The privatization of citizen security in Latin America: from elite guards to neighborhood vigilantes.
Ungar, Mark
IN LATIN AMERICA, THE COMBINATION OF DEMOCRATIZATION,
NEOLIBERALISM, AND record crime rates has converged to spur such a
phenomenal growth in private security that private security guards now
outnumber public police officers in nearly every country. Although
governments and scholars alike have recognized this growth, there has
been very little concerted study of its causes, patterns, and impact. In
particular, the issues and conditions of citizen security in countries
around the world today mask the extent to which private security has
become a part of state and society. This article will develop an
analytical framework to understand private security, focusing on Latin
America, which has experienced growth of every kind of private security.
It will first describe the extent of private security in the region,
discuss its main causes, develop a typology of firms, examine three case
studies, and highlight its long-term impact.
The Phenomenon in Numbers
Since the 1980s, the number of private security firms has grown
exponentially in every region of the world, with expansion estimated at
between seven and nine percent in the industrialized countries and about
11% in developing regions such as Latin America, Africa, and Asia
(Frigo, 2003: 2). Every Latin American country has experienced such
growth. Even in Chile and Costa Rica--the region's two safest
countries--the private security sector has grown at an annual rate of
about nine to 10% respectively. (1) Though this growth began in the
1980s, most Latin American firms are less than 10 years old. In the
Dominican Republic, for example, 47 of the 98 firms registered in the
year 2000 were formed since the mid-1990s (Diaz, 2001: 40; Mata, 2004).
And while most firms have fewer than 100 employees, an estimated 320
have over 1,000 (Ibid.: 3). As Table 1 below indicates, the larger
countries in the region have hundreds of thousands of private security
officers, and the smaller ones have tens of thousands. Together, there
are approximately 1.6 million registered employees in Latin America,
with probably some two million more working informally or illegally.
The constant turnover, tenuous finances, and off-the-books hiring
in this sector make such statistics unreliable. High bankruptcy rates
resulting from small profit margins and high-interest loans make the
number of firms particularly hard to track. Since the bulk of most
firms' budgets go to salary, which must be paid regularly, late
payment by a major client can push them over the edge. As a result,
estimates of the number of firms in many countries vary wildly. For
instance, in the 1990s Guatemala had an estimated 15,000 private
security officers, but by 2007 estimates ranged from 80,000 to 200,000.
(2) Mexico has only 322 private security firms on the federal registry,
about 3,000 private security firms in the Federal District, 6,000 in the
Mexico City area, and about 1,400 more offering services in two or more
states. Estimates of the number of officers range from 140,000
(Economist, January 27, 2007: 33), about 70% of whom are former state
police officers, (3) to 450,000, with some 600,000 unregistered ones.
Changing demands and services make the size of the industry
difficult to determine and control. When the industry began, most firms
provided general services, but increasing sophistication and
segmentation have made them the exception. Just as client demand rose
for integration--bundling a range of services--the open markets of
globalization allowed a few multinational firms to capture a large share
of the Latin American market, among them Securitas, Group 4 Securicor
(operating in 100 countries, including 22 in Latin America and the
Caribbean), Chubb, and Prosegur. In Nicaragua, Wackenhut controls 10% of
the private security sector. Only a few firms in Latin America, based in
Mexico and Brazil, approach the scale of these large firms.
A Typology of Firms
Efforts to identify and understand private security firms have
fallen behind their growth due to their uncertain ownership and shady
practices, but also because of the lack of agreement over what
constitutes a private security enterprise. To form a definition to serve
as the foundation of analysis, this article develops a typology of
private security firms based on two key dimensions. The first is
mission. The stated and unstated services of non-state agencies range
from protection of a specific property to open-ended and usually
self-appointed mandates to maintain public order. As economies expand
and diversify, so do the services offered by private firms. Such
services can be classified into four main categories. One is technical
and physical, such as alarm installation, physical reinforcement of
buildings, fabrication of locks, new lighting, closed-circuit TV, and
provision of firearms. A second is control of physical access, such as
gated communities, security during big events, control or administration
of prisons, extra security in tourist areas, and checking identity at
financial institutions. A third area is training, consulting, and
information services, such as risk assessment, computer security, guard
training, transport trucks and personnel, media relations, and personal
investigation. A fourth, more specialized area is emergencies or
high-risk situations such as kidnapping, political crises, and VIP
protection.
The second dimension is the level of state involvement, ranging
from police departments that provide security for private firms to
completely autonomous and clandestine groups. Amid the industry's
growth, the private and public security spheres have increasingly
overlapped, with public officials acquiring business interests in
private firms, oversight by state agencies becoming corrupted, and
public security monies going to private use. In many countries, private
firms are often hired by--and are probably formed with the express
intent to service--local governments. Peru has a national police, for
example, but wealthy municipalities in the capital of Lima, such as
Miraflores and San Isidro, also hire private security firms. Together,
these two dimensions help to capture the complexity of private security
in Latin America and other regions.
Though most firms occupy the middle of both dimensions, certain
typologies show the direction in which the sector is expanding--and
indicate some of the impacts.
