Agency & Motivations for Violence: Gangs in El Salvador
Mara Savatrucha (MS-13) is one of the most notorious gangs in the world. Along with Calle
18, these gangs emerged among the Salvadorian immigrant community of Los Angeles just
decades ago. As the US authorities deported gang members back to El Salvador (on daily
flights that still happen today), the culture of violence was exported with it back to a country
rife with the legacy (arms and structural tensions) of the Civil War.
MS-13 currently has over 50’000 members across El Salvador, the US, Guatemala and
Honduras. The cities, like San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, experience some of the
highest murder rates in the world1.
Research
Bourgeois (2004)
 Everyday violence results from internalisation of historically entrenched structural
violence (applicable to both El Salvador but also LA and reaction to structural
violence there)
 4 types of violence:
1. Political
- Targeted physical violence and terror administered by official authorities
(military repression, political torture, armed resistance) (conditions in
prison)
2. Structural  chronic, historically-entrenched political-economic oppression and social
inequality (intl terms of trade, to abusive local working conditions) (grievances)
3. Symbolic  internalised humiliations and legitimations of inequality and hierarchy
ranging from sexism and racism to intimate expressions of class power – Bourdieu
(unwitting consent of dominated) (link to Gilligan – shame)
4. Everyday micro-interactional level: interpersonal, domestic, delinquent
 El Salvador
- Initially saw in Cold War context then re-wrote his field notes from 1981
(midst civil war) El Salvador
- Now sees killing of 75000 people during 1980s directly attributable to US
military, economic and logistical support for Salvadoran army
- But CW context blinded him to internecine everyday violence undermining
guerrillas internal solidarity
- But also (Wood) – certain forms everyday violence decreased in
revolutionary setting – wife-beating etc – as peasants also took pride in
mobilising in support of FMLN (pleasure in agency)
 Need to move beyond pornography of violence – where difficult to talk about
dominated/victims in realistic way without either exalting them as innocent victims or
crushing them without agency
 Neoliberalism, in Latin American post-CW, actively dynamises everyday violence –
fusing of structural and symbolic violence produces destructive patterns of
interpersonal violence that reinforce the legitimacy of social inequality
 Need not sanitise violence – but clarify the chains of causality that link structural,
political, and symbolic violence in production of everyday violence (structure for our
presentation?)
 In post-CW era – it is intl market forces (not politically-driven resistance) that is
waging war for hearts and minds of pop
Bourgeois, P. (2003) In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
 I have more detailed notes on this but areas relevant:
 Surface violence (eg substance abuse in innerc-city El Barrio) a symptom and vivid
symbol of “deeper dynamics of social marginalization and alienation”
 Links to Gilligan  psychological and emotional violence  in El Barrio – links to
Puerto Rican cultural forms that have expanded and reinvented themselves in
1
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/deadly-gangs-el-salvador/10773
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immigrants – around a “theme of dignity and autonomy – an oppositional mentality
forged in the face of long-term colonial domination”  basis forged in reaction to
experience in LA/US more widely, external-impact on Salvadoran history/Civil
War
Building on the analytical framework of cultural production theory and drawing from
feminism, wants to restore the agency of culture, the autonomy of individuals, the
centrality of gender and the domestic sphere to a political economic understanding of
the experience of persistent poverty and social marginalization in urban US (12)
Participant-observation ethnographic techniques better suited than exclusively
quantitative methodologies for documenting lives of people on margins of society that
is hostile to them (although methodological issues – analytical and political
tensions, unconscious self-censorship)
Specifically in the New York City Puerto Rican context, the self-destructive daily life
of those who are surviving on the streets needs to be contextualized in the
particular history of the hostile race relations and structural economic
dislocation they have faced
Political economy analysis is not a panacea to compensate for individualistic racist or
otherwise judgemental interpretations of social marginalization – a focus on
structures often obstructs the fact that humans are active agents of their own history,
rather than passive victims (17)
Ethnographic methods allow the ‘pawns’ of larger structural forces to emerge as real
human beings who shape their own futures – structure vs agency debate – the
