Criminología latinoamericana a partir de un enfoque postcolonial uma abordagem pós-colonial
| Páginas | 33-43 |
| Fecha | 01 Diciembre 2017 |
| Fecha de publicación | 01 Diciembre 2017 |
| Autor | María del Mar Gallegos |
| Materia | Ciencias sociales |
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LATIN AMERICA CRIMINOLOGY FROM A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH
CRIMINOLOGÍA LATINOAMERICANA A PARTIR DE UN ENFOQUE POSTCOLONIAL
A CRIMINOLOGIA DA AMÉRICA LATINA: UMA ABORDAGEM PÓS-COLONIAL
Abstract:
is article aims to encourage all those interested, to develop
theories adjusted to the reality of the Latin American context
regarding criminology. Principally, it advocates on the
analysis of criminology from a post-colonial perspective, in
order to understand the consequences of colonialism on both
the colonized and colonizer. Post-Colonialism maintains
that the process and structures of colonization continues
to have consequences for the dynamics of our time. is
article considers the law and in particular the violence that
Latin America experiences as examples of these colonial
consequences. Subsequently, if the intention is to prevent and
reduce crime, postcolonial criminological theory – one that
is also removed from Eurocentrism- must be incorporated
within our approaches.
Key words: Criminology; Postcolonial; LatinAmerica;
Crime; Colonialism; Decolonization
Resumen:
El presente artículo, intenta exhortar a todos aquellos in-
teresados en la materia, a desarrollar teorías ajustadas a la
realidad que nos atañe. Principalmente incita a analizar la
criminología desde una perspectiva postcolonial, esto es
entender las consecuencias del colonialismo tanto en el co-
lonizado como en el colonizador. El post colonialismo sos-
tiene que los procesos de colonización siguen teniendo con-
secuencias en las dinámicas de nuestros días, dos de ellos
según la posición del presente artículo, es en el derecho y
especialmente en la violencia que se vive en Latino Améri-
ca. Por ello, si lo que se pretende es prevenir y aminorar la
delincuencia, se debe incorporar teoría criminológica post-
colonial, además que con ello se estaría descolonizando el
pensamiento eurocéntrico.
Palabras clave: Criminología; Postcolonial; América
Latina; Crimen; Colonialismo; Descolonización
Resumo:
Esse artigo, tenta animar a todos aqueles interessados na
matéria, a desenvolver teorias ajustadas à realidade que nos
pertence. Principalmente incita a analisar a criminologia
desde uma perspectiva pós-colonial, isto é entender as
consequências do colonialismo tanto no colonizado
como no colonizador. O pós-colonialismo sustenta que os
processos de colonização continuam tendo consequências
nas dinâmicas de nossos dias, dos deles segundo a posição
do presente artigo, é no direito e especialmente na violência
que se vive na América Latina. Por isso, se o que se pretende é
prevenir e diminuir a delinquência se deve incorporar teoria
criminológica pós-colonial, uma vez que com essa ideia, se
estaria descolonizando o pensamento eurocêntrico.
Palavras chave: Criminologia; Pós-colonial; América
Latina; Crime; Colonialismo; Descolonização
María del Mar Gallegos*
* Abogada, profesora de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas de la UDLA, cursa actualmente un Master en Criminología en la Universidad de
Melbourne.
Recibido: 15/10/2017
Aprobado: 10/12/2017
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e region of Latin America has long been
considered an area with high levels of violence and crime
with particularly high rates of the, robbery as well as
homicide. roughout Latin America, criminological
studies have oen been undermined. Furthermore, even
less attention has been given to postcolonial theory as
a perspective to understand crime and violence within
the wider region.
As Frantz Fanon said, “colonialism is neither a thinking
machine nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.
It is violence in its natural state and it will only yield
when confronted with greater violence” (Fanon, e
Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p. 61). Undoubtedly,
colonialism had powerful eects on people and society
and has created social systems based on racism. It also
had impacts on the agenda of dierent disciplines, such
as law and criminology, which were and still are tools of
knowledge and power.
