This book examines the persistence of social violence and public insecurity in Honduras. Using a spatial perspective, the author looks at the Honduran state's security polices - known as Mano Dura - and the challenges authorities face. She points to the state's historical difficulty producing and ordering political territory and space.

"Developing a spatial-territorial approach to crime and applying it to Honduras - a country that suffers one of the world's highest rates of crime - Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera makes a significant and high quality contribution to the literature on crime. This is a key case study with a useful and much-needed theoretical framework." - Mark Ungar, The City University of New York - Brooklyn College, USA

"This is the first in-depth study of the structure and culture of violence in Honduras. It emphasizes the origins and the influence of organized crime, focusing in particular on the maras, the youth gangs that are the 'family' of the marginalized youth. Written with ethnographic excellence, it also demonstrates the failures of the anti-mara public policies of the Central American countries deeply affected by youth violence." - Dirk Kruijt, Emeritus Professor, Utrecht University, the Netherlands

Autorentext

Lirio Gutiérrez Rivera is an Anthropologist and Political Scientist. She was Postdoctoral Researcher at the desigualdades Research Network and at the Center of Area Studies and was Adjunct Lecturer at the Institute for Latin American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.

Inhalt
Introduction 1. State, Space and Territory 2. Territorializing the State 3. Violence and Crime 4. Marginal Youth and the Maras 5. Public Security and Policies 6. Alternatives: Above and Below 7. Geographies of Violence Epilogue