Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America 9780804796903

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Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America Eduardo Moncada

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moncada, Eduardo, author. Cities, business, and the politics of urban violence in Latin America / Eduardo Moncada. pages cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8047-9417-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.  Urban violence—Colombia—Case studies.  2.  Municipal government—Colombia— Case studies.  3.  Business and politics—Colombia—Case studies.  4.  Patron and client—Colombia—Case studies.  I.  Title. hn310.z9v5523 2016 303.609861—dc23 isbn 978-0-8047-9690-3 (electronic) Typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/14 Minion

2015010586

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii

Abbreviations, ix



1 Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence



2 Parties, Clientelism, and Violence: Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia

34

3 Medellin: Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence

55



4 Cali: The Derailment of a Pioneering Participatory Project

88



5 Bogota: Building and Branding a Global City



6 The Politics of Urban Violence: Comparisons and Next Steps 156



Notes, 185 References, 199 Index, 219

1

122

Acknowledgments

This project benefited from the feedback and support that I was fortunate to receive from many individuals and institutions. First and foremost, I hope that my parents view this book as a small symbol of my immeasurable gratitude for the everyday sacrifices they made as part of raising me in a country separated by geography, language, and culture from the countries they knew as their homes. My wife, Angie, provided encouragement, patience, humor, and not so gentle reminders of what matters. And along the way Elisio and Nacine arrived, surprised and amazed me, and they have not stopped ever since. At Brown University, I am indebted to Richard Snyder for providing me with an abundance of his time, guidance, and critical but always insightful commentary. His enthusiasm for big important questions is contagious. Melani Cammett, Pauline Jones-Luong, and Patrick Heller each contributed to the research and arguments presented here. All four individuals showed me that what scholars do matters in many different ways. Many people provided feedback at critical moments in the project’s evolution. Enrique Desmond Arias, John Bailey, Kent Eaton, and Benjamin Goldfrank each received an email from me with draft chapters attached, and before we even had a chance to meet in person, each wrote back with detailed and helpful comments and critiques. They did so again several years later. Responding to the questions and comments posed by the manuscript’s anonymous reviewers was both challenging and rewarding, and made this a stronger book. Other individuals that offered insightful comments and questions on the project at different points in its development include Jorge I. Domínguez, John Gershman, Matthew Ingram, Stathis Kalyvas, Rogan Kersh, Peter Kingstone, vii

viii  Acknowledgments

James Mahoney, Barbara Stallings, Judith Tendler, Mark Ungar, and Elisabeth Jean Wood. A number of colleagues provided much needed feedback and friendship, including Jorge Antonio Alves, Kelly Bay, Erin Beck, Mila Dragojevic, Angélica Durán-Martínez, Ayo Jegede, Jeremy Johnson, Cecilia Perla, and Ravi Perry. I was fortunate to present parts of the project during workshops and conferences in front of thoughtful and tough audiences at Brown University, City University of New York, Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, the Universidad de Chile, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Yale University. Funding and support from several institutions was crucial for carrying out this project. I am grateful for the generous funding for field research provided by the American Society of Criminology, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program, and the Drugs, Security, and Democracy Program, which is funded by the Open Society Foundation (OSF) and is a partnership between the OSF, the Social Science Research Council, the Universidad de los Andes, and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica. Support from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation enabled me to synthesize my findings while spending a productive year at Yale University’s Order, Conflict, and Violence Program. New York University’s Postdoctoral and Transition Program for Academic Diversity supported my immensely enriching stay at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. The Department of Political Science at Rutgers University, Newark, provided a supportive environment within which to finalize the manuscript. And a grant from the Research Council at Rutgers University made it possible for me to visit Mexico and start the process of extending the argument. I also thank Geoffrey Burn at Stanford University Press for believing in this project, and James Holt for guiding the manuscript through the production process. Excerpts of the book were first published as articles in Studies in Comparative International Development and the Journal of Comparative Politics. I thank the editors of those journals and the anonymous reviewers for the feedback they provided. And of course, I must acknowledge my immense gratitude to the many individuals in Colombia and Mexico that agreed to be interviewed as part of my research—they provided me with their time and confided in me with their memories, insights, fears, and hopes.



Abbreviations

ACI

Agencia de Cooperación e Inversión de Medellín (Medellin’s Agency for Cooperation and Investment) AMAC Asociación de Maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez (Association of Maquiladoras of Ciudad Juarez) ANAPO Alianza Nacional Popular (National Popular Alliance) AUC Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) BCN Bloque Cacique Nutibara CCB Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá (Bogota Chamber of Commerce) CCC Cámara de Comercio de Cali (Cali Chamber of Commerce) CCP Corporación Cívica Popular (Popular Civic Corporation) CCSC Comisión de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana (Commission on Coexistence and Citizen Security) Desepaz Desarrollo, Seguridad y Paz (Development, Security, and Peace) DSC Dirección de Seguridad y Convivencia (Directorate for Security and Coexistence) DTO Drug Trafficking Organization ELN Ejército Nacional de Liberación (National Liberation Army) ix

x  Acknowledgments

EMCALI Empresas Municipales de Cali (Public Utility Firms of Cali) ENV Estrategia Nacional Contra la Violencia (National Strategy against Violence) EPL Ejército Popular de Liberación (Popular Liberation Army) EPM Empresas Públicas de Medellín (Public Firms of Medellin) FARC Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia) FDI Foreign Direct Investment FSL Frente de Seguridad Local (Local Security Front) GDP Gross Domestic Product GEA Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (Economic Group of Antioquia) IDB Inter-American Development Bank IPC Instituto Popular de Capacitación MNC Multinational Corporation NGO Nongovernmental Organization NDVC Norte del Valle Cartel PARCES Participación, Convivencia, Educación, Superación (Participation, Coexistence, Education, Advancement) PMEP Plan Maestro para Espacio Público (Master Plan for Public Space) PPR Programa de Paz y Reconciliación (Program for Peace and Reconciliation) SUIVD Sistema Unificado de Información en Violencia y Delincuencia (Unified System for Information on Violence and Delinquency) TSJ Todos Somos Juárez (We Are All Juarez)

Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America

1

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Medellin is a new city. The King of Spain came to Medellin, the Organization of American States held its annual meeting here, people are back on the streets because they feel safe, new businesses have emerged and the city is a magnet for international business, four and five star hotels are under construction, foreign capital is back, and the homicide rate has dropped significantly, which is how safety is measured abroad. —Fabio Orlando Acevedo, aka “Don Efe” (former paramilitary leader in the Bloque Cacique Nutibara of Medellin, Colombia, January 9, 2009, author interview)

This statement was how Don Efe responded when I asked him how it was that the city of Medellin, which in the early 1990s was considered the most violent in the world, had become a global model of urban governance. The interview took place six years after Don Efe and other members of the urban paramilitary unit known as Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN) demobilized in Medellin, and six months before he was arrested and jailed in the same city on charges of coordinating extortion rackets, drug trafficking, forced displacement, illegal capture of private lands, and several homicides. And although I was not completely aware of it while I was interviewing Don Efe, his statement alluded to some of the basic elements of the main argument that I develop in this book to explain what shapes the nature and trajectory of the political projects that cities launch in response to urban violence. During the late twentieth century Medellin was the epicenter of a global illicit narcotics trade coordinated by the Medellin drug cartel headed by the infamous Pablo Escobar. Efforts by the Colombian government to dismantle the drug trafficking organization (DTO) and extradite its leaders to the United States in the late 1980s prompted the DTO to launch a war against the state that 1

2  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

unfolded partly on Medellin’s streets. The city’s homicide rate peaked in 1991 at an astonishing 381 per 100,000 people. During this conflict a novel political project was launched to stem urban violence in Medellin by strengthening violence control measures and increasing socioeconomic investment to peripheral parts of the city where the majority of the victims and perpetrators of the violence resided.1 But more broadly, the project explicitly sought to increase the participation of socioeconomically marginalized communities in local governance via new participatory institutions and greater inclusion in the formal political spaces long controlled by a local ruling class of political and economic elites. The architects of this ambitious participatory political project argued that deconstructing the historically exclusionary nature of local politics would reduce violence in the long term and, more broadly, deepen local democratic rule. The participatory project, however, was derailed. The city soon reverted back to its historical struggle to maintain order through a mix of coercive force by state and nonstate actors, fleeting and fragile peace pacts with armed actors, and robust networks of clientelist exchange coordinated by local traditional parties—what I call reactionary political projects. A decade later violence in Medellin again escalated when leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries from the country’s decades-long civil war entered peripheral neighborhoods where lucrative illicit markets and hundreds of small but powerful armed actors were based. The city once more attempted a participatory political project that focused in part on the peripheries that had been the target of the earlier failed participatory project. This time, however, the participatory project was sustained, and soon became the foundation for Medellin’s dramatic rebranding from the world’s most violent city to a dynamic emerging global city. Spaces for political participation increased at multiple scales, including community involvement in the development of major urban infrastructural projects and neighborhood-level participatory budgeting (Brand and Dávila 2011; Castro and Echeverri 2011). Between 2002 and 2009, foreign direct investment (FDI) into Medellin increased tenfold,2 and the city soon joined the ranks of the top Latin American metropolises for doing business.3 Medellin is today widely touted as a model of how urban governance can be reshaped to address violence in major developing world cities in ways that increase local economic competitiveness and foster inclusionary local governance. And though this book shows that the construction and nature of the “Medellin miracle” is far more complex than either its political architects or international donors concede, as in the other cases analyzed in this book, it is emblematic of the significant ways in which the politics of urban violence can

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 3

restructure urban governance in complex and far-reaching ways. Hence it is important that we develop our understanding of the factors that shape how different cities respond to violence. This is the central objective of this book. Previewing the Argument

Multiple scales of power overlap, intersect, and interact within cities (Davis 2011; Sellers 2002). This confluence imparts both substance and political form to the political projects that cities deploy in response to urban violence. And while power within cities is deployed to advance the interests of formal political authorities, it is also exercised to generate gains among the many informal and alternative forces that operate within and outside of cities. Because cities are entangled in complex crosscurrents of political power rooted in both jurisdictional and nonjurisdictional authority, explaining the nature and trajectory of political projects in response to urban violence requires a multilevel analytic framework. Such a framework must unpack political dynamics within the formal political spaces that govern cities while also theorizing the conditions under which the efforts of actors operating at other territorial and institutional scales are able to influence the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. Thus to account for why cities pursue distinct political projects in response to urban violence, and why these projects can sometimes assume forms quite different from those originally envisioned by the political forces that develop them, I build a novel analytic framework that focuses on interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. By urban political economy I am referring to the nature of the relationship between city governments headed by popularly elected mayors and urban business,4 two actors that have long constituted the local ruling class within major developing world cities. These relationships are shaped by the interaction between the individual preferences of the public and private sectors and the formal and informal linkages that join the two. The resulting relations can be collaborative, conflictive, or mired in a state of disengagement. The nature of these relations weighs heavily on the degree to which other actors within or outside of a city are able to influence the nature and trajectory of political projects in response to violence, or what I refer to as the scope of the politics of urban violence. Patterns of armed territorial control vary in their coordination of criminal leadership and the level of lethal violence. Criminal coordination refers to the degree to which the regulation of illicit markets within peripheral urban ter-

4  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

ritories is concentrated in a single or small group of armed actors (high coordination) or is dispersed and disconnected across an array of competing armed actors (low coordination). “Violence” in this book refers to the use or threat of physical force to inflict bodily or psychological harm against an individual, community, or social group (see WHO 2002). By “level of lethal violence,” I am referring to the most visible form of violence: homicide. The intersection between these two dimensions represents distinct types of territorial control that pose different challenges and opportunities for actors seeking to influence the trajectory of political projects in response to urban violence. Taken together, a focus on the nature of urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control strengthens our understanding of the politics of urban violence, which scholars and policy-makers alike consider a major challenge to the construction and deepening of democracy in Latin America (Koonings and Kruijt 2007; Moncada 2013a; World Bank 2011) and other parts of the developing world, including Africa (LeBas 2013), the Caribbean (Jaffe 2013), and South Asia (Varshney 2002; Weinstein 2013). Why Study the Politics of Urban Violence?

Urban violence disproportionally impacts the most vulnerable and marginalized segments of society that are the focus of international development efforts (Moser and McIlwaine 2006; Winton 2004). Violence exacerbates poverty and worsens inequality, which is positively associated with violence (Fajnzylber et al. 2002). The result is a vicious and deadly circle that inhibits both social mobility and productivity. And while cities are increasingly seen as the engines of economic growth in the developing world, urban violence constrains growth through multiple direct and indirect channels, ranging from the redirection of scarce public resources into efforts to stem and address the consequences of violence to the negative effects of violence on investor confidence (Muggah 2012, 36). Frustration and fear in the face of intense violence and heightened feelings of insecurity can contribute to the emergence of vigilantism and strategies of “popular justice” as ways to establish order (Godoy 2006; Goldstein 2004).5 These same sentiments can reshape the physical geography of a city as wealthier segments of society retreat to privately guarded compounds that foster self-segregation along class lines (Caldeira 2000). Finally, violence can erode the legitimacy of state institutions, including democratic political regimes.6 More than half of the world’s population now resides in cities. Latin Ameri-

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 5

ca is today the world’s most urbanized region, with over 80 percent of its population residing in cities. It is also the world’s most violent region, accounting for more than one-third of the world’s homicides in 2012 (UNODC 2013). And it is in the region’s large cities where citizens are most vulnerable to becoming the victims of criminal violence (Gaviria and Pagés 2002). Both emerging and growing cities thus confront the challenge of intense violence. A key focus in this book is unpacking the political conditions that shape and result from the varying ways in which cities respond to this violence after inheriting a range of formal political powers and resources delivered by the wave of decentralization that washed over the developing world in the late twentieth century (Dickovick 2011). These institutional outcomes in the politics of urban violence provide a powerful new lens on the broader question of who governs in major developing world cities. Finally, it is important to note that whereas urban politics is an important vein of research within the discipline of political science (see, for example, Dahl 1961; Stone 1989), the study of urban politics within political science has long been the domain of scholars focused on cities located in the Global North. Many of our theories and concepts of urban politics are therefore rooted in studies of “city politics” in Atlanta, Chicago, and Detroit, among others. The institutional and socioeconomic contexts of these cities differ in important ways from those of Bogota, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, and other cities in the Global South where the pace of urbanization has far exceeded that of North America and Europe (Cohen 2004). Thus an overarching aim of this book is to underscore the need for greater dialogue among scholars of urban politics whose work center on distinct regional settings, but who may be analyzing similar issues, including microlevel political relations, the forces that mediate access to public goods and services, dynamics of local democracy, and challenges to development. The remainder of this chapter is divided into three sections. In the next section I discuss how existing scholarly approaches to the study of the politics of criminal violence provide limited analytic traction for explaining the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. In the third section I build the new analytic framework to explain the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence using a focus on urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. I conclude in the fourth section by previewing the subsequent empirical chapters in which I use this analytic framework to develop controlled-comparative analyses of the politics of urban violence in Colombia.

6  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Reconciling Macro- and Microlevel Approaches to the Politics of Criminal Violence

Existing scholarly treatments of the politics of criminal violence fall under one of two overarching analytic approaches. The first is a “macrolevel” approach that looks to the national level to explain patterns of violence and state efforts to establish order. In contrast, scholars using a “microlevel” approach develop nuanced accounts of the dynamics and consequences of violence at the ground level most proximate to where violence unfolds. Both macro- and microlevel approaches provide important insights into patterns of criminal violence, the actors that carry it out, and the ways in which states respond. Yet, neither approach can satisfactorily account for the nature and trajectory of the political projects that cities launch in response to violence. Doing so requires an approach that takes the city as the primary unit of analysis but that also theorizes how and when forces situated above or beneath the city level influence the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence.7 Scholars working from a macrolevel approach explain cross-national patterns of criminal violence by analyzing where countries reside on the production chains of global illicit economies. Changes in cross-national patterns of violence are attributed to geographic shifts in the production sites and trafficking routes associated with illicit markets, often prompted by state efforts to disrupt these processes in one set of countries that, in turn, displaces the processes to another set of countries.8 Violence increases as new and competing criminal organizations struggle to establish control over reconfigured illicit supply chains (Bagley 2012, 11–13; Shifter 2007, 59). Both criminal organizations and states are conceptualized as locked in perpetual battle, which entails a combination of violence and corruption that challenges national security by destabilizing state institutions, fraying state relations between producer and consumer countries, and weakening the perceived legitimacy of democratic regimes as they struggle to stem violence and impose order (Bailey and Chabat 2002; Rabasa and Chalk 2001; Shifter 1999; Tokatlian 1988). Other scholars unpack the consequences of the overwhelmingly militarized nature of state responses to these challenges (MacCoun and Reuter 2001). The anti-narcotics efforts of the United States in Latin America, for example, have long emphasized disrupting and dismantling the production, processing, and transport of illicit narcotics while largely neglecting domestic consumer demand. This has generated counterproductive effects in target countries, including undermining human rights, generating

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 7

new opportunities for the corruption of state security forces, and weakening incentives for national politicians to uphold democratic practices (Youngers and Rosin 2005). A macrolevel approach provides important insights into the national and global dimensions of criminal violence, but offers weak leverage for unpacking the politics of urban violence. The focus on the national level makes it difficult to detect subnational variation in the frequency and forms of criminal violence. The focus on violence wielded by large criminal organizations overlooks how these institutions and illicit markets are reliant upon diverse arrays of smaller armed actors based in subnational locales and who exhibit varying levels of autonomy from larger criminal groups. But most importantly, the national-level emphasis limits our ability to analytically disaggregate the state and criminal organizations and, in turn, theorize how distinct sets of relations between different levels of both actors may generate varied patterns of violence and (dis) order.9 Macrolevel approaches provide particularly limited traction for studying the role of business in the politics of urban violence, which has largely been overlooked in extant research, and which I place at the center of my analysis alongside the political actors and institutions traditionally found within studies of crime and violence.10 Analyses of the financial costs that violence inflicts on private sector interests rely on aggregate indicators, such as fluctuations in economic growth and levels of foreign investment (Gaviria 2002; Pshisva and Suarez 2006). But these approaches disembed the private sector from politics, making it difficult to analyze the linkages between business interests and political forces and, in turn, how these linkages impact the private sector’s preferences and mobilization in efforts to confront violence. This constrains our ability to theorize the differentiated effects that violence poses for distinct configurations of the private sector, and how local political conditions impact business responses to violence.11 More broadly, in recent years one of the most transformative institutional changes to take place in political systems across the developing world is the decentralization of a range of policy domains, including security, to subnational governments.12 The widespread establishment of direct elections for city mayors has reshaped the territorial distribution of incentives that politicians face to harness security policy-making in order to build political power.13 Mayors increasingly wield varying levels of authority over municipal police forces, and realization that their political fortunes hinge on local security conditions have

8  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

led some to resist recentralization of such powers (Eaton 2008, 14–18).14 But decentralization has also provided subnational governments with a range of powers beyond violence control that can be used to craft political projects in response to violence. Indeed, the very concept of security is changing in ways that encourage local political leaders to become protagonists in confronting urban violence. Citizen security, which entails measures to reduce criminal violence and the fear of victimization (Casas-Zamora 2013, 2), is both a prerequisite and an outcome of human development (UNDP 2013, 3).15 Violence prevention efforts can thus include a range of targeted local-level measures, including socioeconomic investment in marginalized neighborhoods and the reshaping of the built environment, among others. A national-level focus makes it difficult to capture and theorize this rich variation in types of political projects that cities launch to address violence. In contrast, a microlevel approach scales down from the national to the ground level, where units of analysis can vary from jurisdictionally defined territories, such as neighborhoods, to nonjurisdictional units, including individuals, armed groups, and informal settlements. The overarching feature and strength of the microlevel approach, however, is its ability to generate insights into the micro-dynamics of criminal violence through its pinpoint focus.16 A key finding from microlevel studies is that the relationship between illicit markets and violence is mediated by a range of variables, including the nature of relations between criminal and political actors (Arias 2013; Leeds 1996; Rios 2012; Snyder and Durán-Martínez 2009). Microlevel approaches show how social networks can either facilitate or inhibit criminal violence (Arias 2006). Other scholars examine how the institutions forged between criminal and political actors explain variation in types of localized political orders, which in turn have consequences for associational life, economic markets, and political mobilization (Moncada 2013a). Yet extant microlevel studies underemphasize the role of several important city-level actors whose interests may include the microlevel, but also extend well beyond it, such as business. When business does appear in microlevel studies, it is often in the form of idiographic description with an emphasis on the survival strategies of small businesses saddled with tight budgets, including the turn toward alternative forms of security by bribing local police, paying extortion fees to armed actors, or organizing social cleansings targeting impoverished youth and others considered socially “undesirable.”17 The large-scale business interests that are protagonists in urban political economies are absent

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 9

in microlevel studies. Certainly small firms are disproportionally targeted for varied acts of criminal violence because of their size, visibility, and reliance on cash transactions.18 Yet big business, unlike small firms, counts on the substantial financial and institutional resources necessary to access politics and policymaking at multiple institutional scales to influence the nature and trajectory of political projects in response to violence (Moncada 2013b). Large-scale business is also a protagonist in political efforts to enhance the global integration and competitiveness of major cities. Thus a microlevel approach constrains our ability to utilize big business as a powerful vantage point from which to analyze how and when the private sector impacts the politics of urban violence.19 In brief, both macro- and microlevel approaches represent valuable tools in the study of the politics of criminal violence. However, both exhibit limitations when it comes to tackling the question at the center of this book: what explains the nature and trajectory of the political projects that cities launch in response to urban violence? An approach centered on the city level but that addresses the causal import of dynamics at both the macro- and microlevels can thus help to identify and problematize empirical phenomena that would otherwise be difficult to locate in the overly aggregate picture provided by the macrolevel approach, or that would fall outside the purview of a focused microlevel approach. The Politics of Urban Violence: An Analytic Framework

In this section I build a new analytic framework for studying the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. I start by developing a typology of the different types of political projects that cities can launch in response to urban violence. I then unpack the key variables in the framework: urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control. A focus on the interaction between these variables enables us to account for variation in the nature and trajectory of the political projects through which cities address violence. Figure 1.1 provides a schematic representation of the framework. Political Projects in Response to Urban Violence: Policies, Institutions, and Political Form

Political projects in response to urban violence vary in both substance and political form. By substance I am referring to the specific types of policy measures that projects contain and the institutions designated and built to enact those measures. Policies and institutions, however, are shaped by political agen-

10  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Decentralization

Scope

Urban Political Economy

Armed Territorial Control

. Mayors . Business

. Lethal violence

Nature of Political Projects

Trajectory of Political Projects

Political Projects in Response to Violence

. Criminal leadership

Violence

Fi g . 1 . 1 : The Politics of Urban Violence: An Analytic Framework.

das. Thus a project’s political form determines both its substance and how the project preserves or amends the local distribution of political power. Policy measures and institutions to address violence fall under two general though not mutually exclusive types: control and prevention. Control measures entail the use of institutions within the criminal justice system—namely, the police, the judiciary, and penitentiaries—after an act of criminal violence has taken place. Prevention measures seek to stop violence from occurring in the first place, and thus target a range of structural and proximate factors associated with violence.20 Among the structural drivers is socioeconomic inequality (Fajnzylber et al. 2002).21 To address inequality violence prevention efforts may call for socioeconomic investment focused on marginalized populations. A second key area of violence prevention entails government efforts to reshape and regulate public space within the urban built environment in ways that foster social cohesion and the collective efficacy through which community residents can reaffirm shared norms that reject criminality (Sampson et al. 1997). A third variant of violence prevention regulates the proximate causes of violence, including the carrying of firearms in public, the places and times in which alcohol is sold (Krug et al. 2002, 1087), and the signs of disorder that are theorized to signal lax regulation of social behavior to potential offenders. The latter is associated with the “broken window” thesis advanced by Wilson and Kelling (1982), which argues that that graffiti, rubbish, abandoned buildings, and other indicators of disorder encourage criminal behavior.22 A final type of violence prevention focuses on changing cultural norms, particularly among populations at risk of engaging in violence or viewed as permissive or accepting of violence as a way to resolve conflict. Changing cultural norms can rely on a variety of tools, including resocialization initiatives for members of armed groups as

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 11

well as media campaigns and public events featuring pedagogical activities that encourage participants to reject violence as a way to resolve conflict. Regardless of whether measures focus on controlling or preventing violence, enacting said measures require building new institutions or reforming existing ones. For example, control measures require developing capable police institutions equipped with the resources and personnel needed to maintain order. Implementing socioeconomic investment as a form of violence prevention requires establishing, staffing, and sustaining municipal offices to identify and meet the basic needs of marginalized communities. Identifying the proximate triggers of local violence and their spatial distribution across large cities necessitates developing sophisticated tracking and data analysis systems to guide and adjust local prevention efforts (Moncada 2009). The greater the number of measures adopted to tackle violence, the greater the need to construct an overarching institutional apparatus that can effectively coordinate municipal efforts across multiple government agencies and personnel. Local institution building is particularly crucial in the weak institutional settings commonly found in municipalities emerging out of periods of highly centralized political rule. Yet institution building is an inherently political process that reflects and embodies configurations in the distribution of power at specific points in time (Knight 1992). We thus need to consider political form as the third and overarching dimension of projects deployed in response to violence. As I discuss in Chapter 2, local political order in much of urban Latin America, and particularly in Colombia, was exclusionary, with power concentrated in the hands of local ruling classes composed of political and economic elites. I argue that the political form of distinct projects in response to violence can either maintain the status quo of exclusion underwritten by clientelism or, conversely, reshape relations between local government and society in ways that more substantively incorporate marginalized populations into local governance. I identify three ideal type political projects with sharply distinct political forms. Reactionary political projects are exemplified by the “mano dura” approaches to violence and insecurity that have proliferated throughout much of Latin America in recent years and that rely primarily on formal and informal control measures and institutions. Formal measures include the deployment of local police forces to conduct militarized patrols and raids of urban peripheries, the uneven targeting of particular sectors of society—often poor young men from underprivileged communities—for mass searches and preventative

12  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

detentions, and the granting of greater discretion to police in the use of force and arrest of suspects. Informal measures include the explicitly or implicitly sanctioned use of violence by the police and armed nonstate actors against marginalized segments of society in peripheral neighborhoods. Local authorities can signal passive support for such measures by ignoring allegations of human and civil rights violations carried out by police forces and downplaying the need for institutional reform. Reactionary projects preserve exclusionary local political order by dismissing efforts to address the socioeconomic drivers of violence as soft and naive (Prillaman 2003, 18). These projects stigmatize urban peripheries by proposing that only an iron fist is capable of stemming violence in such anarchic contexts (Moser and McIlwaine 2004). And reactionary projects are often rationalized with long-standing elite narratives that frame violence as a sign of political and social underdevelopment among marginalized populations. Finally, reactionary political projects contribute to vicious circles of violence that inhibit socioeconomic development. Such projects thus preserve the underlying political and socioeconomic conditions that both facilitate and are products of exclusionary political order. In contrast, participatory political projects join violence control efforts with preventive measures and institutions. Yet the distinguishing feature of this project is its political form, which emphasizes the provision of socioeconomic investment via programmatic channels as well as participatory mechanisms. This marks a significant departure from the traditional reliance on clientelism as the principal linkage between local government authorities and urban masses in major Latin America cities (Nelson 1979; Portes and Walton 1976), as well as the limited space for autonomous political participation (Fox 1994).23 Under a participatory project, disadvantaged members of society are integrated into the formal political arena through participatory political mechanisms, such as participatory planning and budgeting, as well as institutional partnerships between local government and grassroots civil society. Evidence of these partnerships includes the appointment of grassroots leaders into public office, and the establishment of participatory institutions that allocate public resources following programmatic and not clientelist logics. Through participatory projects, citizens inform and structure processes associated with key dimensions of the local government’s response to urban violence. For example, under a participatory political project the provision of public goods and services takes place within a broader process of citizen participation in which communities are empowered to decide how public funds will be utilized in their neighbor-

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 13

hoods. In short, participatory projects reallocate both resources and political power as part of building more inclusive political orders. In doing so, participatory projects pose the most significant challenge to the exclusionary status quo. In between reactionary and participatory projects we can locate a third response to urban violence: clientelist political projects. Public sector investment associated with violence prevention measures targeting marginalized populations can represent valuable resources for bolstering and forging patron-client relations. Capturing these resources can enhance the ability of politicians to claim responsibility for the distribution of material goods in order to broadcast their power to both the recipients of the goods and the broader public, or claims-making (Chubb 1982, 75). Clientelist projects thus amend exclusionary political orders not by deconstructing them but instead by capturing the socioeconomic resources that under a participatory project would go toward programmatic distribution of goods and services and the building and functioning of participatory institutions. Under clientelist projects these resources are instead harnessed to fuel and develop clientelist bases of power. This type of political project therefore emphasizes violence control measures, empties preventive measures of their substance, and resists the deepening of autonomous political participation in local governance. Given these three ideal type political projects, what shapes how city mayors choose to respond to urban violence? Clientelism, Violence, and Mayors: Exclusionary and Inclusionary

I argue that reliance on clientelism shapes the project preferences of city mayors. In decentralized settings where popularly elected mayors are endowed with the authority and resources to address urban violence, political projects in response to violence represent valuable opportunities to preserve and build political power. The role of clientelism in shaping the policy choices of politicians has been established in the literature on state capacity (Geddes 1994) and recent research on the incentives that politicians face in deciding whether to build participatory institutions for local governance (Goldfrank 2011; Wampler 2010). While clientelism long has been a key tool in the armament of local political elites, decentralization has underscored the importance of clientelism amid the establishment of local elections and the concomitant fragmentation of once cohesive party systems (Harbers 2010; Hagopian 1998; Roberts and Wibbels 1999)24 while simultaneously endowing local governments with more power and resources. We should thus expect that the relationship between mayors and

14  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

clientelism plays a decisive role in shaping politicians’ preferences regarding the type of political project they seek to advance in response to urban violence. Mayors that favor clientelism as the primary linkage to citizens have few incentives to pursue participatory political projects. Distributing resources via programmatic channels or deepening the participation of citizens in deciding how public resources are allocated in their communities would constrain clientelist exchange. Among politicians whom we should expect to have favorable stances toward clientelism are members of traditional political parties whose power has historically been based on clientelist exchange, or political newcomers trying to build clientelist bases of power amid the fragmentation of the party system. These exclusionary mayors are thus more likely to pursue either the continuation of the status quo exclusionary political order through reactionary political projects or, in contrast, pursue clientelist projects to develop new patron-client relations. In contrast, mayors that oppose clientelism are more likely to pursue participatory political projects. These inclusionary mayors oppose clientelism as a way to garner political support among populations increasingly frustrated with traditional political elites and the exclusionary status quo. We are thus more likely to find inclusionary mayors leading alternative and/or progressive movements and coalitions. Once in power, inclusionary mayors also face incentives to pursue participatory projects as ways to weaken their clientelist opponents and diminish the resources available to them by forging programmatic channels and participatory institutions for the distribution of goods and services. Recognizing that responses to urban violence are shaped by pressing incentives to maintain, expand, or contest different types of political order enables us to identify a range of agendas that give projects their political form. Variation in political form, in turn, has important consequences for the nature of local political order. Yet, in seeking to satisfy their political preferences while addressing violence, mayors must also contend with business as the second key actor in the urban political economy. Incorporating Business: Segmented and Cohesive Business Communities

Within urban settings, variation in the institutional configurations of business weighs heavily on the role that the private sector plays in the politics of urban violence. And while much of the comparative political economy literature finds that the institutional configuration of business varies substantially across

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 15

countries (Bartell and Payne 1995; Schneider 2004), studies working from a subnational approach also find rich variation in the configuration of business within countries (Herrigel 2000; Locke 1995). Here I differentiate between two such institutional configurations: segmented and cohesive. Segmented configurations refer to a business community in which there is no strong central coordinating institution that encompasses and coordinates private sector involvement in urban politics and policy-making across all of the major sectors in a city’s economy. In such a setting individual sectors instead compete against each other to make their preferences heard and acted upon by local government. Those sectors with the most individual institutional resources, often in the form of representation through a robust business association,25 are the ones most likely to succeed in influencing politics and policymaking. Associations that represent a single sector function like distributional coalitions that seek primarily to satisfy their particular preferences (Olson 1982, 48–53). Strong sectoral associations provide selective benefits to their members as a way to facilitate collective action and discipline members to support collective goals by discouraging “exit” (Olson 1965, 133–50). Powerful and politically connected associations offer reliable access to the state via both formal (for example, regular appointment to public sector committees) and informal (such as high-level networking events) channels—a critical selective incentive as business seeks to influence policy-making (Doner and Schneider 2000). Yet not all business associations have these capacities, and those that do have an advantage in influencing the politics of urban violence in ways that advance their particular sectoral preferences. In a segmented business community, what shapes individual sectoral preferences regarding political projects in response to violence? Different business sectors have distinct relations to urban territory and violence, which yields cross-sectoral variation in project preferences. At the most general level we can distinguish between goods-producing sectors and service sectors. The former includes primary sectors (for example, agriculture and mining) and secondary sectors (such as industry and manufacturing), while the latter refers mainly to tertiary sectors (for example, banking, real estate, and healthcare). Goodsproducing sectors depend heavily on the security of physical territory within cities and the corridors that link cities to airports and seaports in order to fulfill the basic but crucial function of moving their products to domestic and international markets. Yet these geographic spaces are also vital to the smuggling activities of a range of violent armed actors. A single road can serve both licit and

16  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

illicit supply chains. As a result, goods-producing sectors face several dilemmas, including competition between criminal groups for control of transport routes and the diversification of criminal portfolios to include hijackings, piracy, extortion, and kidnappings that target goods-producing sectors (Dudley 2012, 4). Based on its physical connection to territory and thus heightened vulnerability to targeted violence, a goods-producing sector prioritizes the swift imposition of security and order through violence control measures. Regarding service sectors, one of the defining shifts associated with economic globalization is the growth of service sectors as key drivers of economic productivity. Service sectors, like goods producing sectors, also value physical security. However, the security concerns of service sectors go beyond a physical relationship to territory to one that encompasses the perceptions of security that different audiences hold regarding a city. For large-scale internationally oriented service sectors, global perceptions of the security conditions associated with their cities weigh heavily on existing and potential clients’ investment and travel decisions.26 The service sector has consequently become a key proponent of “city branding” (Avraham 2004; Hernandez and Lopez 2011; Kavaratzis 2004), which proposes that cities should actively manage and control their global images, defined as “the sum of beliefs, ideals, and impressions people have toward a certain place” (Kotler et al. 1993, as cited in Avraham 2004, 472). City branding enables service sectors to appropriate negative local traits associated with their city, such as violence and insecurity, and utilize them to draw sharp contrasts with more positive local developments. This can cause consumers and investors to doubt their negative preconceptions of a city (Avraham 2004, 475). Internationally oriented service sectors in major cities thus find several points of agreement with political projects that extend beyond an emphasis on control measures. Acknowledging violence as a challenge and then contrasting it with innovative and counterintuitive policy responses, such as altering cultural norms, reshaping urban space, or building participatory political institutions in settings normally associated with intense lethal violence and disorder, can draw positive international attention. And transforming the urban built environment as part of a response to violence can reshape cities to align with international perceptions of what global cities should physically approximate. In contrast to segmented configurations, cities in which business is organized in cohesive configurations feature business institutions that encompass a local economy’s multiple economic sectors. Encompassing institutions can assume several forms, including diversified conglomerates, economic groups,27

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 17

and peak associations (Schneider 1998, 110). Such institutions enable collective action across sectors and facilitate coordination with local government. But perhaps the most critical function that encompassing institutions carry out is to deepen ties between sectors that, in turn, harmonize cross-sectoral preferences and lead to the prioritization of broad versus sectoral interests (Schneider 1998, 110).28 Because encompassing business institutions represent a larger share of productivity and investment in a locale, members seek to increase the overall productivity of society (Olson 1965; 1982, 48). Schneider (1998, 111) thus argues that encompassing institutions impart a “state-like perspective” on capitalists in terms of their policy preferences. I find that in the context of urban political economies, these same institutions bestow local capitalists with a “city-like perspective” that makes a cohesive business community more likely to be available to support participatory political projects if and when the broader political environment encourages this type of position. Gauging whether the political environment does so requires us to consider the preferences of the public and private sectors within the broader set of linkages that exist between the two. Local Government-Business Relations: Conflict, Disengagement, and Collaboration

The degree to which mayors rely on clientelism and how business is institutionally configured play important roles in shaping the initial preferences of both actors regarding the way in which a city responds to violence. But the nature of relations between business and local government in the politics of urban violence also hinge on the linkages between the two actors, as shown in Figure 1.2. The x-axis in Figure 1.2 captures whether the preferences of local government and business regarding the response to urban violence are compatible at time 1 (t1). By compatibility I am referring to the degree to which the preferences of the local public and private sectors are in alignment regarding what constitutes the main threat to local security and what type of response is needed. The y-axis accounts for the broader density of linkages between local government and business within a city. Linkages are the formal and informal institutional channels through which business and local government officials engage each other in the task of urban governance. Examples of formal linkages include public-private commissions organized around specific policy domains, while informal linkages include social networks where public and private sector leaders overlap. The density of linkages between local political authorities

18  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Mutual dependence Collaboration

Density of Linkages

Isolation

Conflict

Opposing preferences

Disengagement

Preference Compatibility (t)

Aligned preferences

Fig . 1 . 2: Local Government-business Relations: Preferences and Linkages.

and private sector interests are central to a city’s capacity for governance (Stone 1989; Walton 1977). These linkages join public and private resources, enable the sharing of information, build trust, and provide channels through which conflicts can be resolved (Cammett 2007; Haggard et al. 1997, 52; Kingstone 1999). Yet the density of these linkages can vary substantially across subnational units (Locke 1995) and, in turn, have distinct impacts on the evolution of preferences and, ultimately, the nature of local government-business relations in the politics of urban violence. A high level of linkage represents a situation of mutual dependence wherein the public and private sectors actively rely on each other to jointly carry out urban governance. This level of linkage facilitates collaboration in the politics of urban violence by providing both actors with institutional channels through which they can further align their preferences in the politics of urban violence. The importance of dense linkages is particularly evident in settings where initial compatibility between preferences is low. In such instances, dense linkages increase the incentives that both actors face to accommodate each other’s interests and thus compromise when devising and advancing projects in response to urban violence. As Evans (1997, 65) notes, where relations between the state and the private sector are collaborative, they can reshape each other in “reciprocal iteration.”

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 19

Conversely, in settings in which the two actors operate in states of isolation given a dearth of linkages, the lack of readily available mechanisms for engaging each other and the comparatively frail norms of reciprocity and trust constrain the potential for aligning preferences. A combination of low linkages and opposing preferences fuels conflictive local government-business relations. These relations polarize the politics of urban violence as they encourage each actor to pursue their individual preferences. And because those preferences are opposed, mobilization by each undercuts the other’s efforts and so produces political clashes between the two. Low linkages can encourage local government and business to bypass each other in seeking to satisfy their project preferences by building ties with state or nonstate actors operating below or above the city level that support their preferred response to violence. This further constrains the potential for resolving conflict. As we shall see, conflictive relations pose significant challenges for advancing participatory political projects that require close coordination between the public and private sectors. Finally, relations between local government and business can exist in what I term a state of disengagement. Here preferences that are neither fully aligned nor opposed combine with low linkages to encourage local government and business to operate in isolation from each other. But unlike in settings of conflictive relations, the greater degree of compatibility in preferences precludes the polarization of the politics of urban violence and does not lead local government or business to purposely undermine the other as they pursue their individual interests. Here instead actors retreat to their individual objectives and largely steer clear of the other. As we shall see, disengagement also challenges participatory projects given the rift between the public and private sectors. The Scope of the Politics of Urban Violence

Where local government-business relations fall within the schematic in Figure 1.2 has implications for the degree to which other actors are able to influence the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence.29 I use the term “scope” to refer to the effect that public-private sector relations have on the political opportunities for other actors to influence the politics of urban violence in ways that run counter to the preferences of local government or business, or both.30 Collaborative local government-business relations reduce the scope by generating a united local front that minimizes the opportunities for “outside” actors to influence the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence in ways that run against the shared preferences of the local rul-

20  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

ing class. Not only can a united ruling class coordinate to advance and sustain a jointly preferred project in response to violence, they can use their resources to resist countervailing interventions by outside actors. By contrast, both conflictive and disengaged relations increase the scope of the politics of urban violence. A fragmented local ruling class increases incentives for business and local government to secure outside allies to offset the other’s ability to advance their preferred political project in response to violence. Whereas under collaborative relations both business and local government strive to keep the scope as narrow as possible, conflictive and disengaged relations can encourage both actors to increase the potential influence of outside interests. Although, as we shall see, disengaged relations can generate challenges for outside actors as they struggle to locate allies within the ruling class. Included among the outside actors that I refer to here is grassroots civil society. Varied factors influence the types of political projects that civil society organizations will favor.31 Autonomous civil society organizations that are able to self-organize and establish their priorities independent of local government or political parties may opt to support projects that alter the distribution of power and challenge the status quo. Yet, it is important not to reify civil society and assume that it always favors the deepening of democracy (Payne 2000; Whitehead 1997). Civil society can also mobilize in support of political efforts that prioritize harsh violence control measures, including extrajudicial violence by state and nonstate actors, based on the belief that such a reactionary approach is necessary to establish order.32 Other civil society organizations may have more instrumental reasons for supporting efforts that preserve the status quo, including reliance on pre-existing relations with local government through which civil society serves as a conduit for clientelist machines. Yet, regardless of its preferences, civil society’s influence is contingent on the scope of the politics of urban violence. And while decentralization provides local governments with varied authorities to address violence, national governments still retain the right to intervene within their territories. Although violence manifests itself most tangibly at the local level, its broader political drivers and consequences can extend beyond city borders. In such instances local violence can prompt intervention from above by central governments. As we shall see, violence from conflicts that directly involve the national government, such as civil war, can spill into cities and intersect with urban criminal markets and actors, provoking top-down interventions that can either align with or run against the preferences of local gov-

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 21

ernments and business interests. However, central governments are not unitary actors, but instead consist of a diverse number of institutional actors, each with its own set of project preferences and interests regarding the response to urban violence. Thus partisan alignment or misalignment between national and subnational governments may not always yield accurate predictions regarding whether national interventions in urban settings will support or conflict with the preferences of local actors. Regardless of the incentives driving its efforts to influence the politics of urban violence, the central government’s capacity to do so is also conditioned by the scope of the politics of urban violence as shaped by relations between local government and business. Finally, it is also important to note that criminal actors can also take advantage of the levels of scope to influence local politics. Conflictive local government-business relations can generate opportunities for local criminal actors to infiltrate and co-opt elements of both the public and private sectors. As we shall see, when these criminal incursions become public, they can make local politics even more vulnerable to outside intervention as one or both of the local ruling elite are discredited and delegitimized. In brief, attention to the scope of the politics of urban violence enables us to better gauge the conditions under which outside forces are able to influence the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. Patterns of Armed Territorial Control

Territorial control is at the heart of much of the recent research on violence. Within the civil war literature, variation in configurations of subnational territorial control by states and insurgencies is theorized to yield differences in the spatial distribution, modes, and targets of violence (Kalyvas 2006). Variation in levels of control exerted over territories where valuable natural resources are located influences patterns of violence in conflict settings (Fearon 2005; Ross 2006; Snyder 2006). Territoriality is also a key dimension within studies of illicit markets, which conceptualize criminal actors as firms competing to establish control over territories vital for carrying out varied illegal activities (Schelling 1967; Gambetta 1993; Volkov 2002). And though illegality is not a sufficient condition for violence (Andreas and Wallman 2009; Reuter 2009), participants in illicit markets lack access to formal legal remedies for resolving disputes, punishing transgressions, or deterring potential infractions. Violence is consequently a vital tool used by armed actors to resolve conflict. Yet, as shown in Table 1.1, territorial control actually varies along the di-

22  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Ta bl e 1. 1 : Patterns of Armed Territorial Control in Urban Settings Coordination in Criminal Leadership Low Level of Lethal Violence

Low High

Atomized Fragmented

High

Monopolistic Collapsing

mensions of level of lethal violence and coordination in criminal leadership. Unpacking territorial control along these dimensions enables us to theorize the practical and political challenges and opportunities that varied patterns of territorial control pose for the trajectories of political projects in response to violence. Both clientelist and participatory projects aim to extend the local government’s presence into peripheral urban spaces through infrastructure, programming, personnel, and financial investment, while also incorporating citizens into local governance via either patron-client ties (clientelist projects) or programmatic and participatory mechanisms (participatory projects).33 Distinct patterns of armed territorial control can impact the trajectories of both types of projects. Atomized and Monopolistic Territorial Control

Both atomized and monopolistic patterns of territorial control feature relatively low levels of lethal violence. Yet the level of coordination in criminal leadership varies significantly between the two. Atomized settings are characterized by a multiplicity of small, armed actors with relatively low capacity to engage in sustained lethal violence to protect or expand control over territory and illicit markets, and with little coordination between them regarding the regulation of those markets. Monopolies, in contrast, feature high coordination in criminal leadership in the hands of a single or small group of dominant armed actors that fulfill the role of a hegemon with control over territory, illicit markets, and the individual armed actors operating within the territory. Whereas the low level of lethal violence under atomized territorial control stems from the limited coercive capacities of armed actors, low lethal violence under a monopoly results in part from the lack of competition among the armed actors grouped under the criminal hegemon. Both atomized and monopolistic settings offer practical and political benefits for political projects that move beyond the reactionary status quo. An obvious practical benefit of having a low level of lethal violence is that it provides a more stable security environment into which local government personnel,

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 23

infrastructure, and resources can be safely introduced. Proponents of such projects can also use low levels of lethal violence to depict their initiatives as successful and thus shield themselves from contravening political pressures, even when the factors that account for low lethal violence are unclear. Indeed, the low coordination in criminal leadership within atomized contexts means that incursions by local governments do not face significant armed resistance. Yet, under a monopoly, criminal hegemons can provide local governments with ready points of access to peripheral areas through which the terms of introducing socioeconomic investment (under both clientelist and participatory projects) and processes of political incorporation (under participatory projects) can be negotiated tacitly or explicitly. The combination of low lethal violence and high coordination in criminal leadership can yield coexistence between local governments and criminal hegemons. Coexistent relations represent an equilibrium wherein a criminal hegemon refrains from high levels of lethal violence that can prompt coercive state intervention, and local government refrains from highly repressive or punitive tactics that could catalyze a violent backlash from the armed actor. Under these conditions not only does local government have an incentive to preserve coexistent relations, but so too does the armed actor because constrained interventions by local government enable the armed actor to continue operating illicit markets and extracting associated rents as long as it limits the use of lethal forms of violence. Moreover, the low level of lethal violence can provide local government with political insulation from concerns and queries regarding the continued presence and activities of armed criminal actors. Criminal hegemons may also welcome the introduction of local government resources and institutions of political incorporation because both represent valuable opportunities to capture the inflows of public resources and access spaces of political power. Fragmented and Collapsing Territorial Control

Under both fragmented and collapsing patterns of armed territorial control the level of lethal violence is high. The first is a setting where there is low coordination in criminal leadership given the presence of multiple powerful armed actors actively competing against each other and using violence to protect but also increase their territories and illicit market shares (Friman 2009; Reuter 2009). Collapsing patterns of territorial control represent moments of flux where the high level of lethal violence is associated with an active challenge to the criminal hegemon. Two scenarios are possible here, both of which

24  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

start with a monopolistic pattern undergoing stress either through the internal fragmentation of the dominant criminal hegemon into competing factions or a rival outside actor attempting to displace the hegemon.34 The high levels of lethal violence that characterize fragmented and collapsing patterns of territorial control pose significant practical and political threats for the sustainability of political projects that move beyond the status quo. In practical terms, higher levels of lethal violence produce more unstable security environments. The presence of multiple competing actors generates invisible borders along individual territorial fiefdoms, and violation of those borders can provoke violent reprisals. The physical insecurity inherent in these settings can impact local residents’ willingness to participate in initiatives to deepen participation in local governance for fear of retribution by the armed architects of alternative governing structures. A high level of violence can foster a political climate that favors more hardline reactionary responses to establish order. High levels of lethal violence among a multiplicity of competing actors also make it difficult to definitively attribute responsibility for specific acts of violence given incomplete and inaccurate information flows amid the volatility of ongoing conflict.35 Opponents can leverage this uncertainty to frame the origins of acts of violence in ways that link to the concerns of other actors that can become valuable allies for countermobilizations. Opponents can also use the uncertainty in attribution to dismiss allegations of their explicit or implicit support of the violence carried out by both state and armed groups against actors tasked with carrying out the building of local government presence in peripheral areas, including municipal workers and civil society. Fragmented and collapsing patterns of armed territorial control deny proponents of clientelist or participatory projects a clear interlocutor with whom they can explicitly or implicitly negotiate safe access to conflictive areas. In the absence of this linkage, efforts to deepen citizen participation can come up against microlevel orders where criminal actors regulate political activity and associational life (Arias 2013; LeBas 2013; Moncada 2013a). Thus residents may be wary of participating in initiatives to deepen citizen participation because of constraints imposed by microlevel orders enforced by armed actors. In sum, to explain the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence we need a framework that focuses on the city level but that provides insight on when other actors located at distinct institutional and territorial scales will be able to influence the trajectory of local political projects in substantive ways. A focus on the interaction between urban political economies and

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 25

patterns of armed territorial control provides a strong foundation for such a framework. The next section introduces the empirical analysis where we will use this framework to account for puzzling variation in the outcomes of the politics of urban violence in Colombia. The Empirical Analysis: Models of Urban Governance in Colombia?

During the late twentieth century Colombia’s civil war coupled with growing drug-related violence prompted concerns that the country was on the “brink” of state collapse (Shifter 1999). In the late 2000s, conversely, important progress in security along with state gains against several armed actors led to declarations that Colombia had managed to come “back from the brink” (DeShazo et al. 2007). Yet both generalizations are examples of how macrolevel approaches can lead us to overlook important subnational dimensions of the political dynamics of violence and order. Using a subnational comparative approach (Snyder 2001), I argue that beneath these characterizations of both state collapse and rebirth there exists substantial and intriguing subnational variation in the ways in which three major Colombian cities—Medellin, Cali, and Bogota—experienced and sought to forge order in response to violence. The subnational approach is particularly useful for analyzing the politics of urban violence in Colombia given that historically that no single city has emerged as the country’s dominant national economic and political center. As shown in Table 1.2, Medellin, Cali, and Bogota each make substantial contributions to the national economy. And while Bogota is the national capital, the history of strong regional politics in Colombia means that Medellin and Cali, the capitals of the departments of Antioquia and the Valle del Cauca, carry substantial political weight within the country.36 This has led scholars to characterize Colombia as a “country of cities” (Blasier 1966; McGreevey 1974). I exTa bl e 1. 2 : Overview of Colombia’s Three Principal Cities: Medellin, Cali, and Bogota City

Total Population (millions)

Share of National GDP (%)

Per capita GDP (US dollars)

Medellin Cali Bogota

2.7 2.4 7.6

13.2 10.3 25.4

6,606 6,933 10,507

S o u r c e : Figures reflect author’s calculations based on 2010 data from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística.