1. High State Control and Narrow Mission: Police Moonlighting. In
many countries, police work off hours on their own or through state
contracts to provide security for private properties such as banks. Even
during working hours, as in countries like Ecuador, the police will
charge private entities and individuals for security services. In
Mexico's Federal District, some 70,000 police officials are
assigned primarily to private interests, while only 30,000 are assigned
to public functions.
2. High State Control and Broad Mission: Community Policing Units.
One of the biggest and most promising citizen security reforms around
the world is community policing. Intended to shift policing from the
traditional response to incidents of crime toward a more preventive
approach based on citizen involvement, community policing is made up of
programs such as citizen security councils, protection for vulnerable
populations, and neighborhood watch groups. Such programs are state run,
but as the case of Bolivia shows, they often become more attached to
private interests in their target areas. Since many of the elected
neighborhood councils or police units responsible for community policing
are weak, the programs often become dominated or controlled by local
businesses, cliques of powerful residents, or even drug trafficking and
other organized criminal networks.
3. High Private Control and Narrow Mission: Gated Communities. Most
private security fits the general characterization of agencies that
compete in the marketplace to provide security to private interests with
no state connection beyond legal regulations. The most rapidly growing
sectors here consist of firms guarding the entrances and common areas of
gated communities. These areas primarily feature middle- and high-income
residences, with well-known examples such as Rio de Janeiro's
wealthy gated beach-front communities. Their growing appeal has
witnessed their spread to less affluent and other residential areas,
such as urban high-rises and massive new construction projects. The
unprecedented growth of such communities in many cities parallels the
growth of private security. In Mexico City, for example, about 750 gated
communities with about 50,000 housing units were formed between 1990 and
2001 (Parnreiter, 2002).
4. High Private Control and Broad Mission: Most starkly exhibiting
how private security fills the vacuum of state control is the phenomenon
of vigilantism. Vigilante actions by gangs, death squads, private
militias, and other groups have long existed in Latin America, but they
are now embedded in the region's democratic regimes. The number of
lynchings, and the justifications for them, have risen dramatically
since the mid-1990s, even when taking account of better documentation,
with about 6,000 killings each year in Latin America (Johnson, 2004). In
Guatemala, for example, where 75% of the population supported lynchings
(Godoy, 2006: 2), the United Nations documented 482 lynchings between
the end of the civil war in 1996 and 2002 (Seider, 2004:81), mostly in
areas with the smallest police presence, though not the highest crime
rates. Often with the support or collusion of police officers, most
vigilante actions are carried out by citizens, from spontaneous
gatherings to organized "committees." The targets of such
attacks have also expanded, from suspected criminals and
"immoral" individuals to state officials such as police
officers and mayors, in countries such as Mexico and Peru.
The Sources of Growth
Of the many sources for the expansion of private security in these
different dimensions, the four examined here are closely related and
best explain this phenomenon: crime, criminal policy and law, state
restructuring, and social change. As crime rises, criminal policy
increasingly focuses on crackdowns, which while popular lack a real
long-term impact, partly because the restructuring of contemporary Latin
American states through budget cuts and decentralization reduce their
capacity to enact and implement effective policies. Instead of filling
the gap with more coherent responses, societies that are becoming more
unequal, fragmented, and fearful of certain sectors turn to private
security options that further undercut criminal policy and state
capacity.
Crime. A 41% rise in homicides in the 1990s has made Latin America
the world's deadliest region. (15) Its homicide rate in 2003 was 19
per 100,000 people, compared to six in the U.S. and fewer than four in
Western Europe. Others estimate the regional rate since 2000 to be 27.5
in Latin America, compared to 8.8 in the rest of the world (Cruz, n.d.).
Each year, about 140,000 Latin Americans are murdered, 80,000 minors are
killed by violence, and 54 families are robbed every minute (Carrion,
2003: 51). One of three Latin American citizens has been victimized by
violence, and murder is the second cause of death for people between the
ages of 15 and 25. Even in Costa Rica, by most measures the safest
country in Latin America, homicides have risen by 30% (Mora, 2006: 5).
Of the world's 10 most dangerous countries, half are in Latin
American: El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and Honduras. Crime
is more frequent and more of it is violent. In 1990, 16% of the crimes
against property in Venezuela were violent, in contrast to 46.2% in
2002. Facing such high crime rates with little expectation of
improvement, citizens turn to private alternatives to protect themselves
and their property.
Criminal Policy and Law. Under pressure to bring down crime rates
during their limited time in office, executives often respond with an
iron fist (mano dura) based on mass arrests and incarceration. Because
the needed training or preventive policies are lacking, however, such
actions have little long-term impact. Police have increasing discretion
in making arrests, but cases do not hold up in court due to failures in
collecting evidence or protecting witnesses. Most police action
concentrates on misdemeanors. In Guatemala, where police evaluations are
based on the number of detentions, 80% are for noncriminal acts--while
serious crimes remain uninvestigated (USAID, 2005: 2). Most detentions
in the region are based on edicts that allow officers to arrest people
based on behavior as vague and subjective as suspicion of criminal
intent or for identity checks. Aside from neglecting the causes of
crime, such actions antagonize citizens and increase the appeal of
private alternatives. Moreover, they clog up the courts and prisons,
where an average of 70% of incarcerated persons have not been sentenced.
