Facultad de Derecho

LATIN AMERICA CRIMINOLOGY FROM A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH

CRIMINOLOGÍA LATINOAMERICANA A PARTIR DE UN ENFOQUE POSTCOLONIAL

A CRIMINOLOGIA DA AMÉRICA LATINA: UMA ABORDAGEM PÓS-COLONIAL

María del Mar Gallegos*

Recibido: 15/10/2017

Aprobado: 10/12/2017

Abstract:



is article aims to encourage all those interested, to develop

según la posición del presente artículo, es en el derecho y

especialmente en la violencia que se vive en Latino Améri-

ca. Por ello, si lo que se pretende es prevenir y aminorar la

delincuencia, se debe incorporar teoría criminológica post-

colonial, además que con ello se estaría descolonizando el

pensamiento eurocéntrico.

theories adjusted to the reality of the Latin American context

regarding criminology. Principally, it advocates on the

analysis of criminology from a post-colonial perspective, in

order to understand the consequences of colonialism on both

the colonized and colonizer. Post-Colonialism maintains

that the process and structures of colonization continues

to have consequences for the dynamics of our time. is

article considers the law and in particular the violence that

Latin America experiences as examples of these colonial

consequences. Subsequently, if the intention is to prevent and

reduce crime, postcolonial criminological theory – one that

is also removed from Eurocentrism- must be incorporated

within our approaches.

Palabras clave: Criminología; Postcolonial; América

Latina; Crimen; Colonialismo; Descolonización

Resumo:

Esse artigo, tenta animar a todos aqueles interessados na

matéria, a desenvolver teorias ajustadas à realidade que nos

pertence. Principalmente incita a analisar a criminologia

desde uma perspectiva pós-colonial, isto é entender as

consequências do colonialismo tanto no colonizado

como no colonizador. O pós-colonialismo sustenta que os

processos de colonização continuam tendo consequências

nas dinâmicas de nossos dias, dos deles segundo a posição

do presente artigo, é no direito e especialmente na violência

que se vive na América Latina. Por isso, se o que se pretende é

prevenir e diminuir a delinquência se deve incorporar teoria

criminológica pós-colonial, uma vez que com essa ideia, se

estaria descolonizando o pensamento eurocêntrico.

Key words: Criminology; Postcolonial; LatinAmerica;

Crime; Colonialism; Decolonization

Resumen:

El presente artículo, intenta exhortar a todos aquellos in-

teresados en la materia, a desarrollar teorías ajustadas a la

realidad que nos atañe. Principalmente incita a analizar la

criminología desde una perspectiva postcolonial, esto es

entender las consecuencias del colonialismo tanto en el co-

lonizado como en el colonizador. El post colonialismo sos-

tiene que los procesos de colonización siguen teniendo con-

secuencias en las dinámicas de nuestros días, dos de ellos

Palavras chave: Criminologia; Pós-colonial; América

Latina; Crime; Colonialismo; Descolonização

*

Abogada, profesora de la Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias Políticas de la UDLA, cursa actualmente un Master en Criminología en la Universidad de

Melbourne.

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INTRODUCTION



e region of Latin America has long been

postcolonial theory emerges as a mean to give voice to

the oppressed colonized people. is approach has been

used in a variety of the disciplines among humanities;

however, criminology has tended to overlook it.

considered an area with high levels of violence and crime

with particularly high rates of thef , robbery as well as

homicide. roughout Latin America, criminological

studies have of en been undermined. Furthermore, even

less attention has been given to postcolonial theory as

a perspective to understand crime and violence within

the wider region.

e aim of this essay is to highlight the importance of

linking criminology studies with postcolonial theory so

that crime and violence in the Latin American region

can be better understood and analysed. It puts forward

many of the arguments by post-colonial scholars that

colonisation should not be viewed exclusively as an

historical event but a process with has ramiﬁcations still

today, particularly in relation to Latin Americas social

make up, crime and violence.

As Frantz Fanon said, “colonialism is neither a thinking

machine nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.

It is violence in its natural state and it will only yield

when confronted with greater violence” (Fanon, e

Wretched of the Earth, 1963, p. 61). Undoubtedly,

colonialism had powerful eﬀects on people and society

and has created social systems based on racism. It also

had impacts on the agenda of diﬀerent disciplines, such

as law and criminology, which were and still are tools of

knowledge and power.