Criminology is a discipline of enormous dimensions,
which employs a variety of prisms through. It examines
structures, narratives and images of power. erefore,
it is essential to broaden the scope of this discipline by
incorporating other approaches, such as Postcolonial
eo ry, which oers an understanding of the direct and
indirect inuences of colonisation on both colonized
and colonizer. From the aermath of colonialism,
postcolonial theory emerges as a mean to give voice to
the oppressed colonized people. is approach has been
used in a variety of the disciplines among humanities;
however, criminology has tended to overlook it.
e aim of this essay is to highlight the importance of
linking criminology studies with postcolonial theory so
that crime and violence in the Latin American region
can be better understood and analysed. It puts forward
many of the arguments by post-colonial scholars that
colonisation should not be viewed exclusively as an
historical event but a process with has ramications still
today, particularly in relation to Latin Americas social
make up, crime and violence.
Firstly, it sets the context for the current crime and violence
in Latin America. Secondly, it locates post-colonial theory
analyses, the continued impact of colonialism within
colonised countries, namely in Latin America. ird, it
explores some of the biases found within criminology
as a result of colonialism. is includes rights and
law based approaches that have historically justied
colonialism. Finally, it recognises the importance of
being able to actively challenge and advance criminology
and in particular the dominant criminology within Latin
America and how a dierent perspectives can be useful as
a tool for further inquiry into crime and violence within
the Latin American region.
“Latin America is the world’s most violent place”,
this is how the World Bank as well as the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) has classied the
region. For example, in 2012 according to the World
Bank’s statistics one in three inhabitants in the region
were victims of the. Common crime and violence is the
main threat in the majority of countries of the region.
e Regional Human Development Report, developed
by the UNDP in 2013-2014, has shown that one in ve
people have been victim of some type of robbery in the
last year; indeed, six out of ten robberies in the region
are violent. Unsurprisingly, this has diminished Latin
American’s quality of life as well as compromising the
public’s right to live a life with dignity and freedom
of movement. In fact, between 16.8 % and 51.5 % of
people had been forced to limit the public places they
visit due to fear. More surprisingly, seven out of ten
countries with the highest homicide rates in the world
are in Latin America as well as 46 out of the 50 cities
with the highest rates of homicide in the world are in
the region, including the top 16 (World Bank Group).
Also, the World Health Organization estimates that
violence is the leading cause of deaths in the region
within people between the age of 15 and 44 (United
nations Development Programme 2013).
As a matter of fact, there are approximately about 73,000
to 90,000 rearms deaths annually in Latin America,
which is three times the world average (Cohen and
Rubio 2007, 1-45). In comparison with Africa, which
mistakenly has been considered the most violent
continent, Latin America has a rate of homicide per
INTRODUCTION
VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA
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COLONIALISM AND POST-COLONIAL THEORY
capita of 23 per 100 000 whereas in Africa it is 12.5 per
100 000 people (e Wall Street Journal 2014). To sum
up, while in the rest of the world homicide rates have
been decreasing, in the region it has increased 12 %
between 2000 and 2010 (United Nations Development
Programme 2013-2014). In this context it becomes a
pertinent question to ask: What makes Latin America
dierent from other world’s regions? Answering this
question does not have an easy response. Paraphrasing
Professor Mariana Valverde, trying to explain why
crime exists is comparable to trying to explain why
disease exists (John Barry Memorial Lecture 2014).
However, there are some factors and causes that might
serve as an attempt to understand why crime is high in
Latin American. Perhaps, looking back to history could
be one of the means to get a better insight of this issue,
in other words, it is moment to widen the knowledge of
criminology by introducing postcolonial theory.
Postcolonial theory explores the means that
colonialism has used in order to manifest itself within
a particular society and maintain its hegemonic power
in dierent aspects of people’s daily lives, namely law.
Postcolonial theory can be located as part of a wider
critical theory and is historically revisionist in its
approach, looking to take on new perspectives from ‘the
ground up’ to more adequately explain colonisation.
Under the wide reaching umbrella of Postcolonialism,
there are a number of terms that should be taken into
consideration when studying and engaging with the
theory which are as follows: Colonialism, which was the
process of conquest and settlement by European cultures
in the ird World; Imperialism which is the ideology
that enforces colonialism’s dominance; Neo-colonialism,
which is the continued pressure exercised by the former
colonial power over the colonized countries. Moreover,
the concepts of postcolonialism and decolonisation
emphasize a resistance against oppression in any of its
forms, but especially both of them “seek freedom from
colonial ways of thinking” (Nayar 2010, 3). Whilst
nations can be seen to be liberated by colonial rule and
have established republics, oen the ideas and ways
of thinking through a colonial lens can still be seen to
permeate former colonial societies.
