Adiós Niño: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death

Notes

NoTes introduction The source of the introduction’s first epigraph is Primer Congreso Pedagógico Centroamericano , 198. That of the second is Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Ceh), Memoria del silencio, 6:76. 1. By the middle of the 1970s, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (Guerrilla Army of the Poor, egp) and the Organización Revolucionaria del Puebloen Armas (Revolutionary Organization of the Armed People, orpa) had replaced this traditional Marxist conception of the centrality of an educated elite who led urban workers with one that, at least in theory, placed the countryside and the Maya population at the heart of revolutionary charge. For the most part, the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (Guatemalan Workers Party, pgT) and the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces, far) retained their faith in the city and the citified. 2. The urban poor, the city’s majority, depend on remittances from relatives abroad, the informal economy, the illegal economy of drugs and other goods, and a shrinking formal sector. Neoliberalism has meant lower wages, higher prices, fewer jobs, and dramatic cuts in state spending for social services. The portion of state funds spent on education, housing, and health decreased from 9 percent in 1980 to 2.9 percent in 1991. For a description of city life since the 1980s, see Instituto para la Superación de la Miseria Urbana de Centroamérica (ismu), Dinámica de las condiciones de la vida urbana; Gellert and Palma C., Precaridad urbana, desarrollo comunitario y mujeres en el área metropolitana de Guatemala; avanCso, El procesode crecimiento metropolitano de la Ciudad de Guatemala. 3. avanCso, Más allá de la sobrevivencia. 4. Author interview with Carlos López García, Guatemala City, 2000. 5. avanCso, Por sí mismos. 6. Reguillo Cruz, “La Mara.” 7. Wolfe, “Maras transnacionales.” 8. García Noval, Para entender la violencia, 11. 9. Mbembe, “Necropolitics.” 10. Mazariegos, La guerra de los nombres, 1–16. 11. Martín-Baró, Writings for a Liberation Psychology, 115. 146 Notes to introduction 12. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 50. 13. Taylor, A Secular Age, 171–72. 14. Demoscopía, Maras y pandillas. 15. El Periódico, March 5, 2009. 16. Author interview with Rodolfo Kepfer, Guatemala City, 2010. 17. Lira, “Violence, Fear and Impunity.” 18. Davis, Planet of Slums. 19. According to most scholars, the English-language classic pacesetter is Frederic Thrasher’s The Gang. Other well-known studies include Cohen, Delinquent Boys; Yablonsky, The Violent Gang; Cloward and Ohlin, Delinquency and Opportunity; Anderson , Code of the Street; Covey, Street Gangs throughout the World; Huff, Gangs in America; Vigil, Barrio Gangs; Schneider,Vampires, Dragons and Egyptian Kings; Bourgois, In Search of Respect; Hagedorn, People and Folks; Brotherton and Barrios, Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York Gang; and Hayden, Street Wars. There are a growing number of books about global gangs, such as Hazlehurst and Hazlehurst,Gangs and Subcultures ; and Hagedorn, Gangs in the Global City. For studies of gang members and gangs in Latin America, see Rossana Reguillo Cruz’s En la calle otra vez, as well as her fine essays about youth and culture, such as “La gestión del futuro.” Among other important studies are Arce et al., Las Maras; Rubio, De la pandilla a la Mara; Rivera Solís, Pandillas juveniles y gobernabilidad democracia ; Perea Restrepo, Con el diablo adentro; Strocka, “Youth Gangs in Latin America”; Centro Juana Azurduy, Sin salida; Lara Klahr, Hoy te toca la muerte; Fernández Menéndez and Ronquillo, De los Maras a los zeta; Cerbino, Jóvenes en la calle; and Jones and Rodgers, Youth Violence in Latin America. 20. Santos Anaya, La vergüenza de los pandilleros. John M. Hagedorn writes that “the gang has always been an arena for the acting out of gender.” Hagedorn, “Gang,” 329. Much attention has been paid to gangs and masculinity, from Bruce Davidson’s photos of U.S. gang culture in the late 1950s to recent scholarly work, such as Paula Heinonen’s Youth Gangs and Street Children. 21. Vigil, “Urban Violence and Street Gangs.” 22. Cruz et al., Exclusión social jóvenes y pandillas; Brotherton and Barrios, Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York Gang; Hayden, Street Wars; Hagedorn, A World of Gangs. 23. Lara Klahr, Hoy te toca la muerte, 18. A famous figure in theater, Tito Estrada works with youth in Honduras. 24. Merino, “Las Maras en Guatemala,” “Guatemala,” and “Políticas juveniles y rehabilitaci ón de mareros en Guatemala”; Núñez...