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4 - Piecemeal Vigilantism

from Part II - Everyday Resistance and Piecemeal Vigilantism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

Eduardo Moncada
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
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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.

Type
Chapter
Information
Resisting Extortion
Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America
, pp. 92 - 118
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Piecemeal Vigilantism
  • Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University
  • Book: Resisting Extortion
  • Online publication: 23 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108915328.004
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  • Piecemeal Vigilantism
  • Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University
  • Book: Resisting Extortion
  • Online publication: 23 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108915328.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Piecemeal Vigilantism
  • Eduardo Moncada, Barnard College, Columbia University
  • Book: Resisting Extortion
  • Online publication: 23 December 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108915328.004
Available formats
×