Flexible Justice: Neoliberal Violence and ‘Self-Help’ Security in Bolivia

Abstract

As Bolivia has restructured its economic and political sectors accord- ing to a neoliberal model, citizens have been required to become more ‘flexible’ in securing their livelihoods, creating ‘self-help’ economic activities and informal employment schemes to make ends meet. At the same time, as state mechanisms for administering justice and producing ‘security’ fail due to the inadequacies of the neoliberal regime, Bolivian citizens are adopting ‘flexible’ attitudes toward crime and punishment, frequently turning to ‘self-help’ justice mechanisms (including private security patrols and vigilante lynchings) to combat crime in their communities. This article explores the processes by which neoliberal logic and language condition the experiences and responses to crime and insecurity of residents in different neighborhoods of Cochabamba, Bolivia. It suggests that lynchings in Bolivia today be understood as a kind of neoliberal violence, produced both by the scarcities and deficiencies of the privatizing state, and by the logic of transnational capitalism itself, which has saturated civil society and public culture.