A History of Political Murder in Latin America by Green W. John

Author:Green, W. John
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2015-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE ENDURING APPEAL AND CONTINUING CHALLENGE OF POLITICAL MURDER IN LATIN AMERICA AND BEYOND

The Cold War is over. The military governments are gone. U.S. geopolitical thinkers have long since returned Central America to backwater status. Yet the dance of death continues. The age of political murder persists, blurring past and present. The habit of silencing voices of change through murder in Latin America has yet to fade into the realm of history. The 1996 murder of investigative journalist José Cabezas in Argentina was reminiscent of a Triple A hit, and various other journalists have been killed in the years since. In 2002, La Masacre de Avellaneda saw the murder of Darío Santillán and Maximiliano Kosteki (“Darío y Max”), activist leaders of the “piqueteros,” the street protesters and activists who specialize in paralyzing Buenos Aires traffic in the name of the unemployed. And, in September 2006, Julio López, a star witness in the case against Miguel Etchecolatz, was “disappeared.”1 The 2007 Guatemalan elections were marred by violence and intimidation, Colombia paramilitaries in the “post-demobilization” phase have continued their murderous work unabated, and there were plenty of assassinations around the “election” of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo in Honduras in November 2009, with more journalists killed since. And of course the lists of murdered journalists in El Salvador and Mexico are long.

Thus it is impossible to wrap this study up nice and neat. The practice of political murder continues to lurch along, its edges still jagged and raw. Admittedly, the long-term impact of political murder varies throughout the region, and in most countries there have been fewer murders in recent years than in earlier decades. The evolution of political murder is a moving target and there has been no single outcome. Yet even if political murder is not as overt now, one can still find its effects everywhere. The patterns persist, and the political usefulness of killing certain kinds of people remains attractive to the murderous elites, who still want to crush even symbolic threats. So while conditions now are less favorable to widespread overt use of political murder (compared to the 1970s through the 1990s), elites and militaries in the post–Cold War, post–transition-to-democracy world still make use of the tradition from time to time. Most countries had some kind of dirty war (often more than one), usually in reaction to some kind of popular mobilization, and elites are reluctant to give up what has been an effective strategy. This continued inclination to rely on violence has the potential to pervert, disrupt, and negate democratic processes across the region. The numbers of people murdered, relative and absolute, are not the key factor in assessing the long-term impact of political murder. How many killings does it take to influence society, to dampen democracy? That, of course, depends. There is little doubt, however, that the legacy of political murder hangs over the region like a lingering radioactive cloud. There might be “progress” on the national levels, as perpetrators are prosecuted, while political murder continues at the local level in several countries to varying degrees.

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