26  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Homicide Rate (per ,)

450 400

Bogota Colombia

Medellin Cali

350 300 250 200 150 100 50

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

0

Fi g . 1 . 3 : Violence in Urban Colombia (1988–2008). Source: Author’s calculations based on data obtained from the Secretaría de Gobierno de Medellín, Instituto CISALVA, and the Policía Metropolitana de Bogotá.

ploit this attribute of the country’s political and economic geography to carry out subnational comparative analysis that controls for national political regime type and state capacity while allowing for variation in the explanatory variables and the outcome of interest. As Figure 1.3 shows, in the 1980s lethal violence was increasing in each of Colombia’s three principal cities. The confluence of civil war violence and the eruption of conflict between several major DTOs and the Colombian state contributed to this upward swing in urban violence. As we shall see, however, violence in each city was also carried out by a range of other armed actors with varying linkages to the drug trade and civil war. The late 1980s also marked a critical point in the distribution of political authority in Colombia as the central government initiated a decentralization project that established direct elections for city mayors for the first time in the country’s history and shifted powers and responsibilities for a range of policy areas, including citizen security, to city governments. Thus mayors popularly elected into office starting in 1988 were greeted by settings of intensifying violence, but also new opportunities and challenges to build their political power in a context of decentralized governance. And starting in the 1980s Colombia also initiated market liberalization reforms that would expose its private sector to global competitors. Urban business interests across the country’s three main cities mobilized to increase their competitiveness in order to negotiate the challenges and leverage the opportunities generated by liberalization, with violence emerging as a key obstacle in each case.

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 27

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

t1

Medellin

t2

Bogota

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

Cali

1991

Investment as Percent of Total Spending

Yet, though all three cities experienced increased violence, inherited the same political powers, and were beholden to the same project of market liberalization, the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence both within these cities over time and across them vary considerably. In the early 1990s all three cities attempted participatory political projects. And while Bogota managed to sustain its participatory project, neither Cali nor Medellin was able to follow suit. A decade later, however, Medellin advanced a participatory project that reshaped the local political order, Bogota amended but sustained its participatory project, and renewed efforts for a participatory project in Cali again failed. Today Cali is among the country’s most violent cities, whereas both Bogota and Medellin are seen as models of urban governance based on a range of indicators that include but that also go beyond levels of lethal violence, such as patterns of investment. Figure 1.4 shows the stark divergence in patterns of municipal investment across the three cases over time. The level of investment in Bogota increased steadily starting in 1994 when the city first launched a participatory political project, which was subsequently sustained over time as seen in the steadily increasing level of investment. By contrast, in Medellin and Cali, where participatory projects were derailed during the first half of the 1990s, levels of investment hovered above or below 50 percent of total spending in each city until the early 2000s. It was at this point that investment in Medellin surged and quickly surpassed Bogota as the city implemented and sustained its second participatory political project. Yet, when Cali attempted a second participatory project

Fig . 1 . 4: Municipal Investment in Urban Colombia (1991–2008). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística. Note: Investment refers to socioeconomic investment, including health, education, and basic public goods and services, as well as roads and infrastructure.

28  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

Tabl e 1. 3 : Percentage of Population Living in Poverty in Urban Colombia (2002–11)

2002 2003 2004 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

Medellin

Cali

Bogota

36.5 34.7 31.7 29.3 25.0 23.9 22.0 19.2

33.5 33.7 31.8 30.1 28.5 28.4 26.1 25.1

31.7 32.0 28.8 26.6 19.6 18.3 15.5 13.1

S o u r c e : Author’s calculations based on data from the Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadística.

in 2001, the level of investment increased by approximately 10 percent in 2001 and 2002, only to decrease the following year by nearly the same amount as the project was derailed. Investment in Cali subsequently increased steadily yet continuously lagged behind that of Bogota and Medellin. By 2011, per capita spending by Cali’s municipal government was approximately only 30 percent of Bogota’s and half of that Medellin’s municipal government (Alcaldía de Medellín 2011, 26). Table 1.3 shows that whereas levels of poverty, which were targeted as part of the participatory projects, decreased significantly in both Medellin and Bogota over the course of the 2000s, the level of poverty in Cali fell at a comparatively slower rate and also remains the highest among the three. In this book I thus use this cross-city and within case variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence as the empirical building blocks for a new analytic framework.37 And while the long history of political violence in Colombia might initially seem a challenge for generalization, scholars increasingly acknowledge that the boundary between what we conceptualize and analyze as the separate domains of political and criminal violence can actually be quite porous (Kalyvas 2006). Recent research on the politics of drug-related violence raises important questions in this regard, given that a significant amount of violence by DTOs targets political actors and leaders, and in particular, subnational authorities. Recognizing and exploring the interconnections between political and criminal violence thus allows us to build stronger empirical accounts of and theoretical approaches to the politics of urban violence. More broadly, the political projects launched in response to violence that I analyze in this book have emerged as standard points of reference in a farreaching process of policy diffusion.38 International donors have exported the political projects pursued in Medellin, Cali, and Bogota as models to other de-

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 29

veloping world cities confronting intense violence. My focus on these cases thus yields both analytical and practical insights instructive for understanding the politics of urban violence in settings beyond Colombia. Methodology

The empirical analysis for this book draws on several forms of data collected during various periods of field research that I carried out between 2008 and 2011, totaling approximately eighteen months in the field. Because of the multilevel nature of my analysis, I collected data from multiple actors and institutions situated at distinct levels of the state. My field research strategy consisted of conducting interviews, collecting archival materials, and engaging in participant observation exercises at the national, regional, city, and neighborhood levels. I conducted 211 interviews during my field research. The interviews were semistructured in nature, and interviewees were identified and selected based on a combination of non-probability purposive and chain-referral sampling techniques (Tansey 2007). I carried out extensive archival research before and during each research trip to identify political, social, economic, and criminal actors relevant for my study, and obtained preliminary data on the roles they played in the politics of urban violence. This archival data then enabled me to tailor portions of the questions that I asked during the interviews, which often made interviewees more willing to provide additional information and details inaccessible through archival research alone. Interviewees included politicians from the local, regional, and national levels of government, business owners, representatives of business institutions, leaders of grassroots civil society organizations, and police and military officials. Because of the project’s longitudinal dimension, I invested considerable time locating and interviewing actors that played distinct roles in the politics of urban violence during the early period of my analysis. I was also able to conduct interviews with several former and active members of various armed actors in each city, ranging from youth gangs to guerrilla and paramilitary groups. Given that violence remains a major concern and a highly politically sensitive issue within Colombia, the majority of the interviews were confidential to ensure the safety of interviewees and also increase the probability that they would be as forthcoming as possible. I took notes during my interviews, assigned each interviewee a code used when transcribing the notes into my computer, and then kept the written and electronic notes separate at all times. All elected public officials were asked and consented to having their interviews be attributable.

30  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

In each city I made copies of a mix of archival materials, including major newspapers, municipal records, and private sector archives housed by varied business institutions. In addition to archives produced at the city level, I also examined national government archives, ranging from internal memorandums to official publications, in order to secure greater insights into the dynamics of inter-governmental relations regarding local violence and security conditions, as well as relations between central government agencies and urban business and civil society organizations. To complement these top-down perspectives, I also consulted civil society reports on security conditions in peripheral neighborhoods and assessments of how national and local government projects and initiatives associated with different political projects in response to violence unfolded within peripheral communities. The combination of interview data and archival materials enables me to triangulate (Tarrow 1995) the main dependent variable, the nature and trajectory of political projects in response to urban violence. I use this data to carry out process tracing to identify the causal pathways linking the variables set out in the analytic framework and the institutional outcomes (Bennett and Checkel 2014). Looking Forward

The empirical analysis starts in Chapter 2 with an overview of the origins and evolution of exclusionary local political order in Colombia and its foundational role in sustaining the national political system. I structure this chapter by focusing on three key inter-related factors that I argue help account for the historical resilience of exclusionary local political order in Colombia: traditional political parties controlled by elites, clientelism as the primary mode of political incorporation, and the use of violence to sustain, expand, and challenge political order. This overview helps to situate the contemporary politics of urban violence in its broader historical political context and, more important, alerts us to why the outcomes of the more contemporary politics of urban violence weigh so heavily on the nature of urban governance. Chapters 3 through 5 provide within-case comparative analyses of the politics of urban violence in Colombia. Chapter 3 focuses on the case of Medellin. In the early 1990s reformist elements of the national government and grassroots civil society formed a unique alliance in Medellin to advance a participatory political project in response to escalating urban violence. Disengagement between local government and a cohesive business community in Medellin enabled this unique alliance to make some inroads in developing and implement-

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 31

ing parts of the participatory project. Yet, mobilization by a local government headed by an exclusionary mayor along with the business community’s selfimposed detachment from the politics of urban violence generated numerous challenges for the participatory project. Disengaged local government-business relations combined with the fragmented nature of territorial control in the city’s periphery to derail the participatory project. A decade later, however, important shifts in both the urban political economy and the nature of territorial control generated a setting more conducive to sustaining the city’s second attempt at a participatory political project. Collaborative relations between the city’s cohesive business community, focused on rebranding Medellin in a bid to attract increased foreign investment and tourism, and an inclusionary political independent that enjoyed widespread support among grassroots civil society, together advanced the participatory project in response to violence. The reconfiguration of territorial control from fragmented to a monopoly under the command of former paramilitary leaders and the emergence of coexistent relations between local government and the resulting criminal hegemon further helped to sustain the participatory project. The case of Medellin shows how changes in the key variables at the center of my analytic framework can produce dramatically distinct outcomes in the politics of urban violence even within the same city. But as we shall see, it also raises some unsettling questions about the broader relationship between democracy and violence. Chapter 4 turns to the case of Cali, which was the first Colombian city where a sitting mayor pursued a participatory project. The inclusionary mayor brought together a coalition that counted on strong support from civil society organizations and marginalized communities. Yet the segmented nature of the business community enabled a large-scale agroindustrial elite organized in a strong business association to challenge the participatory project’s emphasis on violence prevention and the inclusionary political incorporation of disadvantaged sectors of society. Efforts to advance the participatory project also faced significant challenges in the highly fragmented nature of territorial control in the city’s periphery, including the use of violence—and its tacit endorsement by economic elites—against municipal workers, civil society leaders, and members of the armed groups that the participatory project sought to resocialize. Cali’s participatory project was thus derailed. In the mid-2000s an inclusionary mayor that secured office with the backing of grassroots civil society and marginalized communities attempted a second participatory project. Yet, by this point, the further breakdown of linkages between local government and

32  Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence

business in Cali had fostered local institutional and fiscal decay. The conflictive relations increased the scope of local politics as the private sector allied with the national government and weakened the local government’s capacity to advance the participatory project. The continued fragmented territorial control in the periphery further challenged the participatory project. The deterioration of local government-business relations and the persistent fragmented nature of territorial control in Cali meant that despite the efforts of two different popularly elected mayors to advance participatory projects, they faced similarly daunting and ultimately politically overwhelming obstacles. Chapter 5 focuses on the case of Bogota. At the start of the 1990s the surprising electoral victory of a political independent drew widespread support throughout the city, including from the city’s internationally oriented business sectors organized in an encompassing institution. Increasingly close linkages between the private sector and the city’s mayor coupled with participation by grassroots civil society led to the deployment of a participatory project in response to violence. The atomized nature of armed territorial control in Bogota facilitated the project’s advancement over time. A decade later a political leftist with a coalition composed primarily of labor and grassroots organizations secured office and proposed deepening the participatory project through increased focus on reducing socioeconomic inequality and greater dialogue between local government and informal street vendors as part of the project’s focus on public space. The city’s business community, however, initially resisted the mayor’s efforts for fear that it would destabilize the city’s successful rebranding and generate reversals in local security conditions. Yet, a ruling by the Constitutional Court favorable to the interests of informal vendors provided local government with an important tool with which to defend its efforts to incorporate informal vendors into the city’s economy in a way that also respected their political, social, and economic rights. Ultimately both business and local government leveraged dense linkages between the two to compromise on the response to informal street vending as part of the participatory political project. The case of Bogota thus highlights how the conjuncture of variables identified in the analytic framework can generate distinct causal pathways to similar outcomes in the politics of urban violence.39 In the final chapter I provide a cross-case analysis that shifts away from detailed within-case empirics to instead provide an overarching cross-case analysis that shows how the variables and mechanisms identified in the analytic framework helps to account for variation in the nature and trajectory of the

Rethinking the Politics of Urban Violence 33

political projects launched in response to violence. I then develop a preliminary assessment of the generalizability of key elements of the framework through analysis of the politics of urban violence in Mexico. The resulting analysis is suggestive of the framework’s utility for examining cases beyond Colombia. The chapter then concludes by outlining next steps in research on the politics of urban violence.

2

Parties, Clientelism, and Violence Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia

Colombia is one of the Western Hemisphere’s oldest procedural democracies.1 However, the historically skewed distribution of political power in Colombia has long prompted scholars to apply an array of qualifiers to the country’s democratic regime, including oligarchical (Wilde 1978), illiberal (Smith and Ziegler 2008), restricted (Bejarano and Pizarro 2002), and consociational (Lijphart 1969).2 Intense periods of violence have also prompted the use of several adjectives to qualify the country’s democratic regime, including besieged (Archer 1995) and under assault (Kline 1995). Yet violence in Colombia neither has been nor is presently a sign of state weakness that can be fixed through institutional re-engineering and reform alone.3 Violence instead has and continues to be strategically used by a variety of actors positioned both within and outside of the state to construct, maintain, and contest the nature of political order. This political order has historically been highly exclusionary in nature with formal political power concentrated in the hands of small groups of traditional party elites and economic leaders. Efforts to reshape exclusionary political order in the late twentieth century set the stage for the politics of urban violence that I examine in this book. In this chapter I show that three inter-related factors account for the historical resilience of exclusionary political order in Colombia. The first is the long-standing control that the country’s traditional Liberal and Conservative parties held over political office and state institutions since the mid-nineteenth century. Second is clientelism, which has served as the primary linkage between citizens and the state. Indeed, despite dramatic institutional and socioeconomic changes over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, clien34

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 35

telism proved highly adaptable and remained a pervasive feature of political life. The third factor that helps to explain the endurance of exclusionary politics is violence, particularly the use of violence by state and nonstate actors as well as those that blur the boundaries between the two. Violence has functioned as an extension of competition between political parties, a prominent dimension of state responses to threats against the established political order, and a tool for varied armed actors to mount challenges for political power, extract economic rents from both licit and illicit economies, and secure territorial control. The intersection between traditional parties, clientelist networks, and violence at the level of cities produced exclusionary local political orders that provided the basis for Colombia’s national elite-dominated regime. This multilevel system of political power began showing signs of exhaustion in the late twentieth century amid substantial shifts in the institutionalization of the party system, the protagonists of clientelism, and the spatial distribution of violence. By unpacking these shifts over time this chapter outlines the context that preceded and informed the contemporary politics of urban violence. My objective is not to provide a detailed political history of Colombia. I instead aim to highlight the critical and evolving roles that the country’s party system, clientelism, and violence have played in perpetuating exclusionary forms of political order that emerged as points of contention in the political projects proposed in response to urban violence. In the next section I examine the development of the country’s traditional two-party system and the associated construction of vertical clientelist networks that spanned from the municipal level, up through regional jurisdictions, and into the hands of national party leaders. In the third section I turn to the state building project that traditional elites undertook in the mid-twentieth century in an effort to preserve their political power in the aftermath of intense partisan violence and in anticipation of the dramatic socioeconomic changes for Colombia that were looming on the horizon. The fourth section concludes with an analysis of the political origins and consequences of the decentralization project initiated in the late 1980s that was intended to restore the legitimacy of the state and stem violence by infusing local governments with an array of powers, resources, and responsibilities. The subsequent chapters build on this analysis by applying the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1 to the puzzle of variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence.

36  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

Party Building, Political Patrons, and Violence

One of the defining characteristics of the Colombian polity throughout its history has been the limited institutional presence of the state across the national territory (Schmidt 1974, 102). During the wars of independence in the first half of the nineteenth century, infighting among national elites and between regional rulers constrained initial efforts to centralize state authority. The difficulties of building centralized rule provided regional elites with ample autonomy in ordering local politics, economies, and societies (López-Alves 2000, 96–97). Thus resistance posed by regional and local elites to incursions by central authorities into territories under their control contributed to the state’s attenuated territorial presence. Prior to the establishment of formal political parties, power in Colombia was largely held by regional caudillos that became protagonists in the wars against Spanish rule by spurring large landowners to form armed pro-independence groups. The landed gentry, in turn, functioned as patrons to the peasant masses. The latter were dependent on landowners for their economic livelihoods given the limited presence of both the state and economic markets in the countryside, where the majority of the population resided. The attenuated presence of the state forced patrons to use their personal wealth for the rents distributed to clients, who in turn pledged their loyalty not only to their individual patron but also to the patron’s favored political movement. Peasants were thus required to join their patron’s ad hoc militias to carry out violence in the name of advancing partisan interests (Leal and Dávila 1990, 43; Martz 1997, 43). Patron-client relations therefore emerged as the country’s “dominant rulerruled nexus” (Schmidt 1974, 98), serving as the medium through which citizens developed an allegiance to one of the traditional political parties. Partisan identity soon became a primary social cleavage, superseded only by Catholicism in its ability to cross class lines (Delpar 1981, xi). Indeed, partisan identity became a near “hereditary hatred” (Dix 1980, 304), given that families began declaring their children either Conservative or Liberal at birth (Safford 1972, 345). Partisanship was thus available for use by political actors at different levels of the state as a powerful “master cleavage” (Kalyvas 2003, 486) to convince supporters to engage in varied activities, including violence, to advance political as well as particularistic interests. Yet, local patron-client relations also served as the foundation for the country’s national two-party system (Wilde 1978). By the 1840s the Liberal and

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 37

Conservative political movements had become formal parties (Schmidt 1974, 97) headed by notables, or jefes naturales (natural leaders), whose power and influence stemmed in part from their familial ties to respected military and economic leaders. Both Liberal and Conservative party leaders harnessed and organized subnational clientelist networks to support their national electoral ambitions. Party leaders forged coalitions of regional caudillos whose capacity to deliver votes during national elections was premised on securing the loyalty of the landed elite patrons (Archer 1990). Colombia’s traditional parties were thus largely organized along personalist and regionalist lines (Archer 1990, 15). At a general level, the Liberal Party was associated with federalism, limited church intervention in politics, and the strengthening of commercial interests through free trade. And Conservatives embraced centralized political rule, an activist church, and economic protectionism that favored large landowners. Yet, because the parties were primarily amalgamations of varied national notables allied with regional leaders, programmatic stances varied considerably within the parties across individual political figures from distinct regions of the country (Delpar 1981; Roldán 2002, 13). Throughout the nineteenth century, party leaders therefore enforced measures to limit the ability of citizens to participate in the political system autonomously from the traditional parties and to obtain public goods and services outside of local patron-client ties. Liberals and Conservatives alternated in the design and adoption of new constitutions that restricted citizenship by imposing a variety of suffrage requirements, including literacy, high-income requisites, and ownership of land (López-Alves 2000, 104–6). Until 1856 no more than two thousand voters took part in presidential and congressional elections (Archer 1995, 171). Certainly during this period of time exclusionary approaches to citizenship and political participation were common throughout Latin America. Yet, in contrast to the experiences of its regional neighbors, exclusionary politics in Colombia was particularly resilient despite challenges mounted by political reformists and mobilization among the rural poor. Political participation and access to the state for the vast majority of the population thus remained limited to clientelistic relations that favored continued elite power. Yet, if traditional party rule built upon clientelist networks and restrictions on citizenship were key characteristics of Colombia’s first century as an independent country, another defining feature was violence. Partisan competition and conflict extended into varied expressions of political violence. Efforts by the party in office to institute reforms that favored its electoral fortunes

38  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

would prompt violent resistance from the opposition party, including violence against the ruling party’s civilian supporters. Counter-reforms implemented once the opposition became the incumbent would provoke similar responses, producing cycles of violence and political instability. Liberal and Conservative party leaders also took steps to strengthen the ability of regional and local allies to maintain the vital patron-client relations that supplied the upward flow of votes. For example, an 1858 constitutional measure allowed regional party cadres to construct and arm local party militias that could be deployed to maintain order, which was often interpreted as the conditions most favorable to the continued power and authority of loyal landowning elites over the peasant masses (López-Alves 2000, 105–6). Because obtaining political office was reliant primarily on clientelistic exchange, parties did not invest in vertical institutionalization. This explains why local party offices were largely abandoned and devoid of staff between elections (Martz 1997, 108). Outside of Bogota, the only representatives of the traditional parties—and thus the only channels to access resources controlled by the parties—were the regional caudillos and large landowners (Hartlyn 1988, 16–20). Over time partisan competition exceeded interparty struggles and began to materialize as intraparty conflicts enabled by the lack of party cohesion. Fragmentation of the parties along individual and regional lines were personalist struggles that contributed to violence as leaders of individual factions would deploy their armed supporters against those of their opponents within the very same party (Martz 1997, 104). Political contests during nineteenth-century Colombia both between and within parties were thus internecine conflicts among a small but extremely powerful set of elites (Martz 1997, 90) with far-reaching implications for political stability and violence. In particular, violent political competition fostered insecurity and thus deepened the dependence of clients on political patrons that offered security in exchange for political loyalty. The Conservative Party, for example, held on to power throughout the first three decades of the twentieth century following a particularly bloody period of interparty strife (known as the Thousand Days’ War) by using the police along with other armed groups under its control to provide security to party loyalists in a context of growing conflict (Archer 1995, 174–75). Traditional party leaders faced with increasing challenges to their authority amid internal party fragmentation moved to resolve political tensions and prevent the breakdown of the closed two-party system. In 1946 President Mariano Ospina Pérez (1946–50), a Liberal Party leader, divided his cabinet equally be-

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 39

tween the two parties in a move that foreshadowed the political pact that would be institutionalized a little over a decade later. Yet, Conservatives rejected the offer to share power and instead encouraged their local party militias to take violent action against the Liberal electorate in preparation for the next presidential elections. Meanwhile, fragmentation of the Liberal Party enabled the rise of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a charismatic politician who had served in several cabinet positions before being appointed mayor of Bogota. Gaitán’s popularity reflected growing unease and frustration among large portions of the population with their socioeconomic and political exclusion. Armed with fiery populist rhetoric in which he attacked the oligarchy, Gaitán garnered strong support from the urban poor and lower-middle classes in a bid for the presidency. Thus his assassination in Bogota amid partisan conflict in 1948 sparked intense violence in the capital city and, more broadly, marked the beginning of a ten-year conflict known simply as La Violencia (the Violence), during which approximately 200,000 people would be killed (Oquist 1978). The rural violence pitted Liberal guerrillas and communist self-defense forces against Conservative partisans who counted on allies in local governments, groups of assassins for hire, and the police. The acts of violence ranged from massacres to the quartering of men while they were still alive (Uribe 2004). Many rural landowners either abandoned their properties or were relieved of them by armed actors. The Valle del Cauca department, of which Cali is the capital city, experienced the largest number of properties lost during this period of violence (Oquist 1978, 323). Yet the partisan cleavage was only one layer of the conflict, as varied forms of criminality as well as long-standing microlevel personal and economic disputes fueled violence that went beyond partisan conflict and, consequently, escaped the control of national party leaders (Dix 1980, 307; Martz 1997, 57; Roldán 2002). As we shall see, this pattern of political, criminal, and individual-level factors combining to drive violence would also be evident in the lethal violence in the country’s urban centers in the 1980s. The decade of violence would lead to Colombia’s first and only experiment with military rule. Yet traditional party elites would soon re-establish civilian rule through a negotiated pact. However, this pact did not address the underlying socioeconomic and political factors that had contributed to the breakdown of the party-controlled regime. It instead interpreted La Violencia as a partisan conflict and thus established a set of measures to reduce interparty conflict while continuing to exclude alternative political forces.

40  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

Broker Clientelism, Civil War, and the Drug Trade

In 1953 factions from both the Liberal and Conservative parties supported the country’s first and only military coup, led by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. Leaders of the factions had concluded that military intervention was necessary to restore order in the countryside. Tasked with bringing an end to what party leaders continued to view as partisan violence, General Rojas convinced liberal guerrillas to accept an offer of amnesty in exchange for laying down their arms, and deployed the military against communist self-defense forces that would become the foundation for future insurgencies (Pizarro and Peñaranda 1991). Yet the military government was unable to fully establish order as partisan cleavages continued to intersect with local-level conflicts to produce violence across the countryside. And Rojas’s efforts to build an independent political movement further alarmed traditional party leaders. As the party factions debated the terms of a return to civilian rule, the country’s business elites launched a devastating national strike against Rojas to protest deteriorating economic conditions (Hartlyn 1988, 458). The following year civilian rule was re-established when Alberto Lleras Camargo became president. Lleras was a Liberal Party leader and had been one of the architects of the pact forged between the parties known as the Frente Nacional (National Front). The pact would structure the distribution of political power in Colombia until the late 1970s.4 The National Front had three specific objectives. The first was to defuse the partisan conflict that had led to military rule. Second was to prevent alternative political movements from securing power, which included limiting political participation through channels other than those constructed by the traditional parties. And third was to advance the interests of the private sector by re-establishing its political access to the central government, which had been weakened during military rule given the historical reliance of business on the traditional parties to influence policy-making (Hartlyn 1988, 76, 148; Martz 1997, 70–71). Toward these ends the National Front relied on several measures. First, between 1958 and 1974, the parties alternated in control of the presidency. Second, the parties divided equally the seats in government institutions from the national to the municipal levels, including the departmental legislatures and municipal councils. Third, the establishment of political parity also included public employment across all levels of the state, with only civil service positions granted exemption from the agreement. And finally, approval of all nonproc-

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 41

edural measures within elective bodies required approval by a two-thirds majority vote (Dix 1980, 308). The National Front thus aimed to repair the cleavage between the traditional parties to ensure their continued control over the state while institutionalizing measures to neutralize political challenges from alternative movements. The guarantee of regular access to the state’s coffers via parity in elective and appointed positions satisfied critical patronage and clientelism needs on both sides of the political divide. But parity also stoked more factionalism within the parties as distinct political camps surfaced to compete for the control over the allocation of public employment and state resources (Dix 1980, 308). Consequently the center of partisan competition under the National Front further shifted from between to within parties as factions sought to strengthen and expand their power bases while using the official party labels in order to compete for political office (Archer 1995, 178–79). From its inception, the National Front continued to foster political instability and conflict. But the National Front also prompted important changes in the scope of the Colombian state that combined with socioeconomic developments to reshape the dynamics of clientelism. A decade of rural violence had prompted both urbanization and migration, which ruptured the traditional patron-client linkage between landed elites and peasants as both sought refuge from rural violence by moving to the cities. The growing concentration of displaced peasants in the country’s cities, along with the natural growth of urban centers and persistent inequality, produced a new marginalized urban population available for mobilization by emerging political actors (Dix 1980, 178). Traditional party elites thus viewed the growing urban masses as a potentially destabilizing force. Party leaders settled on increasing the provision of public goods and services to expanding urban peripheries so as to avert their radicalization. Thus the Colombian state, whose limited territorial presence and resources had relegated it to a minimal role in traditional forms of clientelism, underwent expansionary institutional reforms (Bejarano and Pizarro 2002, 21). The intent, however, was not to deepen citizens’ ties to the state through programmatic channels for the distribution of public goods, but instead to “keep the masses in their places” (Dix 1980, 314) through increased resources for particularistic exchanges between political authorities and society (Gutiérrez 2007, 153). Yet, with traditional clientelist ties already weakened by migration and urbanization, the decision by party elites to invest in a limited state building project further weakened their capacity to maintain party coherence as regional

42  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

political rulers situated themselves to become brokers between client populations and the growing state bureaucracy (Archer 1990).5 The expansion of the state increased the stock of public resources, including budgets and government payrolls, available for clientelist exchange and patronage politics. Senators and regional representatives that controlled local elites as part of the multi-level clientelist structure mobilized to ensure that the territorial and institutional expansion of the state was channeled through their offices. As a result regional elites played central roles in the exchange of material resources coming down from the central government and votes traveling up from the locally based networks of patron-client relations (Leal and Dávila 1990). As long as regional brokers delivered votes during national elections, they were rewarded with resources they could distribute among allies in their departments and across municipalities. And as the gatekeepers for state resources, regional brokers commanded significant loyalty among municipal political officials that were often appointed at their behest (Archer 1990, 27–33). But brokers were not members of the prestigious families from which the natural leaders were descended. They were instead part of an emerging wave of “professional politicians” from the middle-income strata of society. These new political actors welcomed the selective state building project as an opportunity to develop their own bases of patron-client relations critical for wielding political power that had previously been available only to wealthy elites that could draw on their personal capital to underwrite clientelist exchange (Leal and Dávila 1990, 44–46). Traditional elites thus faced an increasingly influential set of political actors disconnected from the wealthy segments of society that had long controlled the levers of political power. As brokers progressively gained greater access to the state and accumulated more power, they contested traditional elites’ control over resources of the party machines. Ironically the very pact that traditional elites had forged in a bid to reclaim power further weakened their capacity to preserve it. The resulting cleavage between the traditional and professional political classes would persist well into the late twentieth century and, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, emerges as an important theme in the politics of urban violence. The political capture of growing state resources and institutions by political interests undermined efforts to quell social discontent in the country’s cities. The corrosive effect of clientelism on state building efforts was particularly evident when the national government attempted institutional re-engineering to improve municipal public service provision as part of quelling social discon-

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 43

tent in cities. Starting in the 1960s, along with many Latin American countries, Colombia established decentralized government agencies to provide citizens with collective goods and services. International development organizations supported the establishment of the decentralized agencies viewed as capable of bypassing politicized government bureaucracies. The agencies were responsible for an array of public services, including water, sewer, and electricity. Between 1960 and 1979, decentralized agencies in Colombia increased their expenditures from 1.4 percent to 20 percent of the country’s gross national product (GNP). Yet this also made decentralized agencies prime targets for political capture by clientelist interests and party factions (Collins 1989, 130–38). The resulting inefficiencies in the state’s ability to effectively meet the basic needs of growing portions of the population would become a key point of societal contention and political upheaval that challenged the continuation of exclusionary politics. The resulting erosion in the legitimacy of the country’s traditional parties was evident in the declining levels of party identification among urban voters (Hartlyn 1988, 147). Evidence of the potentially destabilizing consequences of eroding party identification was also evident in the re-emergence of General Rojas, who founded the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO) movement with the support of sympathetic Liberal Party members. Rojas ran as ANAPO’s candidate during the 1970 presidential elections. Despite receiving a significant share of the votes from the country’s large cities, and within those cities, from marginalized communities in the urban peripheries and the lower-middle classes (Dix 1978, 336–37), Rojas narrowly lost the election to conservative Misael Pastrana Borrero. And while Pastrana rebuffed ANAPO’s allegations of electoral fraud, Rojas’s ability to effectively challenge for political power alarmed traditional elites. During the second half of the 1970s protests proliferated across the country’s cities in response to the poor quality of public goods and service provision, and the seeming indifference of the traditional parties. The protests were largely organized by the popular classes and assumed varied forms, including land invasions, marches, and even the taking of hostages (Collins 1989, 425). The growing number of strikes and violent clashes between state security forces and protestors led the national government to declare a state of siege in 1975 that suspended citizens’ constitutional rights and strengthened the discretionary powers of the police and the military. In 1977 the country’s main labor unions responded with a national strike that included major economic centers, such as Medellin, and that further galvanized marginalized urban communities. Both

44  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

the Liberal and Conservative Party leaders sought to stem the political and social crises with limited political reforms to enable greater citizen participation in governance, but were thwarted by subnational clientelistic brokers who feared that the political opening would diminish their powers and resources (Falleti 2010, 124–33). Yet social discontent with the political status quo was not only a reflection of frustration with the inefficient provision of basic goods and services, but also political leaders’ seeming inability to deal with growing insecurity amid violence rooted in continued political conflict and emerging illicit economies. Political Violence and Drug Trafficking: Increasing Pressures on Exclusionary Order

During the 1960s and 1970s a number of guerrilla insurgencies emerged in Colombia. While several of these rebel groups remained small organizations limited to particular territories, others grew and evolved over time into major insurgencies capable of projecting influence across significant portions of the national territory, challenging state security forces, and capturing and inflicting damage on economic infrastructure. Among the major rebel groups was the Ejército Popular de Liberación (Popular Liberation Army, or EPL) founded in the second half of the 1960s in the department of Antioquia and the Ejército Nacional de Liberación (National Liberation Army, or ELN) established in the 1970s. Both the EPL and the ELN extorted latifundistas (large landowners) in the agroindustrial sector, though the ELN soon focused on the extortion of multinational firms that were building oil pipelines on the border with Venezuela (Echandía 1999, 110–19). In 1972 former members of Rojas Pinilla’s ANAPO movement formed the M-19 rebel insurgency partly as a reaction to the perceived fraudulent outcome of the 1970 elections. But among Colombia’s most powerful insurgencies is the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, or FARC). The FARC began as peasant self-defense forces established during La Violencia in the central departments of Tolima and Cundinamarca. The peasant forces proclaimed their principal objective the securing of national power in order to install a socialist-inspired governing system. The transformation from self-defense forces into a guerrilla insurgency took place in the late 1960s when the Colombian military attempted to reclaim control of rural territories largely under the command of the peasant forces (termed the “independent republics”) (Grupo de Memoria Histórica 2013, 122–23). During the 1980s, the FARC

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 45

engaged in the extortion of firms and property owners in the cattle ranching, commercial, oil, and agricultural and mineral sectors (Rabasa and Chalk 2001, 25). Kidnapping also provided a steady source of revenue, and the targets ranged from wealthy business owners to foreign officials. The insurgencies registered impressive territorial gains across Colombian municipalities throughout the 1980s. Between 1978 and 1995 the combined total number of guerrilla fronts between the FARC, the ELN, and the EPL increased from 15 to 102 (Echandía 1999, 135, 102–3). The FARC alone grew from 350 combatants at its founding in 1966 to 7,000 in 1995 to between 15,000 and 20,000 by 2000 (Rabasa and Chalk 2001, 26–27). Municipalities offered insurgents refuge, sources of revenue, and in some cases, geographically strategic locales from which to launch strikes against state security forces and economic infrastructure (Echandía 1999, 122–23). While insurgencies initially focused on establishing control over municipalities that were key to agroindustry and other primary sectors, by the late 1980s they had a presence in the areas surrounding major cities, including Bogota, Cali, and Medellin. A key factor in the growth and strengthening of the rebel groups was their increased ties to the booming drug trade. Those ties emerged initially because portions of the territories that were falling under insurgent control were also used by narcotraffickers to process and produce illicit narcotics. Between 1991 and 1995 rents from the drug trade averaged slightly over 40 percent of annual revenue for all rebel groups combined (Echandía 1999, 124). The start of the drug trade in Colombia can be traced back to the cultivation of marijuana along the country’s Atlantic coast in part as a response to US consumer demand during the 1960s. A downturn in Colombia’s rural economy in the 1970s combined with increased drug enforcement along the US-Mexico border convinced Colombian farmers and cattle ranchers to invest in marijuana planting and harvesting in what became known as the bonanza marimbera—a $1 billion annual industry (Bagley 1988). In 1976 and 1977, Colombian newspapers reported the existence of several 40,000-hectare marijuana plantations on the Atlantic coast, and estimated that more than 100,000 people depended on marijuana trafficking for their livelihoods (Pécaut 2006, 236), including small farmers, pickers, and bankers, among others. National authorities allowed the marijuana industry to operate in part because of the central government’s limited capacities, but also because the illicit trade benefited many of the powerful and wealthy landowning families on the Atlantic coast. These families, in turn, invested in luxury goods and real estate

46  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

as well as the corruption of local governments. Violence increased in the marijuana producing areas amid the decay of police and judicial institutions along with growing competition for lucrative illicit market share. Yet, by the 1980s a boom in marijuana cultivation in the United States along with growing global demand for cocaine prompted an important shift in the structure of Colombia’s illicit narcotics market with implications for the dynamics of violence and, ultimately, the continuation of exclusionary politics. Coca cultivation during the 1960s was a small-scale industry in Colombia, and trafficking was limited to individual carriers, known as mules, who would transport several kilos on commercial flights to the United States. Upon arrival the mules would then pass the cocaine on to contacts in Miami, Florida, that controlled the distribution portion of the commodity chain. Increased US demand for cocaine led to the scaling up of the Colombian industry, and by the late 1970s the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) noted the existence of a “Medellin Trafficking Syndicate” that would become the infamous Medellin cartel headed by Pablo Escobar. The cocaine and marijuana economies combined were generating revenues of between $2.5 and $3.5 billion annually in profits (Bagley 1988, 75–76). Cocaine traffickers used their profits for varied ends, including acquiring vast tracts of rural land that would ultimately produce conflict between narcotraffickers and guerrilla insurgencies. Between 1980 and 1995, narcotraffickers purchased land in nearly half of Colombia’s municipalities (Reyes 1997). The lands were used to launder profits and enhance narcotraffickers’ social status in a country where land ownership has historically been associated with wealth and authority. Pablo Escobar alone acquired millions of acres of prime cattle grazing lands throughout Antioquia and other parts of the country (Richani 2002, 117–19). The combination of extreme wealth and ownership over rural lands led insurgencies to target narcotraffickers for extortion. Narcotraffickers responded by leveraging their significant financial resources to establish paramilitary forces that soon garnered the support of many traditional landowners frustrated with the state’s inability to effectively counter the guerrilla threat as well as elements of the state security forces and traditional political elites. Thus President Belisario Betancur’s (1982–86) peace negotiation overtures to several guerrilla groups in the early 1980s prompted large landowners, already disillusioned with the state and opposed to the idea of sharing political power with the rebels, to support the expansion of paramilitary forces into

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 47

what would become the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC). The scope of paramilitary activity, however, soon grew well beyond protection of rural lands to include the violent persecution of organized labor, marginalized communities, and civil society organizations considered supportive of the insurgencies and critical of the often violent practices long used by large landowning interests to ensure security and order. Moreover, as paramilitaries made gains against the FARC in securing territorial control, they deepened their own ties to the illicit drug market, augmenting their organizational capacities and leveraging sympathy from the military and elites to deepen their penetration of the state at the local, regional, and national levels (Duncan 2006; Romero 2003). Further contributing to the violence of the 1980s was a shift in the nature of relations between the Colombian state and narcotraffickers. The shift was prompted in part by growing US pressure on Colombia to dismantle the drug cartels in order to stem the influx of narcotics into the US market. In 1984, after Colombian security forces destroyed a major cocaine-processing complex that belonged to the Medellin cartel, the DTO retaliated by assassinating the minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. The murder shocked the country, leading President Betancur to declare war against the traffickers and unleash a barrage of arrests, confiscations, and judicial trials, including several extraditions to the United States. Narcotraffickers responded with both acts of indiscriminate violence, including bombings in crowded city streets, and the targeted killing of police, military, and political officials (Bagley 1988, 80–82). The state’s decision to pursue narcotraffickers had the paradoxical effect of bolstering the territorial expansion of the country’s main rebel groups. By 1987 several truces brokered between the central government and insurgent groups had collapsed. The insurgencies, including the FARC, had largely leveraged the negotiations to expand their territorial reach and organizational strengths. Thus the FARC took advantage of the state’s pursuit of narcotraffickers to assume control of the lands that they were no longer in a position to defend against rebel expropriation. As rebels gained territory, they also assumed greater authority over lucrative portions of the cocaine trade, which bolstered their capacity to challenge state security forces. The state’s struggle to establish order amid escalating conflict and violence produced a critical challenge for the country, leading former president Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970–74) to declare that Colombia was poised to plunge into an “abyss.”6

48  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

A Political Opening: Decentralization and Citizen Security

In the late twentieth century, escalating violence, the declining legitimacy of state institutions, and the progressive difficulties of traditional elites to maintain party coherence while negotiating growing social and economic pressures led to a political opening in Colombia. The reforms that resulted were widely seen as a chance to stem social unrest and violence by reorganizing the very nature of state-society relations. In this section I examine the political environment that resulted from these reforms, where the dynamics of political competition, clientelism, and violence shifted yet again, setting the stage for the politics of urban violence that I analyze in the remainder of the book. Decentralization and Citizen Security

In the mid-1980s Colombia began a project of decentralization that devolved significant powers, resources, and responsibilities to municipal jurisdictions where exclusionary political orders had long provided the foundation for elite control of the polity.7 President Betancur initiated the decentralization process in 1985 with an amendment to the national constitution that established popular elections for municipal mayors set to begin three years later. Betancur succeeded in enacting the constitutional amendment over the resistance of regional brokers in part by guaranteeing them continued control over significant resources for patronage politics and clientelist exchanges (Falleti 2010, 124–33).8 Mayors were initially elected to two-year terms that would subsequently be extended to three years in 1998, and then four years in 2004, all without the possibility of immediate re-election. In a country in which the exclusionary local political order was integral to the multilevel clientelist structure that underwrote the elite party system, the establishment of popular local elections effectively changed “one hundred years of intergovernmental relations” (Falleti 2005, 339). Yet this initial step in political decentralization failed to placate growing social unrest, particularly because the first round of direct mayoral elections held across the country in 1988 were won largely by traditional party candidates (Angell et al. 2001, 25). The broader 1990 presidential elections also devolved into intense violence with the assassination of four major presidential candidates. Paramilitaries assassinated candidates from the Patriotic Union, which was a party formed by the FARC as part of their ultimately failed peace negotiations with the Betancur administration, and also killed the presidential candidate of the demobilized M-19 insurgency. Assassins hired by the Medellin cartel

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 49

killed Luis Carlos Galán, a popular Liberal Party politician and self-declared enemy of the drug cartels. The violence sparked intense political mobilization coordinated by a student-led movement that culminated in demands for a new national constitution through which Colombia could move from a representative to a participatory democracy to halt the country’s seeming social and political unraveling. The student movement leveraged the March 1990 mayoral and congressional elections to include a voluntary “seventh ballot” used by nearly two million voters to express their support for holding a Constituent Assembly (Dugas 2001, 809).9 In response to the broad endorsement of the seventh ballot, in May of 1990 a national plebiscite on the question of a Constituent Assembly was held in conjunction with the presidential elections. Nearly 5.5 million Colombians voted in favor of holding a Constituent Assembly. The newly elected president, César Gaviria (1990–94), a member of the Liberal Party appointed as the party’s candidate after Galán’s assassination, was charged with coordinating the process. Delegates to the Constituent Assembly were elected in 1990 in a single national district designed to blunt the electoral power of regionally based political machines. Among those elected were members of the traditional parties, including several party factions, but also demobilized M-19 rebels as well as indigenous and religious representatives. Gaviria held up the assembly as a symbol of the state’s willingness to advance peace, and he leveraged the development of a new constitution to negotiate ultimately successful peace negotiations with several of the country’s smaller insurgent groups. The FARC, however, did not participate in such negotiations partly out of protest as paramilitaries continued to assassinate many of the leaders and members of the Patriotic Union.10 The country’s largest rebel group instead expanded its presence by taking over the territories abandoned by the smaller insurgencies that opted to demobilize (Echandía 1999). The scope of the Constituent Assembly included a large number of issues, ranging from intergovernmental relations as well as the particulars of specific policy areas, including environmental protection, the rights of women, and the cultural rights of ethnic minorities. The resulting constitution enacted fiscal decentralization by increasing the transfer of central government revenue to municipalities. Automatic transfers were set to increase from 14 to 22 percent of central government tax revenue between 1991 and 2002 (Eaton 2006, 544), and provided resources for municipal investment in a number of basic services, including health, education, water, and sanitation, among others (Echavarria et

50  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

Tabl e 2. 1 : Mayoral Powers for Citizen Security in Postdecentralization Colombia Policy Measures

Institution Building

Citizen Participation

Develop detailed local policy measures for citizen security

Establish tools to monitor levels and patterns of crime and violence

Coordinate with civil society on citizen security

Assume greater authority over police strategies, activities, and operations

Foster mechanisms for interinstitutional cooperation on citizen security

Develop citizen security plans in coordination with civil society

Assign municipal funds to support the development of policies to uphold citizen security

Establish security council meetings to discuss, analyze, and make timely decisions regarding local security conditions

Coordinate greater communication between police commanders and civil society

Develop policies to foster Provide funding for the stronger relations between the police’s operational and police and local communities training needs S o u r c e : Policía Nacional (2005).

al. 2002, 16). The constitution also enabled municipalities to generate their own revenue through taxes on property, industry, and commerce. Despite being a unitary country, by 2001 Colombia ranked behind only Argentina and Brazil— the two largest federal countries in the region—in subnational spending as a percentage of total national public sector spending (Alesina et al. 2005, 176). Measures for administrative decentralization also shifted responsibility for the delivery of public services to municipal governments. As early as 1989 mayors had already become responsible for numerous dimensions of health, education, and public housing services (Eaton 2006, 545; Echavarria et al. 2005, 9; Gilbert and Dávila 2002, 33). But the new constitution also provided subnational authorities with new powers and responsibilities in the area of citizen security. Table 2.1 summarizes the political powers and responsibilities that decentralization gave to mayors in the realm of citizen security. Decentralization provided mayors with the authority to develop new measures and institutions to address local security concerns while also building linkages between local government, the police, and citizens as part of the broader effort to foster a more participatory political order. These powers broke with the centralized nature of security policy-making in Colombia. The historically limited ability of local politicians to propose and implement policies to address local security concerns had its origins in the national-level political reaction to the widespread use of local police forces for violent partisan and particularistic ends by regional and municipal political elites during La Violencia. Thus one of the first

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 51

measures enacted under the National Front was the nationalization of politicized departmental and municipal police forces (Llorente et al. 2008, 21). The nationalized police force reported directly to the minister of defense, who was historically a high-ranking member of the military appointed by the president. Nationalization, however, opened a rift between local government and state security forces, as the latter’s priorities were established at the national-level and did not always align with local security needs or political interests. And though under the 1991 Constitution the police remained a national force, it did provide popularly elected mayors with greater authority over the operations and actions of the police forces assigned to their cities. And fiscal decentralization also enabled mayors to generate budget lines for municipal police, which as we shall see in subsequent chapters represented a politically valuable tool for increasing mayors’ authority over local security forces. The powers municipal governments received to uphold citizen security were also situated within the broader authorities and responsibilities over other policy domains provided by decentralization, which meant mayors could now bring other policy domains to bear in the construction of political projects in response to urban violence. Moreover, the central government took several additional steps to underscore the new authorities bestowed upon municipal governments. President Gaviria broke with the tradition of appointing a senior military figure to the post of minister of defense and instead selected the country’s first civilian ever to hold this position. Gaviria also unveiled the Estrategia Nacional Contra la Violencia (National Strategy Against Violence, or ENV), which acknowledged that despite the national government’s historical focus on national defense, security and defense were not synonymous. This marked the first time that the Colombian national government distinguished between national security and citizen security, and indicated explicitly that the coercive capacity of the state needed to be complemented with preventive initiatives that could address the roots of violence. The ENV privileged the role of local governments in undertaking these measures given decentralization. Mayors, Party Fractionalization, and Local Clientelism

In addition to the powers and resources transferred to local governments, the role of mayors in the Colombian political system was further bolstered by the new constitution’s weakening of regional political authorities. New measures in the constitution targeted both electoral and budgetary rules that had enabled regional politicians to emerge as the linchpins in the political system

52  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

with the expansion of the state under the National Front. Because the election for the assembly had been structured as a single national district, regional rulers were denied the ability to mobilize their political machines to place allies in the assembly who would favor the continuation of clientelism coordinated by regional political authorities. Instead those elected to the assembly were the reformist elements of the traditional parties who along with alternative political forces took advantage of the opportunity to undercut the power of regional rulers (Botero 1996). In doing so, the resulting constitution turned municipalities into the new centers of political power beneath the national level. The first set of constitutional measures to weaken regional politicians limited their ability to engage in clientelist exchange. Here the constitution eliminated the discretionary funds long made available to senators and regional representatives who distributed the resources among allies and local elites that were charged with mobilizing voters (Gutiérrez and Dávila 2000, 43–44). Fiscal reforms further enervated regional leaders by channeling central government funds directly into the municipal budgets while bypassing regional governments (Willis et al., 1999, 13–14). These measures reduced the resources available to regional rulers to engage in clientelism, which in turn made them less politically relevant to both national political authorities that had become dependent on regional leaders to support their electoral ambitions and to local politicians that had relied on regional authorities for access to state resources and political backing for the pursuit of higher office.11 A second set of measures centered on electoral rules that had long perpetuated the continuation of the closed two-party system. Electoral reforms lowered the barriers to entry into politics by reducing official requirements to establish a political party, relaxed the rules for alternative parties to compete in elections, and increased the chances of obtaining office via small party lists (Pizarro 2006, 81–91).12 The constitution also eliminated the practice of holding elections for national and regional elections on the same day, which had reinforced the power of regional brokers that could mobilize their electoral machines in coordination with their national counterparts. Under the new rules of the game, regional brokers lost resources and political influence while mayors emerged as major political figures. Yet the weakening of regional brokers also contributed to the deinstitutionalization of the party system by further encouraging party fractionalization (Cox and Shugart 1995) and the rise of particularistic political movements, or “electoral micro-enterprises” (Bejarano and Pizarro 2002). The delegitimiza-

Exclusionary Political Order in Colombia 53

tion of the traditional parties, moreover, increased incentives for politicians leading independent political movements to adopt antiparty discourses to generate electoral support (Dargent and Muñoz 2011, 54). Given the increased political weight of municipal governments with the new constitution, it is notable that between 1988 and 1997 more than half of the country’s 1,050 municipalities elected at least one candidate unaligned with either of the traditional parties to the office of mayor (García 2000, 93). Thus Colombian politics now featured politicians with varying degrees of linkages to the traditional parties and independent political movements with wide ranging levels of organizational and programmatic cohesion competing for power. Finally, the infusion of resources into municipal governments also generated new opportunities for local politicians to build their own clientelist bases in order to secure and build political power. While clientelism had been directed by regional elites for much of the second half of the twentieth century, the new constitution’s focus on municipalities now allowed for the construction of local-level clientelist networks coordinated by local political authorities no longer beholden to regional machines. Direct elections increased pressures on local authorities to develop powerful and effective campaigns, which also created possibilities for both the private sector and illicit interests, such as narcotraffickers, to provide such support in exchange for political access to the increasingly powerful and well-resourced local governments. In remote rural regions of the country, the influx of fiscal and political resources into territories where state presence was limited enhanced the strategic value of municipalities for both guerrilla insurgencies and paramilitaries (Eaton 2006). As we shall see, even in large municipalities where control by nonstate armed actors might be limited to peripheral urban areas, decentralization could still provide such actors with important resources. Conclusion

By the late twentieth century Colombia had undergone a series of remarkable political and socioeconomic transformations. While city governments began the twentieth century as arguably the weakest level of the Colombian state in terms of formal powers and public resources, they ended the century in a very different place within the historically centralized governing system. Reformist political currents produced a new constitution that pinned national hopes for stemming violence and curtailing clientelism on newly empowered local governments while denying regional governments the resources they had

54  Parties, Clientelism, and Violence

long used to coordinate powerful clientelist machines. City halls infused with unprecedented powers and resources became targets of fierce political competition. And local governments were now the front lines for efforts to maintain and improve citizen security in a context of complex and intense violence. Yet the factors that were the linchpins of exclusionary political order in Colombia—an elite party system, clientelism, and violence—did not vanish at the end of the twentieth century as city governments assumed prominent roles in the task of governing. They were instead reshaped in new and complex ways that set the stage for the politics of urban violence. The deinstitutionalization of the Colombian party system produced local electoral arenas populated by traditional party elites, ambitious newcomers at the head of their own factions within tenuous ties to the traditional parties, and independents backed by a diverse array of social, economic, and political interests. As we shall see, variation in the connections between these political actors and powerful business interests differed considerably both across cities and over time within them, which fostered urban political economies that varied in their receptiveness to the political projects and individual interests of popularly elected mayors. Some newly elected mayors moved to harness their new office to clientelist projects intended to strengthen their political position. Others attempted to reshape the nature of ties between local government and marginalized urban populations into more inclusionary forms via participatory political projects. Both had to negotiate not only their relations to powerful interests but also the particular patterns of armed territorial control within their cities where variation in the coordination of criminal leadership and levels of lethal violence produced challenges and opportunities that impacted the trajectory of political projects in response to violence.