A revolving door of public security officials makes it difficult
for governments to take the difficult but necessary steps to overhaul
security policy. As in any country, ministers are appointed and
dismissed according to the needs and perceptions surrounding the issues
they oversee. Because of the volatility of citizen security, interior
ministers and their staffs--responsible for police and security in most
of Latin America--rotate in office with an unsettling frequency. As a
result, many ministers avoid change altogether because they anticipate a
short spell in office or do not wish to run the risk of failed plans or
antagonizing the police. The problem of rotating ministers is compounded
by changes in ministerial affiliation. Control over the police is often
transferred, e.g., from the interior to justice ministries, or the
ministries are eliminated or downsized.
State Restructuring. The budget reductions, decentralization, and
privatization at the center of Latin American state policy since the
1990s have opened up a large space for private security firms. Although
leftist governments have begun to reverse this trend, the region's
states have been fundamentally altered. Decentralization has led to a
proliferation of police forces along three lines: breaking up the
national police into provincial and municipal agencies, a functional
division of police into specialized units, and the growth of units and
offices within each police force. As confusion is sewn due to the
overlapping jurisdictions and authorities of these new agencies, the
easier and less problematic it is for private security companies to form
and blend in.
Multiple state services in Latin America have also been privatized,
including many connected to security. Peru, Argentina, and Chile, for
example, have opened up bids to private firms for the design,
construction, administration, and even security of prisons, often with
concessions for up to 25 years. Despite criticism and exposure of
financial links between state officials and the businesses being granted
contracts, such privatization is seen as the only feasible option left
for cash-strapped states confronted with losing control over
penitentiary systems that have deteriorated since the 1990s. Conditions
are characterized by inhuman overcrowding, massacres, organized crime,
and gang control. Many officials openly regard private forces as helpful
in filling security gaps. As Nicaragua's police high commissioner
remarked, the state failed to keep up as these firms grew from five in
1990 to 60 in 2003. Many of his meetings with their directors preceded
the passage of laws intended to regulate them.
Budget cuts have limited both salaries for law enforcement and
funding for the types of social programs--such as for youth
employment--known to prevent crime. In contrast to the authoritarian era
with its highly centralized police, many legislators now deliberately
refuse to increase police pay due to the bribes and other sources of
money officers use to supplement their incomes. Limited budgets have
also negatively affected enforcement or follow up on enacted laws. As
the case studies show below, almost every government has passed laws to
regulate private enterprises, while almost uniformly failing to provide
the resources or create the mechanisms to do so adequately. Such
problems extend to broader anticrime policies, such as community
policing, which most governments have also enacted without the required
training and monitoring. State weakness even extends to the
international level. As crime spills across borders in the form of drug
trafficking and youth gangs, countries realizing the need for
cooperation, but lacking a capacity for action, have opened doors for
private security. For example, a transnational security firm performed
counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics actions from a U.S.-controlled
military base in Ecuador.
Social Changes. Among the many positive changes within Latin
American society in the current era of democratization are greater
participation and activism. At the same time, three negative changes
have stimulated private security. The first is inequality. The Gini
coefficient (the basic measure of inequality, using a scale of zero to
100, with zero representing perfect equality) of every Latin American
country surpasses the world average of 40, with some as high as 60. The
richest five percent of Latin Americans receive 25% of the national
income, while the poorest 30% receive only 7.5% (IADB, 1998:11). Many
analysts directly link inequality with homicide. Soares (2004) and
Concha-Eastman (2003) conclude that a one percent increase in the Gini
coefficient "automatically produces" a 1.5% increase in
homicide. Yet inequality fosters private security as well as crime: as
society becomes more divided along class lines, the rich are more eager
and more able to buy their own security.
Fear, a less measurable but in many ways more pervasive trait of
modern Latin American society, has deepened the rifts of inequality.
Latin American cities, which exhibit far higher crime rates than the
national average, are being redefined by fear of crime. Daily lives and
decisions, from transport routes to work schedules, center on this fear
as people avoid entire areas of their cities and fortify their homes
with firearms, alarms, window bars, and dogs. The many families unable
to afford such forms of protection make sure that someone is at home at
all times, reducing their earning power while adding to inequality. In
rural areas, with their greater scarcity of police, fear and
intimidation have risen along with private security. In Guatemala, for
example, many of the kidnappings, disappearances, threats, and killings
of farm workers have been attributed to the private security operations
of farm owners. The defeat of arms control propositions at the ballot
box--mainly by arguments that such laws would leave all weapons in the
hands of criminals--is further testament to citizen fear and the
inability to take collective public action against it.
A third social change is citizens' response to the state,
rooted in the history of public security and police power in Latin
America. In the colonial era, most police forces were ad hoc militias
geared to maintaining social order. That pattern accelerated in the
civil strife that marked the first decades of independence, when most
police agencies were controlled by regional strongmen (caudillos) to
suppress opposition and fight rivals. Professional civilian police were
established as civil wars wound down in the mid-1800s, but governments
failed to make the needed investments to ensure standards and
efficiency. As in most other countries, real police modernization in
Latin America occurred in the 20th century. Unlike the U.S. and Europe,
though, it was undertaken primarily by authoritarian regimes to
integrate police forces into highly repressive security apparatuses.
