Collective Violence and Politics in Argentina

Abstract

Abstract The transition and consolidation of the democratic regime in Argentina banished violence as a means of gaining access to state power. However, the frequent appearance of violent protests (“outbursts,” riots, looting or “puebladas,” among others) interrogates the persistence of violent collective actions and their relations with the dynamics of institutional policy in the current democratic framework. To what extent do these facts form part of the new repertoires of action, as several authors maintain? Are they actions that are an instrument of politics, or are they the expression of a radical opposition to the system? On the other hand, the emergence of a multiple and a fragmented form of violence go hand in hand with the emergence of illegalities of various kinds: the expansion of informal and illegal economies (the trade in drugs, weapons and people, among the main ones). The proven complicity of the state institutions in these processes also questions the relationship between politics and violence, although in a different register. Is it an institutional “flaw” or a new form of government? To what extent does such violence represent strategies of political accumulation?