Fear and Loathing in Central America

This chapter begins with Nils Gilman's seminal essay “The Twin Insurgency,” stating that gangs aim to carve out de facto zones of autonomy for themselves by crippling the state's ability to constrain their freedom of economic action. It talks about gangsters in Latin America that took advantage of the vulnerability of the states they operated in to such a degree that they frequently became shadow powers. It also details how gangs terrorized their host societies, using corruption, extortion, and bullets as their weapons of choice. The chapter cites the statistics that emphasized that the most violent cities in the world were in Latin America, clarifying that the statistics were a result of the impunity enjoyed by the region's criminal organizations, primarily those with ties to the illicit drug trade. It discusses how drug gangs often served as the de facto administrator of social services in slums, where the state failed to provide much of anything.