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"This book is for audiences interested in Latin America and the long-term legacies of civil war more generally. Using archives and in-depth interviews, it provides a captivating narrative of how counterinsurgency in Central America distorted government functioning, breeding long-term patterns of corruption and criminality that burden the region today"--
List of contents
Part I. Foundations: 1. Introduction: undermining the state in civil war; 2. Theorizing wartime institutional change and survival; Part II. Institutional Origins: 3. Civil war in Central America; 4. The wartime institutionalization of customs fraud in Guatemala; 5. Ordering police violence: extrajudicial Killing in wartime Guatemala; 6. Land and counterinsurgency: rewriting the rules of agrarian reform in Nicaragua; Part III. Institutional Persistence: 7. Transition, peace, and postwar power in Central America; 8. Guatemala: the persistence of customs fraud; 9. Guatemala: the persistence of extrajudicial killing; 10. Nicaragua: chronic instability in postwar institutions; 11. Conclusion: the institutional legacies of civil war; Bibliography; Appendix: list of interviews and archival collections.
About the author
Rachel A. Schwartz is Assistant Professor of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
Summary
Using archives and in-depth interviews, this book demonstrates how counterinsurgency in Central America distorted government functioning, breeding long-term patterns of corruption and criminality that burden the region today. It rethinks the relationship between war and state formation and challenges existing approaches to post-conflict reform.
Foreword
Illuminates how wartime institutional transformations undermine core state functions with legacies for political and economic development.
