Policing the Revolution: The Transformation of Security and Violence in Venezuela during Chavismo

Rebecca Hanson
Assistant Professor of Crime, Law, and Governance, University of Florida
Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow

Discussants:

• Rachel Sweet
  Assistant Professor of Politics and Global Affairs
  Kellogg Faculty Fellow
• Ernesto Verdeja
  Associate Professor of Political Science and Peace Studies
  Kellogg Faculty Fellow
• Mayra Ortiz
  Kellogg PhD Fellow (political Science)
   

Since the mid-2000s Venezuela has been ranked one of the most violent countries in the world as homicides and police violence skyrocketed. Much has been written about the country’s turn to Chavismo but scholarship has ignored what will perhaps be the revolution’s most important legacy: how Chavista policies transformed coercive power and the security landscape.

This panel will discuss the Rebecca Hanson's book of the same name, which provides the first in-depth analysis of policing and security policies during the left turn in Latin America by focusing on the experiences of three groups: police officers, police reformers, and residents of neighborhoods most affected by violence. Drawing on ethnographic, interview, and survey research collected over ten years, she analyzes how security policies within the context of the pink tide and later turn to authoritarianism contributed to the expansion of lateral violence and the pluralization of non-state violent actors. Far from the always-already authoritarian project proposed by many scholars and pundits, Hanson shows that the Bolivarian Revolution was defined by highly contested and contrasting visions of security that resulted in a fragmented and inconsistent ordering of state and society. Moreover, by pairing the vantage point of street-level police officers with that of ordinary barrio residents, she provides a unique analysis of how insecurity during revolution was experienced “from below.”