relationship between individual responsibility and social structural constraints
Wood (2003)
 Based around sustained organized and vilent insurgency forging democracy
from below  but transitions need to be pro-poor (need to be material relationship
for peace agreements to endure)
 Material grievances – inadequate access to land, played a role, yet emotional and
moral motives were essential to emergence and consolidation to insurgent collective
action
 Civil War in El Salvador transformed political, economic and social landscape
 Insurgency forged democracy in El Salvador by laying the politics and economic
bases of compromise after mobilization for economic and political inclusion was met
with state violence
 Poor rural residents in their 10s of thousands acted together for social change,
despite high risks of doing so – led to emergency of FMLN – had to be dealt with which
opened doors to democracy in El Salvador
 Olsen – collective action problem – collective action costly to individuals and won’t be
sustained without either coercion, or motivated through selective incentives available
only to those participating
- But in El Salvador, whilst FMLN became alternative governing authority and did
provide some collective goods – these were open to everyone (free-riding) so not
incentive to join insurgency
 Pre-existing social networks and shared collective identity provide multifaceted
contact based on shared norms  But breakup of peasant communities occurred too
early to explain mobilization
 That the values, beliefs, social norms and political identities could outweigh the risk of
disappearance, torture and death is at heart of puzzle of insurgency
 Instead
- Participation was voluntary
- It was widespread
- It evolved over time
- Moral commitments and emotional engagements were principal reason
- Dignity in the face of condescension, repression
- Took pride, indeed pleasure, in successful assertion of their interests and
identity – pleasure of agency
- Motivated by the value they put on being part of the making of history
A lot of the gang members are children of those involved in insurgency  idea of
respect in their community, in their part in history, being passed down?
Gilligan (2000)
 Public health approach is appropriate model to show that violence is a contagious
disease, not a hereditary one [Social and psychological factors are more important
in violence than biological ones]
 Prison inmates work with – pride, dignity, self-respect threatened so acted violently
– if don’t have self-respect, don’t have anything
 Emotion of shame primary cause of all violence – necessary but not sufficient
cause of violence
- Need several preconditions
- Violence-inducing effects of shame can be stimulated, inhibited, or redirected
by presence/absence of other feelings (guilt, innocence)
 Preconditions
1. Feel ashamed over matters so trivial, triviality makes it even more shameful to feel
ashamed about them – nothing more shameful than to feel ashamed
2. Perceive of having no non-violent means of warding off or diminishing feelings of
shame – violence as last resort
3. Lack emotional capacities that normally inhibit violent impulses stimulated by shame
4. Presence of overwhelming shame in absence of feelings of either love or guilt
 Anomalies: Not everyone becomes violent from shame, and even most violent people
on earth are not violent most of the time
 Power of shame is inversely proportional to magnitude of precipitating cause – more
trivial the cause of shame, more shameful it becomes to acknowledge the shame
Ross Kemp – El Salvador Programme
 On average 11 murders a day in a country with population smaller than London
 In conversation – since gov law, more gang members coming in to prison (increased
by 80%) – when asked how he feels about it (Hugo) says – not good, people getting
time when not commit crime just for being MS13 – Ross says, but you are violent
gang, he responds, “that’s not the point man, the government, they got to do a lot of
programmes in the street, to put these people to work, to do something”
 “I tell my son not to be a gang member, not to be like me, to be a normal people”
 Don’t call enemy gang by name – but ‘the other neighbourhood’
 Gov more interested in incarceration not rehabilitation
 Started 1980s LA – race wars
 Active gang member on streets – weekly flights dump deportees – Eric and Duke
 Duke MS13 gang member since beginnings in LA
 “We had to start defending ourselves” (race wards in LA), “at 7 years old, every time I
used to go buy bread early in the morning I used to find a lot of suckers decapitated
by La Guardia” (the police, the killing squad)
 “We saw and we learned, and even though we didn’t want to , violence was in
us. We had to start being proud. We saw whites being proud of being white, we
saw black being proud of being black. Shit, we had to start being proud of
Salvadorian”
 So you were the hardest ones there? Eric – “now we are”
 Duke Not just watching people get stabbed, but people getting arms and heads cut
off – they were at their highest point of violence, stabbing, and “we thought, fuck
