Further investigations pointed to a Guatemalan congressman, and some news reports implicated the vic- tims as members of drug-trafficking cartels (McKinley 2007).

This case illustrates the extent of the infiltration of criminal net- works into Guatemalan security institutions. They are an egregious case; even so, similar phenomena also appear in El Salvador and Honduras. Since the mid-1990s, news reports and human rights organization state- ments have repeatedly warned about organized crime infiltration in northern Central America’s security institutions. A 2004 UNDP briefing on organized crime in Honduras pointed at the infiltration of drug- trafficking cartels into security and justice institutions (Caldera and Landa- verde 2004). In 2007, an unidentified, high-ranking public official said that 30 percent of the country’s police chiefs have decisionmaking posts in the organized crime networks engaged in drug trafficking (Moreno 2007). In 2009 and 2010, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan top national police chiefs and antinarcotics deputies were accused of drug traffick- ing and covering up criminal operations (Castillo 2010; Economist 2010).

Such criminal networks acting within security institutions have con- tributed to the death toll, the overall public insecurity, and the increas- ing levels of distrust in state institutions in the region. This is best reflected in the AmericasBarometer 2008 survey results. Asked about whether the local police protect people against crime or whether instead, the police are involved in crime, 65.9 percent of Guatemalans, 48.8 percent of Salvadorans, and 47.2 percent of Hondurans said that their police were implicated in criminal activities. In Nicaragua, on the other hand, only 25.1 percent of people saw their police as involved in

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crime (Cruz 2010b). In other words, Nicaraguan police were seen to be less infiltrated by crime than those in northern Central America.

CONCLUSIONS

Violence in Central America is the product of several factors. This arti- cle has argued that, in addition to the frequently named societal factors, an important source is the state. State institutions have played a signifi- cant role in the reproduction of criminal violence and in the develop- ment of groups responsible for it. In posttransition Central American countries, tracing this role involves examining how institutions have come to condone and employ violence in cooperation with external violent entrepreneurs. Without denying the importance of economic and social factors, the argument here is that extreme violence in Central America is the product of security institutions that have failed to be effi- cient, transparent, and accountable, as they and some people associated with them have continued tolerating, encouraging, and even participat- ing in the production of criminal violence.

Those faulty institutions were shaped by decisions, pacts, and actions taken during the long transition processes. In northern Central America, the transitions failed to impede the survival of old regime groups, which have retained the ability to maneuver to avoid past and current accountability and to reproduce violence from key positions in the state. In contrast, a combination of factors encapsulated in its com- plex transition allowed Nicaragua to produce security institutions that, although far from perfect, are more effective in controlling their own violent entrepreneurs.

To be sure, Nicaragua has problems with criminal violence. Drug gangs, crime, and interpersonal violence also threaten the Nicaraguan social fabric. Still, the fundamental point made here is that the state has not been the major contributor to that violence as it has been elsewhere in posttransition Central America. In Nicaragua, social inequality, eco- nomic deprivation, the disruption of welfare networks, and the legacies of war are all critical factors in understanding the country’s continuing violence. But these factors are also important in Guatemala, El Salvador, and—with the exception of war legacies—Honduras. The distinctive feature of these countries is that on top of those factors are the state, its agents, and their particular relationship with collaborators in the society. These additional factors have multiplied the violence and exacerbated the underlying social conditions, taking the bloodshed to top world- ranking levels.

This explanation does not mean that state institutions and the groups that covertly lurk within them are the only ones responsible for the outbreak of criminal violence. But they are a key factor that no

CRUZ: VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA 25

longer can be neglected if we are to explain the gap between Nicaragua and the rest. Unfortunately, the references to maras and migration have obscured these explanations so far. They became the scapegoats for insecurity and justified draconian state responses. The enactment of mano dura policies in northern Central America exemplifies this best. Those policies, internally driven by remnants of the old regimes, extended the limits of state violence; they opened the gates wide for abuses and extralegal violence; they unleashed the illegal violent entre- preneurs. Furthermore, under a public opinion–blessed war on gangs, crackdowns deflected people’s attention from the criminal activities of corrupt officials. In coping with the all-out war against them, gangs emerged more powerful and brutal than before.

This article highlights the importance of the state in the analyses of contemporary violence in Latin America and the processes that come to shape the region’s security institutions. These analyses can prove useful in understanding violence in other countries ridden by violence, such as Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, and Mexico. In all of them, state institutions have proven to be not only inefficacious for tackling violence, but also brokers of it.

This article also challenges the idea that transitions are trapped in the dilemma of relying on the old regime security apparatus in the first stages of democratization to prevent an upsurge in crime. The survival of authoritarian institutions has been part of the crime problem. The upsurge of crime that followed the transitions in all Central American countries has been far less devastating in Nicaragua, which deactivated and restrained old regime actors through political engagement and accountability mechanisms.

NOTES

I am deeply grateful to Paul Almeida, John Bailey, William Barnes, Jonathan Hartlyn, Jonathan Hiskey, Mo Hume, Terry Karl, Dennis Rodgers, Mitchell Selig- son, and the reviewers of LAPS for comments on earlier versions of this article.

1. Some authors have expressed serious doubts about the reliability of Nicaraguan data, as violence is much higher than usually reported, due to underreporting and political interference (Godnick et al. 2002; Rodgers 2009). However, the same warnings apply to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, where problems with data are endemic and governments have tried to curb image-damaging statistics (see Estado de la Región 2008). Furthermore, in its recent report about violence in the region, the UNDP considered Nicaragua’s record system “more reliable” than the rest (PNUD 2009, 79).

2. A research project conducted by ITAM in Mexico found that despite the media hype, there is no significant presence of Central American maras in Mexico. According to one of the principal researchers, local conditions, such as a stronger social fabric in Mexican communities, along with an outright refusal

26 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 53: 4

of youth gangs to use extreme violence, have prevented an important settlement of maras from developing (Perea Restrepo 2008; see also Barnes 2007).

3. The only exception was Colonel Guillermo Benavides, convicted for the murder of six Jesuits and two collaborators in 1989. He was later pardoned under the amnesty law.

4. A confidential working document of the Joint Commission, based on the archives of the Truth Commission, provides names of several former death squad members and sponsors who have held top government posts since the political transition. The document, which supports the conclusions of the Truth Commission Report (Comisión de la Verdad 1993), was obtained from a former collaborator of the commission.

5. The same view about the need to survive was expressed by former police commissioners Francisco Bautista and Eduardo Cuadra Ferrey in separate author interviews in Managua, July 2009.

6. In neighboring Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, this pressure was largely absent, because the United States had supported the government forces in the past, and U.S. Congress members did not fear any Marxist-leaning poten- tial from the security forces, as they did in Nicaragua (see Spence 2004).

7. According to some Nicaraguan observers (see Salinas Maldonado 2010), this is changing under the current Daniel Ortega administration.

8. Guatemala was the first country to pursue a zero-tolerance type of approach with the enactment of the Plan Escoba (broom plan) in 2001 (Cruz et al. forthcoming).

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