Mortal Doubt

Transnational Gangs and Social Order in Guatemala City
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-520-29708-1
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 158 mm, Gewicht: 576 g

Reihe: Atelier: Ethnographic Inquiry in the Twenty-First Century

The fear of violent crime dominates Guatemala City. In the midst of unprecedented levels of postwar violence, Guatemalans struggle to fathom the myriad forces that have made life in this city so deeply insecure. Born out of histories of state terror, migration, and US deportation, maras (transnational gangs) have become the face of this new era of violence. They are brutal organizations engaged in extortion, contract killings, and the drug trade, and yet they have also become essential to the emergence of a certain kind of social order.

Drawing on years of fieldwork inside prisons, police precincts, and gang-dominated neighborhoods, Anthony W. Fontes demonstrates how gang violence has become indissoluble from contemporary social imaginaries and how these gangs provide cover for a host of other criminal actors. Ethnographically rich and unflinchingly critical, Mortal Doubt illuminates the maras’ role in making and mooring collective terror in Guatemala City while tracing the ties that bind this violence to those residing in far safer environs.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fontes, Anthony W.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Stadt- und Regionalsoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kriminalsoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Introduction

Part One. Truths and Fictions
Bring Out the Dead
1. Portrait of a “Real” Marero
Brother’s Bones
2. Emissaries of the Violent Peace

Part Two. Worlds and Underworlds
The Road to Prison
3. Porous Prisons
The Prisoners and the Cascabel
4. Extorted Life

Part Three. Spectacle, Structure, and Agency
Make It a Global
5. Made-for-Media Murder
Farewell, Guatemala City
6. Liminal Redemption

Epilogue: Of Violent Others and Orders of Violence

Acknowledgments
Appendix: Notes on Methodology
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Anthony W. Fontes is Assistant Professor in the School of International Service, American University.