Firstly,itsetsthecontextforthecurrentcrimeandviolence

in Latin America. Secondly, it locates post-colonial theory

analyses, the continued impact of colonialism within

colonised countries, namely in Latin America. ird, it

explores some of the biases found within criminology

as a result of colonialism. is includes rights and

law based approaches that have historically justiﬁed

colonialism. Finally, it recognises the importance of

being able to actively challenge and advance criminology

and in particular the dominant criminology within Latin

America and how a diﬀerent perspectives can be useful as

a tool for further inquiry into crime and violence within

the Latin American region.

Criminology is a discipline of enormous dimensions,

which employs a variety of prisms through. It examines

structures, narratives and images of power. erefore,

it is essential to broaden the scope of this discipline by

incorporating other approaches, such as Postcolonial

eory, which oﬀers an understanding of the direct and

indirect inﬂuences of colonisation on both colonized

and colonizer. From the af ermath of colonialism,



VIOLENCE IN LATIN AMERICA

“

Latin America is the world’s most violent place”,

visit due to fear. More surprisingly, seven out of ten

countries with the highest homicide rates in the world

are in Latin America as well as 46 out of the 50 cities

with the highest rates of homicide in the world are in

the region, including the top 16 (World Bank Group).

Also, the World Health Organization estimates that

violence is the leading cause of deaths in the region

within people between the age of 15 and 44 (United

nations Development Programme 2013).

this is how the World Bank as well as the United Nations

Development Programme (UNDP) has classiﬁed the

region. For example, in 2012 according to the World

Bank’s statistics one in three inhabitants in the region

were victims of thef . Common crime and violence is the

main threat in the majority of countries of the region.



e Regional Human Development Report, developed

by the UNDP in 2013-2014, has shown that one in ﬁve

people have been victim of some type of robbery in the

last year; indeed, six out of ten robberies in the region

are violent. Unsurprisingly, this has diminished Latin

American’s quality of life as well as compromising the

public’s right to live a life with dignity and freedom

of movement. In fact, between 16.8 % and 51.5 % of

people had been forced to limit the public places they

As a matter of fact, there are approximately about 73,000

to 90,000 ﬁrearms deaths annually in Latin America,

which is three times the world average (Cohen and

Rubio 2007, 1-45). In comparison with Africa, which

mistakenly has been considered the most violent

continent, Latin America has a rate of homicide per

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capita of 23 per 100 000 whereas in Africa it is 12.5 per

00 000 people (e Wall Street Journal 2014). To sum

Professor Mariana Valverde, trying to explain why

crime exists is comparable to trying to explain why

disease exists (John Barry Memorial Lecture 2014).

However, there are some factors and causes that might

serve as an attempt to understand why crime is high in

Latin American. Perhaps, looking back to history could

be one of the means to get a better insight of this issue,

in other words, it is moment to widen the knowledge of

criminology by introducing postcolonial theory.

1

up, while in the rest of the world homicide rates have

been decreasing, in the region it has increased 12 %

between 2000 and 2010 (United Nations Development

Programme 2013-2014). In this context it becomes a

pertinent question to ask: What makes Latin America

diﬀerent from other world’s regions? Answering this

question does not have an easy response. Paraphrasing

COLONIALISM AND POST-COLONIAL THEORY

Postcolonial theory explores the means that

colonialism has used in order to manifest itself within

a particular society and maintain its hegemonic power

in diﬀerent aspects of people’s daily lives, namely law.

Postcolonial theory can be located as part of a wider

critical theory and is historically revisionist in its

approach, looking to take on new perspectives from ‘the

ground up’ to more adequately explain colonisation.

Under the wide reaching umbrella of Postcolonialism,

there are a number of terms that should be taken into

consideration when studying and engaging with the

theory which are as follows: Colonialism, which was the

process of conquest and settlement by European cultures

in the ird World; Imperialism which is the ideology

thatenforcescolonialism’sdominance;Neo-colonialism,

which is the continued pressure exercised by the former

colonial power over the colonized countries. Moreover,

the concepts of postcolonialism and decolonisation

emphasize a resistance against oppression in any of its

forms, but especially both of them “seek freedom from

colonial ways of thinking” (Nayar 2010, 3). Whilst

nations can be seen to be liberated by colonial rule and

have established republics, of en the ideas and ways

of thinking through a colonial lens can still be seen to

permeate former colonial societies.

in the Americas at that time in history were: the Incas

and the Aztecs. e Incas were located in the southern

region while the Aztecs occupied Central America and

Mexico.