this shit, that ain’t violence, let’s show these fools what violence is” – and
that’s how it happened
 MS13 started at backlash to persecution in US, and now traveled back here – fertile
breeding ground after end of civil war
 Not associated with drugs or money, just about hating people not in their gang and
kill them
 When asked if members of MS13 – answer “until we die”
 Chicho and his clique  Ask a group active in their neighbourhood – why start:
1. “I started let’s say, looking for revenge because they (18th street) killed my uncle. I got
my revenge then I stayed”
2. Often hurt someone in family and can’t let them get away with it
3. “If they came, we’d just kill them” “We defend our area because this is where we live,
we can’t let them come and operate here”
4. “This is El Salvador and Mara Salvatrucha are in control”
 MS13 meant to be 2nd biggest threat to US after Al Qaeda – threat, or scared kids
with guns?
 Corruption – elites (gov and businessmen) shipping 500odd tones of cocaine
through country so suits them to have cliqua as a smokescreen
 Chicho – constantly saying “I’m the one who’s the problem, they’ve [his family] got
nothing to do with it” – I’m the one in the gang, but his brother killed – said with
almost guilt (Gilligan)
 Rehab project for female ex-gang members – training and also education and tattoo
removal
 What was reason joined gang?
- “I joined to be like the other girls of the neighbourhood”
- “I didn’t want to join any gang but both gangs put pressure on me. 18 people, girls
beat me up”
- You can either get in to gang by being beaten up – doing it by hurt, or by ‘love’ – the
train – basically gang rape (one man after another’
- “A mission is a mission” – if you’re told to go and kill someone you kill someone.
When ask if she’s done that, she smiles, laughs and says yes – they find it funny //
chilling honesty
 Just that one project – 14 girls (two died recently)) in whole of South America for
female gang members!!!
COAV (Children in Organised Armed Violence) Interview2
 Social researcher Marlon Carranza from uni Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas in
El Salvador
 Background (Collier – greed/grievance model – young under-educated men / vs
Wood – pleasure in agency)
- El Salvador has highest masculine unemployment rate for Central America (not
including Panama) 15.2% (2000) and highest employment rate in underground
economy (42.8% - 2003)
- Invests less in social sector in relation to total public spending than any other Central
American country (only 27% - 2003)
 “The gangs began due to a number of factors that have to do with the long history of
violence in the country, even before the war”
 Motivations: “the proliferation of weapons is a common factor, as is the sensation that
a lot of what motivates these young people is a desire for “power and control”
and to “stand out”, and not just for economic reasons” (Gilligan)
 “Without a doubt, money is a factor, and the group’s participation provides economic
benefits to youth, including such luxury goods as brand name clothes and tennis
shoes that they would not otherwise have access to. And it is also easier to get
drugs. But purely economic reasons don’t explain why the youth enter into a
gang to get those goods, given that they could organize themselves in other
ways”
 [Previous research “Barrio Adentro” – 2000] – most common motivation was
vacilando (for fun – 40%) followed by family problems (21%) and friends (20%)
 “The word vacil means “for fun” and sums up all the benefits of being a gang
members, which can be summed up in two words: respect and power, related to the
fear imposed on others. Only by understanding the combination of these benefits
(economic, access to drugs and alcohol, social visibility and an ideology that justifies
their actions) will we be able to understand the reasons for joining a gang”
 Average profile: “poor relationship with his family, in part because the family has been
partially responsible for their exposure to violence” / average 8 yrs schooling / armed
2
Mittrany, C (2003) “We want to get out of this deep abyss that violence has pushed us into” - COAV
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(70% carry weapons) / take a lot of drugs / 75% no study / 75% been in prison  only
40$ say they want to leave the gang
Reinsertion programmes “should meet the material needs of youth and the needs of
youth to be heard and seen” (not just economic work programmes) but “the gang
youth need to feel that they are being listened to and the opportunity to become what
they want to be: the protagonists of their own lives”
Diff to Rio – not such a close relationship between gangs and organized crime
Barnes, N. “Characteristics and Motivations of Transnational Gangs in the Americas” – Prof of
Sociology, California State Uni
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“Repatriated youths were faced with rapid urbanization, persistent poverty and lack of
meaningful labour opportunities, making joining a gang one of the few options for
