Criminal Violence in Post

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Vanderbilt Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive DEMOCRATIZATION UNDER ASSAULT: CRIMINAL VIOLENCE IN POST- TRANSITION CENTRAL AMERICA By José Miguel Cruz Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Political Science August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Jonathan Hiskey Professor Mitchell A. Seligson Professor Deborah Yashar Professor Elizabeth Zechmeister Copyright © 2010 by José Miguel Cruz All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Returning to graduate school at age forty can be a leap of faith, especially after leaving a good and secure job and a stable life. It may destroy the few remnants of sanity left after growing up in an environment marked by protracted civil war and violence or it may strengthen a life project devoted to contributing to social transformations in societies burdened by extreme violence. In the end, everything comes down to the support provided by others, without whom preparing for doctoral exams and writing a dissertation would be impossible to carry out or to bear. Fortunately, my return to graduate school was made possible because I have been blessed by the help of many people. I have reached this point precisely because I have had the support of persons and institutions that have allowed me to do what I love: conduct social research, learn from reality and think about ways to apply knowledge to face the challenges faced by democracy and the ongoing struggle for peace and justice in Latin America. These four formative years at the Doctoral Program in Political Science at Vanderbilt University were made possible thanks to the financial support of many institutions. Gratitude is owed to the Center of Latin American Studies (CLAS) at Vanderbilt University, especially to Ted Fischer, who awarded me a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLASF); to the Ford Foundation and the Institute of International Education (IEE), which awarded me a Regional Graduate Fellowship in the Social Sciences and ensured fiscal peace of mind; to the Department of Political Science and especially to Professor C. Neal Tate, who granted support for my enrollment in the iii program; and to the Vanderbilt Graduate School, which granted me a Social Science Dissertation Fellowship. Mitchell Seligson and William Barnes have been my mentors in this process and I am particularly thankful to them. Professor Seligson, my advisor and chair in this dissertation project, has been a constant source of encouragement and guidance. I warmly remember the day-long chat we had in a London coffee house in the winter of 2002, when he encouraged me to enroll in a doctoral program in the United States. Since then, he always has been a close tutor and a remarkable teacher. Bill Barnes, my friend since we collaborated in the exit poll and quick count during the Salvadoran elections of 1994 (“las elecciones del siglo”), has been my life-time mentor: much of what I know about political science comes from his guidance and fatherly support. Jonathan Hiskey has played an important role in my career at Vanderbilt. He has been a critical and enriching reader, a devoted teacher, a wonderful Director of Graduate Studies and a valued colleague. I also have an endless number of colleagues, friends, and professors to thank. They all played important roles in reading previous papers or providing helpful advice that were the base for this work. At Vanderbilt, I want to thank Brooke Ackerly, Carol Atkinson, James Booth, Josh Clinton, Lesley Gill, and Suzanne Globetti. I must also mention my friends from other schools who saw draft chapters and graciously sent helpful comments. They are: Paul Almeida at the University of California, Merced; John Bailey at Georgetown University; Kenneth Coleman at the University of Michigan: Cristina Eguizábal at Florida International University; Mo Hume at the University of iv Glasgow; Terry Karl at Stanford University; and Dennis Rodgers at the University of Manchester. This work has also been enriched from discussions with many colleagues and friends in countries throughout the world. In the United States: Cindy Arnson, Adriana Beltrán, Alberto Concha-Eastman, Consuelo Cruz, Lucía Dammert, Geoff Thale, Ellen Moodie, and Elana Zilberg. In El Salvador: Jeannette Aguilar, Tito Bazán, Roberto Burgos, Roberto Cañas, Henry Campos, Augusto Cotto, Benjamín Cuellar, Carlos Dada, Maria Silvia Guillen, Ovidio Mauricio, Lissette Miranda, David Morales, Wilfredo Preza, Hugo Ramírez, Giovanna Rizzi, Salvador Samayoa, Héctor Silva hijo, Marcela Smutt, and Ricardo Vaquerano. In Nicaragua, Francisco Bautista, Eduardo Cuadra Ferrey, Carlos Fernando Chamorro, David Dye, Roberto Orozco, Manuel Ortega Hegg, José Luis Rocha, Eva Sacasa, Melvin Sotelo, Myriam Vásquez, Mónica Zalaquett. In Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo de León, Emilio Goubaud, and Gustavo Monterroso. In Honduras, Tomás Andino. In Great Britain, Allan Angell, Mercedes Hinton, Joaquín Villalobos, and Laurence Whitehead. I also want to thank Deborah Yashar and Elizabeth Zechmeister for their helpful comments on this manuscript. In El Salvador, Verónica Guerrero granted access to the collection of the CIA declassified documents archived at the premises of CIDAI at the University of Central America in San Salvador. In Nicaragua, Rodolfo Cardenal, SJ, allowed me to explore the rich collection of documents from the Somoza and Sandinista eras at the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua at the UCA in Managua. I am indebted to both. I am doubly indebted to Rodolfo Cardenal, who was Vice-President of the UCA El Salvador and my v supervisor at the time when I took the decision to leave IUDOP in order to pursue my PhD. He understood my decision and supported me throughout the process. Retired generals Humberto Corado in El Salvador and Joaquín Cuadra in Nicaragua provided valuable access to documentation and information about the military. Police commissioners Carlos Ascencio and Luis Tobar Prieto in El Salvador, and Elizabeth Rodríguez in Nicaragua were also very helpful in providing important documentation and information about police institutions. In the World Health Organization and the Pan-American Health Organization, Robert Alexander Butchart and Alberto Concha-Eastman provided valuable access to the WHO mortality database. I also want to thank José Maria Tojeira, SJ, the president of the UCA El Salvador, and Jeannette Aguilar, the current director of IUDOP, for providing me logistic support for conducting my research in Central America. Among my graduate student colleagues in the program, I want to thank my friends at LAPOP and CSDI: Maria Fernanda Boidi, Margarita Corral, Juan Carlos Donoso, Brian Faughnan, Alejandro Díaz-Domínguez, Daniel Montalvo, Diana Orcés, and Carrie Archie Russell. They made these years at Vanderbilt particularly pleasant. I am also indebted to Camille Burge, Brian Faughnan, Mason Moseley, and Jen Selin. They graciously took time to proofread parts of this manuscript in order to make it more legible. Of course, the many remaining errors are all mine. Finally, I have had two sources of inspiration all these years. One source comes from two persons whose physical presence I lost some time ago but who continue being with me. They are my father, Miguel A. Cruz, and my mentor at the UCA, Ignacio Martín-Barό. Both of them taught me about justice, social engagement, and the vi importance of social transformations through critical scholarship. But my most important source of inspiration comes from my family: my three women, Rubí, Marcela, and Carmen, lit up my life and work. They have provided me with the most important support for carrying out this life project, they fill my days with love and patience, and they keep alive my hope and my struggle for a better world. Thank you all. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............................................................................................iii LIST OF TABLES.............................................................................................................. x LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi Chapter I. INTRODUCTION: CRIMINAL VIOLENCE IN POST-TRANSITION SOCIETIES.. 1 II. TO UNDERSTAND POST-TRANSITION VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA...... 10 A Review from Criminology ........................................................................................ 13 The individual-centered approach............................................................................. 13 Society as the key variable........................................................................................ 21 Violence and Democracy.............................................................................................. 32 Violent Actors within the Democratic State? ............................................................... 38 III. AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF REGIMES, TRANSITIONS, AND VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA................................................................................. 45 The Dependent Variable: Homicide Rates ................................................................... 47 Democracy as an independent variable......................................................................... 57 Control Variables.........................................................................................................

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