Resocializing suffering - Neoliberalism, accusation, and the sociopolitical context of Guatemala's new violence

An ethnographic account of the putative shift away from state-sponsored violence and the emergence of new patterns of violence in postwar Guatemala challenges liberal political and moral models that narrowly interpret violence in terms of individual suffering and/or culpability. Such models converge with a resurgence of right-wing political activity. The origins and outcomes of violence are more usefully and accurately conceived in terms of structural and societal conditions. Guatemala's new violence ( e. g., crime, gang activity, and vigilantism) is not the chaos of media accounts but a manifestation of enduring legacies of state violence and the social and economic insecurities brought on by structural adjustment policies.