survival” (Collier)
Maras leadership, rank and file gang members (usually 14-26 yrs old – correlation
with “youth bulge theory”)
“The predictors of youth involvement in gang include gender (being male), and
coming from a working class background and/or a single parent household. Youth are
drawn to gangs in the absence of meaningful work opportunities, violent and
weakened family structures (due to migration of parents) and the failure (or nonexistence) of the welfare state” (Collier – but this is overly simplistic – doesn’t
account for female gang members or intrinsic motivations)
“The most immediate rewards of joining a gang are social and cultural, not material or
economic. Gangs offer youth the protection, respect, identity, belonging and social
support that is often lacking in their urban communities”
“Once youths become gang members, their motivations to remain include maintaining
masculine cultural pride, status and power’ defending their “turf” against rival gangs
and the police; possible increased economic gain; and to support drug (ab)use”
Em – See ref for data sources
Vinyamata, E. – Advisor of Minister’s of Justice Conference of Latin American Countries and
Director of Campus for Peace and Solidarity at Open Uni of Catalonia 3
 Gang criminal activity “increasingly resembles a civil war. A war without ideologies that
seeks control or access to wealth and power through violent action”
 Gangs prosper in countries with: corruption; poverty, marginalization and marked
inequality; lack of employment opportunities; repressive security policies; disaffection
of majority of population with regard to their country (opposite in El Salvador?);
unstructured or dysfunctional families; predominance of a culture of violence (what is
that exactly….! Belief that achievements through violence, history of civil
war?); absence of democratic institutions
 Most gang members emerge from lower middle classes – degraded neighbourhoods
(but if motivations tied to their environment – how could export from LA to
ES?)
Religion – 83% Roman Catholic  links to how portray themselves?
US Department of State Website: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (2007)
 Constitutional, multiparty democracy (El Salvador)
 “Although the government generally respected the rights of its citizens, protection of
human rights was undermined by widespread violent crime, including gang-related
violence, impunity and corruption. The most significant human rights problems
included harsh, violent, and overcrowded prison conditions; lengthy pretrial detention;
inefficiency and corruption in the judicial system; violence and discrimination against
3
http://www.uoc.edu/ojs/index.php/journal-of-conflictology/article/viewFile/vol0iss1-vinyamata/vol0iss1vinyamata
women; abuses against children; child labour; and forced child prostitution; trafficking
in persons; discrimination against persons with disabilities; discrimination against
indigenous persons; discrimination against persons based on sexual orientation; and
lack of enforcement of labour rights” (sounds fun)
Fieser, R. (accessed 27.03.12) – “San Salvador’s Pitch for Peace” – Catholic Relief Service4
 Edgar’s story – at 18 was known as “shy boy”, lives in fear of death. “There are lots of
people here who want to kill me. I don’t mean homeboys. I mean the really bad
people from the organized crime rings and other people who just hate us”  war
memories form early childhood haunt him
 Youth Builders project – former ‘enemy’ gang members working together 
rebuilding community, rehabbing lot in to basketball court etc
 Brian Axel – participated in programme in hope it would inspire him to quit the gang
permanently, “There was one guy, who we call Choven, who never comes out. He’s
bit – about 6 feet 2 inches tall. It’s kind of scary to see him, but he came out and
worked on the court”
 Lionel Gomez – “participated in Youth Builders because he wanted to turn his
drawing into a money-making skill. The 29 year old joined a gang when he was 13,
went to jail at 18, and most recently survived a vicious attack by members of his own
gang. But he has never held a stable job”  “Youth Builders helpmed me put a little
more love in my life’ Lionel says, in a voice so soft it makes his gold-capped teeth
and tattoo-laden hands seem like a disguise”
 Lionel – mother’s boyfriend beat him, mother threw him out, “joined a gang where his
temper flared”. “Violence, he says, was his reaction to nearly everything”
 Harder to get a job than he expected – tattoos give him away. “As he was signing the
contract recently for a job at a nearby factory, the hiring manager caught sight of the
tattoos on his hand and rescinded the offer”
New York Review of Books
Guillermoprieto, A. (2011) In the New Gangland of El Salvador
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Alexis Ramírez, who joined the maras when he was fifteen, doesn’t look like he could
kill people thoughtlessly, although he is serving fifty years for homicide and has fortyeight left to go.
