Criminal violence is one of the most serious challenges in contemporary Latin America. While the drug economy -- which sparked much of the violence -- developed later in the 20th century, the institutions which shape contemporary vulnerability have deep historic roots. In this dissertation, I study three informal institutions: systematic corruption in the security sector, traditional governance institutions, and patriarchal norms, all of which have consequences for contemporary violence and vulnerability. In combining these essays, I aim to uncover some of the historical and social origins of contemporary variation in criminal violence and vulnerability.
The first paper examines systematic corruption in the security sector. I ask: why did Mexico's strong and enduring civilian autocratic regime fail to reform a military riddled with corruption? I argue that the regime's reliance on the military for political control and repression created openings for the military to act corruptly when the center state was faced with political threats. I use an original data-set of military-landlord paramilitaries under the Cárdenas administration to show that where the regime faced greater political threat, military officials abused their power to profit from collusion with landed elites. Tracing these dynamics through to Mexico's dirty war, I find that the presence of these militaries in the 1970s is associated with higher levels of excess repression, suggesting enduring consequences of these collusive agreements for military professionalization.
The second paper examines collaborative governance institutions -- created in Mexico's land reform -- as a source of variation in contemporary vulnerability to criminal violence. Each major land reform in Latin America was accompanied by the creation of collective institutions to administer redistributed land and govern beneficiary communities of land reform. However, little is known about the long term consequences of these administrative institutions. I advance a theory which argues that administrative institutions which enable the preservation of indigenous governance traditions can facilitate collective action capacity, which yields security dividends by empowering communities to respond strategically and collectively to criminal threat. I leverage insight from two months of in-depth, interview-based fieldwork in Michoacán, Mexico, combined with a difference-in-difference design to uncover the consequences of institutional variation in Mexico's land reform for vulnerability to criminal violence and criminal presence. In line with theoretical expectations, I find that land reform communities which preserve traditions of indigenous governance generate security in the context of Mexico's drug war. These findings have important implications for a vast literature which studies the relationships between violence and property rights, as well as for studies of rural security.
The final paper studies the relationship between social inequality and criminal victimization, focusing on hierarchies created and upheld by patriarchal norms. I advance a theory of intersectional vulnerability to criminal violence, arguing that the same traditional structures which enable high collective action and social control of criminal violence can also lead to the preservation of stronger patriarchal norms. I suggest that these strong patriarchal norms lead to more criminal victimization of women relative to men. In patriarchal contexts, women's relative vulnerability is increased by community failure to apply social control to protect women from criminal violence, and exacerbated by women's lack of recourse due to their political exclusion. I test this theory empirically in the context of the Mexican drug war. I use an original measure of patriarchal norms drawn from household surveys on gender roles to identify empirical associations between traditional social structures and higher levels of patriarchal norms pre-drug war. Exploiting the shock of the onset of the drug war, I find that higher levels of patriarchy pre-drug war lead to substantially greater increases in women's victimization relative to men's following the onset of the war. I find strong evidence that this victimization is non-domestic, reflecting how community control of violence fails to protect women from criminal victimization, and that women are most at risk when they are politically excluded. These findings speak to how social and political inequalities shape vulnerability to criminal violence, particularly in contexts where the state fails to provide security.
Together, these papers highlight the complex layering of informal institutions which shape contemporary welfare in the context of widespread criminal violence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/x4k8-x153 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Barham, Elena F. |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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