Although these native societies outnumbered the

Europeans and were very strong in resisting European

domination, they were defeated; mainly because of the

violence, diseases and societal structures established

by the colonizers. e conquest by the Spaniards in

the Americas was marked by its violence. Both the

Spaniards and Portuguese had an ideology shaped

by religious beliefs that justiﬁed not only territorial

conquest over the new lands, but also for conquering the

native people themselves. e ideology of the Spaniards

and Portuguese was based in a long tradition of forced

conversion to Catholicism and the religious justiﬁcation

of Christian over non-Christians (Trevor R. Getz 2011,

51,52). e colonial model used in the Americas was

centred on acquiring wealth from the new world and

was predominately based on the extraction of resources,

agriculture and especially forced labour. ey imposed

an oppressive labour system named the Encomienda,

which allowed the labour exploitation of the indigenous

people to take place. e colonists also established an

urban pattern of settlement, which was characterized by

the Spanish urbanized lifestyles; as a result, indigenous

people, both the Incas and Aztec were removed to the

peripheries. e initial plunder of land in the Americas

did not seem to satisfy the inﬁnite whims of the

Spaniards; hence, the exploitation of the native people

and land persisted over many centuries through its

patterns of control.

For many scholars Postcolonialism itself has become an

ambiguous approach because it is particularly diﬃcult

to describe is deﬁnition with precision. e origins and

scope of Postcolonialism however are an indispensable

starting point to deepen the understandings

surrounding both old and new colonialism (Coronil,

2013). Colonialism in the Americas dates back to 1492

when Christopher Columbus, in an attempt to reach

the East Indies, discovered what was for Europeans

new land and arrived in what today is known as the

Caribbean islands. e two major developed societies

‘e Americas, indeed, had become a vast

laboratory for new forms of long-distance

imperial expansion and colonial settlement

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under the Iberians: in the centuries ahead, the

experiment would continue under the aegis of

new imperial powers’ (Trevor R. Getz 2011, 7).

punished and repressed for been considered moral

and physical inferior, the Spaniards developed policies

that set the boundaries between the rulers and ruled

based on the notion of diﬀerence within races focused

in their attributes and abilities. Hence, colonizers

shaped policies, religion and laws in the colonies, with

preconceived ideas of what was to be a developed

and advanced culture. ese practices were used as a

mean to maintain false conceptions of rightness and

superiority. Noteworthy to consider is that colonizers

took ideas from Charles’ Darwin biological evolution

theory; where species and human beings competed for

survival, in which those who were superior governed by

rules like natural selection and survival of the ﬁttest will

triumph in the evolutionary process (Schmalleger 2012,

I). In lights of this, they codiﬁed social control systems

which underlie the idea that the less intellectual races

[are] exterminate (Trevor R. Getz 2011, 12).

In order to maintain their dominance, the colonizers

developed a sustained coercive system of laws and

social control structures that gave shape to human

behaviour. First of all, they intentionally failed to

identify traditional ways of social control by the creating

and imposing their categorization of what would be

considered as crime. However, this categorization was

not precisely developed in high universal principles of

criminal law, on the contrary it was based on race and

gender. As a result, the colonial social control system

served to legitimate the colonisers’ false position as

a superior race, whereby the colonized people were

categorized as an inferior race. Furthermore, because

of this categorization the colonized people were

penalized and criminalized. Using Fanon’s notion of the

colonial situation, this was a “contact of races in which

the numerically inferior alien race was actually the

sociologically superior race” (Jinadu 1986, 416).

Obviously, the colonized had fewer possibilities to

survive in the struggle of the colonization process

because of the conditions in which they were forced

to live. ey were deprived of proper food, housing

and to their traditional ways of living. Also, important

to consider is that colonization was also an exchange

of microbes, some examples of the diseases they were

exposed to were inﬂuenza, smallpox and among others,

which placed the colonized civilization under threat

and made them be in a vulnerable position. As a result,

they were in fact physical inferior, but because of the

violations inﬂicted by the colonizers. Nevertheless,

these situations were used as evidence to support the

colonizer discriminatory practices, which reinforced

binaries, such as superiority/inferiority and civilized/

savage.