Part of the regional democratization in the 1980s and 1990s, of course,
was a rejection of the state power associated with that repression. So
while the current wave in private security reflects current conditions,
it is also rooted in societal rejection of unchecked centralized state
power. Private security is also a solution that harks back to the
historical norm of many forces controlled by different actors.
Case Studies
To understand these dimensions of private security, this
article's analytic framework will be applied to Honduras,
Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina. It will be shown how private security
spans the region and thrives in contrasting conditions, from
underdeveloped regions like Central America and poor countries in Andes,
to high-income oil producers and industrialized regions such as the
Southern Cone.
Honduras: As in many countries around the world, Honduras
demonstrates how private security flourishes in conditions of high
crime, poverty, and inequality. Yet it also shows how a weak state and
tough criminal policy combine to allow legal and illegal private
alternatives to take root. Aside from the many private security firms in
Honduras, citizen groups and youth gangs (maras) have taken control of
security in many areas of the country.
Of the legal private firms in Honduras, 116 have registered with
the Unit of Registration and Control of Private Security Enterprises
(under the police), while 36 were formed by individual businesses and
another 32 by colonias (large neighborhoods). Laws and regulations to
monitor private security include mandatory registration, with a fee of
100,000 lempiras (a little over U.S.$5,000), and a report on their
inventory of arms. The government of Manual Zelaya, elected in 2005, is
taking additional steps to regulate private security, (16) by creating a
commission to register more firms, as well as making plans to enforce
the prohibition of automatic weapons and to restrict possession of other
weapons as needed, such as one per officer.
Despite the 2007 Law of Transparency and Access to Public
Information, the government refuses to comment on why many firms
operating around the country remain unregistered and are able to obtain
illegal weapons such as AK-47s, M-16s, and Uzi-22s. The Association of
Firms of Security and Private Investigation of Honduras (ASEMSIPH)
estimates that there are up to 400 firms in the country, with nearly
70,000 employees--only about 20,000 of whom work for the 189 registered
firms (Palacios, 2007). Many of these private firms are known as
"suitcase businesses" because they have no fixed address and
do not make public the names of their owners, how they select and train
personnel, the kinds and sources of their weapons, or their budgets,
beyond what they pay for salaries and for weapons.
Such loose control is predicated upon the tacit approval of private
and citizen groups seeking to compensate for a weak state's losing
battle against a relentlessly high incidence of crime--in particular,
the maras that terrorize much of the country and are blamed almost
entirely for violent crime. The two dominant maras, Barrio 18 and Mara
Salvatrucha (MS-13), (17) with 30,000 to 100,000 members between them,
control security across wide swaths of Honduras, "taxing"
businesses, robbing public buses, and increasingly profiting from the
international drug traffic. The perceived failure (more accurately, the
failure to adequately support) security reforms during the democratic
transition of the late 1990s, such as a civilianized police with
accountability controls, led to a turn to la mano dura. Along with
private security companies with ties to former and current military or
police officials, neighborhood watch groups such as Citizen Security
Councils acted tacitly in conjunction with police crackdowns on youth
and other sectors associated with crime. Criticism of such action was
addressed partly by the 2002 national community policing program,
Comunidad Mds Segura (CMS), which introduced citizen security councils,
greater police autonomy, and educational programs in some of the
country's most violent areas. Although crime has fallen in CMS
areas, the role of police and citizens differs in each one. In colonias
in the city of Danli and the Sula Valley, a high level of citizen
involvement has improved security without an increase in abuses. (18) In
the Caribbean city of La Ceiba, however, the head of the neighborhood
CMS group reported that it is used to attack local delinquents. (19) In
the San Pedro Sula Valley colonia of Rivera Hernandez, the police
officer heading the CMS program was arrested for complicity in death
squad killings of suspected mara members. (20) Thus, even with more
preventative state policies, Honduras continues to depend on non-state
private security units and actions to make up for its own incapacities.
Venezuela: Private security in Venezuela is estimated to have grown
by 509%, tripling in the country and quintupling in cities like Caracas
(Sanjuan, 2003). In response to a 58% increase in firearms killings,
(21) the 2002 Disarmament Law was enacted to provide economic incentives
to turn in private arms, which number some 600,000 in the Federal
District alone (El Universal, April 20, 2002: 1-4). However, it involves
little of the cooperation with community groups that is needed to
collect those weapons. Since passage of Venezuela's 1989
Decentralization Law, the number of police forces has risen from a few
dozen to well over 100, including 15 in the Federal District. When Hugo
Chavez rose to power, one of the aims was to assume control over the
police, particularly the many agencies in the hands of mayors who were
part of, or allied with, the opposition. In that effort, Chavez fostered
the Circulos Bolivarianos, which began to form in early 2001 in response
to his call for citizen groups to lobby the central bureaucracy and to
circumvent state agencies. These groups, with over two million members,
are well organized and exist in most of the neighborhoods in the
country. When Venezuela's 1939 Law of Vagabonds and Crooks was
declared unconstitutional in 1997, the police stepped up detentions
based on checking identification.
