Book contents
- Resisting Extortion
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
- Resisting Extortion
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Tables, and Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Resistance to Criminal Extortion
- Part II Everyday Resistance and Piecemeal Vigilantism
- 3 Everyday Resistance
- 4 Piecemeal Vigilantism
- Part III Collective Vigilantism and the Coproduction of Order
- Appendix Researching Resistance to Criminal Extortion
- References
- Index
- Series page
4 - Piecemeal Vigilantism
from Part II - Everyday Resistance and Piecemeal Vigilantism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2021
- Resisting Extortion
- Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
- Resisting Extortion
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Tables, and Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Resistance to Criminal Extortion
- Part II Everyday Resistance and Piecemeal Vigilantism
- 3 Everyday Resistance
- 4 Piecemeal Vigilantism
- Part III Collective Vigilantism and the Coproduction of Order
- Appendix Researching Resistance to Criminal Extortion
- References
- Index
- Series page
Summary
This chapter analyzes cases of piecemeal vigilantism in El Salvador to show why victims resist extortion through ad hoc and sporadic acts of extralegal violence against criminals in coordination with individual police. I first situate criminal extortion within gang politics in El Salvador before turning to the cases of gang-led extortion of small-scale farmers in two rural localities. The small-scale farmers in these localities lacked preexisting organizations to advance collective resistance and had negligible ties to local governing authorities. But the local police were autonomous from the criminal gangs given the latter’s explicit strategy of targeting police as part of the broader state–criminal conflict. Victims in the two cases thus enlisted individual police as collaborators in occasional acts of piecemeal vigilantism. Over time victims faced pressure to scale up their coercive capacities, territorial reach, and extralegal violence amid their inability to end victimization outright. Efforts by victims to do so ultimately distorted their objectives and contributed to their dismantling by national-level judicial authorities.
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- Resisting ExtortionVictims, Criminals, and States in Latin America, pp. 92 - 118Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022