The local dynamics of violence in post-accord Guatemala : historical legacies, community cleavages and grassroots agency

Guatemala experienced some of the world's highest homicide rates long after its peace accords. Literature on post-accord violence is prolific, yet two puzzles remain. First, subnational variation in homicide rates and manifestations of violence challenges widely accepted explanations, focused on structural factors -e.g. history of conflict, socio-economic marginalisation, state absence. Second, without convincing accounts, Guatemala's homicide rates have decreased since 2009. The thesis investigates local homicide rate variations, characterising lived experiences amid increasing/decreasing homicides and exploring the role of grassroots agency. The thesis draws on comparative analysis of two poor urban neighbourhoods, 47 interviews with national experts and residents, and documentary evidence. Tracing causal mechanisms behind patterns of violence, I find structural factors (largely stemming from historical patterns of exclusionary state formation) enabled post-accord violence to pluralise, taking diverse trajectories in interaction with community cleavages. Amid these plural local pathways, cross-case and within-case analysis of the urban neighbourhoods of El Limón and Brisas demonstrate how varying territorial control and competition between gangs explain changing homicide levels robustly. Localised competition produced spirals of mass homicidal violence. Unchallenged control enabled the imposition of order through coercion (criminal pacification). Interview accounts demonstrate that, despite diverging homicide levels, illicit gang activities -namely extortion- result in continuing widespread forms of violence targeted at residents. Similarly, interviews demonstrate grassroots agency is a key dimension of local dynamics, as patterns of violence and non-violent agency affect one another. Both scenarios of gang competition and control elicit self-protection strategies -silence, self-isolation, displacement- that strain cohesion, undermine social capital and weaken local leadership, diminishing collective action. Yet violence is not all-encompassing. Non-violent grassroots strategies -intervening in disputes or negotiating with gangs- can disrupt cycles of violence, attaining tangible security improvements, and can initiate virtuous cycles -restoring cohesion, social capital and informal leadership-, which facilitate further collective action.