Book contents
- Undermining the State from Within
- Undermining the State from Within
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Institutional Origins
- 3 Civil War in Central America
- 4 The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala
- 5 Ordering Police Violence
- 6 Land and Counterinsurgency
- Part III Institutional Persistence
- Appendix List of Interviews and Archival Collections
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala
from Part II - Institutional Origins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2023
- Undermining the State from Within
- Undermining the State from Within
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Institutional Origins
- 3 Civil War in Central America
- 4 The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala
- 5 Ordering Police Violence
- 6 Land and Counterinsurgency
- Part III Institutional Persistence
- Appendix List of Interviews and Archival Collections
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 4 traces the wartime emergence of undermining rules within Guatemala’s customs apparatus by the Moreno Network. It analyzes how the Moreno Network was forged by an elite clique of military intelligence officers granted extraordinary discretion while infiltrating the state apparatus to combat Guatemala’s insurgent groups in the 1970s and 1980s. Amid the heightened sense of threat, this counterinsurgent elite introduced a series of predatory institutional arrangements to capture customs revenues. The chapter also examines how the illicit customs procedures were enforced by the Moreno Network, both through the use of violent and nonviolent coercion and through the co-optation of security forces and other state agencies.
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- Undermining the State from WithinThe Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America, pp. 89 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023