Contesting the Iron Fist: Advocacy Networks and Police Violence in Democratic Argentina and Chile (review)

The military dictatorships may have passed and democratic rule may be firmly entrenched, but parts of the Southern Cone of South America remain mired in violence. The patterns are different today, involving police forces, criminal gangs, and "marginals," rather than soldiers and left-wing political opponents. But the level of violence in places approaches or exceeds that of the darkest days of military rule. Indeed, some cities in the region are as violent as countries involved in civil war.

Claudio Fuentes's intelligent and timely book focuses on the problem of police and criminal violence in Chile and Argentina. At one level, it is a compelling account of a straightforward puzzle: why the problem of police violence has received comparatively more attention in Argentina than in Chile. At another level, it is also about one of the fundamental problems in politics. On the one hand, citizens want a strong police force to protect them from the potential of criminal violence. But on the other, they do not want to give the police so much power to fight criminals that police violence itself becomes a threat. Although he does not mention them, echoes of Hobbes and Locke can be heard in every page of Fuentes's book.

Although they are often compared, Chile and Argentina might at first appear noncomparable cases when it comes to police violence and crime. Simply put, Chile has had less of both than Argentina, which might be one reason police violence has received more attention in Argentina. Although Fuentes acknowledges that the level of violence is lower in Chile, he also demonstrates that it is far from zero. There is significant evidence of carabinero brutality, mistreatment of prisoners, and discrimination against particular sectors of the population. Although not as severe as the downright out-of-control police abuses in parts of Argentina, it certainly merits much more attention than it has received since Chile's return to democratic rule.

In Argentina, the issue of police violence has been placed squarely in the center of the public agenda. After some particularly egregious cases of gatillo fácil in the 1980s and early 1990s, civil rights groups mobilized and made the issue a central concern for citizens and, at times, for politicians. (The same is true of Brazil, a case Fuentes does not discuss directly, but which faces arguably a far worse problem of both police and criminal violence.) Organizations like the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS) and the Coordinadora Contra la Represión Institucional (CORREPI) have developed sophisticated monitoring and advocacy strategies to deal with police violence and have managed to keep the issue very much in the public eye.

In Chile, by contrast, the silence on the issue is deafening. (One of the most telling pieces of evidence in the book is Fuentes's account of Chilean policymakers' reaction to the results of his own study documenting carabinero abuses: complete indifference.) Athough Chile boasted some of the leading-edge human rights organizations during the period of military rule (such as the Vicaría de la Solidaridad, whose professional team of lawyers and advocates developed sophisticated methods to track human rights violations), it has lagged behind Argentina on the issue of police violence. Fuentes's is the first systematic study to attempt to answer why.

Fuentes argues that the tension between the dangers of crime and the powers awarded to the police results in the formation of two competing coalitions. On the one hand, a "pro-order" coalition (which Fuentes might have labeled the Hobbesians) favors get-tough policies through a strong police force. On the other hand, a "civil rights" coalition (the Lockeans?) aims to protect citizens from the dangers of unchecked police powers. Which of these groups predominates in any political system depends, Fuentes argues, on the "political opportunity structure" they face.

The mode of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule has...