(Ebook) The Politics of Violence in Latin America by Pablo Policzer (Editor) ISBN 9781552389072, 9781552389065, 9781552389089, 9781552389096, 1552389073, 1552389065, 1552389081, 155238909X

(Ebook) The Politics of Violence in Latin America by Pablo Policzer (Editor) ISBN 9781552389072, 9781552389065, 9781552389089, 9781552389096, 1552389073, 1552389065, 1552389081, 155238909X

The idea for this book emerged from a series of discussions and meetings  at the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre in 2008 and 2009. In retrospect, although we didn’t know it at the time, this was a period of transition in the way we think about the problem of  violence. In the 1990s, ethnic conflict and other forms of violence emerged in many parts of the world, criminal violence related to the drug trade became a serious problem in parts of Latin America, and the seemingly intractable civil war in Colombia grew even more deadly, despite efforts to bring it to an end. 

While authoritarian rule and later the transition to democracy had preoccupied a previous generation of analysts in Latin America, by the 1990s the focus had begun to shift to the problem of violence and insecurity. The region might have become more democratic than in the recent past, but fear and insecurity related to complex combinations of armed conflict and criminal violence persisted. In addition, the news from places throughout Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and elsewhere contributed to the impression that even though the Cold War had ended, new forms of violent conflict were making the world a more insecure place.