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I asked him if, when he was free, it hadn’t been dangerous for him to walk down
the street covered in tattoos, and he gave a sideways smile. “If you know how
to walk it’s not”
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Came from ‘nice family’ – father an evangelical, mother “preserving in the things of
God”  He was still in school when he decided to join the maras. “I saw the tattoos
[of the mareros in his neighborhood]. I saw the way they behaved toward each other,”
he said. “In my neighborhood they didn’t steal from people; they took care of them. I
liked all that.”
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I tried, unsuccessfully, to figure out if that ducking, swaying thing he did was an
authentic remnant of what had once been a whole and gentle person, or an
ingratiating trick that a thoughtless killer kept stored among his array of
weapons.
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José Eduardo Villalta, twenty-four…has most of a fifty-year sentence still ahead of
him, and I asked him if he didn’t find that depressing. “No,” he said firmly. “I feel at
ease here. This is my home.”
Keefe, B. (1997) “Gang Members Speak Up”, Peace Magazine5
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4
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“In San Salvador, El Salvador and Los Angeles, California a small group of gang
members have organized, calling themselves Homies Unidos. Comprised of
http://crs.org/el-salvador/san-salvadors-pitch-for-peace/
http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v13n6p27.htm [Accessed 27.03.12]
members of different - and rival - gangs, Homies Unidos is doing something that
nobody has ever done in El Salvador and is rarely done in the United States. They
are working together, trying to construct a future for themselves and their homeboys
and homegirls. But it's not easy.”
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Places emergence of gangs from having to “protect themselves on the streets”,
turning to gangs for security
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Hector Pineda experienced this first-hand. A member of La Mara Salva Trucha gang
in Los Angeles, Pineda - aka "El Negro" - 22, now lives in San Salvador where he
founded Homies Unidos.
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1996, Save the Children and other organizations helped founders develop 1 st public
opinion poll to study needs of gang members (1000+ polled)
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"The amazing thing we found is that a vast majority of gang members want to lead a
more peaceful life, they want to get rid of the violence, they want jobs, they want an
education, they want a future for themselves and their children," says Rose-Avila."
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Don’t ask people to leave gangs – no peace makers, but promoters of non-violence.
"We take the best from the gangs and try to build from there. Because in gangs
sometimes they are the only family you have. Society has ostracized you, you don't
belong to anyone, so your Homies are all you've got. And you can't change people,
you can't tell them that they are something they're not, you have to accept them."