3

Medellin Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence

In the 1980s conflict between the Colombian government and the Medellin drug cartel intersected with a range of pre-existing local cleavages to unleash a wave of lethal violence in Medellin. Upon assuming office President César Gaviria declared that stemming the violence would require the city to undergo a social transformation. Gaviria thus launched a unique intervention between the central government and local civil society to tackle violence through increased control and prevention measures and institutions while deepening the political participation of the city’s marginalized populations in peripheral neighborhoods. Yet this participatory political project was derailed, and the city returned to the status quo of relying on formal and informal coercive measures, fleeting peace pacts with armed actors, and clientelism in its bid to maintain order. By contrast, in the mid-2000s, Medellin adopted and sustained a second participatory project that also relied on violence control and prevention measures with an emphasis on citizen participation so as to enable civil society leaders to assume key roles in local governance. As lethal violence plummeted and foreign investment skyrocketed, the “Medellin miracle” drew the attention of international donors that began exporting it as a model of urban security and governance to other major developing world cities. How can we account for the puzzling variation in the trajectories of similar political projects in response to violence in the very same city? In this chapter I use the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1 to construct a within-case analysis of the institutional outcomes in the politics of urban violence. Applying the framework shows that in the early 1990s disengaged relations between an exclusionary mayor and a cohesive business community combined with the 55

56  Medellin

fragmented nature of territorial control in peripheral neighborhoods to derail Medellin’s first participatory political project. A decade later important shifts had taken place in both the urban political economy and nature of armed territorial control. Collaborative relations between an inclusionary mayor and the cohesive business community coupled with the emergence of an armed territorial monopoly sustained the participatory project. Attention to the interaction between the two variables identified in the analytic framework thus shows that Medellin’s transformation was made possible by strategic political interactions between political and economic actors seeking to advance individual interests while allowing for an uneasy coexistence with armed criminal actors. Derailing Medellin’s First Participatory Political Project

In the 1980s the assorted drug trafficking groups that operated in Medellin unified into the single criminal enterprise in response to growing clashes between narcotraffickers and guerrilla insurgencies present in Antioquia. When the central government launched an offensive against the Medellin drug cartel’s leaders and infrastructure, including efforts to extradite narcotraffickers to the United States, the DTO responded by launching a wave of violence as part of its “absolute and total war” against the state (Bagley 1988, 77–87). The cartel counted on two critical resources in this war: ample financing derived from the narcotics trade and foot soldiers in the young impoverished men that formed part of the numerous armed groups based in Medellin’s peripheral communities (Salazar and Jaramillo 1992).1 As levels of lethal violence climbed, President Gaviria established the Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana (Presidential Council for Medellin and Its Metropolitan Area, hereafter the Council) to serve as the national government’s direct representative in Medellin on issues of violence, citizen security, and local development. The Council was initially tasked with breaking the cartel’s links to marginalized youth by coordinating national government investment to increase access to education in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods. Gaviria selected one of his presidential campaign managers, Maria Emma Mejia, to lead the Council. Mejia was originally from Antioquia and a member of an elite local family. But as one of President Gaviria’s advisors on the Council initiative indicated, Mejia was selected in part because it was hoped that her ties to the city’s traditional economic and political leaders could help unite them behind the Council’s efforts.2

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 57

Mejia, however, realized soon after arriving in Medellin that if the Council were to succeed it would also need to count on civil society as an ally. The resulting alliance between central government representatives and civil society prompted the transformation and expansion of the Council into a participatory political project. This unique alliance satisfied the strategic needs of both actors. Mejia worked particularly closely with the Corporación Region and the Instituto Popular de Capacitación (IPC), which were among the city’s best known civil society organizations working on local violence and development.3 Civil society leaders became Mejia’s “passports” into parts of the city that had become inaccessible to outsiders because of extreme violence and the presence of multiple competing armed actors.4 Allying with local civil society also provided the Council with knowledge regarding the drivers of local violence that could inform policy design and implementation. Finally, partnering with civil society provided central government authorities with legitimacy as communities in peripheries had grown frustrated with what was perceived as the historical resistance of local political and economic elites to greater equality in the distribution of wealth and power.5 Civil society also secured important dividends from partnering with the national government. Its past demands for more programmatic distribution of critical public goods and services into peripheral neighborhoods and greater involvement of neighborhood residents in shaping public investment had long been frustrated by the prevalence of powerful clientelistic networks. The resources that the national government had committed to the Council represented an opportunity to deliver collective goods outside of clientelist exchanges that civil society leaders viewed as perpetuating political exclusion.6 Civil society leaders thus leveraged their alliance with the central government as a way to expand the intervention beyond a focus on education. During planning meetings with Mejia, civil society pressed for the Council to address the broader dynamics of socioeconomic inequality and political exclusion.7 Analysis of archival materials and interviews confirm that the objectives of the Council broadened considerably as the national government and civil society consulted and collaborated in reshaping the Council. The result was a joint declaration in which the Council argued that narcotrafficking was not the main driver of violence in Medellin, but that it had instead aggravated historical socioeconomic inequalities within the city in ways that were fostering conflict and violence (Programa Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1992, 5). The declaration explicitly noted that the exclusionary nature of local

58  Medellin

Tabl e 3 . 1: Medellin’s First Participatory Political Project St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Increase the efficiency of local judicial institutions

Generate incentives for economic development and employment in high-violence neighborhoods

Establish citizen councils in low-income neighborhoods to facilitate greater community participation in local development efforts

Develop conflict resolution centers in high-violence neighborhoods

Increase access to and quality of education

Develop the participatory budgeting capacity and resources of citizen councils

Increase police personnel and resources

Improve food security among the city’s poorest populations

Construct mechanisms for marginalized youth to participate in neighborhood governance

Build dedicated detention facilities for juvenile delinquents

Increase the stock of public space in peripheral neighborhoods

Create a city-level security council to coordinate between citizens, policymakers, and civil society

Construct community centers with programming targeting underprivileged youth and populations at-risk of violence Establish a municipal Office for Human Rights S o u r c e : PPMAM (1991).

political rule coordinated by political and business elites could no longer accommodate ongoing socioeconomic and political transformations (Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1993, 43). Thus the Council’s initial focus on education expanded significantly into a participatory political project that aimed to “reconstruct [Medellin’s] social structure” (Programa Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1992, 3). The project’s key dimensions are summarized in Table 3.1. Violence control measures emphasized strengthening police and judicial institutions. The latter included investing in the capacities of local courts to process cases in a timely manner by providing judicial officials with new office space and equipment. The project also sought to increase access to justice by establishing municipal offices in high-violence neighborhoods where citizens could obtain aid to resolve a range of conflicts, from issues of domestic abuse to disputes between neighbors, through formal and informal conflict resolution

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 59

mechanisms. Investment in the city’s police entailed the construction of several new stations to house an estimated four hundred new police hires. Civil society leaders familiar with the extrajudicial practices of local security forces warned Mejia that investment in the police had to be accompanied by robust accountability measures, and so several mechanisms were also established through which citizens could report acts of extrajudicial violence.8 The participatory project also called for the construction and staffing of new juvenile detention centers focused on the resocialization of delinquent youth (Programa Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1991, 17–18). Violence prevention emphasized socioeconomic investment within peripheral neighborhoods. Economic development efforts included tax breaks for new firms, labor skills training for community members, microloans for small businesses, training for at-risk youth on how to start their own businesses, and several programs to help microentrepreneurs link their businesses to Medellin’s efforts to increase its exports to foreign markets. Education measures aimed to increase school enrollment at multiple levels. At-risk youth and members of armed actors that had not previously attended school would receive psychological, economic, and social assistance as part of transitioning into the educational system. The project also proposed investing in community health workers in low-income neighborhoods, and support for the efforts of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working on the prevention of drug addiction. Efforts to expand public space entailed working with civil society and community members to identify and redevelop public space that had been neglected by the state or taken over by squatters. Housing initiatives proposed legal solutions to the occupation of public and private lands, grants for homeowners in peripheral neighborhoods to make improvements to their houses, and funding for groups of residents to work collaboratively on neighborhood improvements. The project aimed to establish several community centers that would work with civil society to build youth-led organizations that could work on neighborhood development and foster stronger social ties between at-risk youth and community residents. And an Office of Human Rights was proposed to coordinate with local and national governments on investigating allegations of local human rights violations (Programa Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1991, 11–16). Both violence control and prevention efforts were situated within the broader objective of deepening local political participation. The project called for establishing several new participatory institutions, including nearly four dozen

60  Medellin

citizen councils at the neighborhood level that would enable residents to discuss and debate local development needs and challenges. The councils would engage in participatory budgeting exercises through which communities could draw on municipal funds to develop, implement, and manage neighborhoodlevel projects in the areas of education, health, public services, and sports and cultural programming. The participatory project proposed developing a citylevel council focused on security issues that would bring together local government, the private sector, civil society, and citizens to deliberate on measures to improve security conditions. And finally, the project called on local government to increase the participation of civil society in the formal institutional spaces, including policy commissions and the boards of municipal agencies, where powerful political and economic interests had long shaped policy-making and the distribution of public resources in Medellin. In brief, Medellin’s first participatory political project was an ambitious endeavor to stem violence in both the short and long terms through an array of measures and institutions that linked control and prevention measures to the task of making local government more inclusionary of marginalized populations. Yet, to the dismay of the project’s architects, many of its foundational measures—particularly those that entailed the reconfiguration of political power—were derailed. To explain the project’s trajectory requires that we unpack the first variable in the analytic framework: the urban political economy. From a United Local Ruling Class to Thin Linkages: Disengaged Relations

Prior to political decentralization the Conservative Party was the dominant political force in Medellin. As shown in Table 3.2, conservatives largely managed to maintain their hold on power during the city’s first five direct mayoral elections. The city’s first popularly elected mayor, Juan Gómez Martínez, was a longtime traditional Conservative Party member whose family had produced several notable and powerful Conservative Party leaders. However, Gómez’s successor, Luis Alfredo Ramos, was not a member of the traditional party elite. He was instead the leader of Equipo Colombia (Team Colombia), one of several factions within the Conservative Party that was amassing emerging professional politicians who lacked personal linkages to the city’s traditional political leaders (Franco 2006, 197–98). Business leaders viewed Ramos’s victory as further sign of the growing disengagement between local government and Medel-

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 61

Ta bl e 3 . 2: Medellin: Popularly Elected Mayors (1988–2007) Term

1988–90 1990–92 1992–94 1995–97 1998–2000 2001–3 2004–7

Mayor

Juan Gómez Martínez Omar Flórez Vélez Luis Alfredo Ramos Sergio Naranjo Pérez Juan Gómez Martínez Luis Pérez Gutiérrez Sergio Fajardo Valderrama

Party

Conservative Liberal Conservative Conservative Conservative Liberal Independent

lin’s economic elite. For several generations parties and politics in Medellin, as in much of Colombia, had been shaped and controlled by the same small groups of elites to the point that their surnames rarely went missing from political offices (Botero 1996). Yet, in the eyes of the city’s business leaders, Ramos represented exactly what had gone wrong in the local political economy. Up until the late twentieth century the city’s dominant industrial sector worked closely with traditional party elites in governing Medellin (Botero 1996; Safford 1965, 502–26). Industrialists had made their fortunes during the coffee boom of the nineteenth century, and in the early 1900s founded several major textile factories that would eventually become among the largest manufacturing firms in Latin America. By the 1930s local industry accounted for more than 60 percent of manufacturing’s contribution to Colombia’s gross domestic product (GDP) (Cámara de Comercio de Medellín 1994, 31). Industry supported clientelist approaches to maintaining control over the city’s growing marginalized populations (Farnsworth-Alvear 2000), particularly given that the city housed nearly the entirety of the region’s industrial labor force by the late 1960s (Walton 1977, 64). Robust linkages between local government and industry facilitated the shared coordination of local governance. These linkages included the regular appointment of industrialists to the offices of mayor and seats on the municipal council, as well as several public-private commissions whose scope of authority included areas particularly relevant for industry’s economic interests. During the first half of the twentieth century industrialists used their charitable institutions to develop much of the local legislation regarding zoning, public services, and other significant urban development issues that local government would then adopt as law (Botero 1996, 34–41). Yet the weakening of the traditional party system and the rise of new political forces led to a thinning of local government-business linkages (Franco 2006). The establishment of mayoral elections along with the rise of the new

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professional political class prompted laments among business elites that the era when the city’s economic and political leaders were indistinguishable had ended (Leyva 2014, 130–31). The political uncertainty that business perceived was compounded by a downturn in the economy prompted by economic liberalization measures. Medellin’s large manufacturing firms were suddenly exposed to international competitors after decades of having been shielded under the import-substitution industrialization (ISI) model established in the wake of World War II. Whereas in 1976 thirteen of the top twenty firms in Antioquia (measured by total assets and liquid assets) were in the manufacturing sector, during the 1990s that number dropped to six as financial services firms claimed nine of the top ten spots (Franco 2006, Table 1, 155). Meanwhile, the very institutional configuration of the business community had also begun to change as industrial elites both diversified their investments and joined with leaders of other economic sectors to facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration through an economic group known as the Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (Economic Group of Antioquia, or GEA). The GEA was founded in the late 1970s as a collective response among Medellin’s business leaders to the hostile takeover of local firms by investors from other parts of the country. Structured on the basis of interlocking directorates,9 the GEA’s leadership consisted of three major firms headed by Suramericana, a large diversified financial services firm. The other two firms were Grupo Nacional de Chocolates, which produced packaged foods, and Argos, a major cement producer. The overlapping ties among the city’s powerful service and industrial firms enabled the GEA to function as an encompassing institution. By the 1990s the GEA included more than 140 large firms from across distinct economic sectors, and its increasing fortunes earned it the title of “the other Medellin cartel.”10 Membership in the GEA provided firms with a number of selective incentives, including access to some of the country’s wealthiest and most successful business investors.11 Controlling these selective incentives enabled the GEA’s leaders to discipline its members into supporting policy initiatives that firms or sectors acting independently might otherwise have opposed or not endorsed. During the 1980s, for example, the interlocking directorate structure served as a shield against narcotrafficking influence in the local private sector. The GEA’s leadership actively monitored whether firms within the group were collaborating with the Medellin drug cartel by placing high-level representatives from one or more of the leading firms on the boards of directors of each company belonging to the group. These high-level representatives indicated to individual

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 63

firm owners that any suspected collusion with the drug cartel would result in the withholding of economic support from and disinvestment by the GEA.12 GEA leaders were aware that the shifting economic conditions amid market liberalization necessitated a transformation of Medellin’s economy. The city could no longer rely on the export of manufactured goods to drive local growth. The private sector thus envisioned reshaping the city from an industrial workhorse to a knowledge-based economy. The latter would preserve the industrial sector while linking it to a focus on providing professional services for global corporations and capital markets while building strengths in medical tourism, high-end commerce and retail, telecommunications, and energy production (Cámara de Comercio de Medellín 1994, 31; Cámara de Comercio de Medellín 1999, 26). The aim, in brief, was to build a globally competitive city attractive to foreign capital. But whereas the dense linkages that had characterized public-private sector relations in the past would have facilitated such a task, these linkages had been weakened amid the fragmentation of the party system to the point where the two were operating largely in isolation from each other. The preferences of business and Ramos regarding the participatory project were not necessarily opposed. Business needed violence to subside but also for the city’s image to begin to change, which elements of the participatory project could have helped realize. Ramos’s reliance on clientelism, meanwhile, provided little incentive to favor the participatory project’s efforts to increase political participation or establish programmatic ties between local government and marginalized communities, but did favor the socioeconomic investment associated with violence prevention as a tool to sustain clientelist exchange and claims-making efforts. Thus preferences were neither conflicting nor fully aligned. Yet, the breakdown of linkages between the public and private sectors precluded alignment of preferences and collaboration. Business viewed Ramos as the embodiment of the professional political class that was trying to govern without the historical influence of the economic elite. As one longtime Medellin business leader noted: “The main thing that was wrong with Luis Alfredo Ramos was that he had the wrong last name.”13 And Ramos, in turn, viewed the city’s economic elite as the allies of the traditional political class that vilified the new political faces that did not belong to the city’s traditional political dynasties. As one of Ramos’s aides indicated: “Before popular elections [for mayors], Medellin’s business leaders had essentially run local government. Ramos was not going let [business] assume the same role after working so hard to be

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voted into office without their help.”14 Thus the case of Medellin in the early thus 1990s illustrates that while preferences might be somewhat compatible, low linkage precludes collaboration and instead perpetuates disengagement between the public and private sectors. This disengagement was evident to both civil society and the national authorities as well. As one civil society leader noted, the GEA as the city’s “main economic leaders” were notoriously “absent” in local politics during the early 1990s.15 National government officials associated with the Council indicated that it had been the seeming unwillingness of Medellin’s political and economic leaders to work together in confronting local violence that had further convinced President Gaviria and his advisors to intervene in the city through the Council.16 Yet, while disengagement increased the scope of the politics of urban violence, it also proved an obstacle for the Council’s efforts to advance the participatory project in the face of resistance by local government. But before explaining the trajectory of the city’s first participatory project, we must also establish the pattern of armed territorial control within the city. Fragmented Territorial Control: “Violence with a Thousand Heads”

Violence in Medellin during the late 1980s and into the early 1990s was certainly linked to the conflict between drug traffickers and the Colombian state. Yet a focus solely on this conflict would overlook the other layers of violence generated by the competing, powerful armed actors that had widely varying links to the drug trade and the civil war. This fragmented territorial control would generate several challenges for sustaining the participatory political project. Upon declaring war against the state, the cartel outsourced violence to an array of armed actors in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods, several with origins predating the cartel. Funds and weapons provided by the DTO enabled armed groups to increase their coercive capacities. Thus between 1980 and 1989 the number of homicide victims in Medellin killed by firearms increased eightfold from 431 to 3,546 (Giraldo 1991, Table 1, 120). But not all armed actors formed alliances with the cartel, and the cartel did not aim to establish a territorial monopoly within the city’s periphery. Far-reaching variation in the actors’ composition, organizational structures, and tactics instead produced what one close observer of conflict in the city at the time called “violence with a thousand heads” (Salazar 1990, 2).

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 65

Among the armed actors in Medellin were several hundred bandas that consisted of groups of armed young men that used violence to maintain territorial “monopolies or mini-fiefdoms” (Jaramillo 1994, 15). Bandas then leveraged territorial control to engage in varied illicit markets, including the transport of drugs and extortion rackets. They also regulated a variety of everyday activities within their territories, including the forms of clothing residents could wear, the times when they could enter and leave the territories, and the kinds of associational activities that could take place (Jaramillo 1994; Salazar and Jaramillo 1992). While some bandas sold their services to the cartel, Salazar and Jaramillo (1992, 91) concluded on the basis of extended ethnographic research in Medellin’s periphery that no more than 30 percent of the bandas were working for the cartel, with the remainder engaged in a variety of other violent criminal activities primarily revolving around competition with each other and resistance against incursions into their territories by state security forces. A second key armed actor were milícias, which emerged out of the national government’s failed peace negotiations with the M-19 and Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL) insurgencies in the mid-1980s. Both insurgencies established peace camps in peripheral neighborhoods located in the city’s northern and western areas, leaving in their wake young men trained in military tactics and the use of firearms (Ceballos 2000, 390–92). The milícia emerged in response to community demands for security in the face of escalating violence and insecurity. Milícias engaged in social cleansings, armed patrols, and also regulated varied forms of behavior in the territories under their control (Gutiérrez and Jaramillo 2004, 21; Jaramillo 1993). Yet, as the milícias grew in number, leaders found it difficult to control the behavior of new recruits, who grew increasingly predatory toward the communities under their control, including the use of lethal violence to extract rents, regulate illicit markets, and maintain microlevel orders (Jaramillo 1994, 31–33).17 Thus individual milícias not only competed against bandas and other armed groups, but also against themselves given limited coordination in leadership. Combos represent a third major armed actor operating in Medellin. They were composed of young men engaged predominantly in varied forms of delinquency, including armed robberies and house invasions. And while combos lacked the same level of coercive capacity as bandas and milícias, they also established territorial control and used violence to extract rents from the local populations (Vélez Rendón 2001, 66). Additional smaller armed actors that varied in their level of organization and objectives, but which also contributed to the

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growth of lethal violence, included chichipatos. These were transient groups of youth that would carry out small-scale acts of delinquency in neighborhoods under the control of bandas and milícias, prompting the latter to respond with violence (Ceballos 2000, 389). And finally there were death squads composed of police and military officers alongside hired assassins supported by small business owners engaged in selective violence targeting young men assumed to be assassins working for the Medellin cartel or members of bandas and milícias, but which also veered into the use of violence to then regulate licit and illicit economies the territories under their control (Salazar 1990).18 In sum, Medellin’s peripheral neighborhoods exhibited a significant number of competing armed actors with generally high levels of coercive capacity and low coordination in criminal leadership over varied local illicit markets. The next section analyzes how this pattern of fragmented territorial control combined with the disengaged dynamics of the urban political economy to derail Medellin’s first participatory project. Interactive Analysis

Even before assuming office, Luis Alfredo Ramos indicated his resistance to the programmatic and participatory elements of the project. Shortly before assuming office, Ramos received a briefing from Maria Emma Mejia on the Council’s plans, during which Ramos indicated that while the resources committed by the central government to address violence were “appreciated,” the Council would need to “align” its political priorities with his own as the city’s popularly elected mayor.19 The meeting foreshadowed Ramos’s approach to the Council during his time in office, which focused on capturing the Council’s resources while limiting its ability to deepen the political participation of marginalized communities. The city’s cohesive business community, meanwhile, would remain largely detached from the politics of urban violence, declining requests by the Council to help in defending against the resistance and, at times, offensives launched by local government against the participatory project. a. Protecting Clientelism and Claims-Making To neutralize the participatory project’s threat to clientelist exchange and claims-making, Ramos sought control over the Council’s resources, specifically the moneys allocated to violence prevention initiatives that accounted for the bulk of its budget. More than 85 percent of the Council’s budget for the participatory project came from the national government (Departamento Nacional de Planeación 1991, 19). The remaining resources were earmarked as the local gov-

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 67

ernment’s responsibility. The Council was originally given authority to manage the budgets for the violence prevention and political participation components of the political project, which it would disburse directly to individual government agencies working on project-related initiatives in the realms of education, housing, and health, while other funds would be awarded through contracts to community organizations, universities, and other local partners working in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods. Yet, in bypassing the mayor’s office, the project’s funding structure threatened Ramos’s ability to channel goods and services via clientelistic networks and limit the political participation of marginalized populations. In contesting this dimension of the participatory project, Ramos paradoxically sought support from the very institution that had been forged to stem clientelism. The 1991 Constitution included a number of decentralizing measures that bestowed local governments with both political authorities and responsibilities regarding local socioeconomic investment. Ramos thus pressed the central government to amend the Council’s funding structure to provide the mayor’s office greater discretion over the allocation of resources. Ramos himself traveled to Bogota to make the case for relocating the Council’s budget to the mayor’s office, enlisting the aid of his former colleagues in the national congress from when he had served as a senator from Antioquia to pressure officials within the executive branch.20 Much to the dismay of both grassroots civil society and national government staff within the Council, the national Ministry of Finance ordered the Council’s funds to be provided to local government first, which would then disburse them to the Council after the latter filed formal requests with the mayor’s office.21 Even before it had begun implementing its varied initiatives and programs, the participatory political project was hobbled as local government gained significant influence over when and how the project’s funds would be spent, and who could claim benefits from their distribution. Interviews with Council staff members indicated that once the mayor secured control over the Council’s resources, he “would often drag [his] feet” on the implementation of initiatives until receiving assurances of control over “when and where” investments were initiated, from the construction of new schools to the opening of community centers.22 During public unveilings of these projects, the mayor’s office would require that civil society leaders who had collaborated on the initiatives “remain silent on stage.”23 Requests for funds would come back from the mayor’s office with budgets slashed or recommen-

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dations that specific vendors known to be close to the mayor be awarded contracts as part of the initiatives. “Ramos had made us part of the very type of politics we were supposed to help end!” complained one former Council staff member.24 After Mejia privately confronted Ramos regarding the increasingly tensions between the Council and the mayor, Ramos publicly declared that the Council was a political threat to local government’s sovereignty and that its priorities would have to align with his own.25 Council leaders approached the GEA to request support in pressing Ramos to allow the Council greater autonomy. Yet business leaders responded by indicating that they had little palanca (colloquialism for “influence”) in Ramos’s office. As one Council leader indicated, “[T]he private sector neither helped nor opposed us when it came to the mayor, instead they wanted to be left alone to focus on taking care of their firms.”26 When the Council requested that the national government return the budgeting model back to the original plan, Ramos again turned to his congressional allies for support. The national government then moved to resolve the conflict by recentralizing the Council’s finances to the executive branch.27 With its finances under the control of authorities in Bogota and the mayor of Medellin trying to undermine its key efforts, the Council quickly found itself faltering in its efforts to bring about the social transformation it had sought to catalyze. b. Resisting the Political Opening Ramos also resisted the calls for deepening political participation in Medellin that the Council issued through a series of public forums, entitled “Medellin: Alternatives for the Future.” The forums were intended to bring together the city’s public and private sector elites with civil society and community leaders from peripheral neighborhoods to plan ways to deepen citizen participation in local policy-making. Organizers structured the forums as participatory processes coordinated through numerous public meetings in peripheral neighborhoods where local residents could discuss health, education, public space, and housing policy with the city’s political leaders. Yet, analysis of primary archival materials and interviews with forum coordinators revealed frustration with Ramos’s opposition to the forums and the private sector’s minimal support for the political opening. In 1991 the forums led to the publication of a “Social Pact” endorsed by several hundred leaders of community organizations. The pact was intended to be a “grand accord amongst the city’s centers of power in order to establish clear

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 69

rules and agreements in order to minimize social conflict that has resulted in today’s generalized violence” (Programa Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1992, 64). Coordinators of the pact proposed the formal institutionalization of civil society participation on the public commissions that had long been used by party leaders to shape local policies across a range of areas largely without input from or accountability to the public. One community organizer described the commissions as spaces where “the [political] parties governed in the dark behind closed doors.”28 Ramos refused to endorse the Social Pact and rebuffed demands by civil society for greater voice in the commissions. Members of the Council again pressed GEA leaders to pressure Ramos into making the commissions more inclusionary. But the Council’s efforts to obtain business support were rebuffed by business leaders.29 In retreating from the political sphere, the private sector was thus focused on its immediate interests versus the broader structural change to the local political order that the Council was proposing through the participatory project. The Council’s coordinators characterized the degree of commitment among local political and business leaders to the pact as “insuffic� cient relative to the gravity of the crisis” (Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1993, 227). Ramos countered that his primary obligation was to the “pact” that he had already established with “all of Medellin’s residents” by winning the mayoral elections on the basis of his own vision for dealing with violence and the other challenges the city faced.30 Thus this key effort to foster more inclusionary politics was sidelined. c. Fragmented Territorial Control: Challenges and Opportunities The fragmented nature of territorial control in Medellin’s periphery also generated challenges for the sustainability of the participatory project, as well as opportunities for those that opposed it. The high levels of lethal violence fostered uncertainty and fear among community organizations implementing project initiatives in peripheral neighborhoods as well as participants in the initiatives. Interviews with the staff of community organizations and residents in the La Independencia I and 20 de Julio neighborhoods in the western portion of the city where the Council supported several programs indicated that they were often the target of threats and acts of violence. But particularly unsettling was the uncertainty regarding which armed actors were carrying out the violence, and whether the violence was because of their participation in Council-sponsored initiatives or part of the seemingly “chaotic” local violence.31

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An example that illustrates how this uncertainty in a setting of fragmented control can undermine efforts to extend local government into violent peripheral settings is the story of one community resident, “Armando,” who participated in a job skills workshop sponsored by the Council when he had been part of a local banda.32 The program was held on the weekends in a school classroom in a highly violent neighborhood called La Independencia I. Several weeks after the workshop began, Armando indicated that he and other participants began noticing cars filled with men never before seen in the neighborhood circling the school during the workshop. Sometime later, three workshop participants disappeared shortly after leaving the school. Neighborhood residents who witnessed the disappearance indicated that armed men riding in the same cars that had been circling the school had stopped the workshop participants and forced them into the vehicles. The bodies of the three young men appeared several days later abandoned not far from the school, with signs of torture. Soon thereafter, as news of the deaths spread throughout the neighborhood, the program was shut down as residents stopped attending out of fear of also becoming the targets of the unknown assailants. The fluid nature of power relations among armed actors within the fragmented setting also posed obstacles for advancing key elements of the participatory project. Conflicts between and within armed actors often translated into the breakdown of lulls in violence that had resulted from negotiations between armed actors and community leaders working with the Council. The collapse of these lulls in violence frustrated the Council’s efforts to encourage members of armed actors to give up their weapons and enroll in resocialization initiatives. Instead, the uncertainty of the pacts often reaffirmed distrust between competing armed actors and thus a reluctance to commit to the resocialization initiatives.33 The fragmented nature of territorial control also enabled the military units operating in and around Medellin as part of both counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations to suggest that local community organizations involved in the participatory project were aligned with or extensions of the insurgencies.34 The case of the Popular Civic Corporation (CCP) is illustrative of the experiences of several community organizations. In the early 1990s, the CCP formed a human rights committee to foster dialogue between the Council and armed actors operating in the neighborhoods where the CCP worked.35 Shortly thereafter, state security forces accused the CCP of collaborating with milícias in a range of violent criminal activities.36 In June of 1992 three young

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 71

men working for the CCP were executed by a group of unknown assailants and the military immediately declared the victims to have been active members of the milícias despite a lack of evidence attesting to the fact. By linking the community organization to the insurgency and offering this as the reason for the violence against its members, the military’s actions dissuaded local residents from participating in social mobilization activities undertaken as part of the participatory project. The CCP closed its doors in 1992 after most of its leaders were assassinated under circumstances rendered unclear by the multiplicity of competing actors operating in the periphery.37 In response to complaints lodged by civil society leaders regarding these types of violent actions against civil society organizations, the mayor’s office often used the fragmented nature of the periphery to deflect criticism and profess helplessness. One civil society leader was told by an aide to the mayor that the “anarchy in this city’s poor neighborhoods” made it “impossible to assign blame” in the violence being carried out against civil society and community residents participating in the project’s activities.38 And though Ramos was not directly implicated in the extrajudicial violence, he failed to publicly condemn the social cleansings despite rumors that several prominent local political families were providing funds to carry out the activities (Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1993, 226). In brief, fragmented territorial control generated significant practical and political obstacles for the participatory project. Ending the Participatory Project

In January of 1993, Maria Emma Mejia resigned from her position as director of the Council. By this point Ramos’s office had become the central staging ground for what one Council staff member termed a “public relations smear campaign” against the Council for not fully demurring to the mayor’s authority.39 During her last press briefing in Medellin, Mejia indicated that the Council had become an “uncomfortable pebble in the shoe” of local government.40 The unraveling of the partnership between the central government and local civil society left the latter without the resources and the political leverage that its partnership with the national government had provided. Civil society leaders lamented the failure of the participatory political project to produce structural change in local politics (Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana 1993, 33–35; Quijano 2004). In the wake of project’s failure, a member of Ramos’s Conservative Party

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faction, Sergio Naranjo Pérez, won Medellin’s 1995 mayoral elections. Naranjo indicated that his administration perceived the incapacity of the local government to “repress and control” (Acuerdo Municipal 19, 1995, 36) violence as the root cause of local insecurity, and upon assuming office focused largely “on security in a military sense, meaning firepower and surveillance” (Veeduría Medellín 1998, 3). The return to the status quo prioritized short-term measures and centralized decision-making that limited citizen participation in the governance of security matters. Medellin’s Second Participatory Political Project: A Shifting Political Economy and an Emerging Armed Monopoly

During the second half of the 1990s old security challenges persisted and new ones emerged in Medellin. Although lethal violence declined, the dismantling of the Medellin cartel did not bring an end to the varied armed actors operating in the periphery. The city’s homicide rate remained well above that of other major Colombian cities. Civil society criticized local government’s continued reliance on a mix of coercive force and largely ineffectual efforts to negotiate pacts between local armed actors as a way to stem violence. The pacts tended to break down amid the fragmented nature of territorial control and the failure of mayors to provide social investment promised as part of discussions with leaders of armed groups. Mayors instead viewed the pacts as a way to secure politically valuable short-term security gains while the armed actors leveraged them to build their capacity to overtake the groups that had signed onto the pacts.41 Once the pacts broke down, violence resumed and the local government could again justify the use of coercive force in what became a vicious circle (Vélez Rendón 2001, 71). Yet the situation became increasingly more complex toward the end of the 1990s as the civil war spilled into Medellin. In the mid-1990s Colombia became a major producer of coca leaf as eradication efforts in Peru and Bolivia displaced production operations to Colombia (DeShazo et al. 2007, 4). The resulting increase in illicit rents enabled insurgent and paramilitary groups to strengthen their finances and recruitment efforts while expanding their territorial reach into urban centers, including Medellin. Thus in the mid-2000s Medellin’s local government launched its second participatory political project as levels of lethal violence again began to increase. The project was proposed by Sergio Fajardo, the first political independent to become mayor of Medellin. Among Fajardo’s main political allies and key

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 73

Ta bl e 3 . 3 : Medellin’s Second Participatory Political Project St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Increase access to justice through formal and alternative judicial institutions

Increase access to and quality of public goods and services among marginalized communities

Develop participatory planning and budgeting initiatives

Expand the territorial presence of the police

Develop a citizen culture that upholds human rights and coexistence

Construct institutions for citizens to hold government accountable and access public information

Increase police personnel and update technological resources

Analyze and propose prevention policies for at-risk youth

Increase public access to local government records and archives

Strengthen police-community relations

Provide economic and infrastructural resources to communities receiving demobilized paramilitaries

Support the establishment of civil society networks for local development

Develop initiatives to strengthen family units in marginalized communities

Establish institutions and programming to encourage political participation among youth

Establish greater equity in the citywide distribution of public space

Provide institutional support for local administrative committees

Redevelop and legalize housing stock in marginalized neighborhoods Foster formal entrepreneurial activity and knowledge among at-risk populations S o u r c e : Alcaldía de Medellín (2004 and 2009).

proponents of the participatory project were the GEA and civil society leaders. In contrast to the first derailed participatory project, this second project would prompt a reconfiguration of the local political order in Medellin and a rebranding of the city’s global image. Why was this second participatory project sustained despite the strong similarities with its predecessor’s focus on violence control and prevention efforts within a framework of deepening political participation? Before using the analytic framework to answer this question, it is important to establish the contours of this second participatory project, which are summarized in Table 3.3. Violence control measures emphasized building the institutional capacity of the police and the judiciary. Among the measures proposed were the establish-

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ment of several municipal institutions that would provide citizens access to a variety of judicial and police services, ranging from free legal advice for lowincome residents to the ability to file police reports. The project also committed public funds to increase the size of the police, provide it with new technological resources, and expand its territorial presence in peripheral neighborhoods. Violence prevention efforts centered on increasing access to and the quality of public goods and services, including education and healthcare services for marginalized communities. The emphasis on building citizen culture sought to foster norms of self-regulation, respect for diversity, and embrace of human rights through pedagogical exercises held in schools, public spaces, and the media. The participatory project proposed several measures to empower and enable at-risk youth to make substantive contributions to local policy-making, including a committee through which youth would deliberate and propose public policy addressing youth-related issues. The project aimed to increase the resources and territorial presence of municipal institutions where families could receive a variety of services, including legal aid, psychological support, social services for children, and counseling services. The Proyectos Urbanos Integrados (Integrated Urban Projects) initiative organized municipal infrastructural investment to ensure a more equitable distribution of public facilities across the city as part of a commitment to social urbanism, wherein infrastructural projects were seen as conduits for local government to deepen ties with marginalized populations and reshape statesociety relations. Transforming the built environment was intended to bring innovative designs in architecture and planning for the use of public space to the city’s poorest violent neighborhoods as a way of signaling the presence of the state, but also to remind residents of long marginalized neighborhoods that they too were part of Medellin.42 The housing component of the project included increasing the stock of public housing, subsidizing the purchase of new housing for low-income families, and providing legal assistance to families illegally occupying public or private lands. Finally, violence prevention efforts also centered on supporting the entrepreneurial pursuits of at-risk youth with microloans and business training to help them secure stable sources of income. Both the control and prevention efforts were part of the broader focus on deepening citizen participation at multiple scales. A participatory budgeting initiative was proposed through which each of the city’s sixteen districts would receive a set portion of the municipal budget. As part of the participatory budgeting process, local development needs would be debated and decided in meetings

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 75

between residents, civil society, and municipal representatives. Urban planning exercises entailed significant and multiple forms of community participation in the design, oversight, and management of varied neighborhood level infrastructural initiatives. To build local capacity to participate in policy-making processes the project provided financial and technical assistance to foster networks among neighborhood-based organizations. And the project also aimed to generate new mechanisms for citizens to ensure public sector accountability and transparency, while also providing residents with ready access to public records and data as a way to strengthen their capacity to engage in local governance. A Shifting Political Economy: Rebuilding Linkages between the Public and Private Sectors

The deepening of market liberalization during the 1990s further impressed upon the GEA the need to internationalize Medellin’s economy by making it a key destination for foreign investment (Londoño 2004, 59). But GEA leaders remained acutely aware that internationalizing Medellin would require revamping the city’s global image. As one GEA executive noted, in the span of a few years Pablo Escobar had accomplished “what it would have taken a public relations team much longer and millions of dollars to do: establish Medellin as a major city in the imagination of the international community.”43 Unfortunately for business the image that Escobar had imparted on the city was one of violence, insecurity, and disorder. Yet, this dark legacy was not wholly unwelcome by business, who paradoxically saw the city’s tattered global image and its “preexisting name recognition” as a platform they could use to “sell Medellin” as safe for international investors.44 Doing so, however, would require influencing the nature of the project the city would launch in response to violence and, more broadly, reconstructing links to local government through which to reestablish the private sector’s influence on urban governance. Thus in 1997 the GEA’s research arm, a prominent think tank named Proantioquia, convened several of the city’s main private sectors firms, institutions, and leaders to develop policy recommendations for how local government should respond to violence. Through this private sector initiative, called Entretodos (Between All of Us), Proantioquia brought US and European security experts, academics, and consultants to Medellin for a series of closeddoor workshops to help private sector leaders devise specific initiatives. The encompassing nature of the GEA also helped to ensure that participating firms who otherwise would have preferred responses to violence distinct from those

76  Medellin

Tabl e 3 . 4: Medellin: Measures and Objectives Proposed by Entretodos in Response to Violence Measures

Key Objectives

Access to Justice for Citizens

Increase ties between communities, police, and the judiciary

Promotion of Peace among Children and Youth

Stem antisocial behavior and foster citizen culture among at-risk and youth populations

Media Outlets as Promoters of Peace

Modify cultural norms and refrain from sensationalistic news coverage

Institutional Modernization

Support the development of community organizations working with at-risk populations

Citizen Oversight

Establish mechanisms for society to assess the implementation and outcomes of public sector responses to violence

Administrative Development

Provide local government with administrative aid to implement security measures

Observatory on Violence

Systematize databases on local violence

S o u r c e : Contraloría General de Medellín (2004).

generated by Entretodos nonetheless endorsed the resulting policies. As noted by one of the coordinators of Entretodos: “Sometimes during the closed-door meetings business owners would declare that we were wasting our time. They would say that what was needed to deal with violence in the city was more violence.” According to the coordinator, this last comment referred to the use of illegal security forces, such as social cleansing groups, which it was rumored that some of the business leaders had supported during the early 1990s. Yet it was at these instances that GEA representatives would “defuse” the situation and talk to individual owners about the collective need to move “beyond the practices of the past”—ostensibly again in reference to the long-standing use of private security forces by some elements of the city’s business community.45 Table 3.4 summarizes the key objectives of the individual measures that Entretodos proposed. Collectively the programs aimed to strengthen control institutions, including the police and the judiciary, while also deepening ties between these institutions and citizens. Additional measures included transforming cultural norms while fostering citizen culture, enabling citizens to hold local government accountable for local citizen security conditions, and providing support to strengthen local government’s capacity to administer and implement security-related initiatives, including systematizing data collection through the establishment of an Observatory on Violence.

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 77

The GEA leveraged its resources to ensure that local government adopted and implemented the programs it had designed. Business secured funding for the program through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which agreed to provide Medellin with a $15 million loan for the implementation of the programs if local government committed an additional $10 million in public funds for their implementation.46 Medellin’s incoming mayor at the time was the Conservative Party scion Juan Gómez Martínez (1998–2000), who had already served as the city’s first popularly elected mayor and enjoyed strong ties to the private sector. GEA member firms and representatives, including divisions of Suramericana and its president, Nicanor Restrepo Santamaría, had all made substantial donations to Gómez’s mayoral campaign.47 GEA leaders thus met with Gómez days before he assumed office, where they presented the policies and IDB financing deal to the mayor-elect “on a silver platter.”48 Gómez adopted the policies and committed the public funds necessary to obtain international funding. Yet, a shift in the local political economy would soon turn the tide against the GEA and threaten both its efforts to transform Medellin’s image and, more broadly, its initial steps toward rebuilding linkages to local government. Before turning to this shift, the next section discusses the shift in the nature of territorial control that unfolded in the time leading up to the second participatory project. An Emerging Armed Monopoly

By the end of the 1990s insurgent and paramilitary forces were mobilizing to control territory, illicit markets, and armed actors in Medellin’s peripheral neighborhoods. Both the FARC and the ELN sought to co-opt milícias while battling with bandas for territorial control (Blair et al. 2009, 36).49 The paramilitaries built alliances with Medellin’s bandas to counter the milícias while also informally collaborating with elements of the military operating in the area (Blair et al. 2009, 37–40; Jaramillo et al. 1998). But the paramilitaries also forged partnerships with the city’s powerful criminal organizations, including the innocuously named “offices” that emerged out of the dismantling of the Medellin cartel and that served as clearinghouses for criminal groups seeking either to obtain weapons or outsource specific criminal activities, including assassinations and kidnappings. Paramilitaries opted to partner with the most powerful of these offices, the Oficina de Envigado, which was headed by Adolfo Paz (aka Don Berna) (Gutiérrez and Jaramillo 2004, 26). Realizing that the Oficina de Envigado could play a key role in deepening paramilitary ties to lucrative illicit

78  Medellin

economies in the city, the paramilitaries made Don Berna the commander of a new paramilitary group: the Bloque Cacique Nutibara in Medellin (Gutiérrez and Jaramillo 2004; Piedrahita 2004). By 2002 the paramilitaries and insurgents in Medellin controlled approximately 650 armed groups in the city between the two of them (Giraldo 2008, 105). The final push into an armed monopoly under the command of Don Berna resulted from several factors. First, Don Berna mobilized the BCN and its criminal allies to eliminate insurgent rivals. The resulting territorial expansion led the BCN into conflict with a second paramilitary group operating in Medellin, the Bloque Metro. Yet the BCN emerged the victor as it displaced the Bloque Metro, killing those who refused to join the BCN and co-opting the rest. Second, Don Berna’s efforts were bolstered by the national government’s 2002 military intervention in the Comuna 13 (also known as San Javier), a violent district in the city’s western region where many neighborhoods had been under milícia control. President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002–10), who won office based on a promise of hardline tactics to re-establish security in Colombia, ordered the military and police to retake Comuna 13 through an operation dubbed Orión.50 The operation was racked with accusations of human rights abuses, including forced disappearances and executions, and allegations that state security forces cooperated with BCN combatants in ousting the milícias (Amnesty International 2005). The power vacuum generated by the ousting of the milícias was soon filled by the BCN. Finally, in 2003 the BCN demobilized as part of peace negotiations with the central government. The demobilization was plagued by challenges, including the participation of nonparamilitaries, the absence of oversight mechanisms, and the central government’s failure to plan for the social reinsertion of the demobilized (Palou and Llorente 2009, 14). Yet, Don Berna emerged from the demobilization process not only as the key interlocutor between the local government and the hundreds of demobilized paramilitaries residing in Medellin, but also as the head of a hierarchically organized criminal structure built on the remnants of the BCN’s institutional infrastructure. Still leading the Oficina de Envigado, Don Berna now commanded the city’s largest and most powerful criminal organization with an armed territorial monopoly from which it coordinated a range of lucrative illicit activities. The next section examines how this territorial monopoly intersected with changes in the urban political economy analyzed above to help sustain the participatory project in response to violence.

