SPEAKER: Katherine Saunders-Hasting, University College London
DATE: 7 June
TIME: 15.30-17.00, followed by drinks and snacks
ACTIVITY: CEDLA LECTURE
VENUE: CEDLA Room 2.02 (2nd floor)

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Gangs, extortion, migration: these are among the big stories that have dominated domestic public discourse in and international coverage of Central America’s Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in the 21st century. While the region’s once world-leading murder rates have declined significantly over the past decade, extortion—the core of the criminal economy of its notorious street gangs called ‘maras’—has expanded precipitously. It is now a billion-dollar industry affecting hundreds of thousands of people every year. 

 

This same criminal economy and the gangs behind it have also been displacing residents of the Northern Triangle within and beyond the borders of their countries. Many thousands have sought to claim asylum abroad on the basis of extortion, violence, and threats by gangs and the inability or unwillingness of their home states to protect them. However, criminal persecution fits poorly with existing international protection regimes, raising a need to further our understanding of the nexus between forced displacement and organized crime.

 

Drawing on a dozen years of longitudinal ethnographic research in Guatemala City, this talk explores the evolution of gang-run extortion economies, the ways residents of mara territories have sought to cope with them, and the complex relationship between gangs, extortion, and criminal displacement. 

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