Examining the Political and Military Power in Latin America: a Response to Christian Gudehus

Abstract

While Gudehus’ views have opened up a necessary theoretical debate about categories used to analyze perpetration, we should be cautious when considering such arguments, particularly when examining the concept of political violence. Hence, in this essay I argue that Gudehus’ claim that “political” is too narrow of a concept when accounting for episodes of collective violence might not be the case when examining the Latin American experience with extreme forms of violence, such as genocide.