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 79

Interactive Analysis

The GEA’s efforts to rebuild linkages to local government suffered a major blow when the candidate that it endorsed during the 2000 mayoral elections, Jaime Alberto Arrubla, was defeated. Arrubla had just concluded his term as national secretary of the judiciary, was a well-regarded legal scholar with deep personal and professional ties to the private sector, and had strong standing among traditional Conservative Party leaders. Yet local voters were increasingly disenchanted with the traditional parties given that both Bogota and Cali had already elected political independents as mayors.51 Several candidates sought to leverage this discontent, including Sergio Fajardo, who made his first bid for the mayor’s office as a political independent in the 2000 elections. But both Fajardo and Arrubla lost to Luis Pérez Gutiérrez, leader of a faction within the Liberal Party. And whereas the GEA had begun rebuilding linkages to local government under Juan Gómez Martínez, those linkages quickly broke down with Pérez in the mayor’s office. The key to Pérez’s victory was his ability to unite the city’s varied Liberal Party factions, and their individual clientelist machines, behind his candidacy (Gutiérrez et al. 2013). Once in office Pérez thus needed to reward his supporters by delivering patronage appointments and resources for clientelist exchange. And in doing so, Pérez began taking steps that deconstructed many of the local government’s linkages with the leaders of the private sector that had backed his main opponent during the mayoral elections. The new mayor declined to invite GEA leaders to join many of the public commissions and boards whose formal role was to provide advice and oversight on varied urban policy issues. Informally these bodies had long served as key spaces where political authorities and business leaders made binding “gentleman’s agreements” regarding major policy decisions.52 The GEA interpreted Pérez’s failure to invite its leaders onto these bodies as a signal that he was trying to govern the city “with his back” to business.53 One instructive example of how this move by Pérez enabled the mayor to satisfy political obligations stemming from his election while weakening links to business is the case of the city’s municipal public services firm, Empresas Públicas de Medellín (Public Firms of Medellin, or EPM). The EPM was considered one of the most efficient public service firms in Latin America (Vélez Álvarez 2013), in part because of consistency in the firm’s leadership and close public-private sector collaboration in its governance. Yet, whereas previous mayors had limited themselves to

80  Medellin

replacing only one or two of EPM’s management upon assuming office, Pérez replaced nearly a dozen members of the EPM’s management team with his political allies. Pérez also appointed and dismissed several general managers— another unprecedented set of decisions that in the past would have been at the very least been subject to discussion with business leaders. By failing to maintain links with business leaders on the EPM’s governance, Pérez avoided having to justify his politically driven decisions regarding how the EPM’s resources were used. For example, shortly after making these management changes, Pérez unilaterally froze energy rates charged to consumers while promising to use EPM’s profits for a variety of targeted giveaways, including offering 100,000 subsidized computers to Medellin’s low-income residents. Leaders of the GEA lambasted Pérez for politicizing the EPM, which was prompting international ratings agencies to publicly question their previously positive assessments of the firm.54 Lacking direct access to local government, the GEA launched public demands for greater accountability and transparency in matters regarding the EPM, including holding public forums on the firm’s future and filing numerous formal requests with local government for documentation on the EPM’s financials.55 Pérez dismissed the GEA’s pressures, arguing that Medellin had “too many loud wealthy people who talk too much.”56 Severing ties to the GEA also enabled Pérez to avoid having to account to business for his efforts to reward the financial backers of his campaign through public works contracts. Pérez’s candidacy had received support from several large local construction firms unaligned with the GEA. Many of the infrastructural projects that would come to be associated with the Medellin miracle, such as the construction of new libraries and a tramway linking parts of the periphery to the city center, thus actually began under the Pérez administration. Yet these projects formed part of a broader pattern of public works investment under Pérez that took place with little accountability and transparency. Allegations of corruption piled up against the mayor, who became popularly known as “Luis fifteen” in reference to his allegedly standard commission on local government contracts. During his last month in office alone, Pérez signed more than 162 public works contracts, with one staffer in the Secretariat of Public Works noting that during the last two weeks of the mayor’s term the office was open and working “24 hours a day” to process and finalize public works contracts.57 In 2003 the national government provided approximately $7.3 million to support the paramilitary demobilization initiative, $5.5 million of which Pérez instead redirected to finance major public

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 81

works projects.58 By the time Pérez left office, Medellin was virtually bankrupt with nearly $60 million in debt and in danger of not being able to meet even basic payroll commitments.59 Pérez also broke links with the GEA on citizen security, including discontinuing the programs that Entretodos had developed and disbanding a committee that had been convened to oversee the programs and on which GEA representatives sat. Elimination of the committee gave Pérez full control and oversight of the funds provided by the IDB. The GEA mobilized to have the policies it had developed reinstated, including sponsoring an issue of the well-regarded national news magazine, Semana, in which the former director of Proantioquia and founder of Entretodos warned that Pérez needed to “dedicate more time” to the security policies that the GEA had left in place. Yet, Pérez again ignored business demands amid the conflictive relations between the two. Business, Civil Society, and Coalition Building

The GEA engaged in coalition building to increase political pressure on Pérez. Business reached out to many of the civil society leaders and organizations that had participated in the derailed participatory project of the early 1990s, including Corporación Region and the Instituto Popular de Capacitación. GEA leaders believed that civil society would be willing to collaborate with business given that Pérez had also dismantled key points of contact between civil society and local government.60 One civil society leader indicated: “Our relations with local government were always hard, but under Pérez they were hostile.”61 Indeed, civil society allegations of extrajudicial violence by state security forces operating in peripheral neighborhoods were either ignored by the mayor’s office or prompted sarcastic responses, such as when Pérez stated that “each time the police intervenes in an area some NGO comes out to protest, but I have repeatedly said that in this country there seems to be an NGO for everything and that there are not enough controls on them in place.”62 Business and civil society together developed and released several highly critical assessments of Pérez’s administration, including on issues of violence and insecurity. GEA leaders, however, wanted more than to criticize local government through their growing cooperation with civil society. Business instead wanted to regain the influence in local governance critical for reshaping the city’s economy in ways that aligned with the private sector’s vision of an emerging global city. As a former director of Proantioquia indicated, if business “was going to win the next election,” the private sector would need to join “radical”

82  Medellin

civil society’s “power to convene” the masses with “the political and financial resources of the capitalists.”63 The leaders of those “radical” civil society organizations, however, were aware that business was not collaborating with them to critique Pérez out of a sense of altruism and corporate social responsibility, but that the GEA was looking for ways to reclaim its influential role in local governance. Thus during one of several meetings between GEA and civil society representatives, the latter announced that community organizations across the city could be convinced to launch a massive grassroots campaign during the 2003 mayoral elections, but only for a candidate that would bring about a “total restructuring of local politics.”64 That candidate ended up being Sergio Fajardo, whose populist streak emphasizing the need for equality and inclusion resonated with marginalized communities, but whose professional background as a professor at one of the country’s elite private universities in Bogota and personal background as the member of an elite business family in Antioquia made him palatable to Medellin’s economic leaders. Thus Fajardo ran in the 2003 elections with the support of civil society and the GEA and won with more than 200,000 votes— the largest number for any candidate in the city’s electoral history.65 Upon assuming office, Fajardo appointed representatives from both business and civil society to key positions within local government. Of particular note was the appointment of Alonso Salazar as secretary of government. Salazar was a well-known journalist and social activist who had conducted pathbreaking research on youth, violence, and narcotrafficking in Medellin and had helped to found several prominent civil society organizations in the city.66 The secretary of government is the second most powerful individual position within municipal governments, as it oversees policies regarding local security. Thus an activist, who during the 1990s published several books that pointed to the exclusionary nature of politics and inequality in Medellin as having contributed to the breakdown of order and flourishing of violence, was now formally responsible for citizen security and advancing the participatory political project with the support of the city’s most powerful economic elites. Yet, explaining the sustainment of the participatory project over time also requires considering the role of the armed territorial monopoly. Armed Territorial Monopoly and the Medellin Miracle

Figure 3.1 shows the drop in levels of lethal violence across Medellin’s sixteen districts between 2003, when the BCN demobilized, and 2006, two years into

Popular

Santa Cruz

Manrique

Villa Hermosa

San Javier

Doce de Octubre

Aranjuez

Robledo

Buenos Aires

Castilla

Guayabal

La Candelaria

Belén

La América

Laureles

El Poblado

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 83

Percentage Change in Homicide Rate

0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100

Fig . 3 . 1 : Medellin: Changes in Homicide Rates across Districts (2003–6). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría de Gobierno de Medellín. Districts are organized according to socioeconomic class from the wealthiest (left) to the poorest (right) based on a housing indicator.

the participatory project under Fajardo. The sharpest drops in violence took place in the city’s poorest districts partly as a result of the lack of competition between warring actors that had historically characterized fragmented territorial control in Medellin. But the drop in violence was also attributable to the orders issued by Don Berna that armed groups in these areas refrain from lethal violence. Don Berna gave this order in part because formal and informal business owners in those territories demanded that the armed groups maintain order and reduce their violent extortive activities. This forced Don Berna to push for an equilibrium that armed actors, his criminal organization, and local residents could live with.67 But Don Berna was also attuned to the need for the participatory project to appear as a success in the key indicator of lethal violence. In a 2003 statement released by the BCN released shortly prior to demobilization, the group indicated that reduced violence in Medellin would be vital to foster “the necessary climate so that investment, particularly foreign, which is fundamental if we do not want to be left behind by the engine of globalization, returns, is encouraged, and productive and long-term employment can be generated.”68 The sharp decline in levels of lethal violence under the monopoly enabled

Popular

Santa Cruz

Manrique

San Javier

Villa Hermosa

Aranjuez

Doce de Octubre

Average

Robledo

Buenos Aires

Castilla

Guayabal

Belen

La Candelaria

Laureles

La America

14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 0 El Poblado

Colombian Pesos (Constant at 2012)

84  Medellin

Fig. 3.2 Medellin: Average per Capita Municipal Investment across Districts (2004–11). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría de Gobierno de Medellín and Medellín Como Vamos. Districts are organized according to socioeconomic class from the wealthiest (left) to the poorest (right) based on a housing indicator.

local government to carry out social and infrastructural initiatives as part of improving the quality of life for local residents.69 Figure 3.2 shows the average per capita municipal investment across the city’s districts between 2004 and 2011. Indeed, Fajardo’s successor was Alonso Salazar (2008–11), who continued the participatory project again with the strong backing of the GEA. And as seen Figure 3.2, during this period of eight years under the participatory project, per capita investment in the city’s poorer districts largely exceeded the cross-district average. Between 2004 and 2010, as shown in Figure 3.3, the city’s poorest districts subsequently registered the most significant improvements in quality of life, including access to public services, housing conditions, and perceptions of the legitimacy and efficacy of a range of local government institutions. Yet, executing components of the participatory project in peripheral spaces often required what Mayor Fajardo characterized during an interview as “negotiations” with armed actors to maintain access to the periphery.70 Shortly after Fajardo assumed office he established the Programa de Paz y Reconciliación (Program for Peace and Reconciliation, or PPR), which was charged with resocializing the demobilized paramilitaries. The PPR relied on Don Berna, and more specifically, Berna’s NGO, Corporación Democracia (Corporation Democracy), to communicate with and channel resources to the demobilized population. Berna and fellow BCN commanders established the Corporación as part of the peace negotiations. The PPR contracted with the Corporación to

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 85

3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 Popular

Santa Cruz

Manrique

Villa Hermosa

San Javier

Doce de Octubre

Aranjuez

Robledo

Buenos Aires

Castilla

Guayabal

La Candelaria

Belen

La America

Laureles

0 -0.5

El Poblado

Absolute Change in Quality of Life Indicator

4

3.5

Fig . 3 . 3 : Medellin: Changes in Quality of Life across Districts (2004–10). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría de Gobierno de Medellín. Note: The Quality of Life Indicator is produced by the Medellin’s Departamento Administrativo de Planeación (DAP) and is based on its annual Encuesta de Calidad de Vida (ECV), which was first administered in 2004. This indicator is composed of several subindicators that measure physical capital, access to public services, human capital, social capital, and household demographics.

coordinate various resocialization initiatives, including cultural programming and labor skills training. But there is also evidence that as local government implemented the project, armed actors moved to capture rents stemming from the project in the form of financial resources and some political influence. Many of the young men receiving public benefits through the Corporación would also be tasked by Don Berna’s criminal structure with carrying out various illicit activities (Restrepo 2010). But as the director of the PPR indicated, the Corporación played a central role in enabling the municipality to “reach into” the periphery and work with both “marginalized young men and their surrounding communities.”71 Thus coexistent relations helped to advance socioeconomic investment in peripheral neighborhoods as a central dimension of Medellin’s second participatory project, but also increased the ability of the dominant armed actor to exert social control and obtain financial resources within the territories under its control. Coexistent relations also enabled local government to deepen political participation. Reduced violence and the general belief that a “fragile peace” had

86  Medellin

been struck between city hall and the city’s dominant armed actor created some “breathing room” for residents of the periphery to engage in new participatory processes and thus “finally feel like citizens.”72 Yet these same participatory institutions represented conduits through which Don Berna’s criminal structure could attempt to access public resources and influence local governance. Don Berna pursued two strategies to capture participatory political processes and spaces. First, he pressured community organizations to cede control over their institutions to members of the dominant criminal structure. The leader of one such community organization, Corporación Picacho con Futuro, indicated that he was under near constant pressure to replace the organization’s board with individuals loyal to Don Berna.73 Second, local allies of Don Berna, including demobilized paramilitaries and political sympathizers, entered into elections for local planning committees, the city council, and other institutions that could also provide ready access to public resources and policy-makers. And though the majority of these candidacies nonetheless failed to win elections (Palou and Llorente 2009, 18), the political incorporation of Medellin’s historically marginalized population deepened citizenship while concurrently increasing the incentives and opportunities for the dominant armed actor to colonize new and existing political institutions as a way to expand its power and resources. By reducing levels of violence and enabling local government to extend both socioeconomic investment and political institutions into the periphery, coexistent relations played a vital, though silent, role in Medellin’s rebranding campaign. The city’s new image was vital for attracting foreign investment. In the early 2000s the city established the Agencia de Cooperación E Inversión de Medellín (Medellin’s Agency for Cooperation and Investment, or ACI)—a public institution that reports directly to the mayor and is responsible for promoting the “Medellin brand” in the international community. The director of the ACI indicated that while prior to Fajardo’s electoral victory in 2004 the agency had made some progress in promoting Medellin within international business venues and conferences, it was only once the city implemented its “unique” response to stem violence that the ACI suddenly found itself overwhelmed by the attention of foreign investors and firms curious about “what was happening with violence and security in Medellin.” And while security remains a key concern for international investors, the fact that Medellin was able to lower violence to levels “comparable with those of other major cities in the region” despite having a “relatively more complex local situation” enabled the city to

Reshaping Political Order and Criminal Coexistence 87

become even more competitive in the global marketplace of emerging world cities. It is no coincidence that featured on the itineraries organized by the ACI for prospective foreign investors are meetings with municipal officials charged with developing citizen security policies and visits to formerly “off limits” areas of the city’s periphery via the cable car system to tour the new library-parks.74 The resulting attention from investors as well as policy-makers and international aid agencies enabled local government to parry criticisms from political opponents and human rights advocates increasingly concerned with the varied criminal activities taking place within the armed territorial monopoly (Restrepo 2010). But the added benefit of this reduction in violence was that it helped to mask much of the continuing illicit activities and other forms of violence taking place within the city. Indeed, the importance of maintaining city competitiveness was not lost on Medellin’s criminal structure either. By constraining conflict between the city’s varied armed actors and ordering the limited use of lethal forms of violence, Don Berna made his criminal enterprise a silent but foundational element of the broader project of city competitiveness, and thus increased incentives for the preservation of coexistent relations that enabled him to engage in lucrative illicit activities. The territorial monopoly thus played a key role in sustaining the participatory project and advancing the “Medellin miracle.” Conclusion

The case of Medellin provides evidence of how the interaction between the urban political economy and patterns of armed territorial control impact the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. Both in the early 1990s and the mid-2000s the city attempted participatory political projects in response to urban violence. Yet, these projects varied considerably in their trajectories, with the first project derailed and the second cementing its place as a key component of the city’s transformed global image. To explain this variation I used the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1. The resulting analysis showed that in the early 1990s disengaged relations between the public and private sectors coupled with fragmented territorial control constrained the ability of the central government and civil society to sustain the participatory project. By contrast, major shifts along both these dimensions generated more practically and politically favorable conditions for the city’s second attempt at a participatory project in the mid-2000s. The next chapter moves to the case of Cali, where repeated efforts to advance a participatory project were thwarted.

4

Cali The Derailment of a Pioneering Participatory Project

In the early 1990s Cali’s local government became the first in Colombia to respond to urban violence with a participatory political project that combined violence control and prevention efforts within a framework to deepen citizen participation in local governance. The city’s mayor, Rodrigo Guerrero, counted on a coalition that featured alternative political forces and grassroots civil society from Cali’s peripheral neighborhoods. Although Guerrero had been a member of the Conservative Party, he opted for an independent campaign as a way to draw a contrast with the growing number of political factions in Cali amid the fractionalization of the historically dominant parties. International donors pointed to the participatory project as an example of local policy innovation in the era of decentralization (Ayres 1998, 20). Yet, despite the praise that the participatory project garnered, it was ultimately derailed. And a decade later, a political independent backed primarily by the city’s poor and civil society organizations proposed a second participatory project. This second participatory project, however, met a similar fate. What accounts for the inability of popularly elected mayors in Cali to advance and sustain participatory political projects in response to one of the city’s key challenges? Using the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1 shows that during the early 1990s conflictive relations between local government and a segmented business community combined with a fragmented pattern of armed territorial control to derail Cali’s pioneering project in response to violence. A decade later, a markedly more conflictive urban political economy and the continued fragmentation of territorial control again undermined efforts to advance the participatory project. The within-case analysis shows how a fo88

The Derailment of a Pioneering Participatory Project 89

cus on the urban political economy and patterns of armed territorial control helps to account for the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. The Unexpected Trajectory of Cali’s Pioneering Experiment

As shown in Table 4.1, traditional party leaders won Cali’s first two mayoral elections. Both victors could trace their lineages back to the regional political notables that had long exerted power in the Valle del Cauca (Pinto Ocampo 2011, 21). Yet Guerrero’s political movement, Fuerza Cívica por Cali (Civic Force for Cali), was an inclusionary political coalition that included a diverse crosssection of the city’s political currents. Elements of the traditional parties were included, but represented the minority in the coalition, which featured movements established by the demobilized M-19 insurgency, the political arm of the FARC insurgency, and the Communist Party, among others. How did Guerrero manage to build this inclusionary coalition? Guerrero was a Harvard University–trained public health specialist who had previously served as the director of the Valle del Cauca’s main hospital, secretary of health, and rector of the region’s main public university. After marrying a member of the Carvajal family, which owned a major paper products firm based in Cali, Guerrero became the director of the firm’s philanthropic foundation. While patron-client relations had long been the main conduits for distributing public resources into Cali’s periphery, local business elites had also coordinated philanthropic efforts to further ensure local social control and order (Pinto OcTa bl e 4. 1: Cali: Popularly Elected Mayors (1988–2007) Term

1988–90 1990–92 1992–94 1995–97 1998–2000 2001–3 2004–7

Mayor

Carlos Holmes Trujillo Germán Villegas Villegas Rodrigo Guerrero Velasco Mauricio Guzmán Cuevas (Julio César Martínez)a Ricardo Cobo Lloreda Jhon Maro Rodríguez Apolinar Salcedo Caicedo (Ramiro Tafur Reyes)b

Party

Liberal Conservative Independent Liberal Conservative Independent Liberal

a Guzmán resigned from office four months before his term was over as a result of allegations that he had received funds from the Cali drug cartel in support of his campaign. The secretary of government, Julio César Martínez, was appointed to finish the term. b Salcedo was recalled eight months before his term officially concluded as part of a political scandal involving irregularities in local procurement processes. His interim successor was Ramiro Tafur Reyes, the president of the Society of Agriculturalists and Cattle Ranchers of the Valle del Cauca.

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ampo 2011, 19). This “hegemonic philanthropy” (Camacho and Guzmán 1990, 188–89) provided goods and services to marginalized communities in exchange for residents refraining from political mobilization outside of traditional party channels. Yet Guerrero shifted the foundation’s approach by enabling aid recipients to actively participate in establishing development priorities for their neighborhoods and to assume leadership roles in the implementation and oversight of the resulting projects.1 And though Guerrero’s approach raised concerns among local leaders, his ties to one of the city’s most esteemed economic families kept him in the good graces of the ruling class—until he became mayor and implemented the participatory project. During the 1991 mayoral elections Guerrero leveraged the support he had gained among marginalized populations during his time as director of the Carvajal foundation to broaden the reach of his coalition. He secured 47 percent of the total vote—including nearly 60 percent of all the votes cast in the city’s poorest neighborhoods.2 But upon assuming office Guerrero also amended the historically exclusionary nature of local politics by incorporating civil society and alternative political movements into formal positions of power in local government, including in the development and implementation of the participatory project. The participatory project was coordinated through a new municipal level institution called Development, Security and Peace (Desepaz), which reported directly to the mayor. Guerrero staffed the new institution with a mix of civil society and community leaders as well as academics.3 Table 4.2 summarizes Cali’s first participatory political project. The participatory project combined violence control and prevention efforts with initiatives to integrate citizen participation into security policy-making and, more broadly, urban governance. Control measures aimed to increase incentives for citizens to report criminal activity by expanding the number and geographic distribution of small police offices (known as Inspecciones de Policía) where citizens could initiate police reports. The offices would also house representatives from various municipal agencies in order to make local government more accessible to citizens. The project called for greater investment in the local police to increase its capacities and territorial reach, but also to increase police accountability to communities and government by providing officers with subsidies from the municipal government to pursue higher education and financial support to purchase homes. Guerrero believed that these resources would increase the police’s support for the participatory project.4

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Ta bl e 4. 2: Cali’s First Participatory Political Project St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Build police capacity and institutional accountability

Increase coverage and quality of public service provision

Foster mechanisms of collaboration between local government and city residents on citizen security

Increase incentives for citizens to report criminal activity

Incorporate at-risk youth into the formal economy

Build neighborhood-level participatory governance institutions

Provide access to justice for low-income populations

Establish cultural centers for at-risk youth populations

Support civil society participation in local governance

Strengthen the capacity and efficiency of judicial institutions

Provide community leaders with peace and conflict resolution training Increase the stock of public housing Disarm and resocialize members of armed groups Institutionalize the epidemiological study of local violence

S o u r c e : Guerrero (1999).

The project’s preventive component proposed channeling socioeconomic investment into marginalized communities. Yet, basic public services, including education, health, water, and electricity would be distributed through programmatic channels and participatory institutions in peripheral neighborhoods coordinated in collaboration with civil society organizations. Educational investment centered on the construction of new elementary schools, high schools, and community centers in peripheral neighborhoods. Efforts to incorporate at-risk youth into the formal economy included providing them with jobs skills workshops as well as microloans to start new businesses. Several new community centers were proposed to engage at-risk youth through cultural and recreational programming. Community leaders would also be able to attend workshops sponsored by the municipal government where they could obtain training in peace and conflict resolution to prevent local disputes from turning violent. And to address Cali’s public housing shortage, the participatory project proposed the construction of affordable housing for twenty-eight thousand of Cali’s most impoverished families.5

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Given Guerrero’s background as a public health specialist, he also prioritized using epidemiological tools, normally used to map the spread of communicable diseases, to study local violence. The collection and analysis of data on violence was also seen as a way to build institutional linkages between local government institutions that had historically set about individually collecting data on crime and violence.6 Applying an epidemiological lens to violence would prompt the municipal government to develop several specific policies, including restrictions on the hours when alcohol could be sold (known as the semi-dry law) and periodic bans on the carrying of firearms in public.7 And a final key violence prevention initiative focused on the resocialization of youth belonging to armed groups through the provision of psychological counseling, recreational activities, and assistance in finding formal employment. The resocialization efforts would also entail negotiating peace pacts between rival groups as a way to generate space for armed actors, municipal workers, and civil society organizations to work together. The participatory project situated violence control and prevention efforts within the task of fostering new forms of political participation among marginalized populations across different policy areas and territorial scales. At the city level the project proposed a security council that would bring together the mayor, police, and community leaders to discuss and develop specific initiatives to stem and prevent violence and criminality in high-violence neighborhoods. The participatory project also sought to increase local government-community coordination on development efforts through monthly meetings between municipal authorities and residents of impoverished neighborhoods in their own community centers and schools. The intent was to make policy-making more accessible to populations long excluded from autonomously participating in local governance.8 During these meetings local residents could provide input into how public resources should be spent in their neighborhoods and would assume responsibility for particular local development initiatives. Finally, because the participatory project would rely heavily on civil society to serve as a bridge between local government and community residents in areas where local government presence was weak, the participatory project aimed to build civil society’s institutional capacities through municipal grants and technical resources. Guerrero appointed a group of citizen security advisors to oversee the project’s implementation while based within the Desepaz offices. Among the advisors were demobilized M-19 rebels and members of the Communist Party.

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These appointments did little to settle growing unrest among powerful interests within the city’s business community. Segmented Business, Dominant Agroindustry, and Weak Linkages to Local Government

The roots of Cali’s segmented business community can be traced back to the historical links between the city’s economy and the fertile lands that surround it. Founded in the sixteenth century as a supplier of agricultural goods to the Spanish Empire, land was long the main source of capital and political power (Blasier 1966). By the start of the nineteenth century more than 50 percent of the local land was concentrated in the hands of 1.5 percent of the city’s population (Ramos 2003). Landowning elites leveraged their wealth to finance industrialization focused on the processing of primary goods, starting with sugar cane in the 1930s, and later diversifying into paper products, textiles, rubber, and tobacco (Walton 1977, 58–60). By the start of the 1990s natural resources represented three-quarters of the Valle del Cauca’s total exports (Observatorio Económico y Social del Valle del Cauca 2003, 38). The overlap between landowning, agricultural, and industrial interests—with capital assets distributed across the city’s rural outskirts, neighboring municipalities, and throughout the department—produced a small agroindustrial elite that wielded tremendous political power (Pinto Ocampo 2011, 17). As one frustrated leader in Cali’s banking sector noted during an interview: “This city has always been dominated by men with sugar, cattle, and corn . . . . and even if that means that Cali doesn’t become a modern city, I don’t know if that will ever change.”9 Repeated efforts throughout much of the twentieth century to establish encompassing business institutions faltered in part because of the reticence of agroindustrialists to share power with other economic sectors.10 Meanwhile party leaders cognizant of agroindustrialists’ economic weight appointed them to leadership roles in shaping the regional economy, including the development of the country’s principal Pacific port in the municipality of Buenaventura to the west of Cali. During the mid-twentieth century Buenaventura became the country’s most active seaport and transformed Cali into the country’s main distribution center for imports and exports (Muñoz and Ocampo 2007, 77). Agroindustrialists that were appointed to local political positions, including the mayor’s office, leveraged their powers to direct public investment toward infrastructure critical for the sector’s ability to produce and bring to market varied primary and manufactured goods (Sáenz 2005, 61). Up until decentralization,

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little action was taken to extend such urban infrastructure into the city’s poorest districts (Walton 1976, 132; Urrea and Ortiz 1999). Yet the growth of the Colombian state in the 1950s and the deinstitutionalization of the party system led to the emergence of new political actors estranged from traditional elite lineages, thus marking the start of a disconnect between Cali’s public and private sectors. Agroindustrialists turned to sectoral institutions to wield influence in local politics, specifically the Cali Chamber of Commerce (CCC), which was founded and heavily influenced by the region’s powerful agroindustrial leaders. Control over the CCC also enabled agroindustrialists to access the public resources that municipal chambers of commerce obtained via registration of firms and which were supposed to be reinvested in local development efforts. Yet the CCC was the principal institution working on behalf of the agroindustrial sector, and was popularly referred to as the city’s “second mayor” in light of its significant political influence.11 The low density of linkages between business and the municipal government led each to focus on its own interests in the context of local governance (Dent 1974, 121; Walton 1977, 89–90). And while business was able to leverage its financial resources and regional and national ties to advance its economic agenda, municipal officials struggled given their lack of authority and resources in the pre-decentralization era. Moreover, decentralization further strained local government-business relations as the local party system fragmented amid the influx of new resources and political factions. Increasing numbers of candidates for local office established political movements only tenuously linked to the once dominant cohesive local party machines. Business leaders dismissed local politicians and office holders from the professional political class as “petty bureaucrats” (Dent 1974, 133). Thus Cali faced the growing challenge of urban violence in the late twentieth century with severely frayed ties between its public and private sectors. As we shall see, the linkages would further deteriorate when Guerrero attempted the participatory political project, ultimately producing conflictive relations. Agroindustry, Violence, and Security

There were two overarching reasons why agroindustry sought to derail the participatory project. The first was the sector’s immediate security concerns in the geographic spaces that harbored its production facilities and distribution channels. A key form of violence that plagued the sector was land piracy carried out by both insurgent and criminal groups. The scale of land piracy ranged

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from small operations wherein trucks would be relieved of their products to more sophisticated operations that including holding the trucks ransom until their owners paid set amounts of money—in addition to the losses they incurred from their products being stolen. While in 1989 land piracy in Colombia inflicted costs totaling $2.1 million, by 1992 that figure had increased to $16.3 million, by 1993 to $49.2 million, and by 1994 it had reached $95.3 million.12 And it was precisely the outskirts of Cali that became a primary setting for land piracy because of the substantial amounts of goods transported between the city and the port in Buenaventura.13 By the early 1990s more than three thousand trucks were traversing the roads of the Valle del Cauca on a daily basis as they transported 80 percent of the country’s imports and 60 percent of its exports via Buenaventura.14 In 1992 when Guerrero assumed office, over one-fifth of all reported cases of land piracy in the country were taking place in the Valle.15 Agroindustrialists hard hit by land piracy referred to the roads on Cali’s outskirts as the “Bermuda triangle.”16 Transport firms were forced to pay between 300 and 400 percent more for insurance on trucks and merchandise, costs that they then passed on to their clients. More broadly, land piracy threatened business elites’ broader project of building a city-region economy. Amid the economic opening of the 1990s, business viewed the strategic link between the city and the Pacific port as central for the Valle’s economic internationalization. Within this vision Cali was to become a hub in a regional economy rooted in agroindustrial production and a conduit for the country’s exports and imports.17 Yet it was this strategic link between the city and Buenaventura that was now threatened by violence and armed actors. In the late 1980s the FARC had begun installing checkpoints on roads leading in and out of Cali, where the rebels would charge “tolls” and take hostages for ransom.18 Agroindustrialists stopped visiting their farms and production facilities out of fear of being kidnapped. Several sold their lands, often taking advantage of inflated land values prompted by the influx of illicit rents from the drug trafficking industry. Other landowning elites joined narcotraffickers, many of whom had purchased rural lands to launder illicit rents, in establishing small paramilitary groups. Because the agroindustrial sector’s main concern was the state’s inability to establish order in the spaces critical for its economic transactions, business prioritized the need for increased police and military presence to re-establish order.19 But business also viewed the peripheral neighborhoods targeted by the par-

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ticipatory project as fertile terrain for subversive political movements. This apprehension was rooted in part by the private sector’s experience with the M-19 insurgency, which had been active in Cali’s peripheries since the 1970s when it began distributing food taken during land piracy operations to impoverished local residents. Rebels also collaborated with several alternative political movements based in these parts of the city and who openly rejected traditional party rule. Business leaders were thus alarmed when in 1982 peace negotiations enabled the M-19 to establish camps in Cali’s peripheral neighborhoods and openly participate in local community organizations (Pinto Ocampo 2011, 19). Agroindustrialists protested by publicly declaring a collective suicide pact in which they agreed that the family or colleagues of any business owner kidnapped by rebels would not pay for their release. Even years after the M-19 was ousted from the periphery after the peace negotiations collapsed in the mid-1980s, agroindustrialists perceived this part of the city as breeding grounds for radical politics that challenged their economic interests and, more broadly, the historically exclusionary local political order (Holguín and Reyes 2014). For example, Cali’s last appointed mayor, Henry Eder (1986–88), was also a wealthy agroindustrial elite whose family founded one of the largest and oldest sugar mills in the Valle del Cauca. On the eve of decentralization, Eder refused to implement administrative reforms required by the central government as part of generating new spaces for citizen participation. The mayor instead declared that the role of citizens in local politics had historically been, and should continue to be, “limited to being governed” (Velásquez 1987, 51). In sum, the dominant agroindustrial sector faced incentives to oppose the participatory project in response to violence based on sectoral security priorities rooted in its particular relationship to geography and violence as well as its long-standing opposition to alternative political mobilization in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods. Cali’s business elites and the inclusionary local government thus held opposing preferences regarding the response to violence, while the limited public-private linkages constrained the potential to negotiate differences. As we shall see, the resulting conflictive relations increased the scope of the politics of urban violence, as business would look beyond the city level to secure allies to advance its security priorities. But before unpacking how conflictive relations contributed to the participatory project’s derailment, we also need to establish the nature of armed territorial control in Cali at the time.

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Fragmented Territorial Control: Gangs, Social Cleansings, and Milícias

The Cali drug cartel, one of the country’s two largest DTOs, avoided confronting the state and instead focused on corrupting and coopting politicians and institutions. For example, the Cali cartel fed intelligence to the elite military forces tasked with dismantling the Medellin cartel, which fostered intercartel conflict that fueled local violence in both cities. Yet the protagonists, drivers, and patterns of violence in Cali went far beyond the drug trade. Evidence from interviews, government reports, and media archives indicate that the city’s peripheral neighborhoods resembled quilts of diverse and powerful armed actors, each of which exerted territorial control and whose individual leaders actively competed to obtain greater territory and shares of varied illicit markets. Among the armed actors in Cali were pandillas, or youth gangs, composed largely of poor young men based in peripheral neighborhoods. Whereas Cali’s homicide rate in 1993 was 104 per 100,000 residents, the rate for men between the ages of fourteen and twenty-nine was nearly four times higher (Espitia 1998). There were approximately eighty-five hundred youth organized in nearly 150 gangs operating in more than a hundred impoverished neighborhoods located in Cali’s western and eastern peripheries (Guerrero 1999, 8; Restrepo 1991, 3). The gangs relied on weapons obtained via local black markets to protect their territories from rival gangs and the police as well as regulate diverse illicit markets, including extortion rackets, the microtrafficking of narcotics, and the sale of varied services, including assassinations, to larger criminal organizations (Restrepo 1991). Numerous social cleansing groups also operated in Cali’s peripheries and focused on protecting the territories where their members and supporters resided and worked. Some social cleansing groups received support from the Cali cartel as part of its efforts to infiltrate and ingratiate itself with local elites by carrying out violence against poor youth (Thoumi 2005, 39). Others targeted individuals suspected of having collaborated with the M-19 insurgency or who were assumed to be members of alternative political movements and youth gangs. The Comandos Verdes (Green Commandos), for example, was a particularly active social cleansing group that killed suspected allies of the M-19 in retaliation for the police and military personnel killed during the 1980s (Holguín and Reyes 2014, 225). Segments of society considered undesirable, including homosexuals and prostitutes, thieves, and the homeless, were also targeted

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(Camacho and Guzmán 1990, 159–74; Guzmán 1993, 39). Social cleansings were also justified based on the racial makeup of Cali’s peripheral neighborhoods, which were home to a large Afro-Colombian population displaced from the rural Pacific coast by the ongoing civil war. The racial makeup of the periphery further made it a target of vilification by the traditional ruling class that viewed emerging racial tensions as more fuel for radical politics (Moncada 2010).20 Amid growing violence and insecurity in the late 1980s, social cleansing in Cali was so rampant that the nearby Cauca River where the bodies of victims were often deposited became popularly referred to as the “river of death.” Finally, a third type of armed actor that further contributed to fragmented territorial dynamics were milícias linked to the FARC and ELN rebels. As these groups established territorial control, they provoked violent responses from both youth gangs and social cleansing groups. Their base of operations in Cali’s poorest neighborhoods enabled the milícias to operate clandestinely within city limits. Among the operations the milícias undertook were armed robberies and assaults along with acts of political violence, including the targeting of political and economic leaders for kidnappings.21 In sum, the participatory project faced a treacherous scenario in the fragmented pattern of territorial control. Low coordination in criminal leadership across armed actors meant that the very neighborhoods that the project focused on were home to competing criminal and political actors that sought to control territory, populations, and illicit markets. And crucially, many of these armed actors were themselves the targets of violence both tacitly and explicitly endorsed by traditional economic and political elites. Interactive Analysis

In the early 1990s the potential to align the opposing preferences of business and local government regarding the response to violence was undercut by the weak linkages between the two. The fragmented nature of armed territorial control was generating high levels of lethal violence among an array of conflicting armed actors. This section analyzes how the interaction between these factors derailed Cali’s first participatory political project. a. Dueling Research and Media Cali’s business leaders established a think tank focused on security issues called the Comisión de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana (Commission on Coexistence and Citizen Security, or CCSC) shortly after Guerrero became mayor. The think tank was not intended to help rebuild linkages with local

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government through the critical issue of citizen security. Instead, as the CCSC’s director noted, business established the CCSC to shape the city’s response to violence and “avoid” having to work with local government in the process of doing so.22 Another CCSC leader described the institution as a way for business to secure an “important vote in the eyes of the public on issues of security and a veto over the municipal government on the same issues.”23 How did the CCSC help business to accomplish these objectives? While Guerrero prioritized developing the local government’s research capacities to provide an empirical basis for crafting and tailoring security policies and initiatives, business carried out its own parallel data collection and analysis. Several CCC staff were transferred to the CCSC to develop databases on local security conditions and policy reports outlining the implications of violence for economic growth. Collecting this data enabled business to strengthen its ties to state security forces. The CCSC’s director arranged it so that every morning the city’s chief of police sent him the same daily report that was sent to the mayor detailing the previous night’s criminal activities.24 The think tank provided a platform on which business could publicly duel with local government on issues of violence. As in the other Colombian cities, local business elites owned many of the main media outlets in Cali (Collins 1981), including the principal newspaper, El País. This enabled business to disseminate detailed security analyses produced by the CCSC. As a member of the CCSC’s board of directors noted: “When the media wants expert commentary on violence and insecurity in Cali, it turns first to us, and then to the mayor’s office.”25 Yet the private sector’s independent research and media campaigns also challenged the broader objectives that data collection and analysis were supposed to play in the participatory project. According to Guerrero’s citizen security advisors, these initiatives had two primary objectives. The first was to identify the proximate and structural drivers of violence in order to establish an empirical basis for policy-making in Cali. But the second objective was to reframe the public debate about responses to violence away from the historical emphasis on mainly more coercive force by the police and military. Yet the mayor’s security advisors noted that the city’s privately owned media relied heavily on the CCSC’s reports to argue that violence in the periphery “was only about insurgency and organized crime” and that the necessary response was “one that put the issue in the hands of the state security forces and out of [the local government’s] hands.”26 This illustrates how conflictive local government-

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business relations bifurcated even the most basic, though critical, components, of local efforts to confront urban violence. b. Low-Income Housing and Land Speculation To improve housing conditions for marginalized populations, Guerrero proposed the development of the country’s largest public housing project on approximately 380 hectares of unincorporated rural lands located on the city’s eastern outskirts. Local government secured a commitment from national authorities to provide residents with subsidies to help them purchase their new houses (Bonilla and Galeano 2000, 4). Yet the municipal government came up against a significant challenge rooted in the historical concentration of ownership over land in the city’s outskirts among small groups of landowning elites and, more broadly, the conflictive relations between local government and business. The exact ownership over parts of the rural lands that border Cali, known as ejidos, had been uncertain since the early twentieth century. Several wealthy landowners claimed ownership despite the arguments of municipal officials that the lands were meant for public use. Among the private owners were several of the Valle’s largest sugar manufacturers and agroindustrial families.27 Although the owners initially rejected the proposal to sell their lands to the municipal government, they soon leveraged ties to traditional party allies in Cali’s municipal council to obtain privileged information regarding studies commissioned by Guerrero on the maximum value of the ejidos. Subsequently the landowners would surprise the municipal representatives by presenting them with the same prices established in the local government’s studies as their own minimum selling price. An interview with a representative from INVICALI, the housing agency charged with the land negotiations, revealed how the broader tensions between the public and private sectors hung over their dealings with the landowners. Among the landowners a core group that was active within the CCC’s leadership circles took the lead in negotiations with INVICALI and repeatedly refused to endorse even basic agreements based on a “distrust of everything that had to do with the public sector.”28 When negotiations broke down, the city attempted to take the land via imminent domain, but a lack of clarity regarding whether municipal governments could use this power forced the mayor to meet the landowners’ escalating demands. Ultimately the landowners reaped massive profits given that the price of the land increased more than 1,100 percent between 1992 and 1994. By the time

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construction was completed, land speculation had increased the cost of the individual houses to the point that the city’s poorest residents, even with subsidies from national and local governments, were unable to afford them. The houses were thus sold to low- and middle-income families and not the poorest populations residing in some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods (Ortiz and Bertaud 2001, 246–47). Thus the inability of the public and private sector actors to negotiate in a context of conflictive relations undermined and distorted the very purpose for which the housing project had been initiated as part of the participatory project. c. Bypassing Local Government in the Struggle for Control over the Police Local police in Cali had a history of participating in varied forms of extrajudicial violence, including social cleansings, at the behest of local political and economic leaders as part of maintaining the exclusionary political order. Thus Guerrero made police reform a key component of the participatory project. Yet the private sector also moved to deepen its ties to the police in ways that undercut local government’s authority over the institution. Through the CCC the private sector built new police barracks to enable the police to patrol the roads leading in and out of the city that were crucial to agroindustry’s operations and facilities.29 Business also provided specific police divisions with financial resources for new transportation and communications equipment and gasoline for motorcycles. Under different political circumstances, the support by business might have been welcome by municipal officials as a way to combine public and private resources for the public good. Yet given the weak linkages between the public and private sectors, business opted to bypass local government and provide resources directly to the police, which had two negative consequences for the participatory project. First, the resources provided by business escaped oversight by local government officials. The parallel funding stream undermined local government’s ability to assume greater authority over the police as mandated by the 1991 Constitution. Interviews with police leaders that held their positions during this period of time attest to the importance of business support and its influence on police loyalties. As one former high-ranking police official noted: “At the time business really was the only local advocate for the police and its needs.”30 As the private sector channeled funds into the police, the mayor’s office found the police hierarchy increasingly resistant to implementing specific initiatives associated with the participatory project, including efforts to have

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police leaders regularly attend neighborhood-level meetings to listen and respond to citizens’ concerns regarding local security conditions.31 Second, the agroindustrial sector used its financial resources to press upon the police its particular security concerns, which did not include increasing accountability to communities and local government. As one CCSC board member indicated, business support was meant only to increase the “repressive capacity of local security forces.”32 Business leveraged its contributions to the police to influence logistical operations within and outside of the city, as evident in an internal CCC letter obtained from a key informant. The letter was from the director of the CCSC to a prominent agroindustrialist asking for input on attached documents that outlined the proper procedures and strategies to establish police checkpoints on key transport routes leading in and out of Cali. The letter requested comments to ensure that the local security forces received detailed guidance “from as many members of the business community as possible” on which roads the police needed to guard and what times firms would be sending out trucks to deliver or retrieve merchandise.33 Thus conflictive relations between business and local government generated a setting in which the former channeled resources directly into a key public institution in a way that undermined the authority of local government and provided the private sector with enhanced influence on police operations. But as we shall see, business support would also enable the police to actively resist local government’s efforts to resocialize armed actors, which ultimately had fatal consequences. d. Fragmented Territorial Control: Challenges for Reincorporation and Peace To illustrate how fragmented territorial control intersected with conflictive relations to derail key components of the participatory project, we can trace the trajectories of a major resocialization initiative and efforts to establish neighborhood-level community councils to deepen political participation. Central to violence prevention was the resocialization of gang members through the Participation, Co-existence, Education and Advancement (PARCES) initiative, which developed cultural, recreational, and educational programming for gang members in peripheral neighborhoods.34 Local community leaders and civil society organizations worked with the PARCES municipal staff to convince gang members to give up their weapons. Gang members that did so would receive financial subsidies, access to social services and education, labor skills training, and formal employment opportunities. Peace pacts between warring gangs were forged in order to facilitate the reincorporation efforts.35 The PAR-

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CES initiative was initially heralded as a major success when several hundred gang members gave up their firearms and knives in a public ceremony outside the main offices of the municipal government, where Guerrero himself accepted many of the surrendered weapons.36 Yet the fragmented nature of territorial control in the city’s periphery and the inability of local government to fully establish control over the police given the private sector’s influence destabilized both the reincorporation process and the peace pacts. The young men that gave up their weapons soon became the targets of violence on multiple fronts. The police targeted the youth with unjustified detentions, verbal harassment, and physical assaults. One Desepaz leader indicated that the police engaged in these actions as revenge against the armed actors that had long challenged their authority in peripheral neighborhoods. And the disarmament of youth gang members had paradoxically created a “unique opportunity for the police to go after the pandillas without fear of being hurt in the process.”37 Social cleansing groups with varying linkages to the police began killing the young men that had given up their weapons as part of the resocialization effort. Media coverage of the youth surrendering their guns inadvertently provided the social cleansing groups and their police collaborators with pictures of the gang leaders that were subsequently killed.38 Leaders of grassroots organizations as well as PARCES staff were also subject to police harassment. One of the PARCES directors recounted how he and his colleagues received numerous threatening phone calls daily from the police officers at the station down the street from their office. The officers warned them to stop “wasting their time” trying to reform criminals or they would “become legitimate targets for elimination.”39 The threats led many community and grassroots leaders to stop working with PARCES out of fear of being targeted by the police. The insecurity associated with being part of the initiative weakened ties between local government and community organizations in peripheral neighborhoods and thus undermined a key dimension of the participatory project. The fragmented nature of territorial control enabled both the police and business leaders to downplay allegations of police involvement in the social cleansings and dismiss concerns that financial support to the police by business was undercutting the municipal government’s ability to hold the institution accountable. One of Guerrero’s citizen security advisors recounted how when the young men in the PARCES initiative began to be killed, he collected the testimonies of residents in peripheral neighborhoods who had seen police officers participate in the disappearances of the former gang members. He then

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presented this evidence to a police official who assured him that the allegations would be investigated. A few weeks later, mayor Guerrero urged the security advisor to go straight to the airport and fly to Bogota because there were rumors that the police were preparing to kill the advisor in retaliation for having investigated their involvement in the social cleansings. The security advisor instead confronted another high-ranking police official and threatened to urge the mayor to withhold public funds from the police. Yet the police official dismissed the threat by noting that “in a single month the city’s businessmen had given the police what the mayor’s office had budgeted for the police for an entire year.” Support from the private sector had clearly enabled the police to assume greater autonomy vis-à-vis local government. When the security advisor urged the director of the CCSC to stop funding the police and instead collaborate with local government to strengthen police capacities and accountability, the director indicated that there “were so many armed actors operating in poor neighborhoods that it was impossible to know for certain that the police were behind the threats to [the advisor’s] life.”40 This illustrates how the intersection between conflictive relations and fragmented territorial control constrained the participatory project along multiple fronts, including providing political cover to dismiss extrajudicial and criminal violence targeting one of the participatory project’s key constituencies. The large number of actors operating in uncoordinated fashion in the city’s periphery also destabilized the peace pacts negotiated by the municipal government. As gangs entered into the pacts and began disarming, rival gangs would attack them now that they lacked weapons to defend themselves and their territories. On several occasions young men in the PARCES initiative urged local community leaders to help them “get their guns back” so that they could defend themselves from their rivals. The breakdown of these pacts led to the suspension of several initiatives associated with the participatory project as gang members and community residents retreated to their neighborhoods and homes out of fear of becoming the victims of violence.41 The fragmented nature of territorial control also limited efforts to deepen the political participation of marginalized communities through the community councils that brought together municipal representatives and neighborhood residents to identify local development needs. The initial round of council meetings were intended to help community residents identify development concerns in their neighborhoods. Invariably residents would point to insecurity, and particularly the conflicts between rival gangs. Here interviews with

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both community and Desepaz leaders that participated in the councils revealed that residents of neighborhoods where gangs were actively battling for territorial control would nearly always demand not only greater police presence but also greater discretion for the police in reducing violence.42 In some cases Desepaz leaders learned that the police had been pressuring community residents to demand more “hardline” policing in their neighborhoods in the days leading up to the council meetings. Thus the council meetings became sites of intense intracommunity conflict between those that favored more preventive efforts and those that demanded extrajudicial measures. One community leader recalled that shortly after a council meeting ended with municipal officials unable to convince the residents that more violence by the police was not a solution to the neighborhood’s problems, the group of residents that had demanded more coercive policing organized a social cleansing group. Several days later the group broke into a house in the neighborhood used by gang members as a place to consume basuco—a low-grade version of cocaine. Two gang members in the house were killed with knives while the others escaped. In an attempt to “fool the police,” but also to scare the remaining gang members, members of the social cleansing group left a note purporting to be from a milícia linked to guerrilla insurgents in which it claimed responsibility for the murders and warned gangs to leave the neighborhood.43 Thus in this instance not only did the fragmented nature of territorial control both foster and enable more violence, but as in the case of the police, it provided residents engaged in such activities with cover for their actions while further straining the ability of the participatory project to deepen citizen engagement. e. Widening the Scope: Business as a Substitute for the State Amid conflictive relations with local government, business moved to draw the national government into the politics of urban violence as an ally. The private sector leveraged growing revelations of local government corruption by the Cali drug cartel (Chepesiuk 2003, 68–69) to position itself as a potential partner for the national government’s interventions in Cali as it pursued the Cali drug cartel. The private sector thus distanced itself from the impending corruption scandal while at the same establishing its own credibility—no small feat given the linkages between the cartel, narcotrafficking, and the local economy. As the president of the CCC noted, the local government’s growing isolation ultimately led business to become a “substitute for the state” in Cali.44 The CCC launched a major public relations campaign that painted the re-

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gion’s traditional business leaders as largely untainted by drug trafficking. A press release drafted by business leaders and reprinted word for word in El País demanded an end to what was characterized as a smear campaign by the national media that was indiscriminately associating the city’s private sector with drug trafficking.45 Leaders of the CCC held in-depth interviews with local and national media in which they acknowledged that some elements of the business community may have been “permissive” of narcotrafficking, but that the majority of the region’s traditional business leaders were not linked to the Cali cartel.46 The CCC thus positioned itself as the only local power with sufficient credibility to help the national government “purge” illicit actors and their corrupt practices from local government.47 The widening of the scope of the politics of urban violence generated several challenges for sustaining the participatory project. First, the local government’s efforts to reincorporate members of armed actors operating in the periphery were hampered not only by the fragmented nature of territorial control but also by the municipal government’s lack of legal authority to expunge individual criminal records. Absent this authority, members of armed youth gangs had less incentive to reincorporate given the probability of being arrested.48 Municipal authorities, in turn, reached out to the national government in the hopes of reaching an agreement under which individuals with criminal records who successfully resocialized would have their records partially or completely cleared. National authorities declined to do so, in part because of growing distrust of the municipal government amid revelations of corruption. But interviews with high-ranking officials in the Ministry of Defense and the Office of the Attorney General indicated that CCC leaders also lobbied national authorities to oppose any type of “amnesty” for Cali’s armed actors in the resocialization initiatives, whom private sector leaders argued were likely aligned with “subversive” elements operating in the city.49 National officials also indicated that the “conflicting” demands coming from Cali’s public and private sectors suggested to them that the resocialization project “lacked the collective support” from local power holders necessary to ensure the project’s success. Thus the increased scope of the politics of urban violence signaled to elements of the central government that there was a divided local ruling class that could likely not support the complex efforts needed to successfully resocialize members of armed groups. Revelations of local police corruption also led the central government to increasingly intervene in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods using military troops

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and elite special forces. The militarization of security likely contributed to the decline in violence toward the end of Guerrero’s time in office, but the broader political implication was one of increased marginalization of local government as national interventions took place without warning or communication of objectives to municipal authorities. As one Desepaz leader noted, the national interventions resembled the pre-decentralization era, when security matters were solely the concern of national security forces and “local governments were powerless to intervene.”50 More broadly, the militarization of security also decreased incentives for members of youth gangs to attend resocialization programs, as many simply stayed home fear of being arrested or, as one former youth gang member noted, “fear that the military would disappear” them.51 Business leaders, meanwhile, welcomed the military intervention in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods, and held several ceremonies during which they gave awards to military officials for their contributions to security in Cali.52 The Derailment of Cali’s First Participatory Project

Cali’s first participatory experiment in response to urban violence captivated international attention. The individual strategies and objectives remain models that donors hold up as a pioneer in the realm of violence prevention. Yet the participatory project encountered significant practical challenges and political resistance that derailed it. An urban political economy characterized by conflictive relations between local government and business along with a pattern of fragmented territorial control together unraveled key components of the participatory project. Efforts to deepen participation and incorporate marginalized populations were distorted by the fragmented nature of territorial control and its intersection with the active support of business for a police force that engaged in extrajudicial violence. As one of Guerrero’s citizen security advisors noted, by 1994 the project had become little more than an exercise in “counting [dead] bodies” to produce statistics on levels of violence, with its violence prevention components largely shells of what had once been envisioned.53 Cali’s Second Participatory Project: Deepening Conflict and Persistent Armed Territorial Fragmentation

The dynamics of violence and conflict in the Valle underwent important shifts in the second half of the 1990s. As coca leaf production increased in Colombia,54 a substantial portion of this growth took place in Colombia’s Pacific Region, which along with the Valle del Cauca includes the departments of Cau-

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ca, Chocó, Nariño, and Putumayo. The Valle’s strategic geographic location, concentration of roads and port infrastructure, and status as seat of the regional government and home to the country’s third largest city all combined to forge an attractive setting for armed actors seeking to participate in the booming drug trade. The result was the growth of insurgent forces in the Valle, the emergence of paramilitary groups, and the fragmentation of a handful of small but powerful DTOs that had emerged in the wake of the Cali cartel’s downfall in the mid1990s. Each of these actors would establish distinct forms of territorial control in and around Cali, producing a highly conflictive setting characterized by varied forms of violence. Between 1999 and 2005 alone, more than sixty thousand people that were forcibly displaced by violence in the Valle migrated to Cali, the majority settling in the city’s peripheral neighborhoods (Guzmán and Moreno 2007). These dynamics shaped the context in which a second participatory project in response to violence emerged in Cali. The victor of the 2001 mayoral elections, Jhon Maro Rodríguez, was a popular journalist and radio talk show host that had never before held elected office. During the elections Rodríguez made his independence from and opposition to the city’s traditional political parties and business elites a defining feature of his populist campaign (Ángel 2001, 102–3). Rodríguez’s political movement, Autonomía Ciudadana (Autonomous Citizenry), capitalized on the popular disenchantment with the city’s traditional political class to position the candidate as someone who would tackle the most pressing issues—including violence and insecurity—by reducing inequality and governing above traditional party politics. Rodríguez had actively worked on numerous social causes with civil society organizations in the city’s poorest neighborhoods and harnessed these ties to secure votes within the populous urban periphery that resulted in a resounding electoral victory (Ángel 2001, 104–5). Because the resulting inclusionary coalition consisted primarily of the city’s low-income and impoverished residents combined with grassroots civil society, the new mayor proposed tackling urban violence by drawing explicitly from the participatory project that Guerrero had pursued in the early 1990s.55 Rodríguez indicated that human development would be at the center of his effort to reconstruct Cali. Table 4.3 synthesizes the key dimensions of Cali’s second participatory project. Violence control efforts focused on increasing the capacity of and coordina-

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Ta bl e 4. 3 : Cali’s Second Participatory Political Project St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Increase interinstitutional cooperation on citizen security

Continue epidemiological study of crime and violence

Increase citizen participation in urban development initiatives

Invest in basic police resources

Expand community policing

Establish participatory planning in marginalized neighborhoods

Provide subsidized housing to local police

Improve public service provision within marginalized neighborhoods

Strengthen civil society through grants and technical resources

Strengthen the efficiency of local judicial institutions

Sponsor sports and recreation initiatives targeting at-risk youth

Build community networks to participate in neighborhoodand city-level policy-making

Regulate the use of public space

Increase accountability mechanisms for local institutions and officials

Provide social services and support to displaced populations Establish “Districts of Peace” in the three most violent sectors of the city S o u r c e : Rodríguez (2001) and Alcaldía de Santiago de Cali (2006).

tion between state security forces and judicial institutions. Interinstitutional coordination would entail closer relations between the mayor’s office and representatives from police and judicial institutions to evaluate and recalibrate control measures. Both local judicial offices and the police were assigned increased resources, ranging from computer hardware for judges to new motorcycles for the police. Aware that elements of the police continued to participate in acts of extrajudicial violence, Rodríguez followed Guerrero’s strategy of providing police officers with housing subsidies to encourage loyalty to the participatory project.56 Rodríguez also revisited the violence prevention measures and institutions that had been weakened or abandoned by the mayors that succeeded Guerrero. For example, Desepaz, which had coordinated the first participatory project, had lost much of its staff, funding, and authority, ultimately ending up as a small project focused on documenting human rights violations. Rodríguez aimed to revive Desepaz by restarting the epidemiological study of violence. And though community-policing initiatives had been developed to varying degrees under

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previous administrations, the second participatory project sought to strengthen the initiative through increased institutional support and ties to networks of community organizations in peripheral neighborhoods. Violence prevention efforts also emphasized public investment in education, healthcare, and recreational activities targeting marginalized communities and at-risk youth. Municipal social agencies were tasked with establishing remote offices in peripheral neighborhoods to increase access to varied services, including new initiatives to address domestic violence and child abuse. A public space recuperation campaign was proposed in order to relieve congestion generated by informal vendors. And to aid the growing migrant population displaced by civil war that was increasingly settling in peripheral neighborhoods, the participatory project provided targeted social assistance to ease their incorporation into local society. One of the key elements of violence prevention under the second participatory project was the formation of three Districts of Peace in the city’s three most violent areas based on homicide rates: the impoverished western edge of the city (District 1), the city center (District 2), and the eastern peripheral neighborhoods (District 3). Strategies to increase institutional presence included establishing branch offices of municipal agencies in each of the districts as well as coordination with existing community organizations to strengthen ties between residents and municipal officials. Residents of the districts would also participate in participatory planning efforts designed to ensure the sustainability and transparency of municipal investment in infrastructure and public services in each area. Finally, Rodríguez aimed to deepen political participation in peripheral neighborhoods by having civil society organizations serve as conduits between local government and residents. The project proposed increasing civil society’s involvement in local governance through several mechanisms, including formal roles in organizing and monitoring participatory budgeting in the Districts of Peace and the development of neighborhood-level networks that would work alongside municipal officials to identify factors contributing to conflict and violence. The municipal government also proposed strengthening civil society organizations by making several grants and other funding opportunities available to them. Cali’s second participatory project thus combined control and prevention measures in a framework that sought to reshape the local political order from one where society was governed by a “few privileged interests” to one characterized by “collective compromise” among all sectors of society (Rodríguez 2001, v).

