1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Applications in Latin and North America, November 28, 2009
This review is from: Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?: How Paramilitary Groups Emerge and Challenge Democracy in Latin America (Paperback)
The Georgia-based School of the Americas has been the convergence point for many years for activists concerned about the United States' impact on Latin American policy. The SOA, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, has reportedly trained hundreds of military officers and has been blasted for years for allegedly aligning itself with death squads. A new book on Latin American paramilitary groups provides a good reference point to understand the complex relationships between the state, arms and privilege, and potentially to understand the current rise of North America's own resurgent militia movement.
In Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? How Paramilitary Groups Emerge and Challenge Democracy in Latin America, author Julie Mazzei presents a thorough examination of paramilitary groups, their use and how official power tolerates their existence amid diverse domestic insurgencies. Looking at Colombia, Mexico and El Salvador, Mazzei says the prominence of armed non-state factions -- in Mexico, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional; in Colombia, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; and in El Salvador, the Frente Farabundo Martí Para la Liberación Nacional -- prompted, in almost all instances a backlash among conservative political elites in each country. With money, loyalists and a cause (be it opposition to reform, anti-Communism or fears of socialist takeover, land seizure, etc.), paramilitaries came to pass as the state apparatus found itself, due to varying circumstances, unable to respond, suppress or extralegally liquidate such rivals to its hegemony. In cases such as Mexico, where leading officials were unable to simply execute activist clergy, paramilitary groups handled the job, as they did in Acteal in 1997.
Paramilitaries gained notoriety as well with needs among the powerful, from drug lords to old moneyed classes in Latin America, to defend land from guerrillas. With that, Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? is a fearless examination of centuries-old class fights in Latin America, though the traditional haves/have-nots liberal/conservative dichotomy is hardly as simple as it seems. In Colombia, paramilitaries declared an array of individuals to be collaborators with subversives, and thus legitimate military targets. Moderates and hardliners in 1970s' El Salvador offered contradictory paramilitary solutions to fight the guerrillas. In Mexico, paramilitaries were just as easily populated by the poor who either sought a paycheck from the wealthy or opposed the leftists on ideological grounds. Social justice activism today would do well to understand the interrelations in Latin America that developed in response to progressive forces. It is not unreasonable to believe some of Mazzei's studies could not be applied more broadly.
Given the simmering cauldron that is white rage in the United States, Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? may also offer a glimpse at our own future. Mazzei's work is particularly poignant given recent reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others attesting to the reestablishment of the dormant North American paramilitary movement. So-called citizen militias gained national headlines in the 1990s, during the term of Democrat Bill Clinton as U.S. President, and now during the reign of another Democrat, Barack Obama. In her study, Mazzei demonstrates the appeal of paramilitary groups the worries they exploit, and just how terrifying their power can be.
Mazzei's scholarship, from the studies of three countries that have wrangled with the strength of paramilitary groups to what their presence says of relations in those countries, is necessary not only for understanding Latin America, but also how power shapes nations' present in times of conflict.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very convincing, March 15, 2010
This review is from: Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?: How Paramilitary Groups Emerge and Challenge Democracy in Latin America (Paperback)
The title is a bit misleading since this book isn't about whether armed citizen groups are valid forms of self-protection or not. The subtitle contains the true topic: How Paramilitary Groups Emerge and Challenge Democracy in Latin America.
The book was very well-researched, and the author completely convinced me of her points. She used the Chiapas region in Mexico; Colombia; and El Salvador as the focus of her book. She focused on the big picture over a sweep of years and so her book had a rather clinical-sounding view of the conditions that spawn paramilitary groups, how they are organized and supported, and (when applicable) how they were disbanded.
The introduction discussed the various past models that have been proposed for the emergence of PMGs, why those models aren't good ones, and what her model is. Chapters 1 & 2 covered the Chiapas region in Mexico: the history (mainly the politics with a lesser focus on the economy structure) and power structure of the area and how that lead to PMGs emerging. She then discussed evidence for how the PMGs were organized, supplied, and supported.
Chapters 3 & 4 covered the same factors for Colombia, but also discussed the attempt to disband the PMGs. I enjoyed this section the most because a human aspect was added by quoting various interviews with PMG leaders. They briefly discussed why they started a PMG and their view of the purpose of PMGs.
Chapters 5 & 6 covered the El Salvador political history, the support structure for the PMGs, and how they were successfully disbanded. The author actually went to visit this country, and so brief snippets of her impressions were included along with some brief interviews that mainly discussed why various people from various sides thought the disbanding of the PMGs worked so well here.
The conclusion summarized what she thought could be learned from her research.
Overall, it was a well-written book, but it's a bit more focused on politics and had fewer interviews with locals than I expected. However, for someone who wants to know more about Latin American politics and/or under what conditions paramilitary groups emerge and are sustained, this is an excellent book.
I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.
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