In Venezuela, newspaper and police reports reveal an increase in
lynchings, rising from only a few each year in 1995--when 57% of
respondents favored the practice in nationwide poll (22)--to one nearly
every week since 1997. (23) Since 1998, rights groups have documented
hundreds of killings by vigilante groups--such as those organized
"to eliminate supposed delinquents." (24) Such actions are
most common in the city's poor barrios, such as 23 de Enero, where
the formation of about 40 private security groups has accelerated the
deterioration and politicization of public order in Venezuela. One of
the oldest self-proclaimed security groups in that barrio is the
"Tupamaros" (named after the leftist Uruguayan guerrillas of
the 1970s). The principal group comprising the Tupamaros, La Esperanza Viva (Living Hope), was officially established as a social work
organization; the state funds it received were channeled into phantom
nongovernmental organizations. Gradually, it became involved in both
crime and law enforcement, and was accused of pressuring young residents
to sell drugs, killing others who interfered, and murdering alleged
delinquents in the name of crime fighting. Although some residents have
denounced such actions, in the face of high crime rates and uncertainty
most fear or support the Tupamaros. William, one young resident,
described the group's anticrime actions approvingly. When some
members witnessed a robbery, for example, they "tied up the
[alleged robber], poured gasoline on him, and lit a fire." They
applied similar methods to someone "taking crack in front of
children. They warned him two times to stop. The third time they ...
took him to the roof of [his] building and threw him off." (25)
Similar groups have spread throughout the city's other
barrios. Although most are small, many have up to 100 members and are
often well armed. Before Chavez's election, police had regarded
these groups as criminal; now they are tolerated or, say critics,
actively supported by the government as a paramilitary network used to
maintain control and identify government opponents. The lack of arrests
for illegal activities connected to these groups, such as the defacement and destruction of property belonging to media outlets and business
organizations opposed to Chavez, supports that assertion--and further
demonstrates the extent of security privatization in Venezuela. Some
even formed their own political party, such as the Tupamaros, which
dissolved in 2007 to join Chavez's all-encompassing socialist
party.
Bolivia: Bolivia demonstrates the strong connection between public
and private spheres in two overlooked ways: the use of police officers
by private interests and the private use of public security funds. As in
other countries, police chiefs often assign their officers to private
concerns, many of which are owned by police officials (Quintana, 2003:
28), and it is common for police officers to supplement their low
salaries (which can be as little as $170 per month) with off-hours work
for private business. Unlike other countries, Bolivia officially
provides private security through the National Police's Battalion
of Private Physical Security (Batallon de Seguridad Fisica Privada).
Until they went on strike in January 2007 to demand full integration
into the force and to receive corresponding salaries, the
Battalion's 7,000 officers lacked police uniforms and official
status. This lack of professional recognition, and the practice of
renting out officers, are rooted in part in the two-tiered division of
the Bolivian police into commissioned and sub-commissioned officers of
lower ranks. Drawn mainly from the country's poor indigenous
majority, they have little professional security or access to means of
resolving grievances.
Despite being crowded out of the market by the police private
battalion, and even having gone on strike to protest the licensing fee
of 20,000 Bolivianos, private firms have grown in number at a steady
clip. About 100 have formed since 2000 in La Paz; the second biggest
city, Santa Cruz, has about 22 such agencies, and Cochabamba over 60,
fewer than 20 of which belong to the Security Enterprise Association.
Officials and analysts alike agree that the actual number is much
higher, estimating that 30% of the population use private agencies
(Garcia Soruco, 2003). Given the lack of formal regulations until 2002,
the government has been unable to accurately document or oversee these
businesses.
While the status of and debate over the private security battalion
is public, other aspects of private security in Bolivia are less
transparent. As in other countries, a less well-known aspect is
financial. In Bolivia, the details of police control over its own
finances are "not known," even to the top echelon of the
government ministry. (26) The Battalions in the departments (the
country's nine regional provinces) of La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa
Cruz, Tarija Sucre, and Oruro are notorious for their corruption. A
larger source of unaccountable income is found in centralized police
units such as the Identification Office, which each year charges
citizens to issue, renew, and replace about 18 million drivers'
licenses, ID cards, fines, registrations, firearms licenses,
certificates of good conduct, and other documents. The police do not
make public the income it derives from the documents. According to
government records, however, the police take in about a million dollars
each year from the 384,000 persons who apply for a new ID or replace a
lost one. Each year in La Paz alone, approximately 230,400 people--six
of every 10 residents--lose their ID card and go to the Identification
Office for a new one. Most of this money ends up in the Police
Benevolence Society (Musepol: Mutual del Seguro Policial), a private
entity that supports approximately 6,000 retired officers, the Police
Housing Council (Covipol: El Consejo de Vivienda Policial), and the
Mutual Cooperation Society (Mucupol: Mutual de Cooperativas de la
Policia). Although nominally public, these three offices are run as
private entities without public disclosures of budgets or operations.