For many scholars Postcolonialism itself has become an
ambiguous approach because it is particularly dicult
to describe is denition with precision. e origins and
scope of Postcolonialism however are an indispensable
starting point to deepen the understandings
surrounding both old and new colonialism (Coronil,
2013). Colonialism in the Americas dates back to 1492
when Christopher Columbus, in an attempt to reach
the East Indies, discovered what was for Europeans
new land and arrived in what today is known as the
Caribbean islands. e two major developed societies
in the Americas at that time in history were: the Incas
and the Aztecs. e Incas were located in the southern
region while the Aztecs occupied Central America and
Mexico.
Although these native societies outnumbered the
Europeans and were very strong in resisting European
domination, they were defeated; mainly because of the
violence, diseases and societal structures established
by the colonizers. e conquest by the Spaniards in
the Americas was marked by its violence. Both the
Spaniards and Portuguese had an ideology shaped
by religious beliefs that justied not only territorial
conquest over the new lands, but also for conquering the
native people themselves. e ideology of the Spaniards
and Portuguese was based in a long tradition of forced
conversion to Catholicism and the religious justication
of Christian over non-Christians (Trevor R. Getz 2011,
51,52). e colonial model used in the Americas was
centred on acquiring wealth from the new world and
was predominately based on the extraction of resources,
agriculture and especially forced labour. ey imposed
an oppressive labour system named the Encomienda,
which allowed the labour exploitation of the indigenous
people to take place. e colonists also established an
urban pattern of settlement, which was characterized by
the Spanish urbanized lifestyles; as a result, indigenous
people, both the Incas and Aztec were removed to the
peripheries. e initial plunder of land in the Americas
did not seem to satisfy the innite whims of the
Spaniards; hence, the exploitation of the native people
and land persisted over many centuries through its
patterns of control.
‘e Americas, indeed, had become a vast
laboratory for new forms of long-distance
imperial expansion and colonial settlement
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under the Iberians: in the centuries ahead, the
experiment would continue under the aegis of
new imperial powers’ (Trevor R. Getz 2011, 7).
In order to maintain their dominance, the colonizers
developed a sustained coercive system of laws and
social control structures that gave shape to human
behaviour. First of all, they intentionally failed to
identify traditional ways of social control by the creating
and imposing their categorization of what would be
considered as crime. However, this categorization was
not precisely developed in high universal principles of
criminal law, on the contrary it was based on race and
gender. As a result, the colonial social control system
served to legitimate the colonisers’ false position as
a superior race, whereby the colonized people were
categorized as an inferior race. Furthermore, because
of this categorization the colonized people were
penalized and criminalized. Using Fanon’s notion of the
colonial situation, this was a “contact of races in which
the numerically inferior alien race was actually the
sociologically superior race” (Jinadu 1986, 416).
It seems that neither the famous theories of moral
philosophers, such as Rousseau, inuenced the work of
criminologists whereas Beccaria had echo in the New
World. Neither the social contract nor the principles
of criminal law were applied in the Americas. On the
contrary, on the one hand the colonized were victims
of such social contract. ey were forced to get into the
ideological assumption of a pact between the state and
its society, which had its foundations in a Eurocentric
perspective. On the other hand, the punishments applied
to the colonized people were arbitrary, unjustied as
well as disproportional. Entire groups of people were
punished and repressed for been considered moral
and physical inferior, the Spaniards developed policies
that set the boundaries between the rulers and ruled
based on the notion of dierence within races focused
in their attributes and abilities. Hence, colonizers
shaped policies, religion and laws in the colonies, with
preconceived ideas of what was to be a developed
and advanced culture. ese practices were used as a
mean to maintain false conceptions of rightness and
superiority. Noteworthy to consider is that colonizers
took ideas from Charles’ Darwin biological evolution
theory; where species and human beings competed for
survival, in which those who were superior governed by
rules like natural selection and survival of the ttest will
triumph in the evolutionary process (Schmalleger 2012,
I). In lights of this, they codied social control systems
which underlie the idea that the less intellectual races
[are] exterminate (Trevor R. Getz 2011, 12).
