Living in the shadow of death: Gangs, violence and social order in urban Nicaragua, 1996-2002

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 267-292

  Rodgers, Dennis ^a  

^a LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

URBAN SOCIETY; VIOLENCE;

CENTRAL AMERICA; NICARAGUA;

EID: 33747602210     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: 1469767X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X0600071X     Document Type: Article

References (89)

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7. Pearce, 'From Civil War to "Civil Society",' p. 590.
8. C. Moser and A. Winton, Violence in the Central American Region: Towards an Integrated Framework for Violence Reduction, Overseas Development Institute working paper no. 171 (London, 2002), p. 33.
9. This latter figure is expressed in 1999 current US$, and calculated on the basis of R. Ahrend, The Economic Consequences of Fighting and Ending Latin America's Civil Wars: What to Expect from Peace in Colombia?, World Bank mimeo (Washington, DC, 1999), and data from the United Nations Statistics Division's online Common Database, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/ (accessed 14 April 2004).
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11. D. Kruijt and K. Koonings, 'Introduction: Violence and Fear in Latin America,' in K. Koonings and D. Kruijt (ed.), Societies of Fear: The Legacy of Civil War, Violence and Terror in Latin America (London, 1999), p. 11.
12. O. de Rivero, El mito del desarrollo: Los países inviables en el siglo XXI (Lima, 1998)
13. E. Galeano, Patas arriba: La escuela del mundo al revés (Madrid, 1998)
14. J. Méndez, G. O'Donnell and P. S. Pinheiro (ed.), The (Un) Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America (Notre Dame, 1999).
15. D. Rodgers, Youth Gangs and Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Literature Survey, World Bank Latin America and Caribbean Region Sustainable Development working paper no. 4 (Washington, DC, 1999).
16. This name is a pseudonym, as are all the names of informants mentioned in this article.
17. The first period of fieldwork was carried out July 1996-July 1997. The second period was conducted in February-March 2002 as part of the London School of Economics Crisis States Programme, which also sponsored another visit in December 2002. For methodological details, see D. Rodgers, 'Un antropólogo-pandillero en un barrio de Managua,' Envío, no. 184 (July 1997), pp. 10-16, and 'Haciendo del peligro una vocación: La antropología, la violencia, y los dilemas de la observación participante,' Revista Española de Investigación Criminológica, vol. 2, no. 1 (2004), pp. 1-24.
18. E. Galeano, Patas Arriba, pp. 322-4.
19. See A. Serbin and D. Ferreyra (ed.), Gobernabilidad democrática y seguridad ciudadana en Centroamérica: El caso de Nicaragua (Managua, 2000), p. 185
20. http://www.policia.gob.ni/ (accessed 18 June 2004).
21. W. Godnick, with R. Muggah and C. Waszink, Stray Bullets: The Impact of Small Arms Misuse in Central America, Small Arms Survey Occasional Paper No. 5 (Geneva, 2002), p. 26. Statistical underreporting is mainly due to the Nicaraguan Police's incapacity to systematically collect data. Since 1990, it has been reduced in size, to the extent that it is absent in 21 per cent of Nicaraguan municipalities (R. J. Cajina, 'Nicaragua: De la seguridad del Estado a la inseguridad ciudadana,' in Serbin and Ferreyra, Gobernabilidad Democrática, p. 174). This situation is compounded by a lack of funds, with the Nicaraguan Police having the lowest number of personnel per capita and per crime, the lowest budget per crime, the lowest budget per officer, and the lowest salaries in Central America (Call, Sustainable Development in Central America, pp. 24-5).
22. Serbin and Ferreyra, Gobernabilidad democrática, p. 187.
23. There were almost three times as many homicides in Honduras, and over six times as many in Guatemala and El Salvador during the same period (Moser and Winton, Violence in the Central American Region, p. 47).
24. Having said this, while Nicaragua is much more violent than official statistics would suggest, levels of violence are lower than those affecting Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.
25. La Tribuna, 2 May 1997, p. 4.
26. Cajina, 'Nicaragua,' p. 177.
27. Nitlapán-Envío team, 'The crisis is bordering on the intolerable,' Envío in English, no. 167 (June 1995), pp. 3-13
28. J.-C. Núñez, De la ciudad al barrio: Redes y tejidos urbanos en Guatemala, El Salvador y Nicaragua (Ciudad de Guatemala, 1996)
