Pro-Capitalist Violence and the Great Wave of Dispossession

Abstract

This article aims to theorize the role of violence in securing and promoting conditions for capital accumulation in the era of globalization by focusing on neoliberal development projects in the global South. To this end, I introduce the concept of pro-capitalist violence, with an emphasis on its manifestations in agrarian contexts in Colombia, Mexico, and Honduras—countries that rank as the deadliest places in the world for defenders of land rights and the environment. I show that not all collective violence in these countries is a product of organized crime, gangs, or armed conflict between states and guerrilla groups. The central argument is that pro-capitalist violence has been an essential instrument enabling the neoliberal agrarian restructuring of Latin American countries through dispossession and repression. The article develops two propositions as an entry point to theorizing pro-capitalist violence: its structural embeddedness, exposed by capturing its positive interaction with economic and security legislation; and its multifaceted nature, shown by tracing its different modalities.