Reuters News Report6
 Fri 23rd March 2012 – Rival gangs MS-13 and Mara 18 call truce  signed document
endorsed by Catholic Church
 “The gangs have been in a period of ‘reflection’ since last year as they considered
the toll of crime in the country” (9% jump in murder rate 2011)
 “Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a
transit point”
 “Considering the pain it causes, to our families and ourselves, we have taken this
decision (to call a truce), because we are all aware that many dead are our own”
 The statement says that is speaks for more then 100’000 gang members who “do not
want to wage war”
 Language used – Gilligan  pre-condition of inability for ‘normal’ feelings of
love and guilt to constrain shame-fuelled violence (pain caused to families –
the constraint) // “wage war”
New York Times Article7
 Possibility that ‘truce’ resulted from secret deal between gov and gang leaders to halt
killings in exchange for better prison conditions (and Reuters claims gov paid them to
put down arms)
 Goal “reducing homicides by 30 percent and reaping political gains”
Huffington Post Article8
 “The Maras have their roots in Southern California, where young men seeking refuge
from Central America’s civil wars formed violent gangs on the street of Los Angeles
and its suburbs in the 1980s”
 Violence due to turf battles, and also engage in extortion and drug trafficking
Renteria, N. (2012) – Reuters News Report [http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/24/us-elsalvadorgangs-idUSBRE82N03J20120324 accessed 27.03.12]
6
7
Archibold, R. (2012) New York Times article
[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/world/americas/homicides-in-el-salvador-drop-and-questionsarise.html Accessed 27.03.12]
8
Aleman, M. (2012) Huffington Post Article [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/el-salvadormara-salvatrucha-mara-18-truce_n_1376955.html [Accessed 27.03.12]]
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30 high-level gang members transferred to lower security prisons – more contact
“with their underlings” to direct criminal activities from inside prison
“Most Central American nations have responded to the region’s crime with tough antigang laws, which have added to problems of overcrowding and violence in their
prison systems. In February, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina proposed
legalizing drugs as a way to decrease violent crime”
Arana, A. (2005) “How the street gangs took Central America”, Foreign Affairs Vol.84:3
 Maras (after deadly species of local ants?!)
 “Now pose the mot serious challenge to peace in the region since the end of Central
America’s civil wars” (violence in peace – Tilly)
 “The solutions attempted so far--largely confined to military and police operations-have only aggravated the problem; prisons act as gangland finishing schools, and
military operations have only dispersed the gangs' leadership, making bosses harder
than ever to track and capture.”
 “1996 – Congress extended the get-tough approach to immigration law. Noncitizens
sentenced to a year or more in prison would now be repatriated to their countries of
origin, and even foreign-born American felons could be stripped of their citizenship
and expelled once they served their prison terms. The list of deportable crimes was
increased, coming to include minor offenses such as drunk driving and petty theft. As
a result, between 2000 and 2004, an estimated 20,000 young Central American
criminals, whose families had settled in the slums of Los Angeles in the 1980s after
fleeing civil wars at home, were deported to countries they barely knew”
 "As more and more hard-core gang members were expelled from Los Angeles, the
Central American maras grew, finding ready recruits among the region's large
population of disenfranchised youth (according to the United Nations, 45 percent of
Central Americans are 15 years old or younger). In El Salvador (a country of 6.5
million people), the gangs now boast 10,000 core members and 20,000 young
associates”
 Tilly – violence in peace (Honduras - murder rate of 154 per 100,000--higher even
than Colombia's, where, despite an ongoing civil war, the murder rate is just 70 per
100,000)
 Legislation alone cannot fix gang problem; “According to Covarrubiaz (the former San
Jose cop), get-tough programs "work temporarily, but do not address the real
problems.”” (structural violence – Bourgeois)
 “In the last two years, Central American members of MS-13 have begun to return to
the United States itself. This time, however, they are appearing in nontraditional
areas, ranging from New York City to suburban Maryland and Massachusetts-anywhere there are significant Salvadoran populations” (exporting violence from
US to Salvador – re-exporting it back)
 Blame? “Some Central American government officials have accused the United
States of inflicting the problem on them, comparing Washington's deportation of gang
members to the 1980 Mariel boat lift, when Fidel Castro supposedly emptied his
prisons and shipped the inhabitants north to Miami. Meanwhile, U.S. officials,
including Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, think the Central Americans
should shoulder the problem alone and favor continued deportations. Such mutual
recriminations are typical of the debate over gang problems and help explain why the
