The dialectical construction of a critical criminology for Latin American borders

Abstract

Border regions have a particular reality framed by violence and high crime rates, with the massive presence of police and military entities that seek repression as social control. With the advance of transnational organizations, it is no longer possible to think about the application of theories that do not consider the specificities of Latin America. As for its criminological tradition, national domestic policies are elaborated on the basis of knowledge produced in central countries. The imitation of central policies, often decontextualized and with dissonant methodologies, destine them to failure. Thus, this issue must be analyzed from the perspective of historical dependence, built on the dialectical method, considering the process of cultural domination and the need for insurgency of the class struggle against colonialism. To this end, Maximo Sozzo works to translate the central models, cultural importation, and the history of the present, to recover the criminological break of criminological imports with the ideological decolonization of criminology. Regarding “borders,” the traditional concept includes two meanings: border – frontier, as a battle front, in which militarization is used as a component of repression, and border-borderland, as a place of meeting and negotiation. Thus, once notes that European methods of border repression do not reflect the Latin American reality, as in its origin it applies the double meaning of the term border. Already in Latin American borders, the frontier context is barely considered, borders as a space to facilitate transnational criminality. Thus, current cross-border criminal control is inadequate, and it is necessary to develop a Latin American dialectical method.