It seems that neither the famous theories of moral

philosophers, such as Rousseau, inﬂuenced the work of

criminologists whereas Beccaria had echo in the New

World. Neither the social contract nor the principles

of criminal law were applied in the Americas. On the

contrary, on the one hand the colonized were victims

of such social contract. ey were forced to get into the

ideological assumption of a pact between the state and

its society, which had its foundations in a Eurocentric

perspective. Ontheotherhand, thepunishmentsapplied

to the colonized people were arbitrary, unjustiﬁed as

well as disproportional. Entire groups of people were

COLONIALISM RIGHTS AND LAW

Although, the twentieth century is said to be the

century of the rise and the triumph of human rights,

this is nothing less than a paradox (Douzinas 2000,

postcolonial theory would allude to the ongoing eﬀect

of neo-colonialism in perpetuating inequality and

exploitation. In many ways Globalization has served to

further widen the gap between rich and poor, East and

West and North and South. Not all groups of people

enjoy the protections of international human rights law,

as Jaques Derrida claims: “no degree of progress allows

one to ignore that never before in absolute ﬁgures, have

so many men, women, and children been subjugated,

starved, or exterminated on earth” (Douzinas 2000,

316).

1

9) due to the fact that this era has been witness to the

very worst of human rights’ violations. Even though

the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

proclaimed dignity, human equality and freedom as

the core principles for the international community,

there remain signiﬁcant doubts about the extent to

which these rights are truly universal. Globalization

has arisen in the af ermath of colonialism and indeed

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Without surprise, Post colonialism is critical due to

the dominant conceptualisation of rights. Human

rights and international law can be seen as a “historical

continuum of the Eurocentric colonial project” (Mutua

M 2001, 42). It is important to critically examine

who determines what is considered universal, and

which ideologies; moralities and interests are behind

the narratives of legal positivism. e European

ethos (Eslava L & Pahuja S 2012, 281) is embedded

in international law; as a result, it has created false

positions of superiority and subordination as well as

binaries that materialised during colonisation, such as

civilised/barbarian, developed/developing and among

others, which still have echoes in today’s world (Eslava

L & Pahuja S 2012, 281).

see how the claim to universal laws can in many cases

oﬀer more beneﬁts to powerful groups and in eﬀect

this reformulation of sovereignty helped the colonisers

to justify their own claims over the native lands and

resources. Furthermore, it demonstrates some of the

complexities to colonial claims over foreign territory

and the ability of justiﬁcations for colonialism to evolve

over time.

Criminal law is one of the most ancient realms of law.

It is also one of the most powerful tools of legem in all

times. It has been used to control society by coercive

measures, but at the same time the people over whom

the power is exercised have legitimized it. Critical

criminology claims that the ‘hegemony-building and

the articulation of state power implies an intimate

interrelation between coercion and consent ’. us,

crime is a meaningful construction deﬁned according

to particular circumstances and under speciﬁc social

processes. Furthermore, it has long been known that

criminal justice contributes to the social construction

of racial identities. Perhaps, one of the causes of

racial crime could be colonialism. Indeed, it might

be said that as a consequence of the “bloody legacy of

colonialist criminology” (Agozino, e Criminology of

Madiba Mandela: A Tribute 2013) as well as a biased

international law, exclusion and marginalization has

occurred in a systematic way. It has led to racial and

ethnic over-representation of minorities within the

criminal justice system. In the words of Sumner, an

“historical perspective on criminal law must inevitably

turn us towards colonialism...crime is not a behaviour

universally given in human nature and history, but a

moral-political concept with culturally and historically

varying form and content” (Chris 2011, 10). It is

therefore necessary to adopt a critical position about

assumptions of crime that have been historically created.

It is crucial to remember that colonialism was not only

an exploitative process over land; it was also a ‘cultural

conquest’ of indigenous beliefs, religion, art and

conceptions of order. Postcolonial studies allows people

to rethink how international law has been framed and

understood, but also to question the way in which its’

Eurocentric positioning continues to shape the world.



e colonized people in the Americas were bound to

lawsandsocialsystemthattheyﬁrstofalldidnotconsent

to and furthermore would not protect them. Anghie

(2005) notes that conceptualisations of international

law and European sovereignty were not just conﬁned

to Europe. Whilst ideas and happenings in Europe

had a strong inﬂuence on the discourse on sovereignty,

European colonialism also presented challenges. In his

‘

SovereigntyDoctrine ’, Anghiemaintainsthatthefamous

Spanish theologian Vittoria’s formulation of sovereignty

based upon a universal law had to be reformulated in

the attempt to address the problem that the Spaniards

had in dealing with the native populations. Here we can

COLONIALISM AS AN ONGOING PROCESS

From a postcolonial perspective, colonialism

should not be viewed simply as a historical event but

as a structure and an ongoing process that still has

ramiﬁcations for the present as well as the future. Indeed

whilst of European colonialism within the Americas

ﬁrst occurred in ﬁf eenth century its inﬂuence today

still permeates. As Chris Cunneen has strongly argued,

colonialism not only has a past dimension, but also

is part of the present and it is a continuing process.