29. D. Rodgers, Living in the Shadow of Death: Violence, Pandillas, and Social Disintegration in Contemporary Urban Nicaragua, unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2000. Nicaragua's predicament can be linked to other factors, including the legacy of war or structural adjustment, but it was very much violence that emerged most forcefully as a key issue in the discourses of informants in both 1996-97 and 2002. Similar processes of social erosion due to violence have been noted elsewhere in Latin America (C. Moser and C. McIlwaine, Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor Perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala, London, 2004).
30. Cajina, 'Nicaragua,' p. 177.
31. J. L. Rocha, 'Pandillero: La mano que empuña el mortero,' Envío, no. 216 (March 2000), p. 20.
32. This association is clearly reinforced by sensationalist reporting in the Nicaraguan media. Nevertheless, gangs are a real source of insecurity in Nicaragua, and it would be inaccurate to characterise them as a 'moral panic'.
33. Pandillas are an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon principally found in Managua, although media reports do signal their presence in other urban centres, including Chinandega, Estelí, Granada, León and Matagalpa.
34. Policía Nacional de Nicaragua, Boletín de la Actividad Delictiva, no. 32 (2001).
35. J. J. Sosa Meléndez and J. L. Rocha, 'Las pandillas en Nicaragua,' in ERIC, IDESO, IDIES, IUDOP, Maras y pandillas en Centroamérica, vol. 1 (Managua, 2001).
36. My case study is limited to a single gang in a specific neighbourhood, so caution must be exercised in extrapolating about the general nature of pandillerismo. Anthropological studies have, however, amply shown the validity of drawing on small-scale cases to think about the dynamics of larger social processes. Certainly, there are many parallels between my findings in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández and other neighbourhood studies of pandillas in Nicaragua such as Núñez, De la ciudad al barrio; Rocha, 'Pandillero'
37. J. L. Rocha, 'Pandillas: Una cárcel cultural,' Envío, no. 219 (June 2000), pp. 13-22
38. Sosa Meléndez and Rocha, 'Las pandillas en Nicaragua'.
39. The labour market and schooling constituted partial exceptions to this at the macro-level, although the high levels of unemployment in Nicaragua mean that most youths' experiences of work tended to be sporadic, and the school dropout rate was extremely high, especially after primary school.
40. It should be noted that these were homemade mortars - 'morteros caseros' - not military models.
41. My translation is not literal, as the range of connotations the expression entails are not adequately conveyed by a verbatim rendition, which would be 'we are [with] death above [us] '.
42. H. Arendt, On Violence (New York, 1969), p. 5.
43. E. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York, 1959).
44. Certainly, local inhabitants never called the police about gang members, although it must be said that they rarely came unless the caller agreed to 'pay for the gasoline'. Police patrols in the barrio were generally infrequent in 1996-97
45. as Police Commissioner Franco Montealegre admitted in a 2001 interview, youth gangs frequently out-gunned the police, making effective patrolling difficult (Nicaragua Network News, vol. 9, no. 6, 5-11 February 2001).
46. M. Bloch, 'La "consummation" des jeunes hommes chez les Zafimaniry de Madagascar,' in F. Héritier (ed.), De la violence (Paris, 1996), p. 216.
47. Cocaine only became prevalent in Nicaragua from early 1999. Internationally, the late 1990s saw a diversification of drug trafficking routes from Colombia to North America due to improved law enforcement efforts in the Caribbean. Flows along the Mexican-Central American corridor increased, and, due to its proximity to the Colombian Caribbean island of San Andrés, Nicaragua is geographically a natural trans-shipment point. This route was under-exploited until 1999 because Nicaraguan transport infrastructure was very poor and traffic was slight. In late 1998, however, Nicaragua was devastated by Hurricane Mitch, suffering major infrastructure damage and resource drainage. This reduced the already limited capabilities of local law enforcement institutions, facilitating the importation of drugs. Furthermore, post-Mitch reconstruction efforts focused on rebuilding transport links, increasing the volume of traffic, which in turn made moving drug shipments easier. Those conveying the drugs take a cut to distribute it locally.