Obviously, the colonized had fewer possibilities to
survive in the struggle of the colonization process
because of the conditions in which they were forced
to live. ey were deprived of proper food, housing
and to their traditional ways of living. Also, important
to consider is that colonization was also an exchange
of microbes, some examples of the diseases they were
exposed to were inuenza, smallpox and among others,
which placed the colonized civilization under threat
and made them be in a vulnerable position. As a result,
they were in fact physical inferior, but because of the
violations inicted by the colonizers. Nevertheless,
these situations were used as evidence to support the
colonizer discriminatory practices, which reinforced
binaries, such as superiority/inferiority and civilized/
savage.
COLONIALISM RIGHTS AND LAW
Although, the twentieth century is said to be the
century of the rise and the triumph of human rights,
this is nothing less than a paradox (Douzinas 2000,
19) due to the fact that this era has been witness to the
very worst of human rights’ violations. Even though
the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
proclaimed dignity, human equality and freedom as
the core principles for the international community,
there remain signicant doubts about the extent to
which these rights are truly universal. Globalization
has arisen in the aermath of colonialism and indeed
postcolonial theory would allude to the ongoing eect
of neo-colonialism in perpetuating inequality and
exploitation. In many ways Globalization has served to
further widen the gap between rich and poor, East and
West and North and South. Not all groups of people
enjoy the protections of international human rights law,
as Jaques Derrida claims: “no degree of progress allows
one to ignore that never before in absolute gures, have
so many men, women, and children been subjugated,
starved, or exterminated on earth” (Douzinas 2000,
316).
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COLONIALISM AS AN ONGOING PROCESS
Without surprise, Post colonialism is critical due to
the dominant conceptualisation of rights. Human
rights and international law can be seen as a “historical
continuum of the Eurocentric colonial project” (Mutua
M 2001, 42). It is important to critically examine
who determines what is considered universal, and
which ideologies; moralities and interests are behind
the narratives of legal positivism. e European
ethos (Eslava L & Pahuja S 2012, 281) is embedded
in international law; as a result, it has created false
positions of superiority and subordination as well as
binaries that materialised during colonisation, such as
civilised/barbarian, developed/developing and among
others, which still have echoes in today’s world (Eslava
L & Pahuja S 2012, 281).
It is crucial to remember that colonialism was not only
an exploitative process over land; it was also a ‘cultural
conquest’ of indigenous beliefs, religion, art and
conceptions of order. Postcolonial studies allows people
to rethink how international law has been framed and
understood, but also to question the way in which its’
Eurocentric positioning continues to shape the world.
e colonized people in the Americas were bound to
laws and social system that they rst of all did not consent
to and furthermore would not protect them. Anghie
(2005) notes that conceptualisations of international
law and European sovereignty were not just conned
to Europe. Whilst ideas and happenings in Europe
had a strong inuence on the discourse on sovereignty,
European colonialism also presented challenges. In his
‘Sovereignty Doctrine’, Anghie maintains that the famous
Spanish theologian Vittoria’s formulation of sovereignty
based upon a universal law had to be reformulated in
the attempt to address the problem that the Spaniards
had in dealing with the native populations. Here we can
see how the claim to universal laws can in many cases
oer more benets to powerful groups and in eect
this reformulation of sovereignty helped the colonisers
to justify their own claims over the native lands and
resources. Furthermore, it demonstrates some of the
complexities to colonial claims over foreign territory
and the ability of justications for colonialism to evolve
over time.
Criminal law is one of the most ancient realms of law.
It is also one of the most powerful tools of legem in all
times. It has been used to control society by coercive
measures, but at the same time the people over whom
the power is exercised have legitimized it. Critical
criminology claims that the ‘hegemony-building and
the articulation of state power implies an intimate
interrelation between coercion and consent’. us,
crime is a meaningful construction dened according
to particular circumstances and under specic social
processes. Furthermore, it has long been known that
criminal justice contributes to the social construction
of racial identities. Perhaps, one of the causes of
racial crime could be colonialism. Indeed, it might
be said that as a consequence of the “bloody legacy of
colonialist criminology” (Agozino, e Criminology of
Madiba Mandela: A Tribute 2013) as well as a biased
international law, exclusion and marginalization has
occurred in a systematic way. It has led to racial and
ethnic over-representation of minorities within the
criminal justice system. In the words of Sumner, an
“historical perspective on criminal law must inevitably
turn us towards colonialism...crime is not a behaviour
universally given in human nature and history, but a
moral-political concept with culturally and historically
varying form and content” (Chris 2011, 10). It is
therefore necessary to adopt a critical position about
assumptions of crime that have been historically created.
