Terminal velocity: The speed of extortion in Guatemala City

Abstract

Guatemala City is racked by the practice of extortion: the act of obtaining goods and/or money through the threat of force. Transportation workers are a particularly vulnerable population, with a homicide rate four times the national average. While social scientists, policy experts, and asylum advocates rightly observe that extortionists control territory, lost in this literature is an appreciation for how these violent actors also govern victims’ experience of time and velocity. This article, in response, develops ethnographically the concept of terminal velocity to assess how the violent extraction of payments from transportation workers routinely presses these drivers up against the practical limits of Guatemala City. This includes the downward pull of extortion, which compels them to drive at ever-increasing speeds, and the upward drag of road congestion, poor infrastructure, and human fatigue that inevitably caps their acceleration.