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The Erosion of Local Government-Business Linkages and Opposing Preferences

Linkages between local government and business deteriorated rapidly in the mid-1990s amid continued revelations of local corruption by the Cali drug cartel, which prompted a national government investigation dubbed the “8,000 Process.”57 The investigation revealed ties between local political leaders and the Cali cartel that discredited traditional political figures and members of the professional political class alike.58 The extent of the cartel’s reach into local political circles became evident when Guerrero’s successor as mayor of Cali, Mauricio Guzmán Cuevas, was forced to resign from office when allegations surfaced that his campaign had received financial contributions from businesses used as laundering fronts by the Cali cartel.59 The discrediting of politicians provided further reason for business to distance itself from local government. As the president of the CCC indicated, business leaders consciously removed themselves from engagements with local government for fear of becoming “contaminated” by the corruption scandals.60 But in order to maintain local political influence, business adopted two parallel strategies. The first strategy was to seek to recapture formal political power via the mayor’s office. In three separate mayoral elections (1998, 2004, and 2008) business leaders working through the CCC put forth the same candidate for mayor, Francisco José Lloreda Mera, who was also the director of the El País newspaper. Lloreda’s great-grandfather had founded the paper in the mid-twentieth century and had passed it on to Lloreda’s father, Rodrigo Hernando Lloreda Caicedo, who was one of the Valle’s most powerful conservative political leaders. During each of his three failed bids for mayor, Lloreda ran as an independent, though he was publicly supported by the conservative traditional political class, elements of the Liberal Party, and business elites. But on each occasion Lloreda lost to members of the professional political class. Business leaders attributed Lloreda’s losses to the power of clientelist machines controlled by professional politicians. As one longtime agroindustrial business owner and former mayor of the city asked rhetorically: “How could we win on the merits of Lloreda’s policies and background when the city’s poor people were selling their votes for bowls of sancocho [a traditional soup]?”61 Strained relations between the public and private sectors were aggravated by fiscal volatility caused in part by the market reforms undertaken during the 1990s. The fallout was particularly acute in the Valle because of agroindustry’s vulnerability to the new international competition. In 1999 the Valle registered

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its lowest rate of economic growth in twenty years (Guzmán and Moreno 2007, 265). Cali’s budget posted deficits each year between 1996 and 2003 (Pinto Ocampo 2011, 25). Between 1990 and 1994 the city’s GDP grew at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent, whereas between 1995 and 2000 that rate decreased to 1.6 percent, with negative growth in 1999.62 To cover budgetary shortfalls local government increasingly turned to loans, which led total municipal debt to increase by more than 60 percent between 1995 and 2002 (Collazos 2012). The city’s unemployment rate, which between 1994 and 1998 increased from 11.3 percent to 19.7 percent, was the highest among large Colombian cities, and during the same period of time Cali was the only major city where inequality increased (Gini coefficient from .51 to .54) (World Bank 2002, Table 4.1, 43). Business leaders pressured local authorities to root out governmental corruption in order to increase institutional efficiency and transparency, while political leaders demanded that business increase local investment and hire more people to combat unemployment. The conflictive relations further increased the scope of the politics of urban violence. Business thus continued fostering ties with levels of the state beyond local government. The CCC lobbied the central government to establish a Presidential Council for the Valle like that established in Medellin at the start of the 1990s (see Chapter 3). But whereas Medellin’s Presidential Council focused its efforts on violence in peripheral neighborhoods, business in Cali pressured national authorities to have the Presidential Council coordinate the development of local infrastructure necessary to consolidate a city-region economy that would, according to business, ultimately generate socioeconomic conditions favorable for a reduction in violence. Despite the fact that Cali was expected to play a central role in the economic project, local government officials were largely sidelined from the high-level discussions between business and the national government. After President Ernesto Samper (1994–98) met with the CCC’s leaders in Cali to discuss how local security conditions were impacting the regional economy, Samper announced the creation of the Presidential Council for the Valle del Cauca to be headed by a business leader that was the CCC’s top choice for the position.63 Deteriorating relations between business and local government would pose a significant challenge for the participatory project in the broader context of ailing urban governance. And while both the public and private sectors were experiencing difficult economic times, the CCC still counted on the financial and organizational resources to invest in research, analysis, and lobbying ef-

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forts to advance its interests in many different policy areas, including security. One local politician indicated that during this period of fiscal and institutional crises, the CCC was the only institution with the resources to regularly convene the media and policy-makers to discuss the issues facing the city, including violence, because “business was the only one with the money to buy lunch.”64 But to account for the trajectory of Cali’s second participatory project we must also consider the city’s continued fragmented pattern of territorial control. Fragmented Territorial Control: Old and New Actors

During the second half of the 1990s the fragmented nature of territorial control in Cali persisted in part as a result of the intersection with conflicts being waged across the Valle among organized crime, insurgents, and paramilitaries. As the growing number of competing actors battled for control of territory and shares of the booming drug trade, they turned to Cali’s hundreds of youth gangs as proxies through which to battle each other. These proxy wars fostered violence in Cali, but also increased the coercive capacities of the youth gangs, who used their enhanced powers to defend and compete for territory apart from the broader conflicts. The result was intense lethal violence with a low concentration of leadership across warring armed actors. Insurgent groups were drawn to the Valle in part by the growth in coca production. FARC fronts secured control over large portions of the roads from Cali leading to Buenaventura. Other insurgent fronts encroached upon the capital city’s rural outskirts, and still others penetrated peripheral neighborhoods on its eastern edges. The comparatively weaker ELN eschewed rural territorial control and instead focused on developing small mobile units that could carry out operations in Cali’s outskirts, including kidnappings of politicians and business owners. In the late 1990s paramilitary forces challenged the FARC’s territorial control in the Valle. The paramilitary Bloque Calima recruited a diverse range of actors to join its ranks, including narcotraffickers, gang members, former guerrilla fighters, and former military personnel (Guzmán and Moreno 2007, 281). Paramilitaries engaged heavily in mass killings and social cleansings targeting community leaders, activists, and alternative political forces considered sympathetic to the insurgents. The dismantling of the Cali cartel in the mid-1990s with the capture of its key leaders led to the formation of several smaller but still powerful DTOs, including the Norte del Valle Cartel (the cartel from the North Valle, or NDVC). The smaller DTOs leveraged control over portions of trafficking routes in the

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territories under their control along with the knowledge of the business that they had accumulated after years of working for the Cali cartel. By 2002 the NDVC had splintered into two competing groups, the Rastrojos and the Machos, who aligned with insurgent and paramilitary forces in the Valle, respectively. The resulting violence unfolded in several strategic locations, including Cali, as DTOs hired local gangs to fight on their behalf while also fueling the gangs’ individual coercive capacities. The key link between armed actors operating throughout the Valle and the gangs in Cali’s periphery were “offices” that enabled the latter to sell their services, including assassinations, to the highest bidders. In 2003 and 2004, for example, the city experienced numerous massacres as part of conflicts between competing DTOs carried out by rival youth gangs.65 In brief, fragmented territorial control during the early 2000s in Cali produced a high level of lethal violence combined with low coordination in criminal leadership across multiple armed actors operating at varying scales but each with interests inside of the city. Interactive Analysis

The breakdown of linkages between the public and private sector in Cali coupled with opposing preferences left little room for negotiation. By the time Rodríguez assumed office mutual distrust between the public and private sectors had deteriorated into open animosity as each blamed the other for the decline in local governing capacity and the failure to effectively address pressing policy challenges, including security. This section shows how the conflictive state of the urban political economy coupled with the fragmented nature of armed territorial control negatively impacted the prospects for sustaining Cali’s second participatory political project. a. Negotiating Fiscal Constraints The conflictive nature of the urban political economy both shaped and was influenced by the fiscal dilemmas that Rodríguez faced in advancing the participatory project. National authorities were increasingly concerned that fiscal decentralization was producing fiscal instability in the form of unsustainable levels of debt among municipal governments.66 Central government authorities had warned Rodríguez’s predecessors about the city’s poor fiscal health and recommended administrative reforms to reduce budgetary shortfalls, including a severe reduction in the municipal payroll long used for patronage politics. In 2001 Rodríguez dismissed nearly half of the city’s public sector workforce to satisfy demands from the national government. This severely undercut the in-

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stitutional capacity of local government to advance the participatory project.67 For example, the Desepaz office that Rodríguez envisioned reassuming a coordinating role in the city’s response to violence incurred substantial reductions in its budget, limiting its ability to accomplish a range of activities associated with the project, from outreach in peripheral neighborhoods to the resources it could provide to gang members as part of resocialization efforts.68 In public, business endorsed the administrative reforms as painful but necessary to “heal” the city’s ailing economy. In private, however, business leaders considered the reforms as a way to limit the ability of politicians to use the municipal bureaucracy as an “ATM for dispensing jobs to political loyalists.”69 One CCSC official argued that by constraining patronage resources the reforms would enable the “return of business to the mayor’s office.”70 Indeed, the private sector was already setting its sights on the 2004 mayoral elections, and thus was not inclined to cooperate with local government under Rodríguez as it struggled amid fiscal constraints and institutional decay. But Rodríguez was also reluctant to build linkages with business given its open opposition to his candidacy during the 2001 elections and its opposition to the participatory project.71 Thus conflictive local government-business relations persisted and fostered polarization within local politics. Yet Rodríguez had hoped to secure financing for key parts of the participatory project by regaining control of Cali’s public utilities firm, Empresas Municipales de Cali (EMCALI), from the national government.72 In April of 2000 the national government assumed administrative control of EMCALI given its dire financial situation and the failure of previous administrations to take steps to ensure the firm’s fiscal solvency. Previous administrations had instead addressed fiscal shortfalls through loans, increasing the firm’s debt more than 2.5fold between 1995 and 2000 from $179 million to $460 million (Vélez Álvarez 2013, 32). The national intervention imposed a moratorium on the firm’s credit, protected its property from being confiscated to settle debts, and ensured the continuation of services for the city’s residents. But during the intervention any revenues generated by EMCALI were not channeled into the municipal budget given that the national government had also assumed EMCALI’s debts. Thus central authorities imposed spending constraints on local government until such time as it offered an acceptable plan for repaying the debt. Efforts to reclaim EMCALI as a way to increase revenues for local government reflected the broader context of thin linkages between the public and private sectors. During the 1990s the public sector union, SINTRAEMCALI,

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had built strong ties with low-income communities in peripheral neighborhoods as a way to secure allies against the utility firm’s potential privatization. In 1999 the union presented local government with a plan for increasing EMCALI’s efficiency and cutting costs so as to stave off intervention by the central government. And while both the central government and EMCALI’s advisory board—headed by the CCC’s president—rejected labor’s plan, Rodríguez implemented the plan upon winning the mayoral elections, during which he had received ample support from labor. The national government in coordination with the firm’s advisory board ousted the managers of EMCALI that Rodríguez appointed to implement labor’s plan (Novelli 2010, ch. 8). The national government thus retained control of EMCALI throughout Rodríguez’s term in office, severely constraining local government’s capacity to invest in a range of areas associated with the participatory project. Weak linkages between local government and business further polarized the debate as local business leaders joined national authorities in criticizing the mayor’s “failure to compromise.”73 The resulting fiscal contraction impacted not only the participatory project’s violence prevention initiatives but also investment in the police as part of building police capacity and accountability. Here business would again step in to offer the police financial support and in the process undermine local government authority critical for the participatory project. b. The Continued Challenge of Police Autonomy In 2003 Cali’s police budget was approximately one-eighth the budget of the Medellin police despite the two cities having nearly the same population size.74 Interviews with police commanders stationed in Cali revealed resentment at what they viewed as the mayor’s “abandonment” of the police while at the same time demanding better security results.75 For example, commanders operating on minimal budgets were forced to limit the areas where motorized patrols would travel given the lack of money to either purchase gasoline or repair motorcycles. Police leaders expressed frustration that the mayor’s office “tied their hands” with a minimal budget but still kept publicly criticizing them for deteriorating local security conditions.76 Business used its financial resources to fill the gap in the police’s budget while again bypassing local government. The CCC spearheaded efforts to raise $1 million from the private sector to support infrastructure for both the police and locally based military brigades, including equipment and barracks for the military to secure the roads between Cali and Buenaventura, the mountains on

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the city’s western edges where FARC fronts were known to operate, and areas just north of the city where numerous agroindustrial firms were located.77 The CCC’s resources helped to purchase motorcycles, trucks, gasoline, and communications equipment.78 In turn, the CCC was able to wield influence within the police at the same time that the institution’s relationship with local government was deteriorating. As one police commander indicated: “These were difficult times with many threats to the city, and the private sector’s support strengthened what was already a special relationship between the police and Cali’s businessmen.”79 Thus business support weighed heavily on relations between local government and the police. Local government officials found the police unresponsive to their concerns regarding rumors of persistent police involvement in extrajudicial violence that challenged key elements of the participatory project. Illustrative of this dynamics are the stories of two coordinators that worked on the Districts of Peace initiative. The coordinators were responsible for building ties to local community groups in areas located within the districts. Yet both related numerous incidents of the police threatening them, community groups, and local residents in ways that severely undermined their individual efforts and the Districts of Peace project. One common tactic used by the police was to stop the coordinators as they were leaving the neighborhoods in which they had been working during the day. The officers would demand to know with which community organizations the coordinators had met. The next day, those same organizations would receive phone calls instructing them to tell their leaders and local residents to stop collaborating with the district coordinators or they “would all regret it.” Several community groups subsequently pulled out of the Districts of Peace initiative, which critically weakened a variety of related projects, including the resocialization of armed actors and programs to foster community participation in local development efforts.80 Although the mayor’s office pressed police leaders to investigate these and other accusations of harassment against municipal workers and community residents working on the Districts of Peace initiative, no official response was ever made. Unofficially, several of Rodríguez’s aides indicated that police officials hinted that unless local government began to show more public support for the police and provide resources on the “same level as the city’s business leaders,” they should “let the police do their job.”81 These anecdotes illustrate how conflictive relations between business and local government permeated on the ground efforts to advance critical elements of the participatory project.

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c. Fragmented Violence: Negotiating Criminal and Political Armed Actors The conflictive urban political economy also intersected with the fragmented pattern of armed territorial control to present local government with a politically treacherous scenario. As Rodríguez noted during an interview, while DTOs and actors from the civil war were present and active within the city’s periphery largely through youth gangs acting as proxies, they represented less of a threat to local security that the hundreds of armed youth gangs that did not have ties to these larger actors but did benefit from the increased availability of weapons and growing local illicit markets. Because the city and its finances were “under the microscope of the central government and the business community,” Rodríguez often considered it politically dangerous to publicly push for addressing the structural causes of local violence through the participatory project.82 But the insistence by business on framing the threats to local security as inextricably linked to the efforts of insurgent groups to urbanize the civil war often forced Rodríguez also to assume an extreme position, as when he publicly declared that “what exist [in Cali] are youth gangs and not guerrilla insurgents or paramilitary forces.”83 Conflictive local government-business relations coupled with the high lethal violence and low coordination of criminal leadership together fueled the schism in local politics that served to undermine the participatory project. Leveraging its research capacities and media connections, business advocated for greater military intervention in local security matters because insurgent incursions threatened the private sector’s plans—endorsed by the national government—for transforming Cali and the Valle del Cauca into a city-region economy. National pressure on local government to cooperate with the military antagonized both local government-business relations and intergovernmental relations.84 Amid these conflicts, members of youth gangs that had started participating in resocialization initiatives withdrew as the military and police engaged in repressive campaigns that at times spilled over into forms of extrajudicial violence that targeted poor young men. As one former gang member indicated: “The situation was difficult. Many of us wanted to stop and leave all the violence behind, but we had to protect our friends from the state and from rivals that thought they could take advantage of our willingness to give up our guns.”85 Here again armed actors themselves were aware that the fragmented nature of territorial control represented an insecure environment for accepting the local state’s invitation to surrender their weapons and resocialize. But agroindustrialists were particularly concerned that to confront this sce-

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nario Rodríguez had appointed the son of a former M-19 guerrilla leader to oversee the participatory project. Upon becoming mayor, Rodríguez selected Jorge Ivan Ospina as secretary of government, which is the municipal government office responsible for citizen security and public safety. Ospina was a medical doctor who had become well known throughout the city for his extensive work to improve access to health care in Cali’s poorest communities. His father, Iván Marino Ospina, had been a leader of the M-19 and key representative in the peace negotiations with national government in the 1980s until they broke down and he was killed by the military. Several business leaders suggested that Ospina’s links to the M-19, even though he himself had never been an active member, made him more likely to be sympathetic to subversive elements operating in the city’s periphery. As one agroindustrial leader noted, “If [Ospina’s] father used guns against us, what could we expect his son to do to us as a politician?”86 Interviews with officials in the national Ministry of Defense that were responsible for military operations in and around Cali at the time revealed that business leaders from the CCC and CCSC often stressed to officials and military leaders that Ospina’s position was a challenge to “reclaiming” the city’s periphery.87 Thus in 2003, amid increased pressures from the national government and business regarding the terms of Cali’s debt repayments and the possibility of obtaining fiscal support to satisfy basic municipal expenditures, Rodríguez gave in to business opposition and dismissed Jorge Iván Ospina from the position of secretary of government. As his replacement Rodríguez appointed the director of the CCSC. This gave the private sector the formal authority to identify local security priorities and shape the city’s policy response accordingly. When asked during an interview to reflect on the trajectory of the project following this decision, Rodríguez simply replied: “[T]he business community in Cali can stop whatever policies it feels aren’t in its interests.” d. Widening the Scope of the Politics of Urban Violence A further challenge for the participatory project was the increasingly close relations between the CCC and the central government that effectively sidelined the mayor. Business consolidated its partnership with the national government on the key issues of security and the regional economy by establishing a “Parliamentary bloc”—a regional-level institution that brought together the Valle’s representatives in the national Congress with business leaders as a platform to advance regional development. The bloc’s regional agenda focused on

120  Cali

securing national government support for the development and securitization of transportation infrastructure connecting Cali to the Pacific port in order to facilitate trade. As part of this effort the Bloc lobbied the national government to support security initiatives to safeguard transportation and port infrastructure.88 The bloc became a major political force in the region. Local politicians in Cali saw the bloc as often eclipsing local government as the main interlocutor between the city and national authorities. This complicated local government efforts to establish itself as a credible authority in negotiations with central government agencies on fiscal issues and others areas that were hampering the participatory project and urban governance. Indeed, the national government took the unprecedented step of establishing the first protocol of its kind in Colombia in which it officially designated the CCC to serve as the central government’s main representative in Cali and the Valle del Cauca. In this role the CCC would act as the president’s eyes and ears on a range of local “issues of interest to the national government,” including security.89 Cali’s Second Derailed Participatory Political Project

Cali’s second participatory project was modeled explicitly on many of the pioneering measures and institutions proposed a decade earlier in a similarly failed attempted to advance and sustain a participatory political project in response to urban violence. The city’s second attempt to break with the status quo faltered in the face of factors that echoed many of the conditions in the early 1990s. More specifically, by the time Jhon Maro Rodríguez assumed office, intensely conflictive relations between local government and the private sector limited the potential to align preferences and work together to address local violence as part of the broader task of reshaping the local political order. The continued fragmented nature of territorial control marked by high levels of lethal violence and limited coordination in criminal leadership further challenged efforts to advance the second participatory project. Figure 4.1 compares homicides across Cali’s districts, measured as each district’s share of the total number of homicides in Cali in the years 2005 and 2010. In both years the poorest districts accounted for larger percentages of the city’s total number of homicides. Indeed, as many of the city’s wealthier districts saw their shares of total lethal violence decrease in 2010, many of the city’s poorer districts experienced substantial increases. Political and economic leaders alike lamented that Cali was unable to match the substantial gains that both Medel-

The Derailment of a Pioneering Participatory Project 121

16

Percentage of Total

Municipal Homicides

14 12

2005

2010

10 8 6 4 2 0 17

2

5

19

9 10 12

8

11

3

4

7

6

20 18

1

13 16 15 14

Comuna

Fig . 4. 1 : Cali: Homicides across Districts as Percentage of Total Municipal Homicides (2005 and 2010). Sources: Author’s calculations based on data from the Observatorio Social de Cali. Districts are organized according to socioeconomic class from wealthiest (left) to poorest (right) using a housing indicator from 2007.

lin and Bogota made in security along with a range of other policy areas. And as this chapter has shown, a focus on the urban political economy and patterns of armed territorial control help to explain Cali’s inability to do so. Conclusion

This chapter has analyzed within-case variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence in Cali using the framework developed in Chapter 1. The city’s first participatory project was derailed amid conflictive relations between local government and business along with a pattern of fragmented territorial control. Cali’s second participatory project in the early 2000s faltered when confronted with markedly more conflictive relations between local government and the private sector and the continued fragmented nature of territorial control marked by high levels of lethal violence and limited coordination in criminal leadership. The case of Cali illustrates how conflictive relations and fragmented territorial control can become mutually reinforcing and constrain participatory political projects, often with fatal consequence for the populations that such projects target. The next chapter shifts to the case of Bogota, which provides a stark contract with Cali’s experience.

5

Bogota Building and Branding a Global City

In 2002 the United Nations declared Bogota a model of urban governance for developing world cities, noting that the city’s innovative response to urban violence in the early 1990s helped to reduce levels of violence while ushering in an era of participatory urban governance. The author of that participatory political project was Antanas Mockus, the first political independent to be elected mayor of the Colombian capital. The mayors that followed Mockus’s first term in office (he would be elected mayor a second time in 2000) retained the participatory project, professing during campaigns that they did not want to endanger the city’s gains in security and, more broadly, its new international image as a model of urban governance. Those perceptions of Bogota contrast sharply with how the city was viewed in the 1980s, when deteriorating infrastructure, a crippling fiscal deficit, corruption scandals, and a struggle to detain escalating levels of lethal violence plagued it. Starting in the late 1980s the city’s homicide rate increased steadily, from 39 to 80 per 100,000 between 1988 and 1993. The violence was fueled in part by the country’s drug wars, the reconfiguration of illicit markets within the city, and the use of local armed actors as proxies for conflicts over territory and criminal economies. There was a generalized sense that the city had become ungovernable (Gilbert 2006). And it was in this context that Mockus advanced the participatory project that was sustained over time. Nearly a decade later, in 2003, local elections again broke new ground when a political leftist, Luis Eduardo “Lucho” Garzón, was elected mayor. Like his predecessors, Garzón also pledged to preserve the participatory project. Yet, unlike his predecessors, the electoral coalition that ushered Garzón into power 122

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relied heavily on the support of the city’s poorest residents. His bid for mayor was largely opposed by wealthier segments of society, including business. Indeed, Garzón encountered vocal resistance from the private sector when he proposed amending the participatory project’s focus on public space. Garzón countered that private sector interests needed to accommodate the broader public good. Yet, amid these tensions, local government and business relations did not degrade into conflict as the two actors reached an agreement that satisfied their individual and shared interests while sustaining the participatory project’s focus on control, prevention, and participation. How can we explain the continuation of Bogota’s participatory political project over time? Why did efforts in the mid-2000s to amend the project provoke a clash between local government and business? And what accounts for the negotiation of this clash into compromise and not outright conflict? In this chapter I show that in the early 1990s collaborative local government-business relations together with the atomized nature of territorial control in Bogota explains why the participatory project was sustained. In the 2000s, while the victory of a political leftist prompted concern among the city’s business elites, the dense public-private sector linkages and relative compatibility in preferences coupled with continued atomized territorial control generated a setting where business and local government could compromise. The analysis thus shows that unpacking the nature of and interaction between the urban political economy and patterns of armed territorial control can strengthen our understanding of the politics of urban violence in a case that continues to command the attention of policy-makers, international donors, and scholars alike. Sustaining Bogota’s Participatory Political Project

Traditional party politicians secured Bogota’s first three direct mayoral elections, as shown in Table 5.1. Yet, by the 1980s the city faced multiple political crises. The city’s second popularly elected mayor, Juan Martín Caicedo, was arrested six months before the end of his term for improper use of public funds. And in a stark display of no confidence in the city’s fiscal situation after years of local budgets being used for clientelist ends, the national government refused to serve as a guarantor for Bogota as it sought loans to pay foreign interest payments on $2.6 billion in debt (Gilbert and Dávila 2002, 44). Both the local Liberal and Conservative parties were undergoing internal fragmentation as individual members built their own political movements based on pre-existing clientelist networks or with the intent of capturing pub-

124  Bogota

Tabl e 5 . 1: Bogota: Popularly Elected Mayors (1988–2007) Term

1988–90 1990–92 1992–94 1995–97 1998–2000 2001–3 2004–7 a

Mayor

Andrés Pastrana Arango Juan Martín Caicedo Ferrer Jaime Castro Castro Antanas Mockus Sivickasa (Paul Bromberg) Enrique Peñalosa Londoño Antanas Mockus Sivickas Luis Eduardo Garzón

Party

Conservative Liberal Liberal Independent Independent Independent Polo Democrático

Mockus resigned from office in 1996 to make an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the Colombian presidency.

lic resources to develop new networks. The inability of the parties to maintain internal discipline was on display during the 1993 elections when the Liberal Party candidate, Enrique Peñalosa, failed to secure the full backing of his party in part because he expressed ambivalence about receiving it given the growing public disillusionment with the traditional parties. Indeed, the 1993 elections featured a 70 percent abstention rate, which further facilitated Antanas Mockus’s surprise victory. He won nineteen out of the city’s twenty districts, securing approximately 65 percent of all votes cast. Yet Mockus not only won a significant share of the vote in the city’s middle- and low-income wards but also secured the majority of the votes in some of the city’s wealthiest wards (Instituto para el Desarrollo de la Democracia Luis Carlos Galan Sarmiento 2001, 72–79). As Mockus indicated during an interview, the diverse nature of his voting bloc represented a “rejection of traditional politics and an embrace of something new.”1 Mockus was a professor of philosophy and mathematics and the former dean of the National University of Colombia. His campaign had limited financial resources and was run by fellow academics with little experience running a political campaign. To compete against opponents using party machines, Mockus deployed pedagogical techniques and outlandish behavior that secured extensive media coverage. A key component of his strategy was to frame the election as a contest between himself as a political outsider committed to a new form of politics and his main opponent, Peñalosa, as a traditional party elite who would maintain the status quo that had brought the city to its current dilemma (Pasotti 2010, 77–79). Citizen security was central to Mockus’s mayoral campaign. He viewed violence as the clearest manifestation of the disjuncture between local government and society, or what he called the misalignment between “personal morality,

Building and Branding a Global City 125

Ta bl e 5 . 2: Bogota’s First Participatory Political Project St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Increase financial support for the police

Enhance coverage and improve quality of public service provision

Develop citizen participation in government accountability

Expand the police’s territorial presence

Modify individual and collective behaviors to build citizen culture

Foster the autonomy of citizens and civil society from political parties

Develop new police training protocols

Reshape and regulate public space

Deepen citizen participation in urban planning and budgeting

Modernize the local penitentiary system

Institutionalize the epidemiological analysis of crime and violence Develop alternative conflict resolution mechanisms

S o u r c e : DAPD (1995); Martin and Ceballos (2004).

social norms and the law” (Mockus 2004, 1). To correct this misalignment Mockus proposed the participatory political project summarized in Table 5.2. Violence control measures aimed to strengthen and reform the local police in ways that aligned with the broader objective of reshaping the local political order. This was particularly important given that the city’s police force had been at the center of several high-profile scandals, including the 1993 rape and murder of a young girl in a police station (Moncada 2009, 435). The project proposed increased investment to support the strengthening of police capacities, including the purchase of motorcycles and communications systems. To expand the police’s territorial presence, the project proposed neighborhoodlevel watch groups that would also foster police-community ties to prevent criminal activity. One notable measure eliminated the city’s transit police and transferred its responsibilities to the local police force—a major development given that the mayor’s office had historically used the transit agency as a reservoir for patronage politics. Additional violence control measures entailed new forms of police training, including offering police officers classes at local public and private universities on a range of topics in order to build dialogue between the police and youth in “neutral” spaces.2 The project also aimed to modernize the penitentiary system by enhancing its resocialization and rehabilitation capacities (Llorente and Rivas 2005, 16–17).

126  Bogota

Violence prevention measures targeted the city’s poorest populations in low-income neighborhoods for increased coverage and quality in the provision of public goods and services, including healthcare, education, and public housing. Central to violence prevention efforts was also a focus on building cultura ciudadana, or citizen culture, defined as “the shared customs, actions and minimal rules that generate a sense of belonging, facilitate urban co-existence, and stimulate respect for the shared heritage and recognition of citizens’ rights and responsibilities” (Departamento Administrativo de Planeación Distrital 1995, 3). Here specific initiatives ranged from the pragmatic to the highly unusual, including restrictions on the times during which stores and nightclubs could sell liquor, the use of mimes to shame people into using crosswalks, vaccinations against violence during which citizens could meet with mental health specialists to discuss past experiences as victims or perpetrators of violence, and encouraging the city’s residents to hold fellow citizens and government officials accountable for even the smallest of transgressions, from accepting a bribe to littering (Moncada 2009, 437–38). The participatory project also proposed expanding and regulating public space as a way to generate and preserve elements of the built environment where citizens could interact, build community, and practice citizen culture. The project set out to modernize the city’s crime and violence data analysis capacities through an epidemiological approach similar to that developed in Cali (see Chapter 4) by establishing the Unified System for Information on Violence and Delinquency (SUIVD). The SUIVD would coordinate the collection and analysis of crime and violence data across the police, the district attorney’s office, and other agencies charged with collecting relevant information. Through the SUIVD local government would disseminate analyses on security conditions in order to provide citizens with concrete metrics with which to hold local government accountable for citizen security (Moncada 2009). A final violence prevention measure aimed to increase access to justice by providing citizens with varied forms of assistance to resolve a wide range of everyday conflicts, including providing residents of high violence neighborhoods with conflict resolution training (Llorente and Rivas 2005, 18). Bogota’s first participatory project situated violence control and prevention measures and institutions within the overarching task of deepening political participation. This element of the project broke with the status quo of clientpatron relations long used to maintain control over populations located in peripheral neighborhoods where the lack of access to basic public services pro-

Building and Branding a Global City 127

vided fertile terrain for patron-client relations (Santos 2007). The participatory project proposed increasing public service provision through programmatic channels for marginalized populations as a way to foster political “autonomy” among citizens and communities long reliant on loyalty to political machines in order to obtain public resources (Departamento Administrativo de Planeación Distrital 1995, 6). Among the new spaces for citizen participation were the city’s first large-scale experiments in participatory planning and budgeting coordinated through a newly established Sub-Secretariat for Local Issues and Community Development. These experiments would enable portions of the city’s population, particularly those residing in peripheral parts of the city, to identify and debate their development concerns and needs with each other and with local government officials while also formulating specific policy proposals for public investment in their neighborhoods. Bogota’s participatory political project represented a major departure from the city’s historical approach to security and urban governance. And shortly after Mockus assumed office it became clear that a key supporter of the participatory project was the city’s business community. Why did the private sector support the efforts of a political outsider who proposed a project in response to violence that would alter the local political order? To answer this question we must unpack the state of the city’s political economy when Mockus assumed office. Cohesive Business, Eroding Linkages, and Global City Aspirations

Historically, no single sector dominated Bogota’s economy. The city’s first wave of industrialization took place during the first half of the nineteenth century and focused largely on consumer goods, including paper, textiles, and beer. A second wave of industrialization in the late nineteenth century met the needs of a maturing industrial sector and a growing metropolis, including the founding of the city’s first electricity company. In between these waves a vibrant commercial sector emerged along with a robust financial sector. A 1980 World Bank study of the local economy thus remarked that Bogota exhibited “a balanced economic structure which is not dominated by manufacturing nor services nor administration as it is in some other large cities in the world” (Mohan 1980, 57). This sectoral equilibrium was overseen by a powerful encompassing business institution in the Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá (Bogota Chamber of Commerce, or CCB), which was established in the late 1870s and quickly became the key institutional voice for the city’s cohesive business community.3

128  Bogota

80

Share of GDP (%)

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 1990 Industry

1994 Commerce

1999

Finance, Real Estate and Other Services

Fi g . 5. 1 : Bogota: Sectoral Composition of GDP (1990, 1994, 1999). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría de Hacienda de Bogotá, D.C.

Coordination between the CCB and local traditional party machines enabled the city’s private sector to satisfy its needs for improved urban infrastructure, favorable regulation of labor, and other conditions conducive to its economic interests. Linkages between business and local government took varied forms, including public-private commissions on specific policy issues, the appointment of business leaders to the boards of the public utility firms, and the support that business leaders received from local parties to pursue public positions on the city council (Gilbert and Ward 1985; Pavony 1999, 399–408). Yet, if relations between business and local government were historically accommodating of each other’s interests, why at the close of the twentieth century did business support a political independent unaligned with the traditional parties that had served as the private sector’s channel to political power? Here we need to consider the particular economic and political needs of the private sector at the close of the twentieth century and how violence generated both challenges and opportunities in these realms. Figure 5.1 shows the contrasting fortunes of Bogota’s industrial and service sectors during the 1990s measured as their respective shares of the city’s gross domestic product (GDP). As industry’s share steadily declined, the service sector’s increased, and by the close of the decade the latter accounted for three-fourths of local GDP. The bulk of the service sector’s growth was in finance and real estate. This sectoral shift unfolded as the national government began market liberalization that further imperiled the industrial sector. In anticipation of these sectoral shifts, Bogota’s business community began

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debating how the city’s economy would compete in a globalized marketplace. The cohesive nature of the business community facilitated coordination between sectors to confront the challenges and seize the opportunities on the economic horizon. As the then president of the CCB indicated, the institution served as a “table where all sectors could leave behind their individual interests and think about collective goals, which meant thinking about the city.”4 Indeed, research by the CCB sought to identify ways to ensure that Bogota would become the “capital of the economic opening” (Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá 1997, 139) given its centrality to the national economy and international ties to global markets. The CCB thus prioritized the transformation of Bogota into the “strategic business center of the Andes” that would serve as the ideal terrain to both create and attract multinational corporations (MNCs) (CCB 1998, xxiv). Yet, becoming a global city required overcoming several challenges, the first of which was violence. During the 1980s Bogota had been the setting for several high-profile acts of criminal and political violence that contributed to the city’s image as the center of one of the world’s most violent countries. In 1984 assassins in Bogota working for the Medellin drug cartel killed the national minister of justice, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla. The following year the M-19 insurgency took over the Supreme Court Justice building in the city center, leading to a standoff with the national military that ended in the deaths of half of the country’s Supreme Court justices and nearly all of the insurgents. In 1987 an outspoken critic of the drug trade and director of one of the country’s main newspapers, El Espectador, was assassinated upon leaving his Bogota office.5 The high-profile nature of these violent acts posed daunting challenges for the private sector’s vision of building a global city. Certainly, levels of lethal violence in Bogota were considerably lower than in either Cali or Medellin. Yet what concerned the CCB was the perception of insecurity associated with the city. The CCB’s leadership argued that Bogota had to measure its competitiveness not against Cali or Medellin, but instead against other major Latin American cities that were not burdened with the task of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) while saddled with an international image defined by insecurity.6 One CCB analysis warned that unless the business community crafted an “explicit and coherent strategic positioning” for Bogota in the global economy, the city would continue to be defined as “the capital city of a country well-known for violence and narcotrafficking” (CCB 1998, 111). The same report described Bogota’s inability to separate itself from the disorder

130  Bogota

associated with Colombia as the “sickness of being a capital city,” in reference to the challenge of disentangling the city’s image from that of the country’s in the global marketplace. In brief, fulfilling the business community’s economic vision required rebranding the city. Yet rebranding required the engagement and collaboration of local government. As the CCB report referenced above noted: “It is not at the national level where [business] should focus its attention to achieve competitiveness and better quality of life; it is at the local level” (CCB 1997, xxii). However, as in both Cali and Medellin during the 1990s, linkages between business and local government had begun to deteriorate given the emergence of professional politicians that operated at arms length from the traditional parties that business had historically relied upon to access policy-making and politics. In the years leading up to Mockus’s electoral victory, the fractionalization of local parties and the growing uncertainty of ready access to the circuits of local political power strained ties between the private sector and local government in Bogota. In 1991 the president of the CCB, Mario Suárez Melo, resigned from his office to enter the race for mayor as a political independent unaligned with either of the traditional political parties. He noted publicly that his independent status would attract voters disillusioned by traditional party politics that had fostered Bogota’s decline. His platform focused squarely on the issues that business considered necessary to transform Bogota’s image, including the economic revitalization of the city center, expansion and regulation of public space, the removal of the informal sector from the city’s downtown commercial districts, and reductions in urban violence and insecurity.7 However, Suárez was unable to secure enough popular support to mount a credible challenge to the city’s traditional political machines. The private sector realized that what it needed was a mayor whose preferences aligned with its own but who would also be receptive to deepening linkages with business instead of pursuing clientelist interests and autonomy from the city’s economic elite. Thus when Antanas Mockus won the 1993 elections and proposed the participatory political project, business stood to benefit in several ways. First, preferences were highly aligned as core elements of the project echoed initiatives that the private sector was already undertaking or had identified as future priorities. Second, by depicting violence as rooted in the distortion of social norms, Mockus detached the perceptions of local violence—and thus of the city itself—from the broader national dynamics of armed criminal actors, illicit markets, and civil war. Third, the participatory project enabled Bogota to asso-

Building and Branding a Global City 131

ciate itself with internationally lauded cases of global cities that had used similar approaches regarding public space, cultural norms, and policing to address violence, such as New York City’s experiments using broken windows theory starting in the late 1980s. The novelty of the participatory project deployed in the capital of the one of the world’s most violent countries would draw positive international attention, including news stories in The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, Newsday, and The Miami Herald, among others.8 By rejecting clientelism as the dominant mode of local governance, Mockus also appealed to the economic and political interests of business in several ways. Efforts to advance good governance in Bogota served to draw a contrast between the capital city and the broader national scandals of corruption at the hands of drug traffickers and organized crime. Such national dynamics had also tainted the city’s image, and a project to govern in a very different manner could generate more distance between the capital city and the national context. Moreover, Mockus’s approach to governance through programmatic channels threatened to weaken the clientelist capacities of traditional and emerging politicians that had resisted the intervention of business in local politics as well as the private sector’s demands for more efficient government to support the pursuit of global city status. Several high-level members of the CCB noted that while they and other business leaders had not openly endorsed Mockus during the campaign because he was an “unknown factor,” his lack of ties to the party machines presented business with a choice: either support Mockus once he secured office and “regain a seat at the table” of local government or continue trying to shape the city’s future with their “hands tied behind their backs.”9 Yet, while collaboration between local government and business certainly would be crucial for the participatory project, we must also consider how the city’s particular pattern of armed territorial control at the time would also help to sustain the project. Transition to Atomized Territorial Control

Bogota’s participatory project materialized during a moment of transition in the local dynamics of violence as the city shifted from a period of fragmented to atomized territorial control. The fragmented nature of territorial control had resulted from the arrival of two major armed actors to the city during the late twentieth century. Emerald mafias that had been operating in Colombia since the 1960s were arguably among the country’s most power-

132  Bogota

ful criminal organizations before major DTOs emerged. The emerald mafias were responsible for nearly 95 percent of the emeralds in the global markets (Gutiérrez and Barón 2008, 109), which were transported from mines in the department of Boyacá in central Colombia to Bogota and then on to foreign wholesalers. In the late 1960s several emerald mafias arrived in Bogota and organized armed groups to resolve disputes among themselves as part of a decades-old conflict known as the “green wars” (Téllez 1993). The influx of firearms and financial resources fueled the proliferation of varied smaller armed actors in Bogota, including death squads, groups of assassins for hire, and extortion rings, many of which served as proxies for the warring emerald mafias as they diversified their portfolios by establishing and expanding illicit urban markets (Fundación Ideas para la Paz 2013, 8). This early pattern of fragmented territorial control deepened in the late 1970s with the arrival of leaders from the Medellin cartel who forged alliances with competing factions of the emerald mafias. The resulting drug-emerald alliances provided narcotraffickers with new influxes of illicit profits and emerald mafias with enhanced coercive capacities with which to challenge rivals. The presence of DTO leaders and emerald mafias increased demand for local armed actors to carry out varied violent tasks, including the provision of security, the transport of illicit goods, and select assassinations. Yet by 1993 many of the emerald mafia’s allies in the illicit drug world had been killed, arrested, or severely weakened. The fragmented pattern of territorial control broke down without large criminal organizations able to finance the growth and coercive capacities of local armed actors. Thus by the time that Mockus assumed power in 1994 the level of lethal violence in Bogota had already begun to fall. And as Figure 5.2 shows, the number of homicides by firearm in particular began a steady and sharp decline in 1993. The breakdown of fragmented territorial control gave way to an atomized pattern consisting of small-scale armed groups, primarily youth gangs, with limited coercive capacity and low coordination in criminal leadership. Certainly some of the armed actors that emerged in response to the demand by the emerald mafias and drug traffickers persisted after their patrons fled or were killed. Yet these actors lacked the coercive capacities needed to engage in protracted and resource-intensive conflicts for projects of defending or building large-scale territorial control. Youth gangs did not enjoy ready access to large criminal organizations coordinating large illicit markets that could have provided steady flows of weapons and capital (Ramos 2004, 79–82). Gang ac-

Building and Branding a Global City 133

3500

Number of Homicides

3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

0

Fig . 5. 2: Bogota: Homicides by Firearm (1980–2008). Source: Fundación Ideas para la Paz (2013, 21).

tivity, which included armed robberies and assaults, prompted residents of the city’s peripheral neighborhoods, small businesses, and members of the police to organize social cleansing groups during the 1980s and into the 1990s (Donovan 2002, 21). While certainly those parts of the city used as bases for the sale of illicit narcotics and other criminal economies featured a high concentration of gangs, their limited coercive power and the low coordination in leadership constrained their ability to challenge local government’s efforts to penetrate these areas as part of the participatory project (Ávila and Pérez 2011, 70). As one of Bogota’s police commanders from the early 1990s indicated during an interview, “[If] along with the Cali cartel and Medellin cartel there had been a Bogota drug cartel, then the all the little gangs that were around [in the 1990s] in Bogota would have looked very different and we would not be talking about Bogota in the same way as we do today.”10 In brief, the city’s participatory project in the early 1990s emerged amid a critical change in the pattern of armed territorial control from fragmented to atomized, which, as we shall see, facilitated sustaining the participatory project over time. Interactive Analysis

Collaborative local government-business relations coupled with atomized nature of territorial control generated both practical and political conditions conducive to sustaining the participatory project. This section identifies the consequences of this interaction for the city’s first participatory project.

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a. Decentralized and Accountable Policing Business collaborated extensively with local government to strengthen police presence and capacities while improving the institution’s accountability to local authorities and communities. Since the late 1980s the CCB had been exploring ways to import the neighborhood watch program popular in the United States and parts of Western Europe into Bogota. The CCB had coordinated directly with the city’s police force to establish an early version of the watch program that it called Sectores de Solidaridad Ciudadana contra la Delincuencia (Sectors of Citizen Solidarity against Delinquency). Business provided the police with financial support to establish these watch groups in areas with high concentrations of commercial firms. When Mockus entered office, however, the CCB, the police, and local government worked together to expand the territorial distribution and scope of the initiative by reconfiguring it into the Frentes de Seguridad Local (Local Security Fronts, or FSLs) program.11 The FSL initiative sought to increase police-community ties as part of deepening citizen involvement in security issues. Private sector collaboration was critical for the FSL initiative as the CCB provided local government officials and the police with key information based on its experience developing and implementing the Sectores initiative. For example, the CCB provided local government officials with detailed lists of community organizations that had been involved in the Sectores initiative in various city neighborhoods, which in turn provided a basis for the development of the FSLs.12 Business also purchased community alarms as part of the FSL initiative, including the installation of the electricity lines to run the alarms in parts of the city that had not been connected to the city’s electrical grid. By the end of Mockus’s term in office, more than 2,200 FSLs were in place across four hundred neighborhoods (Martin and Ceballos 2004, 378). Here it is important to note that the CCB’s provision of financial support for the task of strengthening the police was carried out in coordination with local government. Business and local government worked together to identify the needs of the police, which ensured that the private sector’s financial support was made with the local government’s approval and awareness. But by working with local government, business also increased pressure on city officials to guarantee that the private sector’s funds would be used for their intended purposes. As one CCB representative indicated, “[S]eeing our money enter the city’s budget and emerge on the other side without disappearing into some politician’s pockets strengthened trust between the public and private sectors.”13

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Likewise, local government officials viewed collaboration with business on police matters as a way to maintain police accountability to the mayor’s office and not the private sector.14 Local government-business collaboration thus served each actor’s interests while also benefiting the broader public good through the advancement of a more robust police institution as a key part of the participatory political project.15 b. Information Sharing and Dissemination Collaborative public-private sector relations also extended to the important task of collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information on local security dynamics. In 1996 the CCB established the Directorate for Security and Coexistence (Dirección de Seguridad y Convivencia, or DSC), which was charged with issuing policy recommendations regarding security issues on behalf of the private sector. One of the first initiatives the DSC launched was the Observatory for Security to collect and analyze data on security conditions in Bogota. Particularly novel about this data collection effort was the start of an annual survey to measure victimization rates, public opinions of the police, and perceptions of insecurity. In addition to providing the basis for the policy recommendations of business, the observatory’s work was also intended as a tool to keep the mayor accountable for local security conditions by publicizing survey findings through the media and others venues. While the CCB assumed financial responsibility for designing and fielding the survey, the observatory staff consulted extensively with local police and government officials during the survey’s development and planning stages. Among the observatory’s key interlocutors within local government were officials working on the government’s own institution responsible for analyzing security conditions, the SUIVD. In a more conflictive setting, the observatory and the SUIVD might have been pitted against each other as competitors, as had occurred in Cali. Yet collaborative relations between business and local government generated a situation in which the staff from both agencies collaborated closely in several ways, including sharing technical advice and data.16 More broadly, as one of Mockus’s security advisors indicated, the SUIVD nearly always invited representatives from the observatory to present at public meetings where local security conditions were discussed along with the effectiveness of specific measures associated with the participatory project.17 The nature of the urban political economy thus enabled dialogue and coordination between similar initiatives carried out

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separately by the public and private sectors but as part of shared interests in advancing the city’s response to violence. c. Increasing and Regulating Public Space Within the participatory project, business viewed the effort to reclaim and regulate public space as an opportunity to remove informal vendors from the streets of the city center. Economic leaders argued that the informal vendors posed unfair competition for formal commerce, denied the city valuable tax revenue, and fueled black markets by providing an outlet for the sale of contraband and stolen merchandise. Thus the CCB declared that the historical tolerance of informal street vending had been a major reason for Bogota’s deterioration in the 1980s (CCB 1998, 101). Business consequently supported the participatory project’s focus on public space. As part of the project, Mockus continued the pre-existing practice of removing informal vendors from public streets and relocating them to publicly financed buildings where they could continue selling their wares (Donovan 2008, 38). The president of the CCB at the time indicated that business leaders often pressed Mockus to expand this and other efforts to clear informal vendors from city streets.18 One of Mockus’s key security advisors, however, noted that the administration was hesitant to significantly expand its relocation efforts in part because the mayor himself was uncertain how to balance the regulation of public space with the need to incorporate all citizens, including informal vendors, into the project of “building a new form of politics.”19 As we shall see, however, subsequent shifts in the composition of electoral coalitions would lead Mockus’s successor, as well as Mockus himself during his second time in office, to adopt a more aggressive stance on public space. Yet, during Mockus’s first term as mayor the CCB increased several of its own public space initiatives as part of collaborating with local government. Among these initiatives were the building of small parks and gardens in spaces that had been abandoned by past local administrations and consequently become informal trash dumps. The CCB also committed funds for local government initiatives to eliminate signs of disorder in the commercial districts of the city center whose transformation was key for the private sector’s broader global city aspirations.20 Thus collaborative relations enabled the private and public sectors to coordinate on this key component of the participatory project.

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d. Building Citizen Culture Prior to Mockus’s electoral victory, the CCB had begun researching how reshaping local social norms might be a “key element for increasing the city’s internationalization and competitiveness.”21 Thus business welcomed the centrality of citizen culture in the participatory project. The CCB provided financial support for citizen culture initiatives in several settings, including programming on citizen culture delivered in the city’s elementary and high schools. The private sector also financed the printing of several of the materials used by local government as part of its pedagogical exercises to foster citizen culture. For example, business financed the posters depicting thumbs up and thumbs down that local government gave to pedestrians in the city’s downtown. The pedestrians were then encouraged to use the signs to signal their approval or disapproval of both behavior by car drivers (for example, not stopping at a red light) and other pedestrians (such as jaywalking). This particular pedagogical exercise quickly caught the attention of the international media.22 But in addition to financial support, the CCB provided political support for the participatory project’s emphasis on citizen culture. And this support went beyond Mockus and focused instead on the specific policies themselves. In 1997 Mockus resigned as mayor to launch an ultimately failed bid for the presidency. To complete his term Mockus named Paul Bromberg, an academic who had helped Mockus with his mayoral campaign and that had subsequently served as head of local government agency focused on the coordination of cultural programming. The president of the CCB publicly endorsed Bromberg as mayor, arguing that his appointment “would guarantee continuity of the citizen culture program, the most important program under outgoing mayor Antanas Mockus.”23 And as Bromberg noted during an interview, he needed to continue the focus on citizen culture because it was increasingly “seen by locals and people around the world as a symbol of the city’s security and governance.”24 Thus both local government and business continued working together on citizen culture measures even after Mockus’s early departure from the mayor’s office. e. Internationalization and Investment The fact that the participatory project attracted significant global attention from media, donors, and policy-makers was not only a result of the project’s innovative measures and institutions. It was also a product of concerted efforts by both local government and business to internationalize the project. In the early months of Mockus’s administration, his security advisors met with

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the CCB’s staff and representatives from public relations consultants that were working with the CCB on rebranding strategies for Bogota. The meetings enabled public and private sector representatives to share their ideas and strategies on how local government and business could together raise media awareness of particular measures associated with the participatory project.25 In 1996, for example, only a year after assuming office, Mockus secured an invitation as a keynote speaker at the Ibero-American Summit on Peace and Conflict Resolution, where he presented the emerging “Bogota model.”26 And in 1997, the CCB signed a formal agreement with the European Forum for Urban Security to disseminate ideas and lessons learned in Bogota to policy-makers across Europe.27 Efforts such as these contributed to the export of the Bogota model to other cities facing the challenges of urban violence while concurrently raising the city’s own positive profile. The positive depictions of the city aligned with the private sector’s efforts to destabilize the global perception of Bogota as inherently violent and insecure. But collaborative dynamics in the city’s political economy helped not only to rebrand the city but also to attract FDI, which satisfied the financial interests of both business and local government. Here business deployed its research capacities to shape perceptions of Bogota among foreign investors and firms. Research conducted by the CCB indicated that among the key criteria used by the heads of foreign firms when deciding where to locate their headquarters were local security conditions (CCB 1998, 82). Thus analyses and reports on local security conditions published by the CCB’s observatory became required materials in the informational packets that the CCB distributed to prospective investors abroad. As one CCB representative indicated, the observatory enabled business to “keep the focus of foreign investors on Bogota’s transformation and not on the country’s struggles with drug trafficking and rebels.”28 And indeed, between 1996 and 1998 alone, the level of foreign direct investment into Bogota increased by more than 120 percent.29 Thus both local government and business benefited from the participatory project’s role in reshaping the city’s international image. f. Atomized Control: A Shield and a Political Tool Even with collaborative local government-business relations, the task of sustaining the participatory project was not without its political challenges. Yet the atomized nature of armed territorial control played an important role in neutralizing those challenges. And one particular challenge was Bogota’s city council.

