“The Accumulation of Crime and the Crime of Accumulation”: Narcopolitics, the Entrenchment of Violence, and States of Internal War in Latin America
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines the resurgence of the war on drugs in Latin America following its most visible failures in Colombia and Mexico, and its relaunch under the Shield of the Americas initiative. It brings together critical studies on security and securitization by Walker, Huysmans, Bigo, Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde with analyses of punishment by Wacquant, Garland, and Alexander, as well as Latin American studies on criminal violence, militarization, and state fragmentation by Durán-Martínez, Trejo and Ley, Lessing, and Diamint. Through a critical review of discourses, historical reconstruction, comparative typology, and a dynamic regional panel covering 2013-2022, it analyzes four mechanisms: lethal violence, punitive economies, the militarization of internal security, and money laundering through asset conversion. The argument is that the paradigm persists not because it controls drug trafficking or reduces violence, but because it selectively distributes its costs: it criminalizes the narco-proletariat, relatively protects the narco-bourgeoisie, and concentrates coercion and death on the periphery, while the center absorbs value and retains strategic command. Inequality emerges as the most consistent structural link. In contrast, experxiences in Colombia, Uruguay, and Bolivia offer partial alternatives.
Author: Juan Guijarro
Institution: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7204934101
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