The enigma of violent realities in central America: Towards a historical perspective

Abstract

This chapter suggests an alternative to purely quantitative studies of violence in Latin America based on statistics and death counts, instead positing that historical arguments play an important role in our understanding of the development and occurrence of violence in the region. The authors contest the notion that violence is entirely new or an ahistorical social fact that emerges arbitrarily. Rather, the contributions to this volume take selected historical arguments into closer consideration to examine the embeddedness of today’s “new violence” in a broader flow of history. The historical processes under which today’s violence evolves, the authors argue, can serve as a powerful tool for current individuals and groups to engage in social actions. But uncovering these processes also entails various conceptual challenges for contemporary researchers, which are laid out and discussed in detail in this chapter.