Pais Portátil III: Re-thinking the State: Criminal Organizations and Militarized Violence in Venezuela
"Pais Portátil III: Re-thinking the State: Criminal Organizations and Militarized Violence in Venezuela"------------Veronica Zubillaga: "From Carceral Punitivism to Systematic Slaughter: The Advance of Militarized Raids in the Post-Chávez Era"----------------Based on two qualitative studies developed in Caracas with Rebecca Hanson, in her presentation Verónica Zubillaga suggests that in order to understand the recent increase in violent deaths in Venezuela, specifically in Caracas, in the post-Chávez period we must place at the center of our analysis the discourses and practices of an extremely privileged actor, the state, in the context of the collapse of oil prices. It is proposed that this lethal violence, previously unheard of in the country, can be understood, within the historical process of militarization of citizen security, as the outcome of a carceral punitivism that with the passing of the years has begun clearing a path and juxtaposing itself to the practice of systematic extralegal slaughter seen in extreme police and military violence in focused military raids in poor sectors. This military advance forms part of the advance of necropolitics in the country in the time of the Post-Chávez Bolivarian Revolution.-----------------------Luis Duno-Gottberg: "Lumpen Sovereignty and Lumpenbourgeoisie: Political Treason and Transition in the Bolivarian Revolution"-----------------In his introduction to The Mafia of a Sicilian Village (1860-1960), Charles Tilly explains that if one mafia network managed to extend its control over a large territory, forming coalitions, eliminating rivals, providing protection and extracting resources/rent, its actions would be described as "public" rather than "private". It would be a government; it would resemble a State. Tilly's observation suggests that the line between the State and the parapolitics that brew underground, at the margins of legality, is tenuous. Or, perhaps, that sometimes, the State is just the visible, the acceptable face of crime. This presentation teases such ideas for contemporary Venezuela. Drawing on ethnographic work and archival materials, I explore two instances in which criminal organizations carved spaces of action, developed a political rationality, and even deployed the features of a para-state within the context of the Bolivarian Revolution: the prison self-governance and the so-called "Peace Zones."------------Bios and event link: https://plas.princeton.edu/events/veronica-zubillaga-luis-duno-gottberg-pais-portatil-iii -------------Speaker(s): Luis Duno Gottberg---Rice University------------------Verónica Zubillaga---Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela