Encounters with violence in Latin America: urban poor perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala

Latin America is one of the world's fastest developing regions, yet also a hub area for crime and violence, where the links between social exclusion, inequality, fear and insecurity are clearly visible. This book explores the meaning of violence and insecurity in nine towns and cities in Colombia and Guatemala to create a framework of how and why daily violence takes place at the community level. It uses participatory urban appraisal methods to ask people about their own perceptions of violence as mediated by family, gender, ethnicity, and age. It develops a typology which distinguishes between the political, social, and economic violence that afflicts communities, and which assesses the costs and consequences of violence in terms of community cohesion and social capital. The featured towns and cities in Colombia are: Embudo, 14 de Febrero and Jerico in Bogotß, and Portico, el Arca, Amanecer, Rosario, Cachicamo and Colombia Chiquita; and in Guatemala: Concepcion, Nuevo Horizonte and La Merced in Guatemala City, and San Jorge, Sacuma, Limoncito, Gucumatz, El Carmen and Villa Real. Based on the experiences in these sites, the book examines the following aspects of urban violence: the role of participatory research methodologies in policy planning; the complexity of daily violence; community perceptions of underlying structural factors; the family as a violent institution; linkage to substance abuse; organised violence at the community level; social institutions and social capital; and community perceptions on strategies of dealing with violence.