From a postcolonial perspective, colonialism
should not be viewed simply as a historical event but
as a structure and an ongoing process that still has
ramications for the present as well as the future. Indeed
whilst of European colonialism within the Americas
rst occurred in eenth century its inuence today
still permeates. As Chris Cunneen has strongly argued,
colonialism not only has a past dimension, but also
is part of the present and it is a continuing process.
Nowadays, what is known as the new Imperialism
and/or neo-colonialism has created a powerful-shared
worldview that may be more exclusive than former
models of colonialism. A shared legal-criminological
language has turned society blind to dierent practices;
as a consequence, other conceptions of social control
just do not exist in this world. As Antonio Gramsci has
termed this is what is known as intellectual hegemony,
which is the political leadership based on the consent of
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the led, a consent which is secured by the diusion and
popularization of the world view of the ruling class, this
coupled with the unquestioned criminal justice, which
governs the world, has created a dysfunctional criminal
system. us, even now in the twenty rst century, it
might be accurate to suggest the society in general is
constrained by the structures of colonialism that sought
to segregate, classify and control. us, it is not far-
fetched from Biko Agozino’s stand that criminology has
been a tool in the exercise of power and control towards
the ‘other’ that has demonstrated to be in complicity
in the imperialist project (Agozino, Counter-Colonial
Criminology: A Critique of imperialist Reason 2003,
105-131) because it has overlooked the impacts of
colonialism in its epistemological construction.
erefore, it is clear that there is a need to include
postcolonial theory into criminology as a mean to
provide an opportunity to listen to the voices silenced
by colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. In the
criminological eld, this is to challenge preconceptions
of crime and criminality. In other words, is to confront
the categorization of crime by understanding that is
no more than a product of a political and historical
tension between the colonial states and the resistance
of the colonized people (Chris 2011, 10). Regarding
Latin America process of colonization as it has
been mentioned, the forcefully implementation of
universality of knowledge and practice has deployed
violence and racism. It had two main impacts, rstly it
created cultural identities and secondly it was a weapon
used for political means. Regarding the implication is
that the vast majority of colonized people were forced to
be part of determined social parameters due to outside
factors namely, ethnicity, color and gender. It is believed
in moral psychology that if there is a negative stereotype
of one group in a certain domain, being reminded of
it; for instance, being criminalized for being a member
of certain group, aects their performance in that
domain; hence, being exposed to negative stereotypes
have pernicious eects. erefore, individuals’ as well as
group identities were crucial for shaping and reinforcing
the colonial practices.
On the other hand, the desire of countries from Latin
America to modernize them and emerge from the
status of underdeveloped countries has made them
adopt, as Cohen mentions, bits and pieces of post-
war criminology policy (RonnieLippens 2004, 8). e
transfer of criminological practices in Latin America fail
to be implemented successfully because authoritarian
leaders that were governing in that time were supporting
neocolonialism projects of the hegemonic powers.
In order to maintain their dominance they import
criminology models and polices in a very selective way.
ey gave priority to highly authoritarian policies that
were justied under the name of social defense; however,
from this doctrine only the defense part was adopted
while the social part was intentionally neglected. Both
conditions the internalization of cultural imperialism
and the implementation of Western social programs
in a region in which the sociological conditions
were not in pace for it (RonnieLippens 2004, 12) led
to the over-representation of marginalized people
within the criminal justice system. is is, how the
implementation of certain policies serves to elites to
keep their dominance, which in the long term creates
racialization.
PROBLEMS WITH CRIMINOLOGY´S EUROCENTRISM
It is generally known that the role of criminology is
to explore the consequences, the causes and the possible
solutions of ‘crime’, but what happens when the theories
that have been developed have overlooked colonialism
and its eects? To repeat, it should be noted that
criminological theory has been created from Western-
European perspectives, and has ignored the ird
World or ‘treated it in an most theoretically primitive
fashion, and the general literature on development and
colonialism is remarkably silent about crime’ (Agozino,
e Criminology of Madiba Mandela: A Tribute 2013).