48. The narco also supplied púsheres in other neighbourhoods. Barrio Luis Fanor Hernández was reputedly one of the principal provider neighbourhoods of Managua's cocaine trade, into which the drugs arrived into the city and from where they were distributed.
49. Cocaine is distributed either as cocaine hydrochloride powder or as 'crack,' a mix of cocaine and sodium bicarbonate. Crack is much less expensive than cocaine powder, and is known as 'the poor man's cocaine'.
50. All the actors of the drugs trade were linked to the barrio Luis Fanor Hernández pandilla in one way or another. The narco was an ex-gang member from the early 1990s and all the púsheres were either ex-pandilleros from the mid-1990s or else closely related to ex-pandilleros.
51. Crack users were also described as 'son muerte abajo', which literally translates as 'they are [with] death below [them]'. The fact that crack users were seen as condemned to die is an interesting reversal of the expression 'somos muerte aniba' used by the barrio pandilleros in 1996-97.
52. Although there were more police patrols in the neighbourhood than before, these were perfunctory, generally only involving driving down one street of the barrio and driving back up another without stopping, and often going past the muleros on their street corner. There were occasional police raids on barrio púsheres - although never on the narco - but generally the púsher would received a tip-off from a corrupt policeman in time to hide his wares. The one time the police did arrest a púsher, it was one who was reputedly trying to rival the narco, which supports the view in the barrio that the police was in the narco's pocket.
53. W. F. Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Structure of an Italian Slum, (Chicago, 1943).
54. A. K. Cohen, Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang (Glencoe, 1955).
55. R. Cloward and L. Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs (New York, 1960).
56. M. Sánchez Jankowski, Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society (Berkeley, 1991).
57. L. Yablonsky, The Violent Gang (New York, 1963).
58. H. A. Bloch and A. Niederhoffer, The Gang: A Study in Adolescent Behavior (New York, 1958)
59. J. Katz, Seductions of Crime (New York, 1988).
60. R. Horowitz, 'Sociological perspectives on gangs: Conflicting definitions and concepts,' in C. R. Huff (ed.), Gangs in America (Newbury Park, 1990), p. 53.
61. J. Gould, To Die in this Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 (Durham, 1998)
62. D. Torres Peres (ed.), Historia y violencia en Nicaragua (Managua, 1997).
63. See L. Sepúlveda, Rendez-vous d'amour dans un pays en guerre (Paris, 1997), for a literary allusion to this.
64. I am grateful to Max Spoor for pointing out this analogy.
65. D. Spencer, Demobilization and Reintegration in Central America, Bonn International Center for Conversion working paper no. 8 (Bonn, 1997).
66. The process of 'maturing out' seems to be universal to youth gangs around the world, and is likely part of the inherent dynamics of youth groups (H. Covey, S. Menard and R. Franzese, Juvenile Gangs, Springfield, 1992).
67. U. Hannerz, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (New York, 1969).
68. R. Debray, 'Une "modération" radicale,' Manière de Voir, no. 36 (Nov.-Dec. 1997), p. 16.
69. R. Lancaster, Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley, 1992), p. 195
70. R. Montoya, 'House, Street, Collective: Revolutionary Geographies and Gender Transformation in Nicaragua, 1979-99,' Latin American Research Review, vol. 38, no. 2 (June 2003), p. 63.
71. There did not seem to be alternative female youth organisational forms in the barrio. There were female friendship networks, but these tended to be small, and were not tightly organised. This absence can be linked to the gendered organisation of local space along the lines of 'street = public = male/home = private= female' (S. Ekern, Street Power: Culture and Politics in a Nicaraguan Neighbourhood, Bergen, 1987, p. 55). Women who transgressed this spatial segregation were inevitably stigmatised, and young women were rarely seen in the streets past 15-16 years old. It should be noted, however, that such processes of status ascription - as with many other practices associated with machismo - are very much issues of contention in Nicaragua (Montoya, 'House, Street, Collective,' pp. 61-93).
72. Lancaster, Life is Hard, p. 19.
