Violent Democracies in Latin America

Book Reviews / International and Comparative 383 tions in specific locales. Overall, however, the book gives more time and space to government and industry actors both in the United States and Latin America. Often the analysis suggests the context in which everyday negotiations of “empire” between tourists and sometimes unionized hosts took place, rather than fleshing out those interactions. Negotiating Paradise could well prompt further research in this area, especially as Merrill remains attentive to questions of gender, race, and organized labor in such interactions. While Merrill’s transnational history is not simply about studying the United States through the lens of tourism to Latin America, and he does include good background sections on each of his three case studies, his training as an Americanist sometimes shows. Mexicanists may find it odd that he doesn’t present Cárdenas’s oil nationalization as an act of economic nationalism that defied US power, perhaps forcing a new dynamic in tourism. This moment, as much as the early Cuban Revolution, prompts the question of whether “empire” is always the appropriate rubric for studying US–­Latin American tourism history. Puerto Ricanists are likely to wonder why mass planned tourism is not presented as an ironic counterpoint to mass planned emigration, which is only mentioned in passing. On a more factual level, Muñoz Marín was not committed to commonwealth status as early as 1938, nor was his election victory in 1940 “smashing” ( p. 183). Overall, though, the book is truly about both the United States and the three Latin American cases studied and will remind specialists on particular Latin American countries that their version of the tourist experience is not the only one. I expect that Merrill’s book will become a touchstone for comparative discussion as more detailed work on specific countries and locations develops. anne s. macpherson, SUNY, College at Brockport doi 10.1215/00182168-­­1165505 Violent Democracies in Latin America. Edited by enrique desmond arias and daniel m. goldstein. The Cultures and Practice of Violence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. vii, 324 pp. Paper, $24.95. Cloth, $89.95. Two decades after the end of the last dictatorships, most of the now formally democratic Latin American nations continue to suffer high levels of state and interpersonal violence. Perpetrated by state-­sanctioned armies, guerrillas, gangs, drug traffickers, and local community groups seeking self-­protection, violence is an everyday experience for many. What specific connections exist between democracy and violence in post-­authoritarian Latin American states? What roles do international economic flows and transnational policies, including the involvement of the United States in the region, play in this relation? Violent Democracies in Latin America, a volume edited by political scientist Enrique Desmond Arias and political anthropologist Daniel M. Goldstein, posits answers to both questions, although more effectively in the discussion of the former. In the introduction, the editors persuasively attack the suggestion, common in 384 HAHR / May the literature on Latin America democratic transitions, that the region’s endemic violence constitutes evidence of the failure of Latin American countries to achieve true democracy. The authors argue instead that “Latin American democratic society can be conceptualized as ‘violently plural,’ with states, social elites, and subalterns employing violence in the quest to establish or contest regimes of citizenship, justice, rights, and a democratic social order” ( p. 7). The concept of violent pluralism accounts for a greater number of situations in which “order (and/or disorder) is created through the interactions of multiple violent actors” ( p. 10). Many of the contributors favor an anthropological perspective that reconstructs the lived experience of ordinary citizens within democratic contexts in a variety of countries. Mary Roldán’s and María Clemencia Ramírez’s contributions both examine the relationship between violent individuals and state officials in Colombia, formally Latin America’s oldest democracy. Ruth Stanley’s essay addresses the subjectivity of victims of police violence in Argentina, traditionally considered to have a low level of violence, and Robert Gay’s article examines local violence in Rio de Janeiro in the context of a trans­ national political economy of drug trafficking, demonstrating the extensive complicity of police and other authorities in the very violence and illegality they are supposed to combat. These four contributions explore the relations that violent actors in civil society maintain with one another and with different elements of the state, including politicians, police, bureaucrats, and the military. Similarly, Javier Auyero’s essay focuses on the clandestine connections between legal and illegal political actors and their role in the making of collective violence in Buenos Aires. Rather than signaling a failure of democracy, the perspective of the book reflects the ways in which violent groups in contemporary Latin America maintain autonomous forms of order by re-creating law, politics, and political subjectivity at the local level. In addition to reconstructing the gray area of interactions between violent actors, inside and outside of the state, the essays suggest some articulations between the local and global dimensions when they consider the impact on violence of transnational processes, which include the cocaine trade, the movement of people and goods across increasingly uncontrolled international borders, and the transnational policies of neoliberal economies. Moving away from the post-­authoritarian consensus that saw political freedom and democracy as a result of individualism and the free market, the essays in this book present violence as part of the structural logic of neoliberal democracy. As the different analyses suggest, under neoliberal democracies, many Latin American countries have been forced to comply with the structural adjustments dictated by transnational lending agencies. The resulting shrinkage of state has reinforced economic inequalities, increasing the levels of poverty and unemployment. Under these circumstances, in countries with a past history of political violence, many groups resort to violence as a way of dealing with the tensions generated by neoliberal reforms. Violent Democracies in Latin America offers new insights into the discussion of Latin American politics in the context of the proliferation of violence, but the authors’ argument against the “paradigm of democratization” requires them to focus on certain Book Reviews / International and Comparative 385 aspects of the political experience, and this might prompt objections to some of their assessments. For instance, even though the authors declare that various types of violence in the region are not equivalent, in the analyses of armed groups that operate within poor communities to achieve desired political outcomes there is a tendency to exaggerate both the “plural” and “productive” roles of violence. On the other hand, while the introduction and conclusion of the book offer interesting parallels with the problematic transition to democracy of non-­Western countries, particularly in the Middle East, understanding the effects of US policy in the political systems of these countries and in Latin America would require the inclusion of an additional study. By and large, however, Violent Democracies in Latin America presents a nuanced study of the interactions between trade liberalization, neoliberal economic systems, and the political environment of post-­authoritarian Latin America that subverts many of the previous ideas on the democratic transition and offers useful insights for scholars into the political economic context of the period. As contributors include an anthropologist, several historians, a political scientist, and a sociologist, the volume will reach a wide audience and contribute to the growing dialogue on contemporary Latin American politics. irene depetris chauvin, Cornell University doi 10.1215/00182168-­­1165514 Copyright of Hispanic American Historical Review is the property of Duke University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.