As in Honduras and other countries, another dimension of private
security in Bolivia is community policing, which has been based on a
series of ad hoc laws. The 1994 Popular Participation Law formed
Vigilance Committees and community security forums, for example, while
the Participatory Vigilance Program of 2002 formed 9,000 "Lookout
Pairs"; the National Citizen Security System Law formed citizen
councils at the national, departmental, and provincial (the jurisdiction
under the department) levels. Political instability and a lack of
funding condemned most of these programs to short lives, though, and
those that did survive were co-opted by local police and citizens. Two
of those are the Support and Citizen Cooperation Patrol (PAC: Patrulla
de Auxilio y Cooperacion Ciudadana), set up in 1994 to focus on security
problems such as youth delinquency and drug addiction, and the Group of
Civilian Support for the Police (GACIP: Grupo de Apoyo Civil a la
Policia), comprised of powerful citizens who act with police
authorization to provide local search and rescue services. Run by
specially trained police, GACIP and PAC have been criticized for rights
abuses and for serving the interests of local politicians and police
commissioners. (27)
El Alto, a poor, high-crime city made up mainly of indigenous
immigrants from rural areas, embodies both the potential and danger of
such quasi-state security groups. Armed Self-Defense Brigades emerged
from the city mainly during the protests that toppled the government in
October 2003. Directors of the city's 562 neighborhood councils
were urged to form these brigades to fight state repression and oppose
the killings of local leaders. One leader urged the brigades'
volunteer citizens to "make Molotov cocktails and explosive booby traps." (28) A more pacific alternative in El Alto has been the
community justice councils, centers, and forums that have proliferated
in Bolivia since the mid-1990s through laws to augment decentralized
local administrative and juridical autonomy and indigenous legal norms.
Communities in El Alto have taken advantage of these laws to form a wide
range of judicial security councils, which have enjoyed popular support
because they use indigenous customs and are fast. Most of the disputes
they handle center around charges of violence, with serious crimes such
as rape and murder reported to the judicial police, which in turn can
recognize forum procedures to resolve them. But council sanctions often
violate national law--such as through illegal seizure of private
property and even the death penalty (29)--causing a clash with the
police and courts. The combination of high levels of violence and loose
supervision has led some forums to become channels for vigilantism. In
fact, some groups of justice council members use whistles to alert each
other to the presence of "criminals," who they then beat up or
kill. Advocates of such violence remain the exception, but forms of
private security in Bolivia will be the rule as long as the gap left by
the state needs to be filled.
Argentina: Wealthier than most Latin American countries, Argentina
has many of the highly professional private security agencies that are
common in the U.S. and Europe. Yet its higher crime rate and weaker
decentralized state have also led to a proliferation of less-accountable
firms and greater government reliance on them. Private security began to
appear in the early 1970s, when there were 30 registered firms with
about 20,000 officers. The involvement of two private agencies in the
highly publicized 1997 killing of national photojourualist, Jose Luis
Cabezas, prompted a 1999 law to begin to regulate these firms. There are
now 220 members of the Argentina Chamber of Security Firms (CAESI:
Camara Argentina de Empresas de Seguridad), which estimates that the
sector earned two billion U.S. dollars in 2006 and is growing at an
annual rate of five percent (others say it is closer to 10%). Private
security officially employs about 150,000 people, with another 200,000
not registered with CAESI. The sector also has a heavy foreign presence,
particularly by U.S. firms such as Trident Investigative Services, which
is partly owned by Oliver North (the colonel involved in the Iran-Contra
scandal of the 1980s) and whose South American operations are managed in
part by ex-military officials linked to rights abuses in the 1980s.
The central role of private security is clearest in Buenos Aires
province, home to one-third of the country's population and the
site of its highest crime rates. It has 840 private security agencies
with 42,000 employees--as many as there are officials in the provincial
police force--though most estimates put the number of private officers
in the province at 70,000, with 20,000 of them working illegally and
10,000 as independent contractors. (30) The 15 inspectors at the
province's inspection office conducted 550 inspections in 2004, 90%
of which exposed some kind of irregularity. Nevertheless, the province
has become increasingly reliant on private security to make up for its
own security shortfalls. In December 2006, for example, the provincial
legislature passed a law allowing only private security to guard bars
and nightclubs--primarily, many say, because of the high levels of
corruption accompanying police duty to such businesses. Such legislation
is rooted in the 1999 regulatory law, which was designed to have private
security collaborate in crime prevention.
Residences in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area (the federal
capital city of Buenos Aires and its surroundings) are also increasingly
relying on private security or off-the-books payment to the police.