73. M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984).
74. M. Douglas, How Institutions Think (London, 1987), p. 66.
75. This process of localised capital accumulation bears comparison with the notion of 'primitive accumulation' (K. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, London, 1976, vol. 1, chapter 26). The analogy - which I owe to ]o Beall - is not perfect, considering that the drug dealing elite in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández is not exploiting the local population in the way Marx envisioned burgeoning capitalists exploiting an embryonic proletariat, but an extensive process of socio-economic differentiation has occurred in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández as a result of the drugs trade (see D. Rodgers, 'La globalización de un barrio desde abajo: Emigrantes, remesas, taxis, y drogas,' Envío, no. 264, March 2004, pp. 23-30).
76. C. Taylor, 'Modern Social Imaginaries,' Public Culture, vol. 14, no. 1 (2002), pp. 91 & 106.
77. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, 1983).
78. T. Callaghy, 'The State as Lame Leviathan,' in Z. Ergas (ed.), The African State in Transition (New York, 1987).
79. K. Isbester, 'Understanding state disintegration: The case of Nicaragua,' The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, vol. 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1996), pp. 455-476
80. Rodgers, Living in the Shadow of Death.
81. U. Beck, 'World Risk Society as Cosmopolitan Society? Ecological Questions in a Framework of Manufactured Uncertainties,' Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 13, no. 4 (1996), pp. 1-32.
82. R. Latham, 'Social Sovereignty,' Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 17, no. 4 (2000), pp. 2-3.
83. C. Tilly, 'War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,' in C. Besteman (ed.), Violence: A Reader (New York, 2002).
84. See D. Rodgers, 'When Vigilantes Turn Bad: Gangs, Violence, and Social Change in Urban Nicaragua,' in D. Patten and A. Sen (eds.), Global Vigilantes. Anthropological Perpectives on Justice and Violence (London, 2006), 8-9 July 2005.
85. Núñez, De la ciudad al barrio.
86. G. Hage, '"Comes a Time We Are All Enthusiasm": Understanding Palestinian Suicide Bombers in Times of Exighophobia,' Public Culture, vol. 15, no. 1 (2003), pp. 65-89.
87. Ibid, p. 78.
88. D. Rodgers, 'Disembedding the City: Crime, Insecurity, and Spatial Organization in Managua, Nicaragua,' Environment and Urbanization, vol. 16, no. 2 (2004), pp. 113-24.
89. I learnt about these putative negotiations somewhat fortuitously. Although I know the narco from my first visit to barrio Luis Fanor Hernández in 1996-97, I kept my distance from him during my subsequent return visits. I, in fact, had to leave the barrio earlier than planned in March 2002 partly because of threats from the narco, who felt that I had gathered too much information on the details of the local drugs trade. He subsequently communicated via the family I stay with in the barrio that he was happy for me to return, presumably because nothing happened as a result of my research. During my December 2002 return visit, he made a point of seeking me out to apologise in person for his previous jitters. I was visiting Bismarck, a barrio púsher who had been a pandillero during my investigations in 1996-97 and who was now a close collaborator of the narco, when he turned up with somebody whom he introduced briefly as 'Rodrigo from Colombia' (and who went a little boggle-eyed when it was explained who I was). When I later asked Bismarck about 'Rodrigo from Colombia', he explained that he was linked to a drug cartel in Colombia that was looking for potential business partners in Nicaragua with whom to explore the possibility of setting up 'exclusive arrangements'. According to Bismarck, the Colombian cartel was looking to control drug trafficking in Nicaragua directly, while the narco had recently had problems with irregular supplies from the Caribbean coast and wanted to establish a more reliable set-up. The negotiations revolved around the narco letting the Colombians take over his cocaine delivery arrangements between the Caribbean coast and Managua in exchange for becoming their sole business partner in Managua. 'Rodrigo' definitely did not have a Nicaraguan accent to his Spanish, and the Nicaraguan media does carry reports about Colombian citizens being arrested in Nicaragua on drugs trafficking charges, so it is not necessarily an implausible story.