affected countries have yet to develop a united front to deal with them”
 “It is unrealistic, however, to expect any of the tiny Central American countries, with
their fragile governments, to take the lead in organizing a multilateral approach; that
role can only be played by the United States”
 “So far, Central America has yet to adopt such a multifaceted approach, nor have the
countries there learned to work together or with the United States--despite the fact
that the gang problem affects all of them. Instead, El Salvador and Honduras
continue to pursue their mano dura policies. Meanwhile, the region's more deepseated problems--such as dysfunctional politics, rampant corruption, drug smuggling,
intense urban poverty, and overpopulation--remain untouched, and the mano dura
campaigns are only taking attention and resources away from the fight against these
larger ills”
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“Central American governments have also used their highly publicized crackdowns
on youth gangs to avoid action on another urgent priority: strengthening local
democratic institutions. Since the end of the Central American civil wars in the early
1990s, judicial, legislative, and social reforms have stalled amid partisan infighting,
and local political debates remain sprit along the same left-right fault fines that
caused bloodshed two decades ago”
“The region should also implement a three-pronged approach to gangs, one that
includes prevention, suppression, and intervention. Prison systems must be
transformed so that they no longer serve as training grounds for new gang members.
In California, police now avoid placing competing gangs in the same facilities. Central
America should do the same, to avoid the sort of clashes that recently occurred in
Honduras and El Salvador when M-18 and MS-13 members were thrown into the
same prisons”
Collier (2000) – Economic Perspective
 Statistical investigation of global pattern of large-scale civil conflict since 1965
 Expected to find grievances leading to conflict but found economic agendas are
central to understanding why civil wars start
 Some groups benefiting from conflict so have interest in sustaining it
 Economic opportunities and therefore measures of economic agenda:
1. Primary commodities: Looting of primary commodities (Very few economic gains
from gang membership in ES)
2. Proportion of young men in society: Cost of attracting recruits to rebellion  lack of
other income-earning opportunities and education (El Salvador – young
population)
3. Endowment of education
 Grievance measures:
1. Ethnic or religious hatred
2. Economic inequality – unequal incomes or ownership of assets
3. Lack of political rights
4. Gov economic incompetence
 All results show importance of economic over grievance – only significant grievance
factor is a prior period of rapid economic decline increases risk of conflict
 Obviously conflict inflicts costs, but also economic opportunities:
- People shorten time-horizons during civil war leading to opportunistic
behaviour
- Increase in criminality – risks of punishment for criminal behaviour decline
- Markets become disrupted – trade becomes more monopolistic so marketing
margins increase
- Scope of rent-seeking predation on trade increases for rebels
 Small groups that have economic interest in sustaining/reviving conflict are
disproportionately influential
 Need economic policies to reduce incentives for conflict
- Diversification of economy away from primary export
- Poverty reduction
- Make markets as competitive as possible – competition reduce profits to
normal levels and reduce attraction of conflict for wartime traders
- Market integration promoted by deregulation
This is study on civil wars and rubbished by Cramer etc – relevance to ES?
Groupthink
 Term coined 1953 by William Whyte
 Enemy within & without  purification in group, and extermination of out group
 Groupthink is an institutionalized form of anti-strategic behaviour
- Go in with rational self-maximisation
- Then have need for cohesion and belonging, meaning in a group
- Group is less than the sum of its parts
 Developed by Irving Janis (strive for unanimity overrides motivation to realistically
appraise alternative causes of action)
 Collective rationality (mob mentality)
 Inverts collective action problem – if in group, do away with rationality
 Come to choices that are sub-optimal strategically (ethnic and religious violence) 
gang membership puts family at risk/own life at risk = suboptimal, especially in
use of tattoos
 Clark McCauley: 3 conditions under which groupthink occurs:
1. Directive leadership
2. Homogeneity of background and ideology
3. Insulation from outside influence
Binford, L. () “Violence in El Salvador. A Rejoinder to Philippe Bourgois’ ‘The Power of
Violence in War and Peace’”
 Bourgois utility of violence model (structural relations and everyday violence), but
Binford argues these this theory needs mediating concepts in order to be usefully
applied to a concrete situation
 Bourgeois understanding of post-war reality in El Salvador is mechanical  study of
unfavorable peace settlement, which preserved unequal structural relations, is also
necessary to shed light on high levels of post-war violence
Girard  could be relevant in terms of groupthink/scapegoating/mimesis of violence 
anti-rational behaviour of violence in gangs?
