Projeto
Pax Urbana: Negotiating homicide reduction in Sao Paulo, Medellin and San Salvador in comparative perspective
Resumo
"Pax urbana' investigates taboo processes of negotiation between state and criminal groups in the cities of Sao Paulo, Medellin and San Salvador. Urban violence in Latin America has consistently been the highest across the globe for years. More than 60 thousand people are murdered every year in Brazil, Medellin's murder rate once topped 380 per 100,000 - over three hundred times the UK rate - and El Salvador often has the highest national homicide rate on the planet. Policy responses in the region have had mixed results at best and tend to show signs of fatigue, repetition of failures, and policy inertia. Such are the complex historical, social and contextual drivers of endemic violence, it appears all but intractable: the Gordian Knot of urban governance. Most research in this area has focused on understanding high rates of violence, far less considers why violence recedes. This project starts with a polemical idea: The only way homicide rates have been significantly reduced in chronically violent urban contexts in Latin America is when state has negotiated with criminal groups in poor neighbourhoods. This is a provocative claim but negotiated homicide reduction studied across different contexts is worthy of our attention because it has the potential to provide some untangling of the above mentioned Gordian Knot. For example from the cities proposed in this research project: -San Salvador, 2012. A government led negotiation process with thirty jailed gang leaders cuts the number of homicides by half. Literally overnight. - Medellin, 2002. Crime lord Don Berna takes over the city's underworld and makes a pact with local government. The homicide rate drops from 177 to 37 per 100,000. The 'Medellin Miracle'. - Sao Paulo, 2000. The dominant criminal group, the PCC, start making 'policies' and holding 'court' hearings. Homicide rates in poor favelas fall by up to 90%. The 'magic formula for peace'. However, whilst simply presented these negotiated processes have multifaceted connotations and even contradictory outcomes. As a research team rooted by decades of experience in each research site, negotiated agreements or truces around homicide can produce a range of outcomes, not all of which are necessarily positive for example, forced disappearances may spike when a pact is made to 'outlaw' murder. Pax urbana is a novel 'working concept' that frames the exploration of negotiated homicide reduction in each city between the state and the illegal groups that control the streets. The research aims to be impactful, developing specific policy recommendations for each city in question, whilst common findings are potentially transferable to wider contexts of urban fragility in the region and beyond.
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