Hence, it can be said that criminology has been an
accomplice to the imperialism project, because when
dening what constitutes crime and when exploring
the ways to ameliorate the harms produced by this
phenomena; traditional criminology has tended to
marginalise both the ideals of justice and the dierent
procedures of dealing with ‘crime’, which were and still
are present in other cultures.
Nowadays, Western understandings of crime and the
mechanisms used for social control are so embedded in
the system that it can oen escape public scrutiny even
when it undermines human rights. Unfortunately, the
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consequences of colonialism still persist. Likewise, the
Spanish colonizers killed the last Inca Atahualpa in the
XVI century based in the criminal law and practices
they created and imposed. In the XX century the
Chilean president Salvador Allende was assassinated as
a consequence of necolonialism practices. Indeed, this
is one of the most infamous cases of western dominance
over Latin America, which produced the torture and
death of thousands of innocent people. Again, this
is just an example of the continuing consequences
of colonialism. Nowadays, crime is one of the major
concerns of Latin American governments. Not only is it
within their main duty to preserve citizens’ security, but
also there is a trend of states governing through crime.
It can be argued that authorities justify their actions,
policies and practices as means to set their political
models and desired dimensions of governance (Simon J
2001, 250). Hence, many politicians have used the term
‘war on crime’ as a marketing slogan for their political
campaigns, which has been translated into what is
known as penal populism.
For instance, the very well known ‘war on drugs’ as part
of the generic ‘war on crime’ have had many negative
impacts on Latin America, namely in Nicaragua,
Guatemala with the ‘Operation Cleanup’, Colombia
with the ‘Plan Colombia’ and in Ecuador with the plot
with the right-wing party and its ‘war on drugs’. For
example, it is interesting to observe in the Ecuadorian
case that due to the inuence and pressure from the
United States, there is an inadequate application of
laws regarding drugs. For example, Law 108 in Ecuador
led to the unnecessary imprisonment of marginalized
people in the Ecuadorian criminal system. As a matter
of fact, between 1993 and 2007, over 40 percent of all
prisoners in Ecuador had been incarcerated for oenses
related to drugs (Southwick 2013). ese are a few
examples of how the continuing process of colonization
has exploitative consequences in crime control,
which creates over-representation, racialization and
victimization. Moreover, as Summer claims, crime is a
‘moral-political concept with culturally and historically
varying form and content’ (Chris 2011, 11) taking these
practices for granted is one of the major mistakes of
criminology and as a consecuence in criminal law.
Nevertheless, not all is pessimistic in the eld. In fact,
there are some countries in Latin America region
that are turning back their gaze to history in order to
understand and adopt indigenous practices for social
control. Indeed, in 2008 in Ecuador, the Constitution
was amended and among many other changes it
introduced indigenous criminal justice. It recognized
Indigenous Judicial as a government branch, which
has the same power for administrating justice as the
ordinary judicial branch. It underpins the connection of
indigenous practices and rituals with the nature, which
seeks to reestablish order with the Pachamama (mother
nature). is is a key starting point to decolonize some
of the concepts of law and order. As Erin Fitz argues
‘this new legislation would signicantly challenge
Western conceptions of Nature as property and bring
indigenous understandings of the Pachamama into
law’ (Fitz-Henry 2012, 266). However, even though
this represents a big step in the justice and criminal
arena, there still remains little research developed about
criminology theory per se. Perhaps this new approach
of criminal justice can be an opportunity to go beyond
the traditional colonialist scope of criminology and to
better understands about how crime and violence can
be viewed within Latin America.
However, it is important to mention that criminology
in Latin America has also had its own development,
in 1878 the Argentinean Jose María Ramos Mejía, was
the rst one to write about criminology, in 1898 Luis
María Drago wrote “Las neurosis de los hombres célebres
en la historia Argentina”, which was very famous and
recognized in the criminology arena, to the extent
that Lombroso was the person who wrote the preface
of the book. Also in 1888, the Criminal Anthropology
Society was founded in Buenos Aires. e academia
surrounding criminology, as it can be noted, had an
impact from biological and psychological positivism; it
is only aer Second World War, that in Latin America,
it starts to appear ideas of critical criminology, as a
consequence of the social inequality that the continent
was going through (Social 2011).
