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Reseña:
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Crime has plagued Latin American countries for decades, and drug trafficking, gang violence, and the often lethal responses of security forces to rising crime rates have become highly salient political issues. In many cases, zero tolerance and iron fist policies have become controversial political tools and new crime policies and police reforms are focal points of electoral campaigns. Both crime and the increasingly harsh crime control measures imposed by iron fist policies have grave implications for the rule of law, the expansion and consolidation of human rights, and the quality of public life. A high quality democracy should, in principle, be able to protect its citizens from crime without resorting to arbitrary arrest, harshly punitive punishment and the violation of human rights perpetrated by agents of the state. Yet this is not the view of crime control prevalent in many Latin American democracies. The public image of crime and crime control, as well as political rhetoric, often conflates security with authoritarian iron fist measures.This is not the only image of crime control available in Latin America, however, and my paper seeks to understand how the interaction of media images, public opinion, and political rhetoric affects the debate over how the government should deal with crime. In this paper I explore a possible explanation of how candidates engage the issue of crime during the 2007 presidential elections in Guatemala. By examining the dynamics particular to the problem of crime, I hope to better understand the relationship between politicians, the media, and the public. |