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Mockus’s status as a political independent and his aggressive opposition to the political status quo meant that he not only lacked a legislative majority in the city council but also was held in contempt by many within the city’s legislative body. And while decentralization reforms at the start of the 1990s provided the mayor’s office with significant governing authority, the city council still had the ability to challenge particular policy initiatives required to go through the legislative body. Thus when Mockus presented the council with his plan outlining major policies and investments for his term in office, including the participatory project, the council refused to pass it without significant amendments. Mockus viewed the amendments as efforts to preserve the clientelist practices that he was trying to deconstruct. Thus Mockus subsequently invoked the mayor’s right to ratify the plan through decree. Yet here the atomized pattern of territorial control provided Mockus, and the participatory project, with a valuable political tool. More specifically, the declining levels of lethal violence and the growing interest in the city’s unique response to urban violence enabled the mayor to largely ignore the council’s constant demands for greater involvement in and oversight over the participatory project. As one legislator indicated, city council members were consistently frustrated with their inability to force Mockus to pay “attention to them because the improved security conditions and influx of foreign money” provided the mayor with “a bullet proof vest” from political criticism.30 According to Mockus’s secretary of government, Alicia Eugenia Silva, a longtime council member informed her that her predecessors had always arrived to the council with two suitcases: one filled with contracts and another with money. And because Mockus had made clear that a suitcase with money was not forthcoming, the city council member angrily demanded that on her next visit she bring the suitcase with contracts. Yet, as Silva noted, “People had begun to see that Mockus and his policies in response to violence were what the city needed,” and as such, the council member’s threats and demands “did not merit a response.”31 A CCB leader expressed a similar sentiment when he indicated that the “decline in homicides, even if it wasn’t all due to what local government was doing, still put Mockus and his policies beyond the reach of the old party leaders.”32 This last quotation captures perfectly the broader political implications for the politics of urban violence associated with distinct patterns of armed territorial control. Yet, a year into Mockus’s term in office, some communities were growing impatient with the seemingly slow pace of local government’s interventions

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compared with the swift transformation of the city’s image. Indeed, Mockus’s appointed successor, Paul Bromberg, noted that while “conceptualizing a new form of urban governance” was not difficult for Mockus, “translating that concept into concrete policies that institutions could implement was a major challenge during Mockus’ first year in office.”33 Frustration with this challenge was evident in peripheral neighborhoods, where one community leader noted that “on the basis of the political alliances that [Mockus] has made we see that he is a neoliberal till death. . . . [N]ow what is needed is for people to actually feel what [he] promised.”34 The reference to neoliberalism hints at the perception that the rebranding of the city’s image, strongly supported by the business community, might at times have outpaced policy implementation. As we shall see, this sentiment would grow over time as subsequent mayors adopted and deepened the participatory project in close collaboration with business, ultimately prompting an important shift in the coalition heading local government. But despite the criticism that Mockus received, business remained a steadfast supporter and collaborator in advancing the participatory project. The private sector realized that its economic fortunes hinged on the renewed linkages to local government. And while this did not stop business from also critiquing the mayor’s administration for the slow implementation of programs associated with the participatory project, the intent and particulars of the project itself were never seriously questioned or challenged by the private sector. Sustaining the Participatory Project

Bogota’s first participatory project emerged out of the breakdown of the local party system, which enabled an inclusionary political outsider unaligned with and opposed to clientelist networks to assume power. Yet, as the preceding sections demonstrate, the participatory project was sustained through close collaboration between local government and business in conjunction with an atomized pattern of armed territorial control. As the next section discusses, the participatory project was deepened by Mockus’s successors until the mid2000s, when a political leftist attempted to amend a key part of the participatory project. Amending the Participatory Project: The Politics of Public Space

Bogota’s participatory project was sustained across several mayoral administrations following Mockus’s first term in office. Each mayor expanded particular elements of the project as part of establishing individual political lega-

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cies, but each preserved the project’s emphasis on combining violence control and prevention approaches with participatory governance. While the atomized pattern of armed territorial control persisted during this time, collaboration between local government and business deepened considerably as preferences further aligned and linkages thickened around key elements of the participatory project and, more broadly, the governance of Bogota as an emerging global city. Enrique Peñalosa, who had lost the 1993 mayoral elections, won the 1997 elections while running as an independent. During Peñalosa’s time in office the private sector and local government continued coordinating on several components of the participatory project. For example, local government, the CCB, and the police developed a community policing initiative. As part of developing the initiative, the CCB’s president and Bogota’s police chief traveled to Spain and established academic agreements with universities whose faculty had developed the country’s community policing initiative to train Bogota’s community police officers (Martin and Ceballos 2004, 371–72). Yet business was particularly supportive of Peñalosa’s expanded efforts regarding public space. Indeed, Peñalosa’s aggressive approach to public space earned him the nickname the “bulldozer.”35 Drawing explicitly on the broken windows thesis (Wilson and Kelling 1982), Peñalosa sought to reshape the urban built environment in order to foster adherence to the rule of law. Peñalosa thus developed new public spaces, including several large parks as well as smaller green spaces in peripheral neighborhoods. He also imposed restrictions on the use of personal vehicles and established the city’s first bus rapid transit (BRT) system, the Transmilenio, in order to reduce congestion and further limit the perception of disorder in the built environment. But it was Peñalosa’s particularly strong stance against informal vendors in public spaces that drew vocal support from the city’s private sector. Local government significantly increased the removal and relocation of informal vendors to enclosed markets built by the city. Peñalosa sought to move twenty thousand street vendors from the informal to the formal sector out of the approximately eighty-three thousand that were estimated to be operating in the city by the late 1990s (Orielly 2008, 61). Under Peñalosa the city constructed more than twenty-two hundred stalls in newly built commercial centers where informal workers could be relocated, compared with just over five hundred stalls built by Mockus during his first term in office (Castañeda and García 2007, 174). While some relocation efforts entailed government negotiations

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with informal vendors, many times the police simply forcibly removed the vendors. In the face of criticism by the vendors, both local government and business claimed that previous administrations’ tolerance of informal street vending was a key contributor to insecurity (Donovan 2008, 43). As Berney (2010, 539–40) notes, public space was increasingly framed as the “comprehensive fix for Bogota’s troubles.” Yet the aggressive approach to public space drew opposition from actors located both above and below the city level. Street vendors protested what they perceived as the violation of their right to work as well as the excessive use of force by the police, including the seizure of their merchandise during relocation operations. By 1999 informal vendors in Bogota had lodged more than one thousand legal petitions, known as acciones de tutela, against Peñalosa and local government agencies alleging violations of the 1991 Constitution’s commitment to social and economic rights.36 Colombia’s Constitutional Court subsequently ruled that while public space was a public good, Bogota’s failure to engage in substantive dialogue with the vendors before forcibly removing vendors and to ensure their livelihoods after relocation violated the spirit of the 1991 Constitution.37 Yet Peñalosa continued the relocation efforts with the backing of business, and it was only at the end of his term in office that he established programs that offered street vendors professional counseling on ways to formalize their businesses (Orielly 2008, 63). Collaborative local government-business relations continued when Mockus returned for a second term as mayor in 2001. The CCB worked with Mockus to strengthen the police with the launch of several initiatives, including continued support for increased police presence. Yet it was a development at the national level regarding public space that spurred particularly intense public-private sector coordination. In 1999 legislation in the Colombian Congress proposed regulating informal street vending by organizing vendors into officially recognized groups whose members would receive permission to work in designated public areas without threat of displacement, relocation, or having their merchandise seized by the police.38 Under the legislation, city governments would also enroll informal vendors into various social service programs. Both the CCB and Mockus mobilized in opposition to the legislation. Local government argued that the legislation would reverse the extensive gains Bogota had made in recuperating public space, which it framed as part of the foundation for the city’s advances in citizen security.39 Proponents of the legislation, including informal vendors, argued that the legislation represented

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a more socially just approach to the issue in a national context of increasing unemployment and slowing economic growth. The CCB, in turn, challenged the notion that formalizing street vending would help lower the unemployment rate and argued that it would only reduce local economic competitiveness. Representatives from both the CCB and local government attended open sessions in the Senate (the legislation had passed in the House of Representatives) to voice their opposition, and even held joint press conferences.40 The CCB and representatives from the office of Bogota’s secretary of government pressed allies in the executive branch to oppose the legislation, stressing the negative impact it would have on the capital city’s economy.41 The president’s office subsequently warned the national legislature that it considered the legislation to be unconstitutional because it violated the upholding of public over private interests.42 The legislation was ultimately defeated in the Senate. Yet Mockus also opted to pursue local legislation to challenge informal vending. The legislation was contained within his proposed Código de Policía (penal code), which contained more than two hundred norms for ensuring coexistence and citizen security. Violations of the norms were not classified as crimes but instead as minor offenses punishable by fines of variable amounts depending on the particular norm, which ranged from the requirement that city residents form and maintain orderly lines when boarding public buses to prohibiting children from entering casinos. Through the Código Mockus challenged informal vending by proposing the levying of fines against individual businesses that coordinated with vendors to sell their products on city streets as well as against individual vendors operating in public spaces or who were deemed to impede the physical entry of clients into formal businesses on city streets.43 When vendors took to the city streets to voice their opposition, Mockus responded that while “the street vendors always find a way to survive . . . they do not let others survive,”44 referring to formal businesses that continued to point to informal vendors as unfair competitors. Former mayor Peñalosa publicly endorsed the legislation, arguing that failure to take these steps would reverse not only the gains in public space but also quality of life and security in Bogota.45 The legislation was ratified into law in 2002.46 In sum, public space became a crucial part of the participatory project in Bogota and a space for collaboration between local government and business. But as this section shows, those politics also challenged the ability of informal vendors to participate in the broader effort to build and brand Bogota as a global city given that they were considered inimical to that vision. The next

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section details how this tension unfolded in the context of a moment of flux in the urban political economy with the electoral victory of a political leftist that business viewed with trepidation. A Shift in Local Government: The Political Left and Public Space

In 2003 Luis Eduardo “Lucho” Garzón won Bogota’s mayoral elections. Garzón had founded the country’s largest labor federation, was a former member of the FARC’s political party, and cofounded the Polo Democrático, the country’s major leftist political party. During the elections business backed Juan Lozano, a journalist with the city’s main newspaper, El Tiempo, and head of a political movement loosely affiliated with the Liberal Party.47 Lozano also enjoyed endorsements from Mockus and Peñalosa, and received a pledge of support from the national government under then president Alvaro Uribe, who was a main target of criticism by the Polo Democrático. Garzón’s victory introduced a shift in the class composition of the coalition heading local government. Figure 5.3 shows that the 2003 elections were decided largely along class lines, as Garzón lost the city’s wealthier districts but won the majority of votes in the city’s poorest districts, a pattern that reversed the trend set during the preceding two elections when both Peñalosa and Mockus secured the mayor’s office by winning the majority of votes in wealthier districts. The figure also shows that Garzón’s victory broke with the 1993 electoral pattern when Mockus won a majority of votes across all of the districts. The reconfiguration of electoral support along class lines was also evident in the key actors that supported the candidates’ campaigns. During the 1993 elections Mockus’s campaign budget had been less than one-third of Peñalosa’s. Yet in the 2001 elections Mockus counted on a significantly higher budget in part because of donations from the CCB and its media partners—both strong supporters of efforts to recuperate public space—who made the largest single contribution to the campaign’s coffers (Pasotti 2010, 85).48 Peñalosa similarly enjoyed strong campaign support from the private sector, including endorsements in the city’s leading newspaper and financial contributions. In contrast, Garzón encountered strong resistance from the private sector during the mayoral campaign. The private sector opposed Garzón’s electoral bid because of his leftist political background and the composition of his coalition, which included labor unions representing both formal and informal workers. In a telling moment, the owner of the Corona Group, a major home construction and remodeling

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Mockus 1993

Peñalosa 1997 Garzón 2003

Mockus 2000

Chapinero Usaquén Teusaquillo Barrios Unidos Puente Aranda Los Martires Antonio Nariño Fontibon Engativá Suba Kennedy Candelaria Rafael Uribe Tunjuelito Santa Fe San Cristobal Bosa Usme Ciudad Bolivar

Percentage of Vote Won

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Fig . 5. 3 : Bogota: Electoral Support for Mayoral Victors across Districts (1993–2003). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the ILDDG and the Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil. Note: Districts are organized according to socioeconomic class from wealthiest (left) to poorest (right) based on a housing indicator. Data for the Suma Paz district, a rural district with a relatively small population, was not available.

conglomerate, and also a partner of El Tiempo and the CCB on issues regarding urban governance, publicly stated that he feared that Garzón’s background as a “radical” labor organizer and “defender of communism” would spell the “end of the model city” that Bogota had become.49 As Garzón noted, during the campaign he had “come to represent everything bad for some sectors of society, to represent labor unions, the political left, those who did not use ties, informal vendors, and the indigent.”50 But Garzón did not propose a radical break with the participatory project. Given his own professional background and the more progressive orientation of his coalition, Garzón did indicate that his administration would deepen specific aspects of the project that he considered had been eclipsed by the emphasis on fostering citizen culture and preserving public space. Garzón argued that citizen security hinged as much on socioeconomic conditions as it did on building city infrastructure and repairing social norms. The focus on social norms, according to Garzón, had produced a Bogota that had “a tremendous development in citizen culture, but with people that are becoming terribly impoverished,” whereas his predecessors’ focus on public space had fostered the notion that “democracy should be limited to the rich and the poor sharing a sidewalk.”51 Thus during the campaign Garzón proposed moving beyond a focus on public space as only a matter of order and security, and one of so-

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Tabl e 5 . 3 : Bogota’s Participatory Political Project (2004–7) St r ate g i c Ob j e c t ive s Violence Control

Violence Prevention

Political Participation

Me asure s an d I n st itu t i on s Increase provision of resources and training for police personnel

Reduce food insecurity and malnutrition

Establish citizen networks to prevent and react against violence

Fortify ties between the local judicial institutions and alternative conflict resolution initiatives

Prioritize social investment in communities with at-risk and/or displaced populations

Provide civil society with neighborhood specific data for local participatory planning

Strengthen coordination between agencies working on violence control and prevention

Increase access to education among low-income populations

Support alternative neighborhood-level media

Increase access to alternative conflict resolution mechanisms within violent communities

Strengthen accountability mechanisms for policymaking and policy implementation

Formalize employment for vulnerable populations and informal street vendors

Incorporate community participation into public works Diagnose and improve the capacity of individual wards to assume greater governing authority Support civil society efforts to deepen the political participation of at-risk populations, including women, youth, and ethnic minorities

S o u r c e : Alcaldía de Bogota, D.C. (2004, 59–61; 76).

cial, economic, and political rights as well. Garzón specifically argued for dialogue with informal vendors to find mutually acceptable solutions that would both respect the public good and protect individual economic rights. Garzón aligned his stance on informal vending with his broader goal of strengthening the participatory project’s emphasis on tackling inequality and marginalization, as summarized in Table 5.3. Violence control strengthened the city’s police and formal judicial institutions while simultaneously developing mechanisms to ensure their accountability to government authorities and communities. The project provided the police with resources for the purchase of equipment while also investing in training for police personnel in varied realms, including human rights. Re-

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sources were also designated for developing greater linkages between formal judicial institutions and the alternative conflict resolution mechanisms. Finally, the participatory project aimed to deepen coordination between the police, judicial institutions, and local government agencies that addressed various dimensions of citizen security as envisioned in the participatory project, including housing, education, and social services. Violence prevention efforts emphasized socioeconomic investment to reduce inequality and address the basic needs of the city’s most vulnerable populations. A key initiative sought to reduce food insecurity, including malnutrition, among the city’s poorest communities, with a specific emphasis on children and youth. Particular initiatives to reduce food insecurity included the establishment of community food banks and kitchens in peripheral neighborhoods, sponsorship of nutritional education programming in community centers, and financial incentives for private firms to establish grocery stores in underserved areas. Local government pledged to subsidize the costs for lowincome families to enroll and maintain their children in primary school. Social investment to increase access to and the quality of basic goods and services was designated for populations at-risk of or displaced by violence. And with regards to public space, the project proposed developing measures and new local institutions to work with informal street vendors to formalize their businesses in ways that would offer vendors “social recognition . . . of their work” and thus enable them to “regain self-esteem and dignity” (Alcaldía de Bogotá, 2004, 41). Finally, the participatory project sought to deepen the political incorporation of the underprivileged through several initiatives that would rest on close collaboration between local government and grassroots civil society. Key measures included a commitment to generate and disseminate ward- and neighborhood-level data on social and economic indicators that local political authorities, community organizations, and citizens could utilize to more fully engage in neighborhood-level participatory planning initiatives. Grassroots civil society would receive not only varied financial and technical resources to support their partnership with local government, but also access to new and existing formal institutional spaces, including varied committees and boards responsible for assessing and generating local development policy initiatives. In brief, Garzón’s participatory project retained the key dimensions of the project as developed by Mockus and Peñalosa but also increased the focus on socioeconomic conditions as a key contributor to local violence (Velásquez and Pinzón 2008, 262–63; Ortega 2008). And it was there that informal street vending, as

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part of the broader issue of governing public space, would assume a key role in the politics of urban violence. Interactive Analysis

The battle over public space illustrates how linkages between local government and business can facilitate compromise over differences and, ultimately, collaboration in the politics of urban violence. The issue of public space was initially a point of significant contention between the CCB and Garzón. Yet relations between the two never descended into the conflict that characterizes settings where preferences regarding responses to violence are inimical to each other and linkages are weak. Instead, both the CCB and Garzón ultimately recognized the need for compromise to advance their respective political and economic interests, and used pre-existing linkages and the mutual dependence they created to ultimately resolve many of their differences on the issue of public space. The continued atomized nature of territorial control, moreover, provided Garzón leverage to defend his revisionist approach to how public space would be governed amid steadily declining levels of lethal violence and low coordination among the city’s armed actors. During Garzón’s first year in office news began to circulate that paramilitary forces were beginning to enter parts of the city, particularly peripheral neighborhoods in one of the city’s poorest districts, Ciudad Bolívar, located in the southwestern part of the city. Yet Garzón moved swiftly to prevent the situation from spinning out of control, including coordination with national authorities to work together with police and military forces to prevent large armed actors from establishing territorial control within the city. As violence continued its descent to records lows, Garzón was thus able to parry much of the private sector’s allegations that security conditions were deteriorating in part because of the new mayor’s neglect of public space. Amid these initially tense relations between Garzón and the city’s business community, developments at the national level provided Garzón with legal footing on which to begin acting on the question of informal vendors. Colombia’s Constitutional Court issued a ruling that required local governments to align their approaches to public space with the 1991 Constitution’s privileging of social and economic rights. Local governments were now legally obligated to institutionalize measures intended to ensure that public space recovery efforts would not harm the economic livelihoods of vendors, including the establishment of institutional mechanisms to facilitate dialogue with street

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vendors. The ruling also called on local governments to reserve punitive measures, such as the fines stipulated in Bogota’s Código de Policía, for the firms that organized informal vendors to sell their products, and not “the individual vendors who understandably latch onto any legal opportunity to make a living in the streets in the absence of real alternatives and a context of generalized poverty” (Castañeda and García 2007, 113). Garzón leveraged the Court’s ruling to justify revisiting the city’s approach to informal vendors as part of developing a new Master Plan for Public Space (Plan Maestro para Espacio Público, or PMEP), which would systematize the city’s strategies, programs, and objectives regarding public space for the next twenty years. The development of the PMEP would take a year and a half, and in the time leading up to its unveiling, the private sector increased pressure on local government to adopt a more aggressive stance toward informal vendors. The CCB’s main media partner, El Tiempo, became a key venue for questioning Garzón’s response to what business framed as a growing public space “crisis.” This crisis narrative had three key claims. The first was that under Garzón’s watch the city was being “invaded” by informal vendors. These claims were made despite the lack of precise data on the size of Bogota’s informal vendor population (Castañeda and García 2007, 85, 114). Second, the narrative warned of a reversal in public space recovery given, at the very least, Garzón’s inaction, or at the worst, his complicity with the informal sector that had supported his campaign. Business thus urged Garzón to work closely with the private sector on the issue, as evident in the following excerpt from an editorial published in El Tiempo: Though every [mayoral] administration wants to bring new ideas to the table, it is also certain that the path to prosperity and social justice is characterized by clear rules of the game and continuity in successful policies. . . . It is undeniable that unemployment is a great social tragedy in the city. But it is inconceivable that the administration would not seek to resolve this problem via cooperation with business leaders and the national government, and that it would imagine that the solution is instead to allow the clear invasion of public space whose reclaiming is a victory for Bogotanos.52

And the third element of the crisis narrative linked informal vending to the breakdown in the rule of law and a resurgence of the violence and insecurity of the past. The CCB issued press releases indicting Garzón for failing to “fulfill without delay the laws that obligate him to remove the street vendors.”53 Peñalosa, encouraged by private sector allies, publicly warned Garzón against

150  Bogota

“not following the law” and argued that dialogue with informal vendors would result in local government having to “make concessions that would run against the public interest and . . . against the law.”54 According to business, the growth in informal vending would also fuel insecurity because of the informal sector’s links to “contraband, piracy [and] child labor.”55 Peñalosa tied informal vending to criminality when he argued during a forum on public space—sponsored by the CCB—that “one has to be very careful when discussing the conflict between the right to work and the right to public space, because if not then we are forced to respect the right to work of narcotraffickers, sellers of contraband, etc.”56 The CCB also placed pressure on Garzón by organizing and financing a major study on the impacts of informal street vending on Bogota’s economy, which the association released during an international conference in Bogota that it organized on the challenge of public space shortly before the release of the PMEP. The study, presented at the start of the international conference by the president of the CCB, was based on a survey conducted in four parts of the city with high densities of formal and informal commerce. Among the key findings were the negative impacts of informal vending on formal commerce, including increased competition, pedestrian congestion resulting from reduced sidewalk space, and reductions in employee salaries as a firm strategy to mitigate losses incurred by informal competitors. Based on the study the CCB issued a series of recommendations for local government, including having the administration prohibit informal vendors from occupying recovered public space and the relocation of 85 percent of informal street vendors.57 The final speaker at the conference, interestingly, was Garzón, who titled his talk, “Let Us Debate without Emotion,” in which he reflected on the need for greater dialogue between business and his administration. Indeed, Garzón had already taken several measures to stem the private sector’s concerns that he would allow for a reversal in the recovery of public space. The mayor’s office identified 490 public spaces that had been recovered under previous administrations, ranging from street corners to main thoroughfares to plazas and parks, and announced that informal vendors would not be allowed to reoccupy these spaces, which were largely concentrated in the city’s wealthier districts. But the mayor also pulled elements of the national government into the local politics of urban violence via the Constitutional Court’s ruling to justify his amendment to the city’s approach to public space in ways that aligned with the priorities of the participatory project as well as those of

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his political coalition. Thus the slight increase in the scope of the politics of urban violence amid initial differences between local government and business generated incentives for Garzón to reach outside of the city for support, which in this case came in the form a legal institutional ruling. Garzón also indicated that efforts to recover any of the 490 spaces from informal vendors would require structured dialogue between the vendors and local officials, during which the vendors would be offered various economic incentives and resources to help them relocate and transition into the formal economy, including low-interest loans, credits, and business counseling.58 The same rules requiring dialogue with vendors, Garzón noted, would apply to future city efforts to recover public spaces not listed on the inventory.59 In response to demands by business for more forceful action, Garzón indicated, “[D]ialogue is not a weakness.”60 Given the Court’s ruling against blanket approaches to informal vendors as well as the private sector’s characterizations of the informal sector as part of its crisis narrative, Garzón also initiated the city’s first comprehensive study of the informal vending population. The study’s results showed that nearly half of the informal vendor population resided in the city’s four poorest wards that also had the highest levels of unemployment: San Cristobal, USME, Rafael Uribe, and Ciudad Bolívar. The study also showed that the majority of products sold by informal vendors were from legal firms and not stolen or contraband products, as suggested by the private sector (Castañeda and García 2007, 86, 92–93, 114). Thus Garzón began the process of aligning local government public space policies with his political platform while justifying it on the basis of the Constitutional Court’s ruling. Through a decree, the new mayor ordered local government to research and develop economic alternatives for informal vendors targeted for relocation as part of recuperating public space. However, the decree also required the police to work closely with local government agencies to ensure that the removal of informal vendors complied with the broader commitment to social and economic rights (Castañeda and García 2007, 146–48). With the PMEP still being developed, Garzón opted to sign a pact with representatives of nearly three thousand informal vendors operating in the city center that guaranteed they would not be relocated for a period of six months until the government defined and enacted initiatives to ensure that any relocation would not harm their economic livelihood.61 In return, the vendors vowed to adhere to several rules, including facilitating pedestrian traffic, prohibiting the participation of children in vending activities, no sales of contraband or

152  Bogota

pirated goods, and adherence to sanitary requirements for those businesses selling food. This pact was followed by an additional three agreements with groups of vendors in distinct parts of the city. Here again Garzón defended his actions to business by noting that this pact was a compromise that would ensure that local government actions did not violate the Constitutional Court’s ruling (Castañeda and García 2007, 198–99).62 By early 2005 Garzón and the CCB began working together on the issue of public space. Business leaders, including the head of the CCB, formed a working group at the mayor’s request to help the administration find economic alternatives for informal street vendors.63 The debates that emerged from this public-private working group were at times acrimonious. Garzón was frustrated that the private sector’s media partners continued to critique him despite the existence of the working group. The mayor thus defended his pacts with informal vendors and criticized the private sector’s approach to the issue by declaring: “[We] cannot kill the informal vendors.” In return, business leaders demanded that Garzón cease his “verbal violence” again the private sector.64 Despite these visible tensions, the working group continued to operate and participants from both local government and the business community viewed it as an important channel through which to move past the initial discord that had flared between the two on the issue of public space. How did the tensions give way to collaboration? Over time the linkages that had been constructed between the public and private sectors had fostered mutual dependence. Business leaders acknowledged that despite their differences with Garzón on the particular issue of public space, the local mayor’s office was actively collaborating with the private sector on varied broader initiatives to strengthen the competitiveness of the city’s economy and its internationalization.65 Thus business leaders could not afford to endanger their broader influence in local politics by refusing to work with the mayor’s office to find a mutually satisfying resolution to the issue of public space. Representatives from the mayor’s office similarly indicated that while negotiating the issue of public space with the private sector was difficult, local government was aware that “the private sector had played a critical role in the city’s transformation and that [local government] needed to maintain the close relations with business that had made that possible.”66 One of Garzón’s security advisors put it more simply: “[E]very marriage has its ups and downs, but you don’t divorce because of one disagreement.”67 The resulting collaboration was evident in the specific measures contained in the PMEP.

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The PMEP proposed tailored strategies and programs to deal with informal street vendors in line with the Constitutional Court’s dismissal of blanket approaches to this population. The PMEP thus disaggregated the city’s informal vendor population along several axes, including the nature and duration of vendors’ previous work experiences in the formal and/or informal economy, relevant skills training, levels of education and literacy, existing income, and age. Based on this information the PMEP proposed channeling informal vendors into a variety of initiatives to help them to either join the formal labor market or to relocate to specially designated zones within the city where they could continue engaging in informal vending, which Garzón referred to as “taking economic advantage” of public space. Vendors that wanted to join the formal economy would receive assistance from local government to identify new market opportunities. For those that did not want to join the formal labor market, the PMEP contained several measures to build links between the informal vendors and modern sectors of the economy to help them secure a higher quality of life while retaining their right to work (Castañeda and García 2007, 392). Those vendors that secured spaces in the specially designated zones of the city would become members of a local government sponsored network that would link informal vendors with more than 130 formal sector firms in the city that produced many of the goods that the vendors were selling. The connection between the two would be run by a private sector firm that would be responsible for distributing goods to the informal vendors and, in turn, disbursing vendors’ payments to the formal sector firms. Vendors who agreed to participate in this initiative would also receive training in business development and financial budgeting while committing themselves to selling only those products authorized and obtained via the local government sponsored network (Castañeda and García 2007, 325–34). Finally, the network would also provide informal vendors with bank accounts and ways for them to pay into social security and pension funds that they could then access upon “retiring” from their businesses. Thus the informal sector was inserted into the formal production chain, and received legal and social recognition for their work and labor. More broadly, Garzón was able to maintain the participatory project’s emphasis on targeting socioeconomic investment on the city’s poorest districts. As shown in Figure 5.4, the city’s poorest districts received the largest share of the municipal investment during the 2004 through 2008 period. Thus the participatory project’s initial emphasis on programmatic distribution of goods and

154  Bogota

12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0

Ciudad Bolivar

Bosa

Usme

Santa Fe

San Cristóbal

Tunjuelito

Candelaria

Rafael Uribe

Suba

Kennedy

Engativá

Fontibón

Antonio Narino

Los Mártires

Puente Aranda

Barrios Unidos

Usaquén

0.0

Teusaquillo

2.0 Chapinero

Percentage of Total Municipal Investmenet

14.0

Fi g . 5. 4: Bogota: Distribution of Municipal Investment across Districts (2004–8). Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría Distrital de Planeación. Districts are organized according to socioeconomic class from wealthiest (left) to poorest (right) based on a housing indicator.

services targeting long marginalized communities was retained amid initial conflict between the public and private sector that ultimately was channeled into compromise. Sustaining the Amended Participatory Project

The outcome of Garzón’s efforts to amend the city’s approach to informal street vendors as part of the participatory project thus satisfied the interests of both local government and business. While the mayor initially suffered criticism from both informal vendors and the private sector, he leveraged the Constitutional Court’s ruling to appease informal vendors—a key political constituency during his elections—but also proposed to the private sector that his hands were tied by the national ruling. The slightly increased scope of the politics of urban violence thus encouraged Garzón to look outside of the city for political support to help him negotiate what was proving a difficult issue. Yet dense links to the private sector facilitated communication and ultimately collaboration that produced the compromise regarding where and how informal vendors could still remain on the city streets but without undermining the private sector’s focus on maintaining Bogota’s emerging global city status. Indeed, the compromise actually built ties between formal and informal economic activity, thus serving as an example of the broader efforts in Bogota to negotiate economic globalization and pressures for greater local political participation and inclusion.

Building and Branding a Global City 155

Conclusion

A focus on the interaction between the urban political economy and patterns of armed territorial control helps to account for the nature and trajectory of the participatory projects in response to violence in the case of Bogota. In the early 1990s the city’s first participatory project emerged out of the breakdown of the local party system that facilitated the surprise electoral victory of an inclusionary political independent. The city’s cohesive business community eager to transform the city’s global image quickly became one of local government’s key partners in developing and sustaining the participatory project. Moreover, the participatory project emerged at a particularly accommodating point in the dynamics of local violence for such a political endeavor. The fragmented territorial control with high levels of lethal violence generated by competition among powerful armed actors linked to broader global illicit economies gave way to atomized territorial control with markedly lower levels of lethal violence among smaller armed actors that largely lacked the coercive capacity and thus ability to maintain or compete for territorial control. By the mid-2000s continued and fortified collaboration along with the persistence of atomized territorial control provided a setting in which initial frictions between the public and private sectors regarding amendments to the participatory project could be resolved in ways that preserved the project’s emphasis on violence control, prevention, and participation.

6

The Politics of Urban Violence Comparisons and Next Steps

Cities play central roles in determining the fortunes of economic and political development in the Global South.1 Yet urban violence poses significant challenges for an increasing number of developing world cities. It is therefore imperative that we strengthen our understanding of the political projects that cities deploy to confront urban violence and, in turn, the ways in which those projects reshape politics within cities. This book’s main argument is that the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control influence the nature and trajectory of the political projects that cities launch in response to violence. Chapter 1 placed both of these factors at the center of a new analytic framework to explain the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. To unpack the urban political economy I turned to local governmentbusiness relations. Whether relations between local government and business lean more toward collaboration or conflict, or are anchored in a state of disengagement, impacts whether the local ruling class is united or fragmented in the task of shaping and sustaining a political project in response to urban violence. But because cities are entwined in crosscutting streams of power, the nature of local government-business relations has consequences beyond these two key actors. Increased collaboration reduces the scope of the politics of urban violence by generating a more united local ruling class able to fend off mobilization by opposing interests either from below, such as civil society organizations, or above, such as actors within the central government. In contrast, increased conflict broadens the scope by generating incentives for local government and business to reach seek out and bring outside actors into 156

Comparisons and Next Steps 157

local politics as political allies in the struggle to define the response to urban violence. But accounting for responses to urban violence also requires that we look to the informal sources of power that operate within cities. Here I turned to patterns of armed territorial control that vary along two dimensions. The first dimension is the level of coordination in criminal leadership in the regulation of illicit markets within peripheral urban territories. The second dimension is the level of lethal violence, namely homicides. Distinct combinations generated by the intersection between these two dimensions yield varied challenges and opportunities for political projects deployed in response to violence. The emphasis on urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control addresses an important gap in the existing political science research on violence. Extant research provides limited leverage for studying the politics of urban violence because it focuses either on cross-national dynamics of violence or zooms in on the ground level settings where violence unfolds. Yet city-level political dynamics associated with urban violence are difficult to detect using either a macro- or microlevel approach. We instead need a framework that focuses on the city level but that also theorizes the conditions under which forces operating below or above the city level are able to intervene within local politics, which provides a stronger foundation on which to analyze the politics of urban violence. The framework that I build in this book is an attempt to meet this need. In Chapters 3 through 5 I used this framework to explain puzzling variation in the nature and trajectories of political projects in response to urban violence over time within Colombia’s three main cities. In this chapter we will zoom out of the particulars of the individual cases to instead identify how the variables and mechanisms within the framework strengthen our understanding of the politics of urban violence. The remainder of this chapter is divided into three parts. In the next section I develop cross-case comparative analyses of the politics of urban violence in Colombia. The third section takes up the task of exploring how the key components of this framework resonate in the politics of urban violence beyond Colombia by drawing on additional field research that I conducted in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The intent in doing so is not to develop an additional full case study comparable to the Colombian cases at the center of the empirical analysis in this book. My objective is instead to gauge to what degree key components of the framework might provide some analytical traction for understanding the politics of urban violence in a city in which intense ongoing lethal vio-

158  The Politics of Urban Violence

lence and the response to that violence have attracted significant attention from policy-makers and scholars alike (Conger 2014; Felbab-Brown 2014; Vilalta and Muggah 2012). This exercise yields suggestive evidence regarding the potential generalizability of several components of the analytic framework. I conclude in the fourth section with some reflections on policy implications, next steps in the study of the politics of urban violence, and a call for more comparative studies of urban politics. The Politics of Urban Violence: Cross-Case Comparative Analyses

The within-case analyses in Chapters 3 through 5 revealed rich variation in the variables at the center of my framework and the outcomes that it aims to explain. The fact that even a single city can exhibit striking longitudinal variation in its political economy, patterns of armed territorial control, and the trajectory of the political projects that it proposes in response to violence suggests that we should expect to find comparable dynamics across and within other major developing world cities. Indeed, while the analysis in this book focused on three types of political projects in response to violence (reactionary, clientelist, and participatory), distinct institutional and socioeconomic contexts are likely to generate other variants. In this section I zoom out of the vivid withincase variation to instead show how the framework provides a strong foundation on which to compare the politics of urban violence across cities. Comparing Responses to Urban Violence in the 1990s

In the first half of the 1990s each of Colombia’s three principal cities attempted participatory political projects in response to urban violence. In Cali and Bogota inclusionary politicians that were elected as mayors amid popular disenchantment with traditional politics and the fragmentation of local party systems proposed the participatory projects. By contrast, Medellin’s first participatory project was the effort of a unique multilevel coalition between national government actors and local civil society. Yet, despite the three cities pursuing the same projects in response to urban violence, the trajectories these projects took varied considerably across the cases. Whereas the participatory projects in both Medellin and Cali were derailed, Bogota managed to sustain its project over time. As summarized in Table 6.1, the variation in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence can be explained by focusing on two key variables: the state of the urban political economy and the pattern of armed territorial control.

Comparisons and Next Steps 159

Ta bl e 6 . 1: Cross-case Institutional Outcomes of the Politics of Urban Violence in Colombia (1990s) Medellin

Cali

Bogota

Proposed Political Project

Participatory

Participatory

Participatory

State of the Urban Political Economy

Disengaged (Exclusionary mayor + cohesive business)

Conflictive (Inclusionary mayor + segmented business)

Collaborative (Inclusionary mayor + cohesive business)

Pattern of Armed Territorial Control

Fragmented

Fragmented

Atomized

Institutional Outcome

Derailed

Derailed

Sustained

a. Urban Political Economies: Disengagement, Conflict, and Collaboration The focus on urban political economies provides a strong vantage point from which to unpack dynamics between local government and business as the key actors in the local ruling class. Local political and economic elites historically maintained exclusionary local political orders that advanced their interests while excluding large portions of urban populations from accessing the state other than through patron-client relations (see Chapter 2). A main impetus for decentralization in the late twentieth century was the need to make local politics more inclusionary of these marginalized populations as part of advancing development and deepening democracy. Thus a focus on local governmentbusiness relations at the outset of the decentralization of political power and an upswing in urban violence is the most appropriate starting point for unpacking why and how both actors harness the politics of urban violence to preserve or advance their individual and shared interests that were in the past ensured by exclusionary political orders. Conflictive relations refer to settings in which the preferences of local government and business are opposed and a low density of linkages between the two precludes negotiating mutually satisfying compromises. Clashing preferences and the relative absence of channels through which to resolve differences fosters polarization of the political debate regarding the origins, dynamics, and necessary responses to urban violence, leading both actors to pursue their individual interests at cross purposes. The case of Cali illustrates these dynamics. The breakdown in the linkages between the public and private sectors amid the deinstitutionalization of Cali’s party system left few channels through which the two could seek to better align their preferences on how to respond to local violence. At the center of the city’s historically segmented business community

160  The Politics of Urban Violence

stood a powerful agroindustrial sector concerned primarily with establishing security in the geographic spaces critical for its operations and opposed to local government’s efforts to deepen the political participation of marginalized communities long seen as fertile terrain for subversive politics that challenged the exclusionary political order. The resulting conflictive relations meant that as local government worked to advance the participatory project, business used its research capacities, financial capital, and other resources to advance its own interests and, in the process, undermined key elements of the participatory project. But conflictive relations also increased the scope of the politics of urban violence as business brought the national government into the local struggle to define the city’s response to violence. Here the private sector leveraged revelations of local government corruption at the hands of the Cali drug cartel to position itself as an ally for the national government’s intervention in the city, which sidelined local government and further diminished its capacity to sustain the participatory project. Conflictive relations thus produced a setting wherein efforts by both local government and business to advance their preferences conflicted in ways that weakened the prospects of sustaining the city’s participatory project. In contrast, disengagement between local government and business does not foster polarization or active countermobilization. Here moderate compatibility in preferences coupled with a low density of linkages encourages actors to instead focus on advancing their individual and immediate interests but without actively seeking to undermine each other. Medellin at the start of the 1990s provides a clear example of disengagement. The city’s cohesive business community had significantly withdrawn from local politics in reaction to the proliferation of politicians largely detached from the traditional political notables that had long been the private sector’s partners in governing the city. Political newcomers, in turn, eschewed dense linkages with the city’s business elites and instead mobilized to capture local public resources in order to fuel and build clientelist machines that could provide them with autonomy to pursue their political ambitions in newly competitive local political environments. The lack of linkages between the public and private sectors constricted coordination between the two in the task of confronting escalating local violence. Whereas the business community’s increasing focus on attracting foreign investment could have benefited from the participatory project’s potential to rebrand the city’s image, its disconnect from local government provided business with little incentive to engage the politics of urban violence in

Comparisons and Next Steps 161

ways that would also benefit the political newcomers sitting in office. Without these linkages the private sector instead retreated to a focus on its immediate security priorities and resisted pressures from both the national government and local civil society to become more involved in sustaining the participatory project. Such involvement might have been useful given the mayor’s opposition to the project’s focus on deconstructing the exclusionary nature of the local political order through programmatic and participatory mechanisms for the distribution of public goods and services. Under little pressure from the city’s economic elites to do otherwise, the mayor thus focused on capturing the project’s resources to preserve his clientelist machine and claims-making capacities while resisting calls from national government representatives and local civil society to use the participatory project to build a more inclusionary political order. Disengaged relations consequently generated space for the mayor’s clientelist interests to weaken key elements of the participatory project. Local government-business relations can also be collaborative, wherein significant compatibility in preferences and a high density of linkage that represent mutual dependence enable communication, sharing of resources, and the building of trust between the public and private sectors. Collaborative relations played an important role in the politics of urban violence in Bogota as local government and business worked closely to develop and maintain the city’s participatory project, in contrast to settings where actors labored at odds with each other or were simply detached from each other. Instead, in Bogota an electorate frustrated with traditional party rule ushered into the mayor’s office an inclusionary political independent that proposed the participatory project as the way not only to stem and prevent violence but also to reshape local state-society relations. Bogota’s cohesive business community had already begun to view with growing unease how its traditional party allies were being eclipsed by emerging political forces focused largely on advancing clientelist interests to the neglect of the city’s infrastructure and governance. Thus business saw in the inclusionary mayor an opportunity to regain local political influence and advance its economic interests by leveraging the participatory project to rebrand the city in order to attract foreign capital as part of building Bogota into a global city. Collaboration between the public and private sectors enabled the coproduction of Bogota’s participatory political project over time.2

162  The Politics of Urban Violence

b. Patterns of Territorial Control: Fragmented and Atomized To explain the divergence in the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence in the 1990s we must also consider the differential effects that the distinct patterns of armed territorial control across the three cities had on the participatory projects. By zooming in on this intersection we generate a valuable interactive lens on the processes that shape the trajectories of political projects in response to violence. The high level of lethal violence and minimal coordination among armed actors in a setting of fragmented territorial control generates challenges for efforts to deepen the institutional presence of local government within urban peripheries while also incorporating residents into urban governance. The unstable security environment combined with marked uncertainty regarding which actors are responsible for specific acts of violence produce barriers for proponents of participatory projects while also generating opportunities for their opponents. These dynamics are evident in the case of Medellin, where numerous armed actors used violence to preserve and expand their individual territories and regulate illicit markets while also extracting rents from the populations under their control. Combined with the lack of coordination among them, this fragmented territorial control challenged the efforts of national government representatives and civil society to advance the participatory project. Among the specific challenges that the project faced were the frequent collapse of fragile peace pacts forged between armed actors with the help of community leaders working on the participatory project and the lack of reliable information regarding the perpetrators behind particular acts of violence against both proponents of and participants in initiatives associated with the participatory project. The lack of information and clarity regarding the dynamics of violence within peripheral neighborhoods, however, also represented an opportunity for the city’s exclusionary mayor to dismiss allegations that state security forces, including the local police, were engaging in the extrajudicial violence that was constraining the participatory project. The unwillingness of the private sector to intervene in the participatory project’s behalf despite requests from civil society further enabled the mayor to ignore the accusations that state security forces were behind acts of extrajudicial violence. This case thus illustrates how fragmented territorial control combined with disengaged relations can produce treacherous practical and political terrains for participatory political projects. And while Cali also exhibited fragmented territorial control, the conflictive nature of local government-business relations heightened the negative effects

Comparisons and Next Steps 163

that this fragmented pattern had on key elements of the participatory project. Private sector resources channeled into local police units fostered a degree of autonomy from local government that manifested itself in police participation in extrajudicial violence against former gang members participating in resocialization initiatives. Conflictive relations in Cali enabled the private sector to point to the intense lethal violence and multiplicity of competing armed actors to dismiss accusations by local government of implicit and explicit involvement by business in the extrajudicial violence. Fragmented territorial control also fostered frustration and fear among marginalized populations living in high-violence neighborhoods that, in turn, encouraged them to bypass varied participatory institutions established as part of the city’s response to violence and instead engage in extrajudicial violence to re-establish security and order. The interaction between conflictive relations and fragmented territorial control thus derailed Cali’s pioneering participatory project. Unlike both Cali and Medellin, the participatory project in Bogota emerged in a moment of atomized territorial control. Whereas during the 1980s lethal violence in Bogota was increasing as drug traffickers and emerald mafias competed within the city, by the early 1990s the weakening of both actors produced an atomized pattern of territorial control featuring numerous small, armed actors with limited coercive capacities and low coordination in criminal leadership. The result was a progressive decline in lethal violence that provided the participatory project and its supporters with an important political shield against opposing interests. The relatively stable security environment generated a low-risk environment for municipal staff implementing specific initiatives as part of the participatory project and for community residents to participate in said initiatives. And the steady decline in lethal violence contributed to the city’s rebranding efforts, which encouraged foreign investment that reinforced the private sector’s commitment to maintaining the project while also generating revenue for local government to invest in the project’s varied measures and institution-building efforts. This case thus demonstrates how collaborative public-private sector relations coupled with atomized territorial control can sustain a participatory political project in response to violence. Comparing Responses to Urban Violence in the 2000s

Cross-case analysis of the politics of urban violence in Colombia during the early 2000s when each city again proposed a participatory project in response to violence also reveals fascinating variation in the institutional out-

164  The Politics of Urban Violence

Tabl e 6 . 2: Cross-case Institutional Outcomes of the Politics of Urban Violence in Colombia (2000s) Medellin

Cali

Bogota

Proposed Political Project

Participatory

Participatory

Amended Participatory

State of the Urban Political Economy

Collaborative (Inclusionary mayor + cohesive business)

Conflictive (Inclusionary mayor + segmented business)

Collaborative (Inclusionary mayor + cohesive business)

Pattern of Armed Territorial Control

Monopoly

Fragmented

Atomized

Institutional Outcome

Sustained

Derailed

Sustained (amended)

comes. Inclusionary mayors controlled local government in each of the three cities during this period of time. Bogota’s mayor aimed to amend elements of the participatory project focused on issues of public space while preserving the broader emphasis on violence control, prevention, and the deepening of citizen participation in local politics. Cali’s mayor sought to revive the participatory project that had been derailed at the start of the 1990s. And in Medellin an inclusionary mayor proposed a far-reaching participatory project with an explicit emphasis on reshaping local politics to make them more inclusionary. Yet, as shown in Table 6.2, key explanatory variables and thus the trajectories of the political projects again varied in important ways across the three cities. a. Shifting Urban Political Economies Attention to important shifts that transpired in the urban political economies of Bogota and Medellin help to account for the similar institutional outcomes in both cases. The case of Bogota illustrates how collaboration between local government and business can help to facilitate communication and foster mutual dependence that in turn generates incentives to resolve differences that emerge within the politics of urban violence. The election of a political leftist as Bogota’s mayor initially yielded tensions between the mayor’s more progressive approach to security issues and a cohesive business community concerned that this agenda would endanger the city’s meteoric rise to global city status. Yet when tensions flared as the mayor proposed amending the participatory project’s approach to the regulation of public space, the increased density of linkages between the public and private sectors and the compatibility in preferences regarding the city’s response to violence facilitated continued collaboration that ultimately mediated these tensions. The resulting compromise therefore

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largely satisfied the political and economic interests of both actors and enabled the sustainment of the participatory project, though now slightly amended to reflect the conciliation reached by local government and business on the issue of informal street vendors and the regulation of public space. This case demonstrates the importance of collaborative local government-business relations for mitigating differences between the actors that, in a more conflictive setting, might devolve into polarized politics that encourage each actor to apply a zerosum approach in the pursuit of individual preferences. The case of Medellin further indicates the centrality of collaborative relations for sustaining a participatory project. This case specifically shows how increased compatibility in preferences can foster the building of local government-business linkages in the politics of urban violence. Here a cohesive business community still focused on transforming Medellin into a global service center hub collaborated closely with the first political independent to be elected mayor of the city. Through this collaboration the private sector secured increased influence in urban governance by deepening existing and building new linkages to local government, including appointments to important policy commissions and posts within the mayor’s cabinet. And local government received political support from the private sector as it moved to reshape the local political order with the development of varied programmatic and participatory institutions to govern the distribution of public resources and deepen the participation of citizens in urban governance at multiple scales within the city. As the participatory project was implemented and sustained, both the public and private sectors in turn benefited from the growing influx of resources via international investment attracted to Medellin’s rebranding and emerging market opportunities in what was once the world’s most violent city. In contrast to both Medellin and Bogota, conflictive relations persisted in Cali and by the early 2000s had contributed to and were being fueled by the city’s broader crisis in governance. Conflictive relations undercut the participatory project by polarizing the debate regarding how the city should respond to violence, thus generating little incentive for compromise between the public and private sectors. The increased scope of the politics of urban violence given these conflictive relations also increased pressures on the mayor’s office as the national government and local business strengthened their ties and together complicated efforts by local government to obtain resources with which to advance the participatory project. More broadly, the growing ties between the national government and local business soon sidelined local government in

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key decision-making processes, including those relating to security operations in its peripheral neighborhoods that were the very targets of the participatory project. The case of Cali thus demonstrates how highly conflictive relations within the urban political economy can undermine efforts to advance a participatory political project and, at the same time, have broader repercussions on local governing capacity. b. Stasis and Change in Patterns of Armed Territorial Control By the early 2000s armed territorial control across the three cities exhibited both stasis and change. In Cali the lack of change in the nature of local government-business relations was matched by continued fragmentation in the pattern of armed territorial control. The composition of this fragmented territorial control included many of the same actors that had been present during the first attempt at a participatory project: youth gangs, social cleansing groups, and milícias. Moreover, by the 2000s, some of these actors had become proxies of larger competing armed actors involved in the drug trade and civil war in areas surrounding the city. Thus low coordination in criminal leadership and a high level of lethal violence characterized the pattern of territorial control in Cali. Conflictive local government-business relations magnified the threat that the city’s fragmented pattern of territorial control posed for the participatory project. Already under intense pressure from the national government and business, local government was increasingly constrained in its ability to challenge the framing of local violence by these actors as linked to the political conflict and thus requiring a more hardline and militarized response that undermined individual initiatives associated with the participatory project. This consequently prompted local government to reshape its very composition when it dismissed a key political appointee painted by business as sympathetic to rebel interests and replaced them with the leadership of a private sector think tank on security. The combination of highly conflictive relations and fragmented territorial control thus derailed Cali’s second participatory project. Whereas the pattern of territorial control in Bogota, as in the case of Cali, also remained relatively stable, its atomized nature produced very distinct political consequences for the local government’s efforts to sustain the participatory project. A key feature of the atomized pattern of territorial control was decreasing levels of lethal violence to near record lows. This generated a setting in which the debate about amending the participatory project centered not on issues of how to control escalating levels of lethal violence or confront powerful