It is necessary to say that critical criminology “employs a
dialectical method of thought, in which contradictions
continually appear and disappear into new synthesis”
(John 2014, 90). e central gures in Latin America
were the Brazilian Roberto Lyra Filho “Criminología” in
1964; the Venezuelan Elio Gómez Grillo “Introducción
a la Criminología” (1966); the Colombian Alfonso
Reyes Echandía “Criminología” (1968); the Mexican
Luis Rodríguez Manzanera “Criminología” (1982) and
the Argentineans Osvaldo N. Tieghi, Roberto Victor
Ferrari and Eugenio Raúl Zaaroni, one of the most
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critical theorists of the region (Social 2011). All of the
authors mentioned, have seen critical criminology
as a point of debate, as a theory that searches internal
contradictions and specially gaps in a system, it is a
point where something dierent can emerge.
In the last years, many authors have dedicated entire
works to critical criminology, for instance Elena
Larrauri with “La herencia de la criminología crítica”
and Gabriel Ignacio Anitua “Historia de los pesamientos
criminológicos”; however, none of them has introduced
postcolonial theory as part of their postulates. As Jaumes
Peris Blanes says: “e emergency of postcolonial issue
in the Latin America studies in the 90´s showed the
limits of the debate on postcolonial interest” (Blanes
2010) this statement it is not far from true, as it has been
said little interest from the criminology perspective has
been put into postcolonial theory in the region. Latin
America criminological knowledge cannot overlook
that although colonizers are seen to be long gone, their
legacy of the colonial structures lives on (Wolfe 2000).
Needless to say, all this amnesia regarding colonialism
and its consequences might be one of the reasons of
the high rates of criminality in Latin America. It is
important to consider that the struggle for survival by
non-Spaniards people in their own land raised feelings
of anxiety and hatred. e oppression of people in
their own territory and the profound changes to their
social structures brought resentment. Also, it becomes
essential to take into account the systematically violent
intervention by neocolonial power forces in the region
occurred in the twentieth century. It is not that Latin
America’s homicide and crime rates are accidental, they
are product of history, which has to be critically revised
and reassessed. Furthermore, it is necessary to nd
the dierences between the two genres of colonialism,
which Ashis Nandy’s draws on. One type was more
violent and it was focused in territorial occupation
whereas the second was committed to the conquest
not only of land, but also of minds and bodies (Ghandi
1999). us, it leads us to ask if it is possible to suggest
that in colonized places in which more confrontation
and struggle of classes between the colonizers and
colonized occurred, is that where nowadays more crime
is seen? Is it just a matter of coincidence that in places
in Latin America, such as in Argentina, Uruguay and
Chile in which colonization could be seen as a type of
settler colonialism (which will be explained further)
are places of less violence in the region? Both these
questions go beyond the scope of this essay; however,
it is not only interesting to look comparatively over the
Latin America to establish explore how dierent types
of colonialism are potential factors to violence and
crime, but it also an important area that needs more
criminological investigation.
Although there is an urge of a corpus of postcolonial
work in Latin America, there is no deep research of
postcolonial studies in the region. us, as Fernando
Coronil has exposed the aim for postcolonial studies
should be to expand its geographical scope and also its
temporal depth by opting for a “tactical postcolonialism’,
which perceives the discipline ‘not as a fenced territory
but as an expanding eld for struggles against colonial
and other forms of subjection” (Coronil, 2013, p. 3).
Moreover, one of the roles of university academics and
intellectuals should be to reverse the colonial order
with the aim of achieving further alternatives for social
justice and democracy.
erefore, borrowing Fanon’s words in such situation,
there is a claim of native intellectuals to go beyond
the domains of Western culture. More simply, this
epistemological stand should not be perceived as a
luxury, but as an obligation with their own people
(Brydon 2000). Concerning criminology, it should not
only aim to incorporate postcolonial theory, but also to
create a ‘tricontinenatlism’ criminology -using Robert
Young’s term, to include anticolonial thoughts of Africa,
Asia and Latin America in the discipline.