Tenants in many middle-class buildings, for example, pool money to pay
local officers for basic protection. Many residences hire private firms
or were originally built with private security as a main draw. About 80%
of the 450 suburban gated communities in Buenos Aires were formed
beginning in 1995 (Janoschka, 2002), while urban gated residences, known
as garden towers, house up to 600,000 people. Between 1991 and 2001, up
to 90% of new urban housing and single detached suburban homes were
connected to gated communities, comprising over 10% of the suburban
share and about 25% of upper-income residences (Ibid.). In the federal
capital, the majority of the 70,000 officers under the Public Security
Secretariat are assigned to paid private law enforcement (Vidal Mendez,
2003). Although violent crime is relatively low in Buenos Aires, and has
been gradually declining since 2003, audacious crimes such as armed
robberies of crowded restaurants keep public fear of crime high. Given
the general consensus that such crimes are possible only with police
collusion, more businesses--particularly services such as markets,
stores, and restaurants--are turning to the city's many private
firms. (31)
Similar trends can be seen throughout the country. In Corrientes
Province, an estimated 62 firms have about 4,000 agents, only 10% of
whom are legally registered. (32) Though some provinces have a civilian
office to monitor private security, many of them, like Corrientes, give
that responsibility to the police. In many cases, psychological and
physical exams--and even a criminal record check--are neglected. In La
Rioja Province, low salaries--just $250 a month for street police and
around $400 for a sub-commissioner--compel most officers to work an
extra 80 to 90 hours for banks and other private business. (33) Wineries
in the Andes region pay a large sum--the equivalent of 55,000 bottles
each year--in security (Andes Wines, 2007). In Mendoza, the main
wine-producing province, citizens have also turned to private security,
leading to a 60% increase in firms between 1994 and 1997 (Repetto,
2002). In 1999, a violent strike by police in Mendoza was triggered in
part by demands for higher pay and for an end to their protection of
banks and private businesses. A 1999 security overhaul prompted by this
strike produced little improvement, leading to the iron fist and more
private security. In 2007, Governor Julio Cobos proposed tough
provisions, such as wiretapping, declaring that "we are going to
privilege life over the laws" and put "limits on rights"
to combat crime. Cobos has gone through five security ministers during
four years in office--weakening state capacity--but has signed an
agreement of cooperation with the Association of Private Security
Agencies (Carvajal, 2007). Among those asked to work on his
"anticrime plan" was Aconcagua S.A., a private agency headed
in part by an intelligence official who worked in the Mendoza police
headquarters between 1973 and 1981, where a secret detention center was
located that "disappeared" hundreds of people. (34)
Impacts and Consequences
The impacts of private security in Latin America extend from
everyday protection to the nature of the region's democracies.
Various safety risks are involved. Though most of the managers and
guards in private firms come from state security bodies, the insatiable
demand for private security has meant that increasing numbers of new
hires lack relevant experience. No guarantee exists that former or
current police officers will be reliable and safe. Yet those with no
security background (who were unqualified to join or were kicked off the
police force) will probably receive minimal training from firms
operating on slim profit margins that are not legally required to offer
it (or can skirt this responsibility due to lack of enforcement).
Latin American democracy is affected because governments, having
invited private security firms to fill gaps in public capacity, then
face a level of private proliferation that calls into question the
state's control. States that have scaled down their security
services in neighborhood, prisons, borders, and other areas often cede
both capacity and legitimacy. Privately run prisons and community
policing programs may be more efficient and even more tolerant
alternatives, but without clear and enforceable standards, they are
increasingly likely to respond to non-state interests. Diminished state
capacity to reassert authority undermines the legitimacy and relevance
of state programs and laws among citizens. With citizens'
confidence in the ability of democracy to resolve problems already low,
such trends risk real deterioration and destabilization.
Most private security firms fall in the middle of the typology
posited in this article, and their impacts range from daily actions to
national democracy. The four case studies show that private security is
shaping Latin America through the economic power of private firms, the
private use of public money, and, amid growing inequality and fear, the
spread of gated communities and vigilante actions.
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Centroamerica, advierte la ONU." El Mundo (May 26).
Mata, Atalo 2004 "Nuevo direccion de control de empresas de
seguridad privada." Es Mas, in Noticieros Televisa. At
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Centro de Asesoramiento Social y Desarrollo Legal 1998 Justicia
Comunitaria, Vol. 4: Las Zonas Urbano Marginales de la Paz y Cochabamba.
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NOTES
(1.) The Costa Rican figure is based on an estimated 50% rate of
growth since 2002. Source: Alberto Li Chan, Police Commissioner; AI, San
Jose de Costa Rica, June 19, 2006.
(2.) The lower estimate is by Otto Perez Molina, a military general
specializing in intelligence, who was an architect of the 1996 Peace
Accords and a 2007 presidential candidate; Author Interviews, June 19,
2007; June 19, 2007; the higher estimate is from "Impunity
Rules," The Economist (November 18, 2006: 41).
(3.) Niels Uildriks and Nelia Tello, "Mexico's Unrule of
Law: Human Rights and Police Reform under Fox," unpublished
manuscript, Utrecht University: 196.
(4.) The federal government lists 712 different firms (at
www.seguridadprivada.com.ar/).
(5.) Only in the three main cities: Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and La
Paz.
(6.) See Arrivillaga (2003).
(7.) Alberto Li Chan, Police Commissioner; AI, San Jose de Costa
Rica, June 19, 2006.
(8.) See Diaz (2001: 40; 2004).
(9.) Das (2005: 248).
(10.) Carrion (2003: 75).
(11.) Das (2005: 265).
(12.) Lainez (2007).
(13.) According to 2003 estimates.
(14.) Harvard Law School Faculty and the Universidad de Columbia
del Paraguay, La Seguridad en el Paraguay: Analisis y respuestas
comparadas (May 2007).
(15.) Centro de Noticias OPS/OMS Bolivia. "Mueren unos 80,000
menores al ano por violencia en la region" [about 80,000 minors die
annually from violence in the region] (November 17, 2006); the Health
Situation Analysis Program of the Pan American Health Organization,
1997; United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute,
"Criminal Victimization in the Developing World" (Publication
55; Rome: United Nations, 1995).
(16.) Author Interview, Alvaro Romero, Minister of Security, July
13, 2006. The General Office of Special Preventive Services (DGSEP), a
unit of the Security Secretary (Direccion General de Servicios
Especiales Preventivos de la Secretaria de Seguridad), runs the
penitentiary system, administers juvenile detention facilities, and
oversees private security.
