Street Urban Peace in Contested Informalities: The Hidden Face of Colombia’s War on Drugs

Jorge Mantilla

doi:10.31389/jied.51

Abstract

Law enforcement interventions in drug markets require policy coordination to prevent collateral outcomes that might harm vulnerable people under criminal control and spread crime across places. This paper analyzes street-level peace building in the inner city at the frontline of the ongoing urban war on drugs in Colombia. Building on the emergent literature on criminal governance and using crime script models, the paper argues that behind the chaos that in appearance prevails in open-air drug markets, illegal economies in Colombia’s urban centers are ruled by schemes that set parallel mechanisms of order, social control, and distribution. Furthermore, the paper addresses the ways in which street-level bureaucracies and therapeutic policing interventions can become a way of building urban proximity, connectedness, and trust in the context of contested informalities.

Highlights

In 2016 Colombian authorities cracked down the largest open-air drug market in the world’s top cocaineproducing country
The paper poses two main contributions to the debate of illicit economies and urban peace. It states that criminal governance is not always a function of state weakness and that it can be established in low-crime equilibrium cities, such as Bogotá
The set of norms that organized the architecture of the black market, as well as its primary operating illegal economies, was not the result of monopolistic actions to impose arrangements in terms of price and social order to consumers, dealers, or other participants in the market

Summary

Introduction

In 2016 Colombian authorities cracked down the largest open-air drug market in the world’s top cocaineproducing country. Being home to the outcast and most marginalized sections of urban populations, impoverished, unruly, and crime-ridden areas, known as skid rows, ghettos, and inner cities or slums, often lodge different types of illegal markets and criminal activities In these places, chronic poverty and addiction tend to appear intertwined with some of the most profitable illegal markets around the world, such as drugs, street sex trade, or stolen goods. Low levels of violence in the context of competitive organized crime operations, illegal markets, or places with the absence of strong statehood can be explained by a) arrangements between extralegal groups (Idler 2019; Shortland 2019) or b) arrangements between extralegal groups and the state (Barnes 2017; Sobering and Auyero 2019; Willis 2015) This relation means that less violence does not necessarily imply less criminal activity (Aziani et al 2019; Bergman,2018). They understand the local turn as a vehicle to design more effective interventions and to empower local communities towards emancipation and transformative action (Leonardsson and Rudd 2015)

The Social Order of El Bronx

Protection Rackets and Criminal Governance

Therapeutic Policing as Street-Level Peace Building