LATAM-CRIME: Vigilante Activity Increases

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ANALYSIS - Daniel Gatti

MONTEVIDEO, Apr 18 1996 (IPS) - Increased incidents of crime throughout Latin America, and the real or perceived inability of government institutions to take counter action, has encouraged a rise in private defence initiatives – including vigilantism, according to a regional survey.

IPS correspondents in Latin America found the vigilante phenomenon growing even in countries with relatively peaceful reputations, like Uruguay, where self-defense groups have started to operate.

In Venezuela, enraged citizens killed two suspected criminals this month: one in the La Vega district of southeastern Caracas where many of the vigilante killings have occurred and the other in the neighboring city of Maracay.

A mob caught the La Vega criminal as he was fleeing after committing an assault. Neighbors armed with sticks beat him to death and left his body lying in the street. More than 20 mostly- young people have met death in a similar way over the past two years.

Although Venezuela has no formally-organized “self-defense groups” neighborhood organizations created for other purposes are often quick to take on the job after a local crime has been committed.

Some 5,000 people are murdered in this country of 22 million every year, with 1,000 of these killings attributed to settling accounts among gangs.

Vigilantism takes a still more truculent form in Brazil’s “extermination groups,” successors to the “death squads” of decades past. These groups are largely composed of retired or active-duty security force members and hired killers, giving them a “professional” character. Officials believe that merchants pay them to kill thieves.

Many police officers openly “supplement” meagre wages with mercenary work. This explains why only 11 of 107 military police officers killed in Sao Paulo in 1995 were on duty at the time; the rest were engaged in “outside work,” that is, fulfilling private security “contracts.”

But the state of Bahía is also home to “popular self-defense groups” partcularly active against anyone suspected of rape or other sexual crimes. Dozens of killings of this sort have been reported annually throughout the state.

Vigilante justice is also no stranger to Central America and flared up in Guatemala just last month. A typical case occurred on March 22 in the town of Nueva Concepción, where neighbors disarmed police guarding a jail, dragged out two people charged with a kidnapping and killed them. A mob later attacked the hearse transporting the bodies and set fire to them.

But extra-judicial executions have also occurred in Honduras, where (as in El Salvador) recently reconstituted civilian police forces have been criticized for their alleged inability to control crime.

Uruguay has yet to record any mob lynchings or killings of criminals by organized vigilante groups, but informal “citizen- justice” groups began appearing here in 1991.

Montevideo neighborhood merchants organized the first of these groups in an area where petty crime had soared and local tabloids reported last month that at least eight bands of armed neighbors were active in the poor neighborhoods surrounding the capital.

Some of these groups areled by former leftist militants who say they arehelping to defend “the honest people” in the neighborhood who work for their living but are menaced by delinquents, the weekly “Brecha” reported.

In Chile, a 1994 law eliminated preventive detention and made acquittal easier for those who to defend themselves or their families kill criminals breaking into their homes, offices or stores. Neighborhood self-defense and vigilante initiatives have grown in poor neighborhoods such as La Pintana, Pudahuel, La Granja, and Lo Espejo as a way for people to protect themselves against crime where there is almost no police presence.

“Two forms of impunity encourage communities to turn toward lynchings: the criminal is out on the street despite accusations and the neighbors know they won’t be punished for what they do,” said Venezuelan psychiatrist Iris Rojas.

Lynchings “occur when people are desperate” due in part to insufficient government resources to “station police everywhere,” Venezuelan judicial police chief José Lazo acknowledged.

But Uruguayan human rights researchers and activists said that the number of violent crimes, including homicides, has remained stable in that country in recent years, as has juvenile crime.

The same is true in Argentina and Chile, said Uruguayan Institute for Legal and Social Studies spokesman Francisco Ottonelli.

He attributed the public perception of a crime wave across Latin America partly to sensationalism and statistical manipulation by the media and political sectors interested in promoting repressive policies.

In such countries as Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela, police officials, however, have recorded an increase in crime and the level of violence that comes with it.

“These are hyperviolent societies with very high social polarization, so it’s understandable that crime in these countries occurs with the same violence that marks society,” said an Argentine citizen security investigator.

All Latin American countries have experienced an increase in property crimes, such as theft and robbery and “this has a ready explanation: the economic and social crisis is marginalizing ever- larger layers of society,” said leftist legislator Jorge Orrico.

Most of the wealthier neighborhoods in Latin America’s increasingly stratified cities have installed their own private security systems, building neighborhood walls and fences and stationing private security guards in watchposts.

The “VIP” neighborhoods in cities like Rio de Janeiro and the wealthy periphery of Buenos Aires are practically impregnable bunkers, and the same phenomenon can be observed in some residential districts of Santiago, Caracas and to a lesser degree, Montevideo.

In a 1995 referendum, residents of Santiago’s high-income Las Condes district voted to install a centralized alarm system for all homes as a top priority investment project.

In Venezuela, the mayor’s office in Petare, east of Caracas, encouraged residents of certain neighborhoods years ago to organize and arm themselves to assist the local police.

Now citizens throughout the region are in fact arming themselves. Firearms sold for “personal defence” have increased in most Latin American countries, according to police statistics.