Girard, Rine (1996), “Mimesis and Violence” in J.G. Williams (ed.) The Giard Reader, The
Crossroad Publishing Company: New York
 “Violence is the process itself when two or more partners try to prevent one another
from appropriating the object they all desire through physical or other means. Under
the influence of the judicial viewpoint and of our psychological impulses, we always
look for some original violence or at least for well-defined acts of violence that would
be separate from non-violent behaviour. We want to distinguish the culprit from the
innocent, and, as a result, we substitute discontinuities and differences for the
continuities and reciprocities of the mimetic escalation” (9)
 Violence based on aggression – some individuals more aggressive than others,
violence based on economic scarcity – but “a teory of conflict based primarily on
appropriative mimcry does not have the drawbacks” of above (10)
 “The phenomena that take place when a human group turns into a mob are identical
to those produced by mimetic rivalry, and they can be defined as that loss of
differentiation which is described in mythology and re-enacted in ritual…mimetic
rivalry tends toward reciprocity (12)
 “Violence is not originary; it is a by product of mimetic rivalry. Violence is mimetic
rivalry itself becoming violent as the antagonists who desire the same object keep
thwarting each other and desiring the object all the more. Violence is supremely
mimetic” (12-13)
 Key ideas:
- Mimetic desire – all our desires are borrowed from other people
- Mimetic rivalry – conflict originates in mimetic desire
- Since mimetic rivalry develops from struggle for the possession of the objects is
contagious – it leads to the threat of violence
- If 2 individuals desire the same thing (could be respect?) – soon a 3rd, and 4th so on
individual thing – eventually the object is forgotten and mimetic conflict transforms in
to general antagonism
- They wanted same object, now want to destroy the same enemy (symbolic violence –
tattoos/markers of gangs) (mimetic antagonism)
- A paroxysm of violence would tend to focus on an arbitrary victim and unanimous
antipathy would mimetically grow against him
- The elimination of this victim would reduce appetite for violence and calm situation 
origins of sacrifice and religion
 Critique
- Evidence often based on readings of myths and bible stories – which can often be
tendentious
Also exist non-mimetic desires (taboo desires in repressive societies)
Can have positive mimesis – loving mimesis or creative mimesis
 Scapegoating  When mimesis reaches the point of mimetic contagion (where society
at risk) here the scapegoat mechanism is triggered
- 1 person singled out as cause of trouble and is expelled/killed – this person is the
scapegoat (but in ES also some killings random – bus shooting of random
victims)
- Social order restored as people perceive they have solved the cuse of their problems
by removing the scapegoated individual
- Burke first coined the term but Girard developed concept more extensively
-
Others to Read
1. Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, Nancy Scheper-Hughes (Editor)
(University of California, Berkeley), Philippe Bourgois (Editor) (University of
Pennsylvania)
2. Bourgois:
 http://istmo.denison.edu/n08/articulos/power.html
 http://www.philippebourgois.net/Monthly%20Review%20El%20Salvador%201982.pdf
 http://www.philippebourgois.net/Ethnography%20Power%20of%20Violence%202001.
pdf
 http://www.philippebourgois.net/Apuntes%20Investigacion%20CECYP%202002%20s
maller.pdf
3. Also – my diss at BA level was on tattoos – could be some interesting (or really
uninteresting and bad!) work on there in terms of that – but not sure if we need
that level of detail – I’ll look when at home
4. http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1947579_2012504,00.html - photos