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armed actors that challenged the state’s territorial control. The debate instead revolved around the mayor’s efforts to apply a more holistic approach to the treatment of informal vendors as part of regulating the use of public space. Certainly at times the private sector, in its efforts to challenge the mayor’s proposed amendments, fostered a narrative that attempted to link relaxed regulation of the informal sector with Bogota’s past of violence and insecurity. But the low level of lethal violence provided the mayor with political cover that could be used to parlay the private sector’s narrative and instead bring the debate back to the particulars of public space and informal vendors. The broader collaborative nature of local government-business relations eventually led to dialogue and compromise on this issue, thus preserving the core elements of the participatory project while also amending its approach to public space in a way that advanced the interests of both actors. The case of Bogota in the 2000s thus reaffirms how collaboration in the political economy combined with atomized territorial control provides a favorable setting for participatory political projects. And while the case of Medellin also shows the importance of collaborative relations for sustaining participatory projects, it also illustrates that the low level of lethal violence conducive for such projects can originate from a very distinct pattern of armed territorial control. By the early 2000s the nature of territorial control in Medellin had shifted into a monopoly under the control of a criminal hegemon. This shift favored the participatory project by lowering levels of lethal violence through reduced competition between armed actors, which in turn facilitated efforts to extend local government’s presence into peripheral neighborhoods and enabled residents to engage the new institutions and resources being built as part of the participatory project. The monopoly allowed both local government and the private sector to frame the sharp decrease in lethal violence as the outcome of the city’s participatory project, thus contributing to the attention that the project and, by extension, Medellin itself drew from varied international audiences, including foreign investors. But the armed monopoly also played an important role in Medellin’s “miracle” transformation by fostering a fluid coexistence between local government and a criminal hegemon that, in turn, helped to sustain the participatory project paradoxically framed by international donors as a model for reshaping urban governance in the developing world. The criminal hegemon mobilized to keep violence low in part to maintain coexistence with local government while coordinating varied lucrative illicit markets in the city. Local government, in turn, leveraged the

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concentrated leadership under the monopoly to negotiate safe access to parts of the urban periphery in order to implement and sustain the participatory project. The case of Medellin thus shows that while collaborative local governmentbusiness relations and a low level of lethal violence are important for sustaining participatory projects, the low level of lethal violence can result not only from atomized patterns of territorial control but also from armed monopolies. This case thus captures the complexity of urban governance in cities racked by violence perpetrated by powerful informal armed actors, which I return to at the end of this chapter in my discussion of future research trajectories. Extending the Analysis: Suggestive Evidence from Mexico

The empirical evidence and analysis presented in this book shows that a focus on the interaction between urban political economies and patterns of armed territorial control can provide a powerful lens on the politics of urban violence. Establishing the external validity of the causal claims that I develop in my framework would require testing them systematically on cases beyond those examined here. This is a task that exceeds the scope of this book. Thus the purpose of this section is not to develop an exhaustive study of an additional out of sample case. The intent is instead to assess the degree to which several of the framework’s key dimensions resonate in empirical settings beyond Colombia. To this end I draw on field research that I conducted during the summer of 2012 in Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico, just a few miles south of the United States–Mexico border. Starting in the early 2000s, levels of lethal violence increased dramatically in Juarez fueled in part by President Felipe Calderón’s (2006–12) decision to wage war against the country’s increasingly powerful DTOs. But the escalating violence in Juarez prompted a unique intervention by the national government that Calderón described as an effort to “solve the social roots” of violence in Juarez by developing and strengthening violence control and prevention efforts while deepening citizen participation in security matters and, more broadly, urban governance. This intervention, called Todos Somos Juárez (We Are All Juarez, hereafter TSJ), parallels the experience of the Presidential Council in Medellin established by the central government in coordination with local civil society that aimed to install a participatory political project in response to violence in that city (see Chapter 3). The case of Ciudad Juarez is thus important because it is Mexico’s first foray into a participatory

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project to confront urban violence and because it provides a unique opportunity to assess the degree to which key elements of my framework resonate in a distinct empirical setting. In extending the analysis into Mexico I find evidence in support of three core elements of my analytic framework. First, the analysis shows that business is a pivotal actor in shaping the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. Second, clientelism shapes the preferences of politicians regarding responses to urban violence. And third, patterns of armed territorial control impact the trajectories of political projects launched in response to violence. In the remainder of this section I draw on empirical evidence from Ciudad Juarez to expand on each of these points. While the resulting analysis is not intended to provide a level of detailed study equivalent to those offered in Chapters 3 through 5, this exercise does provide strong suggestive evidence in support of the potential generalizability of elements of the analytic framework, and thus underscores the need for more research on the politics of urban violence. Ciudad Juarez: Business, Clientelism, and Shifting Patterns of Armed Territorial Control

Despite the recent surge in drug-related violence, illicit drug markets are not new to Mexico.3 Yet when U.S.-led interdiction efforts in the 1980s led to the diminished use of the Colombia-Caribbean smuggling route, DTOs rerouted the transport of narcotics originating in South America through Mexico, which was also undergoing significant political reforms that redistributed powers and responsibilities in varied policy realms, including security, across the federal, state, and municipal tiers of government (Felbab-Brown 2014, 3). The reshaping of Mexico’s political geography coupled with the increased transit of narcotics through the country set the stage for the reconfiguration of long-standing pacts between political leaders and DTOs (Snyder and DuránMartínez 2009), as well as the restructuring of relations among competing DTOs. The distribution of drug-related violence in Mexico is thus not spread evenly across the national territory. Much of the violence is concentrated in and around major and strategically located cities that in recent years have exhibited levels of violence far higher than the national average. In 2009, when Mexico’s homicide rate was just under 18 per 100,000 people, the homicide rate in Ciudad Juarez, the capital of state of Chihuahua, was 168 per 100,000 (Molzahn et al. 2013, Table 7, p. 26).4 Yet, as in Colombia, drug-related violence in Mexico intersected with varied pre-existing local political, social, and eco-

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nomic realities to generate layered forms of violence that challenge efforts at single causal attribution. Indeed, a notable parallel with the Colombian case was the decision by several Mexican DTOs to outsource violence to urban youth gangs that had long operated within and exerted territorial control over impoverished peripheries in Mexican cities, including Ciudad Juarez (Guerrero-Gutiérrez 2011, 38–40). In early 2010 the federal government thus initiated the TSJ initiative in coordination with the state and municipal governments as well as civil society and the private sector.5 The initiative called for investment in 160 different policy measures that together emphasized violence control, prevention, and the deepening of citizen participation in the governance of security and a wide range of related issues, including policing, local economic competitiveness, education, and public space, among others (Gobierno Federal de México 2010). The TSJ was designed based on input received from thematically organized working groups, known as mesas, that included representatives from the three levels of government, security forces, the private sector, and civil society. Individual working groups were expected to coordinate and monitor the implementation of specific measures grouped under overarching policy domains, including housing, healthcare, and security. The remainder of this section focuses on the working group on security (mesa de seguridad), which quickly emerged as the most powerful of the groups and exerted significant influence on the trajectory of the TSJ initiative. a. The Private Sector Is a Pivotal Actor in the Politics of Urban Violence The working group on security quickly became a key target for business mobilization seeking to influence the response to urban violence. Since its creation the working group on security was intended to bring together multiple streams of local society, including human rights groups, lawyers, youth groups, academics, government representatives, and the private sector (Conger 2014, 180– 81). Yet interviews with a diverse cross-section of participants in the working group on security indicated that the private sector moved quickly to become a protagonist in the group. Before detailing the private sector’s mobilization, it is important to first unpack the nature of Juarez’s business community. Ciudad Juarez’s economy has long been shaped by its close proximity to the United States–Mexico border. In the 1960s Mexico initiated the Programa de Industrialización Fronteriza (Border Industrialization Program), which provided varied financial incentives to encourage foreign firms—the majority of

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them based in the United States—to establish plants and factories in Juarez and other points along Mexico’s northern border. This marked the start of the proliferation in Juarez of manufacturing free trade zones commonly referred to as the maquiladora industry (MacLachlan and Aguilar 1998). While in 1975 Juarez accounted for one-third of the country’s maquiladora workforce (Fuentes 2000, 33), by 2011 the city was home to four out of every ten manufacturing jobs in the country. Today Juarez is responsible for nearly one-fifth of the country’s manufactured exports.6 The sector’s predominance yielded a segmented business community in which manufacturing emerged as the key political actor among the city’s business sectors. Interviews with representatives from the service sector, which is particularly reliant on the heavy cross-border traffic between Juarez and its sister city of El Paso, Texas, revealed consistent frustration that the city’s manufacturing sector enjoys “near total access to local and state government,” while the city’s small- and medium-size businesses in others sectors “struggle to be heard by the city’s political leadership.”7 The interview data are congruent with studies of local politics in Ciudad Juarez that have also identified a divide in the political access that the city’s private sector enjoys between small- and medium-size businesses versus larger firms overwhelmingly concentrated in the manufacturing sector (Mizrahi 1994; Topal 2012). Indeed, among the most powerful business institutions in Juarez is the Asociación de Maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez (Association of Maquiladoras of Ciudad Juarez, hereafter AMAC). Similar to the agroindustrial sector in Cali’s segmented business community (Chapter 4), the manufacturing sector in Ciudad Juarez viewed the city as a hub within a broader city-region economy heavily reliant upon a system of interstate and interregional transport corridors for bringing products to and from global markets (Topal 2012, 1174). Central to ensuring this economic vision was maintaining order, which entailed close collaboration between the manufacturing sector and the city’s traditional political leaders. The dramatic economic transformation that Juarez underwent in the late twentieth century catalyzed the growth not only of industrial plants and parks but also the arrival of impoverished migrants looking for employment. This fueled the city’s largely unplanned physical expansion that produced sprawling peripheral neighborhoods known as colonias populares. Because these peripheries lacked access to basic public goods and services, they provided fertile terrain for clientelist politics (Ward 2010). And these were now the very neighborhoods that were being targeted for varied interventions under the TSJ intended

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to foster more programmatic distributions of goods and services and deepen the political incorporation of residents into local governance. The manufacturing sector thus leveraged its institutional resources via the AMAC to shape the efforts of the working group on security. Doing so was critical for the manufacturing sector, given that the working group was charged with overseeing investment in local police and advising security forces on local operations, among other measures. Thus the AMAC provided the working group with financial and in-kind resources to support its organizational development. According to a representative from the AMAC, the institution “lent” several of its administrative personnel to the working group in order to support research activities, produce reports, and develop the group’s website.8 Through the working group the AMAC secured closer ties to the local police, which it leveraged to acquire increased policing of critical transport routes. Known as rutas seguras, or safe routes, local and state security forces would shut down portions of public roads and escort trucks carrying the goods produced in local factories to the United States–Mexico border or other transport facilities for distribution to foreign markets. Business leaders tried to keep the safe routes agreement with local security forces “secret” from the public and the media because it could cause a “backlash” from the city’s residents. As the AMAC representative explained: “People would ask why the police were protecting televisions and computers for the gringos and not protecting them.”9 Representatives from other business sectors that also participated in the working group on security, including from the real estate, retail, and commerce sectors, viewed the manufacturing sector’s prominent role in the group with mixed feelings. As a representative from the real estate sector noted: “It is good that the owners of the maquilas are active in the mesa because they have always acted as if they don’t need to work with other sectors because they have so much power and influence. But for those same reasons, we have to constantly remind government officials that the [working group] is more than the maquilas.”10 Civil society leaders participating in the working group, however, expressed much greater concern regarding the manufacturing sector’s prominent position. According to civil society representatives, business leaders from the manufacturing sector consistently marginalized civil society proposals within the working group on security and the one dozen committees established within the group to work on specific issues, including community policing and the development of crime indicators. One human rights NGO staff member at-

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tributed the private sector’s resistance to the “conflictive history between the maquiladora sector and civil society in Juarez.”11 Additional interviews with civil society leaders participating in the TSJ initiative indicate that this conflictive history has multiple drivers, including exploitive labor conditions within the maquiladora sector, the perceived reluctance among the sector’s leaders to assist civil society in addressing the phenomenon of femicide in Juarez, wherein substantial numbers of young women—many employed in the maquilas— have been killed, and civil society’s long-standing complaints about collusion between the maquiladora sector and corrupt local party machines in shaping the city’s haphazard and inequitable spatial development.12 Thus civil society leaders participating in the TSJ encountered strong resistance from the manufacturing sector in response to pleas for the working group on security to better align and collaborate with the other working groups dedicated to addressing the structural drivers of violence, including socioeconomic inequality and disengagement between citizens and local government. The working group on human rights endured particularly intense criticism during meetings that brought together all of the working groups with local, state, and federal government officials.13 The issue of human rights was crucial given the growing allegations that the city’s new local chief of police, Julian Leyzaola, who had just been transferred from Tijuana, was encouraging the use of extrajudicial violence by local security forces. Indeed, there was growing evidence that the harsh and violent techniques used by the municipal police were being applied indiscriminately, including against individuals with no ties to DTOs or the drug trade.14 Business leaders, along with municipal government representatives, dismissed civil society’s claims. As one business leader noted, the new police commander’s iron fist approach to policing was both necessary and effective because it was forcing criminals either to flee Ciudad Juarez or be “exterminated.”15 Civil society representatives also raised concerns that while policing and public order were being prioritized, the TSJ initiative was not assigning equal attention and resources to the socioeconomic issues that had been identified in the working groups at the outset of the initiative. Yet each time that civil society representatives attempted to bring up this discrepancy, they were drowned out by the allegations of business leaders that civil society was trying to “politicize” the initiative and use it as a political “soapbox.”16 Several civil society leaders, frustrated with these challenges, resigned from the TSJ’s working groups, which further weakened the incentives for municipal officials and business represen-

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tatives that remained to focus on the concerns that civil society had raised and undercut the initiative’s broader promise to reshape local state-society relations. b. Clientelism Shapes Political Preferences Interview data and archival research indicate that the dynamics of clientelism played a key role in shaping the preferences of local political leaders in Ciudad Juarez regarding the city’s response to urban violence. The municipal mayor during the TSJ initiative was Hector Murguía Lardizábal (2010–13), a member of the country’s once dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI). The PRI was renowned for its powerful local clientelist machines that enabled the party to maintain power in Mexico for more than seventy years (Fox 1994; Magaloni 2006). Hence Murguía viewed the working group on security, and, more broadly, the TSJ initiative, with some trepidation. Here we can draw a parallel with the experience of the Presidential Council in Medellin, whose efforts to distribute resources via programmatic channels and foster greater citizen participation were opposed by the city’s exclusionary mayor (see Chapter 3). In Ciudad Juarez, the TSJ initiative occupied a similar position in the local political environment wherein Murguía’s office intervened extensively to ensure that the distribution of resources provided by the federal government for the initiative would supplement and not subvert local clientelist networks. Thus the TSJ initiative soon ran into financial troubles as the budgets allocated to socioeconomic investment in the city’s peripheral violent neighborhoods were mishandled or simply disappeared.17 The head of the state of Chihuahua’s Commission on Human Rights, which formed part of the TSJ initiative, publicly declared that the mayor’s office had used these resources to invest in overpriced public works projects that did not benefit the city’s peripheral neighborhoods and that were instead geared toward obtaining votes in the next election.18 Media reports described the haphazard construction of community centers and hospitals that sat empty without staff or programming—what one paper termed “cement without social substance.”19 Efforts by both civil society and the media to obtain information on how TSJ funds were being spent, moreover, were rebuffed by municipal officials. The federal government also rejected requests by civil society leaders for accountings of the TSJ’s expenditures and budgets. Federal authorities justified their rejections on the basis that the particulars of the TSJ’s investments were classified as “matters of national security.”20

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Interviews with business leaders indicate that there was a general awareness within the private sector that portions of TSJ funds were being captured for clientelist ends by Murguía’s office. As one business leader noted, it was “common knowledge” within the private sector that federal funds for TSJ initiatives were “disappearing into the pockets” of the mayor and his political allies. Yet, here the segmented nature of the business community again played an important role in the reactions of the private sector to the realization that the TSJ’s funds were being redirected for political gain by elements of local government. Interviews with manufacturing sector leaders indicated that they decided not to publicly denounce the clientelism “as long as the politicians didn’t take from the funds” earmarked for the municipal police.21 Thus because the manufacturing sector prioritized security for the physical territories critical for its operations and was leveraging its participation in the security working group to direct resources into the police, it opted to overlook the political capture of resources designated for the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the TSJ initiative. But those sectors whose preferences included but went beyond the emphasis on violence control found that their demands for local government to be more transparent with the funding for the TSJ initiative generated resistance not only from the mayor’s office but also from the manufacturing sector. As one retail business owner and participant in several of the TSJ’s working groups indicated, “[M]uch of the money for the TSJ disappeared once it landed in the mayor’s office, and when we stood up to demand answers, the maquila owners would not support us because they were afraid that the mayor would start taking away the money under their control for the police.”22 Here again, the segmented nature of the local business community played an important role in shaping the intersectoral dynamics within the politics of urban violence. c. Territorial Control Influences the Outcomes of the Politics of Urban Violence The case of the TSJ initiative in Juarez also provides evidence supporting my framework’s focus on the practical and political challenges associated with distinct patterns of armed territorial control. The increased lethal violence that Juarez experienced and that ultimately prompted the TSJ initiative was generated by the fragmentation of local territorial control. In the mid-2000s Juarez became the setting for a violent clash between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels. The conflict emerged when the Sinaloa cartel attempted to take control of trafficking routes along the city’s outskirts while also attacking the leadership and drug distribution centers of the Juarez cartel.23 Both cartels enlisted the

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city’s numerous youth gangs as proxies in their conflict, which enhanced the coercive capacity of local gangs and also fostered new and more powerful gangs that contracted out their services to the larger DTOs while also establishing territorial control throughout the city’s peripheral neighborhoods.24 In some cases the DTOs’ demand for armed actors to carry out violence on their behalf led elements of state security forces to establish gangs explicitly for this purpose, such as the feared La Línea gang, composed of former municipal and state police officers. By the late 2000s, amid this fragmented pattern of territorial control with powerful competing armed actors and low coordination in criminal leadership, the level of lethal level violence made Juarez the world’s most violent city.25 Yet, a year after the TSJ initiative was launched, the level of lethal violence in Juarez dropped steeply from 224 to 136 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2010 and 2011. By 2012 the rate had further declined to 56 homicides per 100,000 residents. There were likely multiple reasons for the decline in lethal violence. The increased aggressiveness of the municipal police force under Leyzaola, which prompted numerous allegations of human rights abuses, illegal detentions, and torture, likely contributed to the reduction in violence.26 But what also seemed to have played a key role in the drop in lethal violence was the reconfiguration of territorial control from a fragmented to a monopolistic pattern as the conflict between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels ended with the Sinaloa cartel consolidating control over the city and specifically the drug trafficking transport routes that cross through the city. Upon establishing territorial control, the Sinaloa cartel reverted back to its preference for regulating drug operations through corruption and cooptation versus violence.27 The result was a territorial monopoly with a declining level of lethal violence and coordinated criminal leadership in the Sinaloa cartel. The steep decline in lethal violence under the monopoly raised several challenges for the civil society leaders still participating in the TSJ working groups. Municipal officials leveraged the declining levels of lethal violence to dismiss civil society demands for greater police accountability given the continued allegations of extensive extrajudicial violence. As one aide to Mayor Murguía told the director of a women’s rights organization that was calling on the mayor’s office to reign in the city’s new police commander: “First you complain about the violence, and now that the situation is improving, you want us to stop?”28 The decline in violence also provided local government with some broader political cover against questions regarding the mishandling of funds allotted to

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the TSJ for socioeconomic initiatives. Indeed, the national government’s need for the TSJ to appear as a winning strategy against violence given the intense criticism that President Calderon had faced quickly also led the president to attribute the drop in violence to the TSJ and, in turn, to begin exporting the initiative as model to other Mexican cities.29 As one representative of a human rights organization that was participating in several of the TSJ working groups noted with frustration: “What good are our criticisms and complaints about stolen money, projects that are never implemented, and buildings built in the middle of nowhere when the President is thanking Murguía for a job well done?”30 Thus the territorial monopoly further challenged efforts by civil society to advance critical elements of the TSJ that had been developed with a vision toward reshaping the local political order. In brief, the case of Ciudad Juarez is a critical one given the emphasis on violence control, prevention, and citizen participation within the TSJ initiative. This political project represents Mexico’s first attempt to address urban violence through a multidimensional approach that goes beyond coercive force and that explicitly invokes the political powers, resources, and responsibilities of a range of subnational institutions and actors. By showing how elements of the analytic framework developed in Chapter 1 yield important insights in this case, this section also provides encouraging evidence regarding the framework’s generalizability. First, applying the framework to the case of Juarez reveals how the segmented nature of the city’s business community enabled a powerful manufacturing sector to emerge as a pivotal actor in the politics of the TSJ. Second, the analysis shows that clientelism played a key role in shaping the political mobilization of local authorities vis-à-vis the project’s efforts to address local socioeconomic inequities and deepen political participation. Here dominant elements of the local private sector were willing to overlook how local clientelist practices were distorting key elements of the TSJ initiative so long as they did not interfere with the ability of business to advance its particular security interests. This suggests a state of disengaged relations between the public and private sectors, which aligns with findings from recent studies on the growing challenge to traditional PRI dominance in Ciudad Juarez since the mid-1980s (Mizrahi 1998; Rodríguez and Ward 1994). More in-depth research on the evolution and particulars of the city’s political economy would help to better establish the precise nature of local government-business relations and, in turn, provide greater insight into the impact of these relations on the politics of urban violence in Ciudad Juarez.

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And third, applying the framework to the case of Ciudad Juarez also illustrates how the interaction between patterns of armed territorial control and urban political economies impact the institutional outcomes of the politics of urban violence. The emergence of a territorial monopoly in Ciudad Juarez provided local government with a critical shield to weather criticism from civil society regarding the extrajudicial tactics being used by the municipal police and, more broadly, the political capture of resources allotted to elements of the TSJ initiative that ran contrary to the political interests of local government. Certainly more research is needed to unpack the politics that shaped the TSJ initiative in Juarez, including on how the disengaged nature of the local political economy influenced the scope of the politics of urban violence in Juarez. But as this section shows, the analytic framework developed in this book provides a strong starting point for such future research. Next Steps: Policy, Politics, and Subnational Research

As we end our analytical and empirical journey in the politics of urban violence, I close this book with three points. The first departs momentarily from scholarly analysis to the world of policy, specifically regarding why and how policy-makers should incorporate the private sector into efforts to stem and prevent urban violence. The second point returns to the academic analysis by outlining some of the questions that this study raises for future research on the politics of urban violence. And finally, I conclude by making a case for increased comparative study of urban politics. Policy Recommendations: Incorporate Business

This book has shown that urban business interests can play significant roles in the politics of urban violence. The substantial financial, institutional, and political resources of the private sector underwrite its ability to influence the processes through which cities govern citizen security. Future efforts by policy-makers and the international donor community to help major developing world cities confront urban violence should consider ways to incorporate business into such initiatives. Certainly the cases of Bogota and Medellin illustrate how powerful business interests can contribute to innovative initiatives undertaken in response to violence. In both cases the private sector’s support for and collaboration with local government played vital roles in sustaining political projects that combined a focus on control and prevention with efforts to make local governance more inclusionary of marginalized communities.

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Yet, both of these cases, as well as the case of Cali, also show that the nature of the private sector’s participation in such efforts is contingent on political factors. Distinct institutional configurations of business communities and varied types of relations with political actors and institutions can lead business to mobilize in ways that either advance or constrain government efforts to stem and prevent violence and, more broadly, bolster or weaken local democracy. Policy-makers have begun to recognize that the private sector actors can play important roles in the struggle to reduce urban violence (Americas Society 2012). But without careful attention to the political dynamics that influence the calculations and behavior of business actors, steps to incorporate the private sector into these efforts run the risk of making it even harder to effectively confront a major and pressing threat to human life, governance, and development. How might business be incorporated into political projects to stem and prevent urban violence? A first key step that policy-makers should take is to map the institutional configuration of business communities in the cities where projects to confront urban violence are being developed. These mapping exercises should not be limited to the task of producing only contemporary snapshots of how violence is impacting the private sector. Present-day dynamics must instead be situated within the broader historical context of how the business community has been organized within cities and the evolution of its linkages to distinct levels of the state. As shown at several points in this book, business actors often view and assess contemporary political processes through historical lenses that use past experiences as points of comparison to inform present-day calculations about whether and how the private sector should participate in the politics of urban violence. Establishing these dynamics through mapping exercises based on careful and in-depth field research can alert policymakers to both the potential opportunities and pitfalls associated with private sector involvement in the politics of urban violence. The empirical analysis in this book also suggests several specific recommendations regarding ways to ensure that private sector involvement in the politics of urban violence benefits the greater public good and does not instead distort public institutions in ways that endanger the public good. In particular, the cases of Cali and Bogota in provide stark examples of why ties between business interests and state security forces require careful institutional oversight and mediation by government authorities. In Cali, conflictive local government-business relations limited the ability of the mayor’s office to mediate and regulate links between the private sector and the police. This undermined local

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government’s authority and encouraged police recalcitrance when their political overseers demanded greater accountability to both political authorities and the city’s marginalized populations. The end result was a severe undermining of local government’s broader political efforts to stem and prevent urban violence. By contrast, collaborative local government-business relations in Bogota enabled political authorities to regulate how the private sector engaged the local police force. This limited the possibility of having private sector support for the police become a tool to subvert local political authority over state security forces. Thus policy-makers should consider ways to ensure that private sector support for the police does not bypass local political authorities. Of course, such a task is more difficult in settings of conflictive relations such as those examined in the case of Cali. And one can also imagine other scenarios in which the private sector might be reluctant to work through local government in its efforts to strengthen the police, such as when local authorities are suspected of being corrupt or colluding with criminal actors. In such settings, policy-makers might consider locating or even establishing alternative mediators between the police and the private sector, such as public commissions that include participation from civil society, as a way to again ensure transparency in the ties between the police and business. In brief, business represents a powerful force that should be actively and explicitly incorporated into projects to confront urban violence, though careful attention must be paid to the way in which private sector support is channeled and regulated within the politics of urban violence. Politics of Urban Violence: Comparing Neighborhoods and Localized Orders

This book’s analytic approach to the politics of urban violence focuses on dynamics that unfold principally at the city level. In doing so I have attempted to build a framework that also theorizes when actors located below and above the city level can influence the politics of urban violence. Yet, among the main trajectories for future research is to scale down beneath the city level to focus squarely on individual neighborhoods where the interactions between economic, political, social, and armed actors shape microlevel orders. Indeed, the institutional manifestations of decentralization in the developing world have not stopped at the municipal level. As several of the cases in this book indicate, political projects in response to urban violence can seek to extend the institutional apparatus of municipal governments into individual neighborhoods.

Comparisons and Next Steps 181

Thus we should expect that neighborhoods within a single city might vary substantially along a range of formal political and socioeconomic dimensions, each with significant and distinct consequences for how citizens experience democracy and development on a daily basis. Thus in settings of urban violence, neighborhoods represent valuable sites for carrying out comparative analysis of the politics of urban violence. Among the questions that a neighborhood-level analysis might tackle is how small business firms negotiate the daily pressures and challenges associated with violence and, in turn, how the coping mechanisms used by firms impact neighborhood level dynamics, including social cohesion, economic development, and neighborhood politics. Similar questions can be asked with regard to small community-based organizations that often sit at the forefront of neighborhood efforts to confront violence and insecurity.31 Future studies should also unpack and theorize how neighborhood political operatives and party brokers, who often embody and facilitate the linkages between state and society in resource-scarce urban peripheries (Auyero 2001), negotiate competing demands and pressures from firms and community groups as well armed actors regarding the state’s local presence. But neighborhood-level analyses would not only provide unique windows into spatial variation in the operation and experiences of formal political institutions. As noted in this book, armed actors leverage territorial control not only to regulate illicit markets and extract rents but also to build varied forms of localized order that impact a range of individual and community behaviors. Neighborhood-level analysis would thus provide important insights into the factors that shape the origins and evolution of these localized alternative orders. Such insights could then be used to develop more granular understandings of how the political projects that cities launch in response to violence unfold across microlevel jurisdictions. Comparative Urban Politics

Finally, the analysis developed here highlights the potential dividends to be gained from greater dialogue and debate between scholars of city politics—historically anchored in the experiences of major cities in the United States and Europe—with those of scholars examining urban politics in major developing world cities. Bridging this border can yield mutually beneficial insights for our understanding of urban politics across the North-South divide. For example, at the center of much research on American city politics is a focus on the govern-

182  The Politics of Urban Violence

ing regimes forged between local governments and business interests (Stone 1989). Urban regime theory holds that the nature of public-private sector relations have considerable influence on the outcomes of urban governance in varied policy domains. This book detects an analogous dynamic in the politics of urban violence in developing world cities, yet explores its potential and limitations for shaping urban governance in settings in which informal institutions and violence play critical roles in determining the local distribution of political power. This illustrates the potential for new insights to emerge from greater comparative urban research across the North-South divide. But comparing cities across borders also holds the potential to destabilize overly aggregate depictions of countries and regions as either “developed” or “developing.” The subnational turn within the study of comparative politics (Moncada and Snyder 2011) has increasingly shown how the spatial unevenness of the state is not particular to the Global South but is instead a phenomenon evident across all regions of the world. Gibson (2013), for example, finds similar mechanisms shaping the fortunes of the institutional frameworks that regulate both the access to and exercise of political power across subnational units located in starkly distinct national political and socioeconomic settings. Similarly, Pasotti (2010) identifies analogous political processes driving the breakdown of clientelist machine politics across cities in Latin America, the United States, and Europe. The growth of subnational comparative political research along with increased interest among scholars of city politics in the United States and Europe in developing more explicitly comparative research designs (Kantor and Savitch 2005; Robinson 2011; Sellers 2005) indicates that the moment is ripe for greater dialogue between scholars working on urban politics on either side of the geographic and disciplinary divides. Comparative studies of the politics of urban violence across such divides represent one such promising area of study as part of the emerging body of comparative urban analysis.



Reference Matter



Notes

Chapter 1

1. I use the term “periphery” to refer to physical spaces within cities that combine relatively high levels of violence and poverty and that can, but do not necessarily, align with administrative boundaries. See Gilbert (2007) for a provocative discussion on the politics of the terms used to describe such urban spaces. 2. Author’s calculations based on data from the Banco de la República. 3. América Economía, “Las Mejores Ciudades para Hacer Negocios, 2013.” See http://rankings.americaeconomia.com/mejores-ciudades-para-hacer-negocios-2013/ introduccion/. 4. The term “business” refers to formal sector enterprises that engage in the sale of goods and/or services in exchange for financial remuneration. 5. See Dammert and Malone (2003) on the reciprocal relationship between fear of crime and inequality. 6. See Pérez on how crime and insecurity erode public perceptions of the legitimacy of the state institutions. For a contravening analysis of the relationship between criminal victimization and political participation, see Bateson (2012). 7. Gerring (2007, 214) defines a unit of analysis as “the level of aggregation at which an analysis takes place.” 8. This dynamic is often referred to as the “balloon effect.” 9. For a disaggregated analysis of criminal organizations, see Kenney (2007). And for discussions on the role of states in social science theory, see Evans et al. (1985). 10. For studies focused specifically on the political role of business in civil war settings, see Rettberg (2003 and 2007) and Wood (2000). 11. See Flores-Macías (2012) and Wood (2000) for important exceptions. 12. It is important to note that decentralization does not necessarily produce the 185

186  notes to chapter 1

uniform distribution of power and resources across subnational units. On this point, see Falleti (2010). 13. At the start of the 1980s only three Latin American countries had direct mayoral elections. By 1997 seventeen countries were holding elections, and popularly elected city councils were appointing mayors in six other countries (Stein 1998, 2). 14. See Myers and Dietz (2002) on how decentralization has increased the political power of city mayors in Latin America. 15. Several of the subnational politicians whose administrations I analyze in this book were the original architects of the notion of citizen security in Latin America. 16. The microlevel study of political violence has sought to address concerns associated with macrolevel studies in this area of research, including coding dilemmas, loose fit between concepts and empirical proxies, and an inability to elucidate causal mechanisms (Kalyvas 2008, 397). 17. See Argueta (2012) and Ungar (2007) for studies on the emergence of the private policing industry. 18. There is surprisingly little research specifically on criminal victimization among small firms in either the formal or informal sectors. For one study on the relationship between firm size and extortion in Italy, see Lavezzi (2008). 19. Business can be disaggregated and studied along multiple axes, including size (micro, small, medium, large), portion of the economy (formal versus informal) and target markets (domestic versus foreign), as well at the level of individual business owners, firms, sectors, and business associations (Haggard et al. 1997). 20. There are a range of typologies to classify distinct violence prevention measures. See Brantingham and Faust (1976) and Van Dijk and de Waard (1991). 21. Becker (1968) argued that higher levels of inequality lower the opportunity costs of committing criminal violence and increase the market gains to be made from engaging in such acts. 22. For a rejoinder, see Harcourt (2009). 23. See Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007) on types of linkages between citizens and politicians. 24. An institutionalized party system is characterized by stability in interparty competition, strong linkages between parties and society, a lasting organizational structure for parties independent of transitory political movements, and a degree of legitimacy accorded to the system by the principal political actors (Mainwaring and Scully 1995, 4–6). For analyses of variation in party system institutionalization, see Mainwaring and Torcal (2006) and Mainwaring (1999). 25. Associations are defined as “long-term organizations with formal statutes regulating membership and internal decision-making in which the members are individual business people, firms, or other associations” (Doner and Schneider 2000, 280). 26. The América Economía magazine, an influential periodical among current and

notes to chapter 1 187

potential international investors in Latin America, produces an annual ranking of the competitiveness of Latin American cities, within which local security is a critical component. See http://rankings.americaeconomia.com/mejores-ciudades-para-hacernegocios-2013/. 27. An economic group is a “multi-company firm which transacts in different markets but which does so under common entrepreneurial and financial control” (Leff 1978, 663). For a seminal review on the role of diversified economic groups in patterns of development in late industrializing countries, see Amsden and Hikino (1994). 28. These ties between sectors can assume several forms, including familial connections among owners, strategies of vertical integration, or interlocking directorates. For an overview of research on interlocking directorates, see Mizruchi (1996). 29. See Sellers (2005) on the need for analytic frameworks to capture the influence that factors below and above cities exert on urban politics and outcomes. 30. Here my argument parallels the logic of research on the breakdown of authoritarian regimes (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986) and the deepening of citizenship in semiauthoritarian enclaves (Fox 1994). Each of these related veins of research views the degree of collaboration among local ruling elites as critical for whether the status quo configuration of political power is preserved or amended. For a recent analysis of the conditions under which subnational authoritarian regimes persist or collapse that relies on a multilevel analytical lens, see Gibson (2013). 31. There is a large literature on the concept of civil society and both its functions and forms in the Global North and South. In the study of Latin American politics in particular, civil society has been a focus in the study of democratic transitions (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986), democratic consolidation (Linz and Stepan 1996), and efforts to advance new and more inclusive forms of political incorporation and citizenship (Fox 1996; Yashar 2005). 32. See Fuentes (2005) for examples of civil society advocating for more reactionary measures, specifically in the realm of police reform. 33. For a recent overview on the capacity of the state to penetrate society and enact its preferences across its territory, otherwise known as infrastructural power (Mann 1984), see Soifer and Vom Hau (2008). 34. Among the catalysts for the fractionalization of criminal organizations are shifts in political structures and thus protection and political influence (Shirk 2010, 173) and institutional destabilization in the face of increased state pressures (Astorga and Shirk 2010, 16). 35. In some ways these conditions parallel what Clausewitz (1968) termed the “fog of war.” 36. Departments are the middle tier of government in Colombia, which has thirtytwo departments. 37. On within-case analysis, see George and Bennett (2005, 151–80).

188  notes to chapters 1 and 2

38. See Weyland (2007) and Brinks and Coppedge (2006) on policy diffusion. 39. See George and Bennett (2005, ch. 11) on multiple conjunctural causation. Chapter 2

1. The classic procedural definition of democracy is an “institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote” (Schumpeter 2013 [1943], 269). 2. Lijphart defines a consociational democracy as one in which elite pacts maintain regime stability in the face of significant fragmentation within a country along one or more axes. 3. See Arias and Goldstein (2010, ch. 1) for a discussion of “violent democracies” and their implications for theories of democratic consolidation. 4. See Hartlyn (1988) for an in-depth analysis of the politics that shaped the National Front. 5. Of course, traditional forms of clientelism did not completely end with state expansion. Even today traditional patron-client relations govern rural portions of the country. 6. Former Colombian president Misael Pastrana Borrero (1970–74), as quoted in D. Lazare, “Drugs & Money,” NACLA Report on the Americas 30 (6) (1997). 7. Decentralization can be disaggregated along political, fiscal, and administrative dimensions (Falleti 2010). 8. The establishment of popular elections for governors in the country’s thirty-two departments followed shortly afterward in 1991. For an explanation of Colombia’s political decentralization that conceives of it as a political strategy enacted by national-level conservatives who were less hopeful about securing the national presidency than they were of winning elections at the subnational level, see O’Neill (2005, 90–91). See also Willis et al. (1999, 29–35) for a political explanation of decentralization in Colombia. 9. The 1990 vote already contained six separate ballots on a variety of issues; hence the self-produced “seventh ballot.” The seventh-ballot was printed in several national newspapers for citizens to cut out, fill in, and submit with their official ballots on Election Day. 10. On December 9, 1990, when elections were held for the Constituent Assembly, the state security forces launched a bombing of the FARC’s secretariat, known as the Casa Verde (Green House), in the municipality of La Uribe in the department of Meta. The bombing was interpreted widely as a symbol of the military’s opposition to the peace negotiations. 11. Interview with Professor Francisco Leal Buitrago, on August 26, 2008. 12. For detailed discussions of how the electoral reforms in Colombia were intended to increase participation of alternative movements, see Pizarro (2006).

notes to chapter 3 189

Chapter 3

1. Thoumi (2002, 109–10) estimates that in the early 1990s the Colombian drug trade produced an annual value added of approximately $2.5 billion. 2. Author interview with advisor to President César Gaviria, MDE0131, on February 26, 2009. 3. The IPC was established in 1982 and worked on fostering sustainable community development and public participation in local politics. The Corporación Region was founded in 1990 by local community activists encouraged by the prospects of decentralized governance as part of the new national constitution. 4. Interview with Maria Emma Mejia, on August 12, 2009. 5. Interview with national government representative in the Council, MDE05, on October 27, 2008. See also Semana, “¿Guerra Civil en Medellín?” July 30, 1990. 6. Interview with civil society leader, MDE12, on October 16, 2008. 7. Interview with civil society leader, MDE13, on October 16, 2008. 8. Interview with civil society leader, MDE12, on October 16, 2008. 9. For a review and critique of the literature on interlocking directorates, see Mizruchi (1996). 10. See Newsweek, “The Other Medellin Cartel,” April 22, 1996. By 2008 the GEA accounted for nearly 7 percent of Colombia’s total GDP. See Suramericana de Inversiones S.A., “Presentación de Compañias Relacionadas,” powerpoint presentation (September 2008). 11. Olson (1965, 51) defines selective incentives as benefits available exclusively to the members of a defined group. 12. Interview with GEA business leader, MDE62, on January 22, 2010. 13. Interview with business leader, MDE 9921, on October 17, 2008. 14. Interview with former aide to Mayor Luis Alfredo Ramos, MDE6676, on January 21, 2010. 15. Interview with civil society leader, MDE22709, on February 27, 2009. 16. Interview with national government representative in the Council, MDE05, on October 27, 2008. 17. At points the milícias worked with the police and the military, and at other points worked against them (Ceballos Melguizo and Cronshaw 2001, 121–22). 18. Prior to the drug wars of the late 1980s, elements of the ruling class had complex ties to many of these armed actors, including hiring them to threaten or eliminate political and economic competitors (Salazar and Jaramillo 1992, 64). 19. Interview with Maria Emma Mejia, on August 12, 2009. 20. Interview with former aide to mayor Luis Alfredo Ramos, MDD6676, on January 21, 2010. 21. Interview with national government representative in the Council, MDE05, on October 27, 2008.

190  notes to chapter 3

22. Interview with civil society leader MDE13, on October 16, 2008. 23. Interview with civil society leader MDE12, on October 16, 2008. 24. Interview with Council staff member, MDE100, via telephone, on April 25, 2014. 25. El Tiempo, “Medellín para Todos,” April 18, 1993. 26. Interview with Council staff member, MDE100, via telephone, on April 25, 2014. 27. El Tiempo, “Renunció la Consejera de Medellin,” January 29, 1993. 28. Interview with former community organizer from La Independencia I neighborhood, MDE3323, on August 8, 2009. 29. Interview with Council staff member, MDE100, via telephone, on April 25, 2014. 30. El Tiempo, “Salir de la Crisis, Compromiso Paisa,” August 12, 1992. 31. Interview with former community organization staff members, MDE 0014 and MDE 0015, on August 10, 2009. 32. Armando is a pseudonym. Interview with former banda member, MDE111, on October 15, 2008. 33. Interview with Council staff member, MDE100, on April 25, 2014. 34. El Colombiano, April 5, 1992, 4C–5C. 35. El Tiempo, “Los Derechos Humanos Suben a la Comuna,” November 25, 1991. 36. El Tiempo, “Acusan de Extorsión a Milícias Populares,” December 7, 1991. 37. El Colombiano, April 5, 1992, 4C–5C; El Colombiano, April 24, 1992, 7C. 38. Interview with civil society leader, MDE22709, on February 27, 2009. 39. Interview with national government representative in the Council, MDE05, on October 27, 2008. 40. El Tiempo, “Renunció La Consejera de Medellín,” January 23, 1993. 41. The central government was able to complete negotiations with milícias in Medellin through the Agreements of Medio Luna. Demobilized members were organized into private security forces for peripheral neighborhoods, which ultimately began engaging in human rights abuses and were formally disbanded several years later. 42. Interview with former mayor Sergio Fajardo, on October 20, 2008. 43. Interview with GEA executive, MDE19, on February 11, 2009. 44. Interview with GEA executive, MDE19, on February 11, 2009. 45. Interview with Entretodos Coordinator, MDE21, October 24, 2008. 46. Interview with former director of Entretodos, MDE18, on January 14, 2009. 47. Based on data obtained by the author from the Consejo Nacional Electoral. 48. Interview with member of Entretodos, MDE17, on February 24, 2009. 49. Among the milícias operating in Medellin were the Milícias Populares Valle de Aburrá, the Milícias America Libre, and the Milícias Independientes del Valle de Aburrá. 50. The operation was concentrated in the following neighborhoods: 20 de Julio, Las Independencies, Belencito, El Corazon, Nuevos Conquistadores, and El Salada. 51. See El Tiempo, “Vuelve el Trapo Rojo,” November 27, 2000.

notes to chapters 3 and 4 191

52. Interview with GEA executive, MDE09123, on March 26, 2009. 53. Interview with GEA executive, MDE15, on January 15, 2009. 54. El Tiempo, “Populista Yo,” March 2, 2003, El Tiempo, “Las EPM, A Rendir Cuentas,” March 8, 2003. 55. For an example, see Comité Cívico de Seguimiento a EPM: Balance de Gestión: 2003–2009, available at www.intergremialantioquia.org/ComiteCivicoEEPPMInformefinaldic2009.pdf, accessed October 2, 2013. 56. El Tiempo, “Populista Yo,” March 2, 2003. 57. El Tiempo, “Sorpresas en Corte de Cuentas,” January 15, 2004. 58. Colombia Week, “Paramilitary Demobilization Falters,” January 19, 2004. 59. El Tiempo, “Las Perlas Que Encontro Fajardo,” January 9, 2004. 60. Interview with GEA executive, MDE15, on January 15, 2009. 61. Interview with civil society leader, MDE22709, on February 27, 2009. 62. El Tiempo, “Yo No Frené la Paz,” October 20, 2002. 63. Interview with former director of Proantioquia, MDE23, on January 15, 2009. 64. Interview with civil society leader, MDE11, on October 22, 2008. 65. El Colombiano, “Sergio Fajardo Arrasó en Medellín,” October 27, 2003. 66. See Salazar (1990). 67. Interview with Don Efe on January 9, 2009. 68. As quoted in Amnesty International (2005, 32). 69. Interview with former mayor Sergio Fajardo, on October 20, 2008. 70. Interview with former mayor Sergio Fajardo, on October 20, 2008. 71. Interview with the director of the Programa de Paz y Reconciliación, MDE83089, on January 8, 2009. 72. Interview with the director of the Programa de Paz y Reconciliación, MDE83089, on January 8, 2009. 73. Interview with community organization leader, MDE600259, on February 25, 2009. 74. Interview with representative from the ACI, MDE4011, on January 16, 2009. Chapter 4

1. Interview with former mayor Rodrigo Guerrero, on August 6, 2008. 2. Guerrero won 92,165 out of the 173,556 votes in Cali. Author’s calculations based on El País, “Votación por Zonas para Alcaldía de Cali,” March 9, 1992, A3. 3. Interview with former mayor Rodrigo Guerrero, on August 6, 2008. 4. Interview with former mayor Rodrigo Guerrero, on August 6, 2008. 5. Socioeconomic classes in Colombia are defined along six levels, or estratos, running from 1 (poorest) to 6 (wealthiest). The public housing was intended for families from the poorest socioeconomic class.

192  notes to chapter 4

6. Interview with former Desepaz analyst, CAL022, on September 12, 2009. 7. Bans on carrying firearms would be negotiated with the military, which is the only institution that can issue such a ban. 8. Interview with former citizen security advisor, CAL730, in Cali, on July 30, 2008. 9. Interview with banking sector leader, CAL91709, on September 17, 2009. 10. Interview with former director of the Unidad de Acción Vallecaucana, CAL2029, February 2, 2009. 11. Interviews with former director of the El País newspaper, CAL892, on February 3, 2009 and former president of major industrial firm, CAL218, on November 21, 2008. 12. El Tiempo, “Bloques de Búsqueda Contra Piratería Terrestre,” November 12, 1995. 13. El Tiempo, “Piratería Amenaza la Apertura,” February 3, 1992. 14. El Tiempo, “Piratería se Soma a las Ciudades,” November 15, 1995; Semana, “Empresario Avisado,” November 12, 1990. 15. El Tiempo, “Bloques de Búsqueda Contra Piratería Terrestre,” November 12, 1995. 16. El Tiempo, “Robos a Camiones Siguen sin Frenos,” January 11, 1994. 17. Interview with former president of the CCC, CAL21, on April 29, 2009. 18. These operations were specifically carried out by the FARC’s Front #30. El Tiempo, “7 Muertos, 5 Heridos por FARC,” March 19, 1991. 19. Interview with former president of the Society for Agriculturalists and Cattle Ranchers of the Valle, CAL109, April 27, 2009. 20. Nearly 210,000 residents—or approximately 40 percent of the city’s total AfroColombian population—reside in Cali’s peripheral neighborhoods (Moncada 2010, Table 1, 7). 21. El Tiempo, “La Guerrilla y la Delincuencia Común,” July 25, 1993. 22. Interview with former director (A) of the CCSC, CAL026, on June 7, 2006. 23. Interview with former director (B) of the CCSC, CAL99, on February 6, 2009. 24. Interview with former director (B) of the CCSC, CAL99, on February 6, 2009. 25. Interview with former director (B) of the CCSC, CAL99, on February 6, 2009. 26. Interviews with former municipal security advisor (A), CAL198, on November 14, 2008; former citizen security advisor, CAL730, on July 30, 2008; and former municipal security advisor (B), CAL00330, on November 14, 2008. 27. El Tiempo, “Meléndez, Ejido Con Varios Dueños,” April 22, 1992. 28. Interview with former director of INVICALI, CAL6616, on July 28, 2008. 29. El País, “Cali, Sola Contra la Inseguridad,” October 13, 1991. 30. Author interview with former Cali chief of police, CAL517, on February 12, 2009. 31. Interview with citizen security advisor, CAL200810, on August 8, 2008. 32. Interview with former president of a major industrial firm, CAL218, on November 21, 2008. 33. Letter in author’s archives.

notes to chapter 4 193

34. Parces is also slang for “friends.” 35. El País, “Alcaldía y Pandillas Firmaran ‘Acuerdo,’” May 7, 1993. 36. El País, “Pandillas Entregan las Armas,” May 28, 1993. 37. Interview with former PARCES director, CAL90, on August 24, 2008. 38. Interview with former PARCES director, CAL90, on August 24, 2008. 39. Interview with former PARCES director, CAL90, on August 24, 2008. 40. Interview with citizen security advisor, CAL200810, on August 8, 2008. 41. Interview with citizen security advisor, CAL200810, on August 8, 2008. 42. Interview with former citizen security advisor, CAL730, on July 30, 2008, and interview with former municipal security advisor (B), CAL003300, on November 14, 2008. 43. Interview with community leader in Charco Azul neighborhood, CAL12, on August 5, 2008. 44. Interview with former president of the CCC, CAL21, on April 29, 2009. 45. El País, “Valle No Es de Narcos,” August 1, 1994. 46. The leadership of commercial business associations allied with the CCC also issued a number of interviews in which they sought to distance themselves from local government and the stigma of corruption. See El Tiempo, “El Estigma de la Droga Reciente Economía Caleña,” March 16, 1995. 47. El País, “Nuestra Sociedad fue Permisiva,” August 14, 1994. 48. Interview with former PARCES director, CAL90, on August 24, 2008. 49. Interview with former official in Ministry of Defense, BOG1148, on November 10, 2008, and interview with former official in the Office of the Attorney General, BOG820200, on October 8, 2008. 50. Interview with former municipal security advisor (A), CAL198, on November 14, 2008. 51. Interview with former gang member, CAL77, on November 9, 2008. 52. Interview with former president of the CCC, CAL21, on April 29, 2009. 53. Interview with former citizen security advisor, CAL813, on August 31, 2008. 54. Between 1988 and 2000 the amount of dry coca leaf produced in Colombia as a share of the regional total increased from 10 to 75 percent. Author’s calculations based on UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (2001, 67). 55. Interview with former mayor Jhon Maro Rodríguez, on July 2, 2009. 56. Interview with former mayor Jhon Maro Rodríguez, on July 2, 2009. 57. The name was drawn from the title given to the case by the attorney general’s office. 58. The 8,000 Process also revealed linkages between key members of the national government and the cartel. See Semana, “Claves Ineditas del 8.000,” available at http:// www.semana.com/noticias-on-line/claves-ineditas-del-8000/80267.aspx, accessed January 3, 2011.