(17.) Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13), which originated in Los Angeles,
has an estimated 100,000 members in 33 U.S. states, as well as in Mexico
and Central America.
(18.) In the San Pedro Sula barrio of Choloma, for example, a
decline in the murder and robbery rates can be attributed in part to
social programs developed at community policing committee meetings.
Author Interviews, Community policing meeting in Choloma (February 19,
2004). The area had nine murders in January 2002, but only four per
month in the first four months of 2003; there were 17 robberies in
January 2002, but none in the first four months of 2003.
"Presidente Maduro inangura programa 'Comunidad Segura'
en Choloma, Cortes" (May 3, 2003); at www.casapresidencial.hn/
seguridad. Danli's community policing actually originated from
citizen protests against the police instead of through the national
program.
(19.) Author Interview, Celeo Santo Sosa; Colonia of Confite, La
Ceiba (February 25, 2004).
(20.) Author Interview with Inspector Oscar Gamez, head of the CMA in Rivera Hernandez, one of the country's most violent
neighborhoods, who was acclaimed for his role, but later arrested in
connection with a killing (February 18, 2004). Gamez says that private
officers can use 12-calibre and 38 specials.
(21.) "Asesinadas 30 personas en el mes de Octubre,"
Ultimas Noticias (November 7, 2002: 20).
(22.) El Nacional (Caracas, March 14, 1995); El Diario de Caracas
(March 15, 1995: 2).
(23.) Ultimas Noticias, 1995 through 2000; coverage of crime in
this newspaper is detailed and accurate.
(24.) There were 164 between October 2000 and September 2001
(Informe Anual, 2001-2002, Programa Venezolano de Educacion-Aecion en
Derechos Humanos, PROVEA; El Nacional, March 12, 1997: D-17; El
Informador, June 11, 1998: A-5).
(25.) Author Interview, Caracas, February 2003.
(26.) Author Interviews, Alfonso Ferrufino, former interior
minister, December 16, 2004; retired police official Jose Arancibia
Mollinedo, December 15, 2004.
(27.) "En procura de policia vecinal," La Paz/ANF.
(28.) Indymedia, "FEJUVE Instruye Crear Brigada de
Autodefensa" (October 17, 2003).
(29.) Author Interviews, El Alto neighborhood council meetings,
August 2000 and December 2004.
(30.) "En la Provincia de Buenos Aires, solo los agentes de
seguridad privada podran custodiar boliches y bares," Clarin
(December, 22, 2006); Diario Zona Oeste, at www.la-gente.com.ar.
(31.) Private personnel in the city are paid up to 50% more than
state police are. Sources: Roberto Sausa, president, Seguridad Magnum;
Author Interview, October 24, 1994; CAESI and the Union del Personal de
Seguridad (UPSRA), La Nacion (November 6, 1994: 3).
(32.) "Aumentan las empresas fantasmas de seguridad
privada," Servicio de Informacion de Seguridad (April 28, 2007),
SIS online at www.sisonline.com/noticias.
(33.) Author Interviews, police officials in La Rioja, August 2005
and February 2006.
(34.) E-mail correspondence, Pablo Salinas; Pdgina 12 (May 13
2007), Carlos Rodriguez, "Mendoza Convoca a Agencias Cuestionadas
por sus Directivos La Seguridad a Manos de Represores."
MARK UNGAR is Associate Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn
College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and of Criminal
Justice in CUNY's Doctoral Program in Criminal Justice (email:
MUngar@brooklyn.cuny.edu). He has written and edited 30 articles, book
chapters, and books on policing, criminal justice, and human rights, and
is currently completing a book on citizen security reform in Latin
America. He has been an advisor on police reform with the United Nations
and governments in Bolivia, Argentina, Honduras, and Venezuela. He is
currently assembling a manual on community policing in Latin America,
and recently completed a project documenting prison conditions in the
region.
Table 1: Estimated Size of the Private Security Sector in Latin
America
Country Number of Firms
Registered Not
Argentina 712 (4)
Bolivia 100+ (5)
Brazil
Chile 800 (6)
Colombia
Costa Rica
Dominican 98 (8)
Republic
Ecuador (10) 200 100
El Salvador (11)
Guatemala
Honduras 116 284
Mexico 322 1,400
Nicaragua 60
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Uruguay
Venezuela
Country Estimated Number of Employees State
police
official
Official Unofficial
Argentina 75,000-150,000 80,000-200,000 By province
Bolivia 7,000 22,000
Brazil 580,000 1,000,000 By state
Chile 45,000 36,000
Colombia 190,000
Costa Rica 20,000 (7) 17,000
Dominican 20,000-30,000 27,000 (9)
Republic
Ecuador (10)
El Salvador (11) 25,000 (12) 20,257
Guatemala Combined: 80,000-200,000 20,000
Honduras 20,000 60,000 12,000
Mexico 140,000-450,000 600,000 By state
Nicaragua 9,000 (13) 7,000
Panama 16,000 11,000
Paraguay Combined: 45,000 (14) 15,000
Peru 50,000
Uruguay 21,300
Venezuela 75,000 By state
Table 2: A Typology of Private Security in Latin America
Control Mission
Property Public Order
State: Police moonlighting in community policing units
Private: Gated community firms; vigilante groupings
