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While non-state terrorism has grown substantially in many parts of the world since the mid 1990s, in Latin America, the insurgent continent par excellence, where radical non-state actors at both ends of the political spectrum have historically resorted to terror to attain political goals, this scourge has dwindled. Drawing on the seminal work of Timothy Wickham-Crowley, this article posits that this baffling trend can be explained as a result of a shift in the cultural repertoires of Latin American revolutionary and other anti-systemic groups in the 1990s. The traumatic experiences associated with authoritarian backlash and repression; a more pragmatic attitude that values democracy, accommodation, and dialogue as political strategies; and the rejection by vast sectors of the population of wanton violence as a tool to attain political objectives have subtracted terror from the range of activities (stock) of collective action of former and new radical groups. Groups fighting for change have thus internalized that terror ultimately constitutes an ineffectual and de-legitimized strategy. Colombia constitutes the exception to this regional trend. There, it is argued, terror is widely used as and informed by the perverse logic of armed conflict, whereby armed parties deliberately target civilians to advance military and political objectives. Desde mediados de los años noventa el terrorismo no-gubernamental ha aumentado de forma significativa en muchas regiones del mundo. En América Latina, sin embargo, un área donde históricamente grupos radicales de izquierda y derecha recurrieron a prácticas terroristas para conseguir sus objetivos políticos, el terrorismo como fenómeno ha disminuido notablemente. Basado en el influyente trabajo de Timothy Wickham-Crowley, este artículo sostiene que la disminución del uso del terror en América Latina corresponde a un cambio en los "repertorios culturales" de grupos revolucionarios y otros grupos anti-sistémicos. El trabajo arguye que este cambio deriva de tres factores: las traumáticas experiencias derivadas de la represión brutal de la que fueron objeto muchos de estos grupos, un creciente pragmatismo y la valoración del juego democrático; y el rechazo por parte de la gran mayoría de la población en la región del uso de la violencia como método político. En este sentido, los grupos que bregan por promover cambios sociales han internalizado que el terror constituye una estrategia contraproducente e ilegítima. El artículo sostiene que Colombia constituye una excepción a esta tendencia. En el caso colombiano, se argumenta, el terror deriva de la lógica perversa del conflicto armado, donde los actores deliberadamente victimizan a los civiles para alcanzar objetivos militares y políticos a través del terror.

This edited volume, part of a series on emerging patterns in conflict, development and peacebuilding, should be of interest to scholars, policymakers, diplomats and practitioners. The book offers a...

This chapter provides an overview of contemporary mobility patterns in the Americas and evaluates them from a regional rather than a single-case or sub-regional perspective. In examining these new mobility patterns, it explores migration conditions and intersections devoting special attention to historical continuities and changes. This chapter covers five main topics: violence and migration; political and legal responses to changing migration patterns; lifestyle and high-skilled North–South migration; spaces of transatlantic and transpacific migration; and new patterns of intraregional South–South migration. The chapter argues that contemporary patterns link the entire region in a complex web of transnational and transregional movements connecting origin, transit and receiving countries. It further posits that new patterns are having major impact on states’ policies and sociopolitical conditions and are shaping in significant ways the lives, roles and identity of people on the move including migrants and refugees.

This chapter explores the paradigmatic case of Michoacan, Mexico, a model transnational state with intense social and economic interconnections with the United States suffering very high levels of violence. It investigates how insecurity resulting from criminal-related activities and the concomitant reaction on the part of the Mexican state and self-defense groups has forcibly displaced thousands of people, critically reshaping the state’s migration patterns, such as with the rise of internal displacement. Relying on interviews with migrant authorities and representatives of civil society both in Mexico and the United States, this chapter traces the effect that violence is having on traditional migration patterns showing how an important number of uprooted Michoacanos have attempted to migrate north using existing transnational migration networks. The analysis thus underscores the complex intermestic dimension that human mobility is attaining in the North American corridor.

This article discusses the evolution of state capacity in Colombia. Drawing on the general debate regarding the conceptualization and measurement of the state, the piece tracks the record of the Colombian state in the last decade. The article posits that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the strength of the Colombian state has increased only marginally in the last 10 years. This improvement derives from important gains in two of Michael Mann's (1986) infrastructural power dimensions -territorial reach and bureaucratic capacity. Lack of substantial improvements in Mann's third infrastructural dimension- autonomy vis-à-vis non-states actors- and setbacks in the state legitimacy dimension make the gains in state capacity modest rather than robust.

This article investigates cooperation efforts on the part of Argentina, Brazil and Chile (the ABC countries) in Haiti. It addresses two salient puzzles. First, why did ABC countries miss the opportunity to build a stronger strategic approach in Haiti, despite the favourable setting presented by a multinational stabilisation and development initiative? Second, why has their cooperation in Haiti not surmounted typical characteristics of North-South cooperation, such as poor coordination? It is argued that the absence of strategic cooperation between the ABC countries and the reproduction of problems plaguing North-South cooperation derive from a complex mix of factors, including philosophically different models of economic development, historical rivalries and the interaction between the ABC countries and Haitian political actors.

For years, nongovernmental terrorism in Latin America was considered an epiphenomenon of the Cold War. The persistence of this type of political violence in the 1990s, however, not only belied many assumptions about its causes but also led scholars to reexamine the phenomenon. This article investigates the validity of a number of hypotheses by applying a pooled time-series cross-section regression analysis to data from 17 Latin American countries between 1980 and 1995. Findings indicate that nongovernmental terrorist acts in Latin America are more likely to occur in poorly institutionalized regimes characterized by varying degrees of political and electoral liberties, a deficient rule of law, and widespread human rights violations. The analysis also shows that nongovernmental terrorism in the region tends to surface in cyclical waves; but it finds no association between economic performance or structural economic conditions and the incidence of nongovernmental terrorism.

Based on the general research and observations derived from on site visits of the Special Rapporteurship on Migrant Workers and their Families of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, this chapter discusses the components of due process guarantees for individuals who are subjected to immigration proceedings. While this analysis centers on situation of migrant workers in the Western Hemisphere, its general considerations can be applied to refugees and asylum seekers beyond that region. The examination is for the most part informed by decisions of the Inter-American Commission system organs, although it also relies on case law of the European human rights system. The chapter provides an overview of migration as a political and social phenomenon and reviews international human rights norms and state practice pertaining to migrants in the Americas. It then presents suggestions concerning a quantum of due process in cases on status, exclusion, and expulsion of foreign nationals. Keywords: asylum seekers; European human rights system; foreign nationals; immigration proceedings; inter-American commission on human rights; migrant workers; refugees