Furthermore, it is important to take into account the
type of criminological knowledge that has been thought
in Latin America, particularly in the South. Criminology
studies have a limited development in the region and to
even lesser extent in South America. In fact, the only
criminological centers that are dedicated to teaching
criminology have been constrained to neoclassical
and positivist repressive criminological theories,
which are mainly focused in policing, medical forensic
investigation, and prison administration. Indeed this
can largely be seen as a product of the hybridization of
culture-knowledge of the encounter between colonized
and colonizer.
e colonial process is embedded in ideological
constructions of colonial laws that have exploitative
consequences even today. Despite the comparatively
high levels of violence in Latin America, criminology’s
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contribution to analysing the harmful eects of
colonisation and neo-colonisation in this part of the
world has been minimal.
One of the keys roles for criminology should be to
examine how dierent types of colonialism intersect
and have continuing inuence today. Here it should be
important to note Wolfe’s important distinction between
settler colonialism and other types of colonialism
based on economic and labour exploitation. Settler
colonialism could be seen to take place in states such
as Australia and e Unites States. Here the main
consideration for colonisation was the control and the
use of the land where there is no cessation of settler
colonialization, because the colonists never leave, with
the colonial structure remaining. Here the ‘logic of
elimination’ takes place whereby the settler population
with the native population being removed from the land
and assimilated into the colonial structure replaces the
native population. However, in Latin America there was
a dierent type of colonialism, it was centred on the
economic and labour exploitation where wealth from
foreign lands were brought back to mainland Europe.
Criminology should then canvass the repercussions
that each type of colonialism has had in the colonised
countries. It is possible that the way in which
colonisation manifested in the region might be one of
the reasons for the high rates of crime. In places where
huge massacres of indigenous took place and then
those who survive were conned to reservations there
is less rates of crime. Whereas in places in which there
were a constant labour exploitation and more class
stratication, crime rates are high. It is important to be
clear, that one way of colonisation is not better than the
other, but it is crucial to do further research about the
topic in order to determine what makes one region very
dierent from the other when it comes to violence and
crime issues.
Unfortunately, data show that while in the rest of the
world the rates of homicide have decreased from 0 % to
-50%, in Latin America, the rates have increased to 12%.
Indeed, in the last decade more than one million people
have died in the region as a consequence of violence
and criminal acts (United nations Development
Programme 2013). Some questions arise in relation
to these statistics: what has criminology developed in
order to nd solutions to these problems? What makes
Eurocentric-Western criminology theorists believe
that programmes that are ‘o-the-shelf ’ (Chris 2011,
15) will be eective and aective in the postcolonial
world? ere is something that criminology has (un)
intentionally forgotten to embrace. In the words of Biko
Agozino:
[ere is a] need to compare criminological
theories and methods according to whether
they are pro-imperialist or anti-imperialist in
orientation in order to show what criminology
has been missing by ignoring marginalised voices
of the other in its institutional development
or what criminology could learn from anti
colonial struggles (Agozino, Counter-Colonial
Criminology: A Critique of imperialist Reason
2003, 350)
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, criminology has to embrace
postcolonial theory as a call for opening the dialogue
with other conceptions of crime and criminality.
Western criminological cannot escape its liability of
complicity with the imperialism project. erefore, it
should introduce postcolonial theory in order to have
better insights of the colonial past and its impacts on
the development of the discipline. Moreover, it might
incorporate experiences of crime and control that are
used in postcolonial countries in order to construct
a more reexive and inclusive knowledge. Perhaps
these practices would be important tools towards the
decolonization of the discipline. However, the aim of this
essay is not to stay in the nostalgic terrain of colonialism
and its consequences, it is to exhort to Latin American
criminology intellectuals to develop and improve their
own criminology theories. e aspiration has to be that
western academics can incorporate to their criminology
teachings former colonized practices and visions of
crime and social control. At the end this will enrich
criminology. It would make it more pluralistic, real and
practical, especially for its application in places, such as
Latin America in which crime is a day-to-day issue. It is
a theoretically urge to dig into the archives of criminal
justice in Latin America in order to explore new paths
for developing the discipline of criminology. If it is the
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region will to become a safer place and step away from
the astonishing crime rates which are darkening Latin
America territory and communities, then it is necessary
to produce and not to only re-produce criminological
knowledge. It has to create their own theories according
to the regions’ own reality and necessities. Getting to
know the intersections between the ‘colonial past’ and
the ‘postcolonial present’ will aid to nd better counter-
measures to this social problem that aects every person
in the region.
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