194  notes to chapter 4

59. See El Tiempo, “Quien Compro Caballos a Guzmán,” September 20, 1997; and El Tiempo, “Fiscalía Investiga 15 Cheques,” August 27, 1997. 60. Interview with former president of the CCC, CAL21, on April 29, 2009. 61. Interview with agroindustrial elite and former mayor, CAL213093, on September 18, 2009. 62. Author’s calculations based on Escobar and Collazos (2007, Table 2.1.4, p. 27). 63. El Tiempo, “Lista Terna Para Escoger al Consejero Presidencial,” June 24, 1997; El Tiempo, “El Valle Tendrá Consejero Presidencial,” June 11, 1997. 64. Interview with city council member, CAL130, on July 30, 2008. 65. El País, “Los Múltiples Rostros de la Violencia Urbana,” April 8, 2004. 66. By 1997 nearly half of all departments and close to one-third of all municipalities in the country had reached “critical” levels of debt (Alesina et al. 2005, 186). 67. El Tiempo, “Arrancó Reforma de Cali,” June 26, 2001. 68. Interview with Desepaz staff member, CAL2031, on July 5, 2009. 69. Interview with director of Industrial Business Association, CAL008, on August 13, 2008. 70. Interview with former director (A) of the CCSC, CAL026, on June 7, 2006. 71. Interview with former mayor Jhon Maro Rodríguez, on July 2, 2009. 72. El Tiempo, “EMCALI a la Espera de Decisión del Gobierno,” November 1, 2000. 73. El Tiempo, “EMCALI Sigue a La Espera de la Recapitalización,” April 4, 2001. 74. El Tiempo, “Policía de Cali, En Quiebra,” December 2, 2003. 75. Interviews with leaders in Cali’s police force, BOG10101 and CAL43029, on November 9, 2008 and July 1, 2009, respectively. 76. Interview with leader in Cali’s police force, BOG10101, on November 9, 2008. 77. CCC/CCSC Powerpoint, 2005, Cali, Colombia. In author’s records. 78. CCC Powerpoint, 2007, Cali, Colombia. In author’s records. 79. Interview with leader in Cali’s police force, CAL43029, on July 1, 2009. 80. Interviews with District of Peace coordinators (A), CAL8872 and (B), CAL8873, on July 4, 2009. 81. Interview with mayoral aide, CAL7789, on July 6, 2009. 82. Interview with former mayor Jhon Maro Rodríguez, on July 2, 2009. 83. Caracol Radio, “No Habrá Medidas de Excepción en Cali, Afirma Alcalde,” October 23, 2002. 84. El Tiempo, “Luna de Miel a los Cien Días,” April 5, 2001. 85. Interview with former gang member, CAL6176, on July 6, 2009. 86. Interview with agroindustrial elite and former mayor, CAL213093, on September 18, 2009. 87. Author interview with former official from Ministry of Defense, BOG2010, on October 6, 2008. 88. See Revista ACCION, “La Política en Beneficio de Regiones,” November 2007.

notes to chapters 4 and 5 195

89. See Cámara de Comercio de Cali, “Convenio Presidencia de la República— CCC,” press release, November 5, 2005. Chapter 5

1. Interview with former mayor Antanas Mockus on June 1, 2006. 2. Interview with Bogota police reform coordinator, BOG3607, July 3, 2007. 3. For a comprehensive history of the CCB, see Rodríguez (1995). 4. Interview with former president of the CCB, BOG3901, on November 11, 2009. 5. Semana, “De Pie,” January 19, 1987. 6. El Tiempo, “Las Cinco Plagas de la Capital,” December 28, 1992. 7. El Tiempo, “Suárez Melo se Retira y Apoya a Jaime Castro,” October 31, 1991. 8. El Tiempo, “La Onda Mockus Llega a E.U.,” April 26, 1998. 9. Interviews with CCB board members, BOG3110 and BOG3111, on November 12, 2009. 10. Interview with police commander, BOG8887, on July 4, 2007. 11. The FSL was a national level program, but the degree to which it was enacted and sustained hinged on cooperation and participation from municipal governments. 12. Interview with CCB’s FSL coordinator, BOG7100, on June 2, 2006. 13. Interview with CCB board member, BOG3110, on November 12, 2009. 14. Interview with former secretary of government, Alicia Eugenia Silva, on November 11, 2008. 15. Funds transferred from the CCB to local government were then channeled to the Fondo Distrital de Vigilancia y Seguridad (FVS), which is the municipal agency charged with managing investment in Bogota’s police force. 16. Interview with director of the SUIVD, BOG2706, on June 2, 2006. 17. Interview with citizen security advisor to Antanas Mockus, BOG0078, on October 10, 2008. 18. Interview with former president of the CCB, BOG3901, on November 11, 2009. 19. Interview with Hugo Acero, on July 12, 2006. 20. El Tiempo, “A Mockus le Falta Concretar sus Programas,” August 11, 1995. 21. Interview with former president of the CCB, BOG3901, on November 11, 2009. 22. El Tiempo, “Amores y Desamores Hacia Mockus,” June 23, 1996. 23. El Tiempo, “Apoyo de Consejo y Gremios,” April 9, 1997. 24. Interview with former mayor Paul Bromberg, on October 10, 2008. 25. Interview with former mayor Paul Bromberg, on October 10, 2008. 26. El Tiempo, “Mockus Clausura Foro Iberoamericano de Paz,” November 1, 1996. 27. El Tiempo, “Propuestas Contra la Inseguridad,” June 23, 1997. 28. Interview with former president of the CCB, BOG3901, on November 11, 2009. 29. Author’s calculations based on data from the Secretaría Distrital de Planeación de Bogotá, D.C.

196  notes to chapter 5

30. Interview with city council member Omar Mejia, on April 21, 2009. 31. Interview with former Secretary of Government, Alicia Eugenia Silva, November 11, 2008. 32. Interview with the CCB’s FSL coordinator, BOG7100, on June 2, 2006. 33. Interview with citizen security advisor to Antanas Mockus, BOG0078, on October 10, 2008. 34. El Tiempo, “Amores y Desamores Hacia Mockus,” June 23, 1996. 35. Semana, “Peñalosa, el Bulldozer,” May 4, 1998. 36. Acciones de tutela were established in the 1991 constitution as a legal mechanism through which citizens who perceive their constitutional rights to be under threat or having been being violated can request that the judicial intervention to protect their rights. 37. See Sentencia T-396 de 1997 of the Colombian Constitutional Court. 38. See Ponencia para Segundo Debate al Proyecto de Ley 289 de 2000 Senado, 074 de 1999 Cámara. Gaceta del Congreso No. 259, January 6, 2001. 39. El Tiempo, “Frente Común Contra Ventas Ambulantes,” June 5, 2001. El Tiempo, “Distrito Piden al Congreso Archivar Ley del Vendedor,” March 30, 2001. 40. El Tiempo, “Vendedores Ambulantes,” March 29, 2001. 41. Interview with citizen security advisor to Antanas Mockus, BOG0078, on October 10, 2008. 42. El Tiempo, “Frente Común Contra Ventas Ambulantes,” June 5, 2001. 43. See Articles 33 and 70 of the Código de Policía de Bogotá, D.C. available at http:// www.dmsjuridica.com/CODIGOS/CODIGOS/COD_POLICIA_BOGOTA/COD_ POLICIA_BOGOTA.htm, accessed October 16, 2014. 44. El Tiempo, “El Distrito Rindió Cuentas,” August 4, 2003. 45. El Tiempo, “En Defensa del Espacio Publico,” September 30, 2002. 46. On the eve of the Police Code’s ratification, a scandal erupted when it was revealed that three members of the council had accepted bribes from an organization representing a part of the informal street vendor population to vote against the legislation. 47. El Tiempo, “La Campaña No Se Puede Improvisar: Juan Lozano,” April 1, 2003. 48. The Corona Foundation, headed by the CCB and El Tiempo, originally offered a donation so large that Mockus declined to accept until a smaller donation of $13,500 was made. See Pasotti (2010, 85). 49. El Tiempo, “Vetos Odiosos,” October 5, 2003. 50. Eduardo Luis Garzón, “Hagamos el Debate sin Pasión,” Presentation at the International Forum on Public Space and the City, Bogota, Colombia, 2005, 115. 51. El Tiempo, “La Voz Disidente de la Ciudad,” September 3, 2003. El Tiempo, “Mi Lucha es por la Inclusión Social,” July 22, 2003. 52. El Tiempo, “Espacio Público, a la Deriva,” February 14, 2004. 53. El Tiempo, “Examen al Espacio Público,” May 10, 2005.

notes to chapters 5 and 6 197

54. Quoted in Castañeda and García (2007, 182). 55. El Tiempo, “Al Alcalde Garzón le ha Faltado Autoridad para Aplicar la Ley,” February 6, 2005; El Tiempo, “Gremios le Piden a Lucho Garzón que Cese Violencia Verbal,” March 12, 2005. 56. Peñalosa (2005), “Es Mas Fácil Hablar Que Hacer,” Presentation at the International Forum on Public Space and the City, Bogota, Colombia, 2005, 31. 57. Maria Fernando Campo (2005), “La Visión Empresarial del Espacio Publico en Bogotá,” Presentation at the International Forum on Public Space and the City, Bogota, Colombia, 2005, 10–15. 58. El Tiempo, “El Espacio Público, En Manos de los Alcaldes,” April 13, 2004. 59. El Tiempo, “Inventariado el Espacio Público,” June 22, 2004. 60. El Tiempo, “No Cambio de Camiseta no Soy Esclavo de Nadie,” June 13, 2004. 61. El Tiempo, “Primer Pacto de Garzón con Ambulantes,” November 12, 2004. 62. El Tiempo, “No Voy a Arrendar ni a Parcelar el Espacio Público,” November 12, 2004. El Tiempo, “A Pagar por el Espacio Publico,” November 13, 2004. 63. El Tiempo, “Empresarios Tienen la Palabra,” February 17, 2005. 64. El Tiempo, “Examen al Espacio Público,” May 10, 2005. 65. El Tiempo, “Así ven la Gestión del Alcalde,” December 31, 2006. 66. Interview with aide to Garzón, BOG63330, on October 12, 2008. 67. Interview with official with the Secretaría Distrital de Gobierno de Bogotá, D.C., BOG78120, on October 10, 2008. Chapter 6

1. Portions of this chapter appeared previously as “Business and the Politics of Urban Violence in Colombia,” in Studies in Comparative International Development 48 (3) (2013): 308–30. Used with permission of Springer Science and Business Media. 2. On coproduction, see Ostrom (1996). 3. Astorga (2005) provides an excellent overview of the drug trade’s role in Mexican political history. And see Bailey (2014) and Shirk (2011) for a comprehensive analysis of the complex dynamics and evolution of the Mexican drug trade in recent years. 4. Mexico is divided into thirty-one states. 5. Under Calderón, the federal government’s efforts to stem violence had been limited primarily to a coercive strategy focused on the capture of high-level traffickers and DTO leaders in strategic parts of the country, including Ciudad Juarez (Felbab-Brown 2014, 27–29). Calderón broke with the status quo only after armed assailants killed seventeen young people in Juarez in early 2010 while they were gathered for a party. When the media asked him about the killings, Calderón erroneously suggested that the youth were part of the criminal underworld, which generated a significant backlash both within Mexico and abroad. 6. Press Release, “Ciudad Juarez: Polo de Crecimiento y Sinonimo de Competivi-

198  notes to chapter 6

dad,” Secretaría de Economia, October 13, 2011, available at http://www.economia.gob. mx/eventos-noticias/sala-de-prensa/comunicados/1986-ciudad-juarez-polo-de-crecimiento-y-sinonimo-de-competitividad, accessed June 10, 2013. 7. Interviews with retail sector business owners, CJ0011 and CJ7301, on June 12, 2012. 8. Interview with AMAC representative, CJ2073, on June 6, 2012. 9. Interview with AMAC representative, CJ2073, on June 6, 2012. 10. Interview with real estate business leader, CJ9201, on June 9, 2012. 11. Interview with representative from the Chihuahua’s Commission on Human Rights, CJ1133, on June 1, 2012. 12. Interview with civil society representatives, CJ21021 and CJ2010212, on June 10, 2012. 13. Interview with participants on the human rights working group, CJ431 and CJ2000, on June 5, 2012. 14. See Christian Science Monitor, “Violence Declines in Juarez—But at What Price?” February 14, 2013. 15. Interview with owner of a manufacturing plant, CJ0125, on June 9, 2012. 16. Interview with civil society representative, CJ21021, on June 10, 2012. 17. See, for example, El Diario, “No Hay Recursos para Poner en Marcha Proyectos de Salud,” November 13, 2012. 18. Proceso, “Y Todos Somos Juarez, Gran Negocio,” November 8, 2012. 19. Proceso, “El Plan Juarez: Cemento sin Contenido Social,” January 8, 2011. 20. Proceso, “Y Todos Somos Juarez, Gran Negocio,” November 8, 2012. 21. Interview with manufacturing sector representative and member of security working group, CJ331, on June 10, 2012. 22. Interview with real estate business leader, CJ9201, on June 9, 2012. 23. The Juarez cartel is also known as the Vicente Carillo Fuentes cartel. 24. Among these new powerful gangs are the Artistas Asesinos and La Línea. 25. Reuters, “Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez, the World’s Most Violent City?” August 28, 2009. 26. Proceso, “La Violenta ‘Pacificacion’ de Juarez,” February 18, 2012. 27. InsightCrime, “Despite Shake Ups to Mexico’s Underworld, Juarez’s Uneasy Peace Will Stand,” October 25, 2012. 28. Interview with director of a women’s rights organization, CJ6111, on June 5, 2012. 29. El Economista, “Calderón Presentará Estrategia Todos Somos Acapulco,” May 30, 2012. 30. Interview with director of a women’s rights organization, CJ6111, on June 5, 2012. 31. See Magaloni et al. (2012) for an innovative approach to these questions using survey data.



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Index

Acevedo, Fabio Orlando (Don Efe), 1 ACI, see Agencia de Cooperación e Inversión de Medellín Afro-Colombians, 98, 192n20 Agencia de Cooperación e Inversión de Medellín (ACI; Medellin’s Agency for Cooperation and Investment), 86–87 Agroindustry, 44, 93–96, 101–2, 111–12, 118–19, 159–60 Alianza Nacional Popular (ANAPO; National Popular Alliance), 43, 44 AMAC, see Asociación de Maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez ANAPO, see Alianza Nacional Popular Argos, 62 Armed groups: death squads, 66; emerald mafias, 132; funding from drug cartels, 64, 66; milícias, 65, 66, 70–71, 77, 98, 189n17, 190n49; private security forces, 76, 190n41; proxies for others, 113, 114, 118, 122, 132, 166, 175–76; social cleansing, 65, 76, 97–98, 103, 105, 133; weapons surrenders, 103, 104. See also Armed territorial control; Guerrilla insurgencies; Paramilitary forces; Youth gangs

Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, see FARC Armed territorial control: in analytical framework, 3, 21–25; atomized, 22–23, 163, 166–67; in Bogota, 122, 131–33, 138–39, 141, 148, 155, 163, 166–67; in Cali, 97–98, 102–5, 108, 113–14, 118–19, 162–63, 166; in Ciudad Juarez, 175–76, 178; in civil wars, 21; collapsing, 23–24; comparative analysis, 162–63, 166–68; criminal coordination, 3–4; fragmented, 23–24, 162–63, 166, 175– 76; interaction with urban political economies, 162–63, 166–68, 178; in Medellin, 64–66, 69–71, 72, 77–78, 82–86, 87, 162, 167–68; monopolistic, 22–23, 167–68, 176; neighborhoodlevel analysis, 181; patterns, 3–4, 21–24, 22 (table), 157, 162–63, 166–68 Arrubla, Jaime Alberto, 79 Asociación de Maquiladoras de Ciudad Juárez (AMAC; Association of Maquiladoras of Ciudad Juarez), 171, 172 Associations, see Business associations Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia 219

220 INDEX

(AUC; United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), 46–47 Autonomía Ciudadana (Autonomous Citizenry), 108 BCN, see Bloque Cacique Nutibara Berney, Rachel, 142 Betancur, Belisario, 46, 47, 48 Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN), 1, 78, 83, 84 Bloque Calima, 113 Bloque Metro, 78 Bogota: bus rapid transit system, 141; citizen culture, 126, 137, 145; city council, 138–39; classes in electoral coalitions, 144–45, 145 (fig.); clientelism, 126–27, 131, 139; corruption, 123, 139, 196n46; economy, 25 (table), 127–29, 128 (fig.); global image, 129–31, 136, 137–38, 154; mayors, 122–25, 124 (table), 130–31, 140–41, 144–45, 145 (fig.); municipal debt, 123; municipal investment, 27, 27 (fig.), 153–54, 154 (fig.); police force, 125, 134, 141–42, 146–47, 195n15; population, 25 (table); poverty, 28, 28 (table); transit police, 125; as urban governance model, 27, 122, 138 Bogota, business-government relationships: collaborative, 131, 134–38, 140, 141–43, 152, 154, 161; compromises, 123, 148, 154, 164–65; historical, 128; participatory political project and, 123, 130–31, 136–37, 140, 141–43, 155, 164–65. See also Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá Bogota, participatory political project: business support, 123, 130–31, 155, 164– 65; continuation, 122–23, 140–42, 145– 48, 146 (table), 150–54; first, 125 (table),

125–27, 133–40, 155; as model, 28–29; public space, 123, 126, 136, 141–43, 145, 147–53; sustained, 27, 122, 155, 164–65; violence control measures, 125, 146–47; violence prevention measures, 126, 147. See also Informal street vendors Bogota, urban violence in: armed territorial control, 122, 131–33, 138–39, 141, 148, 155, 163, 166–67; decline, 122, 132, 139; drug trade and, 122; epidemiological analysis, 126; homicide rates, 26 (fig.), 122, 132, 133 (fig.); paramilitary forces, 148; perceived insecurity, 129; political assassinations, 129; research and data collection, 126, 135–36; social cleansing groups, 133 Bogota Chamber of Commerce, see Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá Broken windows thesis, 10, 131, 141 Broker clientelism, 41–43, 44, 48, 52. See also Clientelism Bromberg, Paul, 137, 140 Buenaventura, 93, 95, 113 Business associations: collective action, 15, 17; definition, 186n25; encompassing, 62–63; sectoral, 15, 94. See also Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá; Cámara de Comercio de Cali; Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño Business communities: in Bogota, 127–31, 144–45; in Cali, 89–90, 93–96, 98–102, 105–6; campaign contributions, 144; in Ciudad Juarez, 170–71, 172–74, 175; cohesive, 16–17, 127–31; financial support of police, 101–2, 104, 116–17, 134–35, 180, 195n15; institutional configurations, 14–17, 179; in Medellin, 60–63; philanthropy, 89–90; segmented, 15–16, 93–94, 171,

INDEX 221

172, 175. See also Business-government relationships Businesses: goods-producing sector, 15–16, 61, 93, 127, 128, 170–71, 172–73; interlocking directorates, 62–63; largescale, 8–9; private security forces, 76, 190n41; service sector, 15, 16, 63, 127, 128, 171; small, 8–9, 181 Business-government relationships: collaborative, 3, 18, 19–20, 156, 161, 164–65; comparative analysis, 159–61, 164–66; conflictive, 3, 19, 20, 21, 114–19, 156–57, 159–60, 165–66; disengaged, 3, 19, 20, 160–61; formal and informal channels, 15; influence of businesses, 15, 156–57, 164–66, 178–79; linkage density, 17–19, 94, 128, 152, 154, 159, 160; policy recommendations, 179–80; political factors, 179; preferences and linkages, 17–19, 18 (fig.), 63–64, 159–61, 165. See also Urban political economies; and individual cities Caicedo, Juan Martín, 123 Calderón, Felipe, 168, 177, 197n5 Cali: agroindustry, 93–96, 101–2, 111–12, 118–19, 159–60; clientelism, 111; drug trafficking, 105–6; economy, 25 (table), 112; mayors, 88, 89 (table), 89–90, 96, 108, 111; media, 99, 106, 111; migration to, 108, 110; municipal debt, 112, 114; municipal investment, 27 (fig.), 27–28, 91, 92; police force, 90, 101–2, 103–4, 105, 106, 109–10, 116–17, 118; population, 25 (table); port, 93, 95, 119–20; poverty, 28, 28 (table); regional economy, 118; unemployment, 112 Cali, business-government relationships: collaborative, 94; conflictive, 96, 98–102, 104, 112, 114–19, 165–66;

deterioration, 111–13, 159–60; mayoral candidates, 111; with national government, 105–6, 112, 119–20. See also Cámara de Comercio de Cali Cali, participatory political projects: business opposition, 94, 95–96, 99; derailed, 27, 88, 101–5, 106, 107, 120–21; Desepaz, 90, 92–93, 103, 105, 107, 109, 115; Districts of Peace, 110, 117; first, 90–93, 91 (table), 98–107; as model, 28–29; second, 27–28, 108–10, 109 (table), 114–16, 117, 118–19, 120–21; violence control measures, 90, 108–9; violence prevention measures, 91–92, 102–4, 109–10 Cali, urban violence in: armed territorial control, 97–98, 102–5, 108, 113–14, 118–19, 162–63, 166; epidemiological analysis, 92; homicide rates, 26 (fig.), 97, 120–21, 121 (fig.); insurgents, 96; land piracy, 94–95, 96; milícias, 98; militarized security, 106–7; pandillas (youth gangs), 97, 102–5, 113, 114, 118; paramilitary forces, 113; persistence, 27; research and data collection, 98–100; social cleansing groups, 97–98, 103, 105 Cali Chamber of Commerce, see Cámara de Comercio de Cali Cali drug cartel: conflict with Medellin cartel, 97; corruption of local politicians, 97, 105, 106, 111; downfall, 108, 113–14; relations with state, 97, 105 Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá (CCB; Bogota Chamber of Commerce): citizen culture initiatives, 137; collaboration with local government, 131, 134–35, 137–38, 141, 152; Dirección de Seguridad y Convivencia, 135; as encompassing institution, 127–28;

222 INDEX

establishment, 127; financial support of police, 134–35; goals for city’s economy and image, 129–31, 137–38, 154; informal vendor issue, 136, 142–43, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154. See also Bogota, business-government relationships Cámara de Comercio de Cali (CCC; Cali Chamber of Commerce): distancing from corrupt local government and cartel, 105–6, 111; financial support of police, 101–2, 116–17; leaders, 100, 116, 119; mayoral candidate supported, 111; political influence, 94; relations with national government, 105, 112, 119–20; resources, 112–13; staff members, 99. See also Cali, business-government relationships Carvajal foundation, 89–90 CCB, see Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá CCC, see Cámara de Comercio de Cali CCP, see Corporación Cívica Popular CCSC, see Comisión de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana Central governments, see National governments Cities: migration to, 41, 108, 110; poverty, 28, 28 (table); power, 3. See also Local governments; Urban political economies; Urban violence; and individual cities Citizen culture: in Bogota, 126, 137, 145; in Medellin, 76 Citizen participation, see Participatory political projects; Political participation Citizen security: accountability of local governments, 126; in Bogota, 124–25, 147; decentralization and, 48–51; distinction from national security, 51; as election issue, 124–25; human

development and, 8; mayoral powers, 50 (table), 50–51 Citizenship, 37. See also Political participation City branding: of Bogota, 129–31, 136, 137–38, 154; of Medellin, 2, 75, 86–87; participatory political projects and, 16 Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: civil society, 172– 73; clientelism, 174–75; drug trafficking organizations, 175–76; economy, 170– 71; maquiladora industry, 170–71, 172– 73, 175; mayors, 174–75; participatory political project, 168, 170, 171–75, 176–78; peripheral neighborhoods, 171; police force, 172, 173, 176; public works projects, 174 Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, urban violence: armed territorial control, 175–76, 178; homicide rates, 169, 176; levels, 168, 176–77, 197n5 Civil society organizations: in Bogota, 147; in Cali, 90, 92, 108, 110, 117; in Ciudad Juarez, 172–74, 176, 177; collaboration with businesses, 81–82; collaboration with government, 12, 57, 147; diversity, 20; in Medellin, 55, 57– 58, 59, 68–69, 70–71, 81–82, 86; political projects supported, 20; victims of violence, 70–71 Civil wars: armed territorial control, 21; Colombian, 25, 26, 72 Clientelism: in Bogota, 126–27, 131, 139; broker, 41–43, 44, 48, 52; in Cali, 111; in Ciudad Juarez, 174–75; in Colombia, 34–35, 36, 38, 53; in Latin America, 12; of mayors, 13–14, 53, 54; in Medellin, 61, 79–80; weakening, 52, 131 Clientelist political projects, 13, 14, 22 Cocaine, 46, 47, 72, 105, 107–8, 193n54. See also Drug trade

INDEX 223

Código de Policía, Bogota, 143, 149, 196n46 Colombia: civil war, 25, 26, 72; constitutions, 37, 38, 48, 49–50, 51–52, 67, 148; economic reforms, 26, 62, 111–12, 128; homicide rates, 26 (fig.); independence, 36; institutional expansion, 41–43; military rule, 39, 40; state security forces, 78, 81, 148; trade, 62, 93, 95, 111–12. See also Decentralization; Military; National governments; and individual cities Colombian Congress, 67, 68, 119–20, 142–43 Comandos Verdes (Green Commandos), 97 Comisión de Convivencia y Seguridad Ciudadana (CCSC; Commission on Coexistence and Citizen Security), 98–100, 102, 104, 115, 119 Communist Party, 89, 92 Communist self-defense forces, 39, 40 Community policing, 109–10, 141, 172 Comparative research: cross-case analyses, 158–68; methodology, 29–30; in urban politics, 25–26, 181–82 Conflict resolution mechanisms, 11, 58, 91, 126, 147 Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana (Presidential Council for Medellin and Its Metropolitan Area), 56–60, 64, 66–70, 71, 112 Conservative Party: factions, 38, 40, 41, 123–24; hereditary identities, 36; history, 36–42, 44; leaders, 37; in Medellin, 60–61, 71–72, 77, 79; policies, 37; power, 34 Constituent Assembly, 49–50, 52, 188n10

Constitutional Court, 142, 148–49, 150–51, 154 Control measures, see Violence control measures Corona Group, 144–45 Corporación Cívica Popular (CCP; Popular Civic Corporation), 70–71 Corporación Democracia (Corporation Democracy), 84–85 Corporación Picacho con Futuro, 86 Corporación Region, 57, 81, 189n2 Corruption: in Bogota, 123, 139, 196n46; in Cali, 97, 105, 106, 111; in Medellin, 80; national scandals, 131; of police, 106 Criminal groups: emerald mafias, 132; guerrilla insurgents as, 44–45, 46, 94–95, 96; political influence, 21; smuggling, 15–16. See also Armed groups; Drug trafficking organizations; Politics of criminal violence; Urban violence Cultural norms, changing, 10–11, 76 DEA, see Drug Enforcement Agency Death squads, in Medellin, 66 Decentralization: administrative, 43, 50, 96; in Cali, 94; citizen security and, 48–51; clientelism and, 13–14; in Colombia, 43, 48–54; in developing world, 5, 7–8; electoral reforms, 52–53; fiscal, 49, 51, 52, 114; political, 48, 50, 67, 139; political projects and, 13–14, 50. See also Mayors Defense ministry, see Ministry of Defense Democracy: in Colombia, 34; consociational, 34, 188n2; definition, 188n1; impact of urban violence, 4; legitimacy, 4; local, 2 Desepaz (Desarrollo, Seguridad y Paz;

224 INDEX

Development, Security, and Peace), 90, 92–93, 103, 105, 107, 109, 115 Dirección de Seguridad y Convivencia (DSC; Directorate for Security and Coexistence), 135 Don Berna, see Paz, Adolfo Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), US, 46 Drug trade: beneficiaries, 45–46; in Bogota, 122; cocaine, 46, 47, 72, 105, 107–8, 193n54; development in Colombia, 45–46; guerrilla insurgencies and, 45, 46, 47, 72, 113; marijuana, 45–46; in Medellin, 1–2, 55, 64; paramilitary forces and, 47; revenues, 46; US-led anti-narcotics efforts, 6–7, 47; value added, 189n1; youth gangs and, 170, 175–76 Drug trafficking organizations (DTOs): Cali cartel, 97, 105, 106, 108, 111, 113–14; emerald mafias and, 132; in Mexico, 168, 169–70, 175–76, 197n5; paramilitary forces, 46, 72; relations with Colombian state, 26, 47; in Valle del Cauca department, 95, 107–8, 113–14; violence, 28, 46, 47, 48–49. See also Medellin drug cartel DSC, see Dirección de Seguridad y Convivencia DTOs, see Drug trafficking organizations Economic development, 4, 59. See also Businesses; Foreign direct investment; Investment Economic Group of Antioquia, see Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño Eder, Henry, 96 Education: in Bogota, 147; in Cali, 91; in citizen culture, 137; job training, 70, 85, 91; local responsibilities, 50; in Medellin, 59, 74; subsidies, 147

Ejército Nacional de Liberación (ELN; National Liberation Army), 44, 45, 77, 98, 113 Ejército Popular de Liberación (EPL; Popular Liberation Army), 44, 45, 65 Elections: broker clientelism and, 42; citizen security as issue, 124–25; coalitions in Bogota, 144–45, 145 (fig.); for Constituent Assembly, 49, 52, 188n10; direct elections of mayors, 7, 26, 48, 53, 63–64, 123, 186n13; of governors, 188n8; legal reforms, 48, 52–53; party identification, 43; presidential (1990), 48–49; violence associated with, 48–49. See also Political participation Electoral micro-enterprises, 52 Elites: in Cali, 93–96; in colonial period, 36; drug trade and, 45–46; landowners, 93, 100–101; in Medellin, 2, 57–58, 61–62, 68, 83; power, 38; professional politicians, 42; regional and local, 36, 38, 41–42, 53; traditional, 42. See also Agroindustry; Businesses; Ruling classes ELN, see Ejército Nacional de Liberación EMCALI, see Empresas Municipales de Cali Emerald mafias, 132 Employment: job training, 59, 70, 85, 91; public, 40–41, 114 Empresas Municipales de Cali (EMCALI: Public Utility Firms of Cali), 115–16 Empresas Publicas de Medellín (EPM; Public Firms of Medellin), 79–80 Encompassing institutions, 16–17, 62–63. See also Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá; Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño Entretodos (Between All of Us) initiative, Medellin, 75–77, 76 (table), 81

INDEX 225

ENV, see Estrategia Nacional Contra la Violencia EPL, see Ejército Popular de Liberación EPM, see Empresas Publicas de Medellín Escobar, Pablo, 1, 46, 75. See also Medellin drug cartel El Espectador, 129 Estrategia Nacional Contra la Violencia (ENV; National Strategy against Violence), 51 European Forum for Urban Security, 138 Evans, Peter, 18 Exclusionary local political orders: clientelism and, 48; in Colombia, 34– 35, 37, 159; effects of political reforms, 48; history, 37; mayors, 14, 174; in Medellin, 57–58; political projects and, 11, 12; resilience, 34–35. See also Clientelism Extrajudicial violence, 101, 103–4, 109, 117, 118, 173, 176 Fajardo, Sergio, 72–73, 79, 82, 84, 86 FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia; Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia): conflicts with paramilitaries, 47; drug trade and, 47, 113; extortion and kidnapping, 44–45; formation, 44; growth, 45; headquarters bombed, 188n10; land piracy, 95; in Medellin, 77; milícias, 98; political arm, 48, 49, 89, 144; territorial gains, 47, 49 FDI, see Foreign direct investment Food insecurity, 147 Foreign direct investment (FDI): in Bogota, 138; in Medellin, 2, 63, 75, 83, 86–87 Frente Nacional (National Front), 40–41, 51–52

Frentes de Seguridad Local (FSLs; Local Security Fronts), 134, 195n11 Fuerza Cívica por Cali (Civic Force for Cali), 89 Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, see FARC Gaitán, Jorge Eliécer, 39 Galán, Luis Carlos, 48–49 Gangs, see Youth gangs Garzón, Luis Eduardo “Lucho”: informal vendor issue, 148–53; leftist politics, 144–45; Master Plan for Public Space, 149, 152–53; participatory political projects and, 145–48, 150–54; supporters, 122–23, 144–45, 150–51 Gaviria, César, 49, 51, 55, 56, 64 GEA, see Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño Globalization, 16, 129 Gómez Martínez, Juan, 60, 77 Governments, see Business-government relationships; Local governments; National governments Governors, direct elections, 188n8 Grassroots organizations, see Civil society organizations Green wars, 132 Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño (GEA; Economic Group of Antioquia): economic development goals, 63, 75; as encompassing institution, 62, 75; formation, 62; local politics and, 64, 79, 80, 81–82; members, 62; opposition to Medellin cartel, 62–63; participatory political projects and, 63, 68, 69, 73, 75–77, 81; Proantioquia, 75, 81–82. See also Medellin, businessgovernment relationships Grupo Nacional de Chocolates, 62 Guerrero, Rodrigo: at Carvajal

226 INDEX

foundation, 89–90; electoral coalition, 88, 89, 90; as mayor, 99, 100; participatory political project, 88, 90–92, 101; relations with police, 103–4; weapons surrender, 103 Guerrilla insurgencies: criminal activities, 44–45, 46, 94–95, 96; drug trade and, 45, 46, 47, 72, 113; expansion, 44–45, 47; peace negotiations, 46, 47, 48, 65, 96; political candidates, 48, 49; territorial gains, 45, 47; training camps, 65; in urban areas, 45, 53, 118. See also Ejército Popular de Liberación; FARC; M-19 rebel insurgency Guzmán Cuevas, Mauricio, 111 Homicide rates: in Bogota, 26 (fig.), 122, 132, 133 (fig.); in Cali, 26 (fig.), 97, 120– 21, 121 (fig.); in Ciudad Juarez, 169, 176; in Latin America, 5; in Medellin, 2, 26 (fig.), 64, 72, 82–83, 83 (fig.) Housing: in Cali, 91, 100–101; in Medellin, 59, 74, 84; public, 50, 74, 91, 100, 191n5 Human rights violations, 12, 59, 78, 81, 109, 173, 176 Ibero-American Summit on Peace and Conflict Resolution, 138 IDB, see Inter-American Development Bank Inclusionary local political orders, 11, 13, 14, 89, 90, 108 Inequality: in Cali, 112; policies addressing, 10, 12–13, 32, 57–58; urban violence and, 4, 57, 186n21. See also Elites; Poverty; Socioeconomic investment Informal street vendors: in Cali, 110; rights, 142, 148–49, 152 Informal street vendors, in Bogota:

agreements, 151–52; assistance for, 152; business-government relations and, 148, 152, 154; Constitutional Court ruling and, 142, 148–49, 150–51, 152, 154; Garzón’s policies, 148–53, 154; impact on formal commerce, 150; linked to crime, 150, 151; national legislation on, 142–43; negotiating with, 146, 151; official tolerance, 136, 142; protests against forcible removals, 142; regulating, 143, 149, 151–52, 196n46; relocating, 136, 141–43, 150, 151, 152 Institutions: building, 11, 73–74; encompassing, 16–17, 62–63. See also Political projects Instituto Popular de Capacitación (IPC), 57, 81, 189n2 Insurgencies, see Guerrilla insurgencies Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), 77, 81 Investment: foreign direct, 2, 63, 75, 83, 86–87, 138; municipal, 27 (fig.), 27–28, 74, 84, 84 (fig.), 91, 92, 153–54, 154 (fig.); in police, 59, 90, 116, 125; socioeconomic, 10, 11, 12–13, 59, 63, 67 IPC, see Instituto Popular de Capacitación Jaramillo, Ana Maria, 65 Juarez, see Ciudad Juarez Juarez drug cartel, 175–76 Kelling, George L., 10 Kidnappings, 44–45, 95, 96 Labor unions, 43–44, 115–16, 144–45 Land piracy, 94–95, 96 Lara Bonilla, Rodrigo, 47, 129 Leyzaola, Julian, 173, 176

INDEX 227

Liberal Party: factions, 38, 39, 40, 41, 123– 24; hereditary identities, 36; history, 36–42, 44; leaders, 37, 40; in Medellin, 79–81; National Front, 40–41; policies, 37; power, 34; power sharing, 38–39; presidential candidates, 49 Lleras Camargo, Alberto, 40 Lloreda Caicedo, Rodrigo Hernando, 111 Lloreda Mera, Francisco José, 111 Local governments: accountability for citizen security, 126; debt, 112, 114, 123; democratic, 2; powers, 53–54; taxes, 50. See also Business-government relationships; Decentralization; Mayors; Urban political economies; and individual cities Lozano, Juan, 144 M-19 rebel insurgency: allies, 97; in Cali, 96; demobilization, 92, 96; formation, 44; leaders, 119; peace camps, 65, 96; political arm, 48, 89; Supreme Court building takeover, 129 Maquiladora industry, 170–71, 172–73, 175 Marijuana, 45–46. See also Drug trade Master Plan for Public Space, see Plan Maestro para Espacio Público Mayors: corrupt, 111, 123; direct elections, 7, 26, 48, 53, 63–64, 123, 186n13; exclusionary, 14, 174; inclusionary, 14, 89, 90, 108; party affiliations, 53; political independents, 72–73, 79, 82, 88, 89–90, 108, 124, 130–31, 139; powers, 7–8, 50 (table), 50–51, 67, 139. See also Business-government relationships; Clientelism; and individual cities Medellin: citizen culture, 76; civil society organizations, 55, 57–58, 59, 68–69, 70–71, 81–82, 86; clientelism, 61, 79–80; economy, 25 (table), 59, 63;

foreign direct investment, 2, 63, 75, 83, 86–87; global image, 2, 75, 86–87; manufacturing, 61, 62, 63; mayors, 60– 62, 61 (table), 63–64, 71–73, 77, 79–82, 84; municipal investment, 27, 27 (fig.), 74, 84, 84 (fig.); police force, 59, 66, 73–74; population, 25 (table); poverty, 28, 28 (table); public works projects, 80–81; quality of life, 84, 85 (fig.); as urban governance model, 1, 27 Medellin, business-government relationships: collaborative, 56, 61, 165; conflictive, 79–80, 81–82; disengaged, 55–56, 60–64, 66, 68, 69, 160–61; improving, 75–77. See also Grupo Empresarial Antioqueño Medellin, participatory political projects: business support, 63, 73, 75–77; captured, 85, 86; derailed, 2, 27, 55–56, 60, 66–69, 71–72; effects of violence, 69–71; first, 2, 55–60, 58 (table), 66–70; funding, 66–68, 77; goals, 2; as model, 28–29; second, 2, 55, 72–75, 73 (table), 82, 84–87; violence control measures, 58–59, 73–74; violence prevention measures, 59, 63, 66–67, 70, 74 Medellin, urban violence in: armed territorial control, 64–66, 69–71, 72, 77–78, 82–86, 87, 162, 167–68; bandas, 65, 66, 70, 77; chichipatos, 65–66; civil war and, 72; combos, 65; criminal “offices,” 77–78, 85, 86, 87; death squads, 66; decline, 1, 2–3, 82–87; drug trafficking links, 1–2, 55, 64, 66, 72; effects on participatory political project, 69–71; efforts to address, 2, 56–60; homicide rates, 2, 26 (fig.), 64, 72, 82–83, 83 (fig.); insurgents, 2, 77, 78; milícias, 65, 66, 70–71, 77, 189n17, 190n49; paramilitary forces, 1, 2, 77–78,

228 INDEX

84–85; private security forces, 76, 190n41; social cleansing groups, 65, 76 Medellin drug cartel: armed groups funded by, 64, 66; conflict with Cali cartel, 97; dismantling, 72, 77; emerald mafias and, 132; origins, 46; political assassinations, 47, 48–49, 129; relations with businesses, 62–63; war against Colombian state, 1–2, 56, 64 Medellin miracle, 2–3, 80, 87 Media: in Bogota, 144, 149; in Cali, 99, 106, 111; coverage of participatory political projects, 137–38 Mejia, Maria Emma, 56–57, 59, 66, 68, 71 Mexico: clientelism, 174; drug trafficking organizations, 168, 169–70, 175–76, 197n5; maquiladora industry, 170–71, 172–73; state security forces, 176; trade with United States, 170–71, 172; urban violence, 169–70. See also Ciudad Juarez Middle classes, 42 Migration, from rural areas, 41, 108 Milícias: in Cali, 98; in Medellin, 65, 66, 70–71, 77, 189n17, 190n49 Military, Colombian: in Cali, 106–7, 116–17; counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations, 70; coup, 39, 40; death squads, 66; in Medellin, 70. See also State security forces Ministry of Defense, 51, 106, 119 Ministry of Finance, 67 Mockus, Antanas: election victory, 124–25, 130, 144; participatory political project, 122, 125–27, 130–31, 136, 137–40; presidential campaign, 137; second term, 142–43 Multinational corporations (MNCs), 129. See also Foreign direct investment Municipal governments, see Cities;

Decentralization; Local governments; Mayors; and individual cities Murguía Lardizábal, Hector, 174–75, 176, 177 Naranjo Pérez, Sergio, 71–72 Narcotics trade, see Drug trade National Front, see Frente Nacional National governments: business associations and, 105–6, 112, 119–20; centralization efforts, 36; civil society organizations and, 57; interventions in localities, 20–21, 106–7, 111 National Liberation Army, see Ejército Nacional de Liberación National Popular Alliance, see Alianza Nacional Popular NDVC, see Norte del Valle Cartel Neighborhood watch programs, 134 Neoliberalism, 140 Networks, see Clientelism Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 59, 103. See also Civil society organizations Norte del Valle Cartel (NDVC), 113–14 Observatory for Security, Bogota, 135–36, 138 Oficina de Envigado, 77–78, 85, 86, 87 Ospina, Iván Marino, 119 Ospina, Jorge Ivan, 119 Ospina Pérez, Mario, 38–39 El País, 99, 106, 111 Pandillas, see Youth gangs Paramilitary forces: activities, 47; AUC, 46–47; in Bogota, 148; in Cali, 113; demobilization, 78, 80, 84–85, 190n41; drug trade and, 46, 47, 72; in Medellin, 77–78, 84–85; political assassinations,

INDEX 229

48, 49; resocializing former members, 84–85; in urban areas, 53 PARCES (Participación, Convivencia, Educación, Superación; Participation, Coexistence, Education, Advancement), 102–4 Participatory political projects: city branding efforts and, 16; in Ciudad Juarez, 168, 170, 171–75, 176–78; decentralization and, 50; failures, 71– 72, 107, 120–21; media coverage, 137–38; public meetings, 68; socioeconomic investment, 12–13, 59, 63, 67; territorial control and, 22. See also Bogota; Cali; Medellin Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party), 174, 177 Party systems: in Colombia, 34, 36–42, 44, 52–53, 54; fragmented, 13, 38, 39, 94; hereditary identities, 36; institutionalized, 186n24; local, 130; party identification levels, 43; Polo Democrático, 144. See also Conservative Party; Liberal Party Pastrana Borrero, Misael, 43, 47 Patriotic Union, 48, 49 Patron-client relations, see Clientelism Paz, Adolfo (Don Berna), 77–78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87 Peasants, 36, 38, 41, 44 Peñalosa, Enrique, 124, 141–42, 143, 144, 149–50 Pérez Gutiérrez, Luis, 79–81 Peripheral urban territories: community development, 59–60; public goods and services, 12–13, 41, 42–43; use of term, 185n1. See also Armed territorial control; Participatory political projects

Plan Maestro para Espacio Público (PMEP; Master Plan for Public Space), Bogota, 149, 150, 152–53 Police: accountability, 59, 90, 134; in Bogota, 125, 134–35, 141–42, 146–47, 195n15; business support, 101–2, 104, 116–17, 134–35, 180, 195n15; in Cali, 90, 101–2, 103–4, 105, 106, 109–10, 116–17, 118; in Ciudad Juarez, 172, 173, 176; community policing, 109–10, 141, 172; corruption, 106; death squads, 66; extrajudicial violence, 12, 101, 103–4, 109, 117, 118, 173, 176; institution building, 11, 73–74; investments in, 59, 90, 116, 125; mayoral authority, 51; in Medellin, 59, 66, 73–74; nationalization, 51; neighborhood watch programs, 134; state security forces and, 51, 148; training, 90, 125, 141, 146; transit, 125. See also Violence control measures Policy recommendations, 178–80 Political economies, see Urban political economies Political participation: community councils, 59–60, 104–5; increasing, 2, 12, 44, 92; in planning and budgeting, 12, 74–75, 127, 147; restrictions, 37. See also Elections; Participatory political projects Political projects: clientelist, 13, 14, 22; decentralization effects, 13–14, 50; exclusionary or inclusionary, 11; political forms, 10, 13–14; reactionary, 2, 11–12, 14; responses to urban violence, 3, 4, 8; typology, 9–13. See also Participatory political projects; Violence control measures; Violence prevention measures Politics of criminal violence: macrolevel

230 INDEX

approach, 6–8, 9; microlevel approach, 6, 8–9 Politics of urban violence: analytical framework, 9–25, 10 (fig.), 156–57, 169, 177–78; in Colombia, 25–29, 34–35, 48, 54; cross-case comparative analyses, 158–68, 159 (table), 164 (table); future research, 180–82; at neighborhood level, 180–81; in 1990s, 158–63, 159 (table); policy recommendations, 178–80; reasons for studying, 4–5; scope, 3, 19–21, 156–57; in 2000s, 163–68, 164 (table) Polo Democrático, 144 Popular Civic Corporation, see Corporación Cívica Popular Popular Liberation Army, see Ejército Popular de Liberación Populism, 39, 82, 108 Poverty: food insecurity, 147; impact of urban violence, 4; rural, 37, 108; urban, 28, 28 (table) PPR, see Programa de Paz y Reconciliación Presidential Council for Medellin and Its Metropolitan Area, see Consejería Presidencial para Medellín y su Área Metropolitana Presidential Council for the Valle del Cauca, 112 Prevention of violence, see Violence prevention measures PRI, see Partido Revolucionario Institucional Private sector, see Businesses Proantioquia, 75, 81–82 Programa de Paz y Reconciliación (PPR; Program for Peace and Reconciliation), 84–85 Public employment, 40–41, 114

Public goods, 12–13, 37, 41, 42–43, 57, 126. See also Education; Investment Public space: in Bogota, 123, 126, 136, 141– 43, 145, 147–53; in Cali, 110; reshaping and regulating, 10. See also Informal street vendors Racial tensions, in Cali, 98 Ramos, Luis Alfredo, 60–61, 63–64, 66–68, 69, 71 Reactionary political projects, 2, 11–12, 14 Rebel groups, see Guerrilla insurgencies Regional political authorities: caudillos, 36, 37, 38; clientelism, 34–35, 36, 38, 52, 53; direct elections of governors, 188n8; effects of decentralization, 51–52, 53–54 Restrepo Santamaría, Nicanor, 77 Rights: human rights violations, 12, 59, 78, 81, 109, 173, 176; social and economic, 142, 145–46, 148–49, 151 Rodríguez, Jhon Maro, 108–10, 114–15, 116, 117, 118–19, 120 Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo, 40, 43, 44 Ruling classes: fragmented, 20; in Latin America, 11; shared preferences, 19–20. See also Business-government relationships; Elites; Party systems Rural areas: migration from, 41, 108; peasants, 36, 38, 41, 44; poverty, 37, 108. See also Agroindustry Salazar, Alonso, 65, 82, 84 Samper, Ernesto, 112 Schneider, Ben Ross, 17 Sectores de Solidaridad Ciudadana contra la Delincuencia (Sectors of Citizen Solidarity against Delinquency), 134 Service sectors, 15, 16, 63, 127, 128, 171

INDEX 231

Todos Somos Juárez (TSJ; We Are All Juarez), 168, 170, 171–75, 176–78 Transportation: land piracy, 94–95, 96; public, 141; roads, 15–16, 172 TSJ, see Todos Somos Juárez

Silva, Alicia Eugenia, 139 Sinaloa drug cartel, 175–76 Sistema Unificado de Información en Violencia y Delincuencia (SUIVD; Unified System for Information on Violence and Delinquency), 126, 135–36 Small businesses, 8–9, 181. See also Informal street vendors Smuggling, 15–16 Social cleansing groups: in Bogota, 133; in Cali, 97–98, 103, 105; in Medellin, 65, 76 Socioeconomic investment, 10, 11, 12–13, 59, 63, 67. See also Investment Spain, community policing, 141 State building, 41–43 State security forces: human rights abuses, 78, 81; Mexican, 176; municipal police forces and, 51, 148; operation in Medellin, 78. See also Military Street vendors, see Informal street vendors Student movement, 49 Suárez Melo, Mario, 130 Subnational governmental units: comparative analysis, 25–26, 182; spending, 50. See also Decentralization; Local governments; Regional political authorities SUIVD, see Sistema Unificado de Información en Violencia y Delincuencia Supreme Court, 129 Suramericana, 62, 77

Unified System for Information on Violence and Delinquency, see Sistema Unificado de Información en Violencia y Delincuencia United Nations, 122 United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, see Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia United States: anti-narcotics efforts in Latin America, 6–7, 47; broken windows thesis, 131; Drug Enforcement Agency, 46; drug trade, 45, 46; trade with Mexico, 170–71, 172 Urbanization, 4–5, 41 Urban political economies: in analytical framework, 3; changes in 2000s, 164–66; in Global North, 5; interaction with territorial control patterns, 162–63, 166–68, 178; variations among, 54. See also Business-government relationships Urban politics: comparative analysis, 25– 26, 181–82; power, 3; scholarship on, 5 Urban violence: impacts, 4; inequality and, 4, 57, 186n21; in Latin America, 5; in Mexico, 169–70; public health responses, 92; vicious circles, 4, 12. See also Politics of urban violence; and individual cities Uribe Vélez, Álvaro, 78, 144

Taxes, 49, 50 Territorial control, see Armed territorial control El Tiempo, 144, 149

Valle del Cauca department: agroindustry, 93–96, 101–2, 111–12, 118–19, 159–60; Buenaventura, 93, 95, 113; drug trafficking organizations,

232 INDEX

95, 107–8, 113–14; economic growth, 111–12; exports, 93; landowners, 93, 100–101; land piracy, 94–95, 96; Parliamentary bloc, 119–20; regional economy, 118; violence, 39, 108. See also Cali Vicente Carillo Fuentes cartel, see Juarez drug cartel Violence: assassinations, 39, 47, 48–49, 129; in Colombia, 34, 35, 37–39; definition, 4; extrajudicial, 12, 101, 103–4, 109, 117, 118, 173, 176; kidnappings, 44–45, 95, 96; political, 37–39; proximate causes, 10, 11. See also Homicide rates; Urban violence Violence control measures: in Bogota, 125, 146–47; in Cali, 90, 108–9; clientelist political projects, 13; definition, 10; institutional development, 11, 73–74; in Medellin, 58–59, 73–74. See also Police Violence prevention measures: in Bogota, 126, 147; broken windows thesis,

10, 131, 141; in Cali, 91–92, 102–4, 109–10; cultural norms addressed, 10–11, 76; inequality addressed, 10; at local level, 8; in Medellin, 59, 63, 66–67, 70, 74; public space policies, 10; socioeconomic investment, 10, 11, 12–13, 59, 63, 67; types, 10–11 La Violencia period, 39, 44, 50 Voting, see Elections We Are All Juarez, see Todos Somos Juárez Wilson, James Q., 10 World Bank, 127 Youth: resocialization efforts, 59, 92, 102– 4, 106; at-risk, 56, 59, 74, 91; student movement, 49 Youth gangs: in Bogota, 132–33; in Cali, 97, 102–5, 113, 114, 118; drug trade and, 170, 175–76; in Medellin, 66; in Mexico, 170, 175–76; as proxies, 113, 114, 118, 175–76