Nowadays, what is known as the new Imperialism

and/or neo-colonialism has created a powerful-shared

worldview that may be more exclusive than former

models of colonialism. A shared legal-criminological

language has turned society blind to diﬀerent practices;

as a consequence, other conceptions of social control

just do not exist in this world. As Antonio Gramsci has

termed this is what is known as intellectual hegemony,

which is the political leadership based on the consent of

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the led, a consent which is secured by the diﬀusion and

popularization of the world view of the ruling class, this

coupled with the unquestioned criminal justice, which

governs the world, has created a dysfunctional criminal

system. us, even now in the twenty ﬁrst century, it

might be accurate to suggest the society in general is

constrained by the structures of colonialism that sought

to segregate, classify and control. us, it is not far-

fetched from Biko Agozino’s stand that criminology has

been a tool in the exercise of power and control towards

the ‘other’ that has demonstrated to be in complicity

in the imperialist project (Agozino, Counter-Colonial

Criminology: A Critique of imperialist Reason 2003,

factors namely, ethnicity, color and gender. It is believed

in moral psychology that if there is a negative stereotype

of one group in a certain domain, being reminded of

it; for instance, being criminalized for being a member

of certain group, aﬀects their performance in that

domain; hence, being exposed to negative stereotypes

have pernicious eﬀects. erefore, individuals’ as well as

group identities were crucial for shaping and reinforcing

the colonial practices.

On the other hand, the desire of countries from Latin

America to modernize them and emerge from the

status of underdeveloped countries has made them

adopt, as Cohen mentions, bits and pieces of post-

war criminology policy (Ronnie Lippens 2004, 8). e

transfer of criminological practices in Latin America fail

to be implemented successfully because authoritarian

leaders that were governing in that time were supporting

neocolonialism projects of the hegemonic powers.

In order to maintain their dominance they import

criminology models and polices in a very selective way.

ey gave priority to highly authoritarian policies that

were justiﬁed under the name of social defense; however,

from this doctrine only the defense part was adopted

while the social part was intentionally neglected. Both

conditions the internalization of cultural imperialism

and the implementation of Western social programs

in a region in which the sociological conditions

were not in pace for it (Ronnie Lippens 2004, 12) led

to the over-representation of marginalized people

within the criminal justice system. is is, how the

implementation of certain policies serves to elites to

keep their dominance, which in the long term creates

racialization.

105-131) because it has overlooked the impacts of

colonialism in its epistemological construction.



erefore, it is clear that there is a need to include

postcolonial theory into criminology as a mean to

provide an opportunity to listen to the voices silenced

by colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism. In the

criminological ﬁeld, this is to challenge preconceptions

of crime and criminality. In other words, is to confront

the categorization of crime by understanding that is

no more than a product of a political and historical

tension between the colonial states and the resistance

of the colonized people (Chris 2011, 10). Regarding

Latin America process of colonization as it has

been mentioned, the forcefully implementation of

universality of knowledge and practice has deployed

violence and racism. It had two main impacts, ﬁrstly it

created cultural identities and secondly it was a weapon

used for political means. Regarding the implication is

that the vast majority of colonized people were forced to

be part of determined social parameters due to outside

PROBLEMS WITH CRIMINOLOGY´S EUROCENTRISM

It is generally known that the role of criminology is

to explore the consequences, the causes and the possible

solutions of ‘crime ’, but what happens when the theories

that have been developed have overlooked colonialism

and its eﬀects? To repeat, it should be noted that

criminological theory has been created from Western-

European perspectives, and has ignored the ird

World or ‘treated it in an most theoretically primitive

fashion, and the general literature on development and

colonialism is remarkably silent about crime’ (Agozino,

accomplice to the imperialism project, because when

deﬁning what constitutes crime and when exploring

the ways to ameliorate the harms produced by this

phenomena; traditional criminology has tended to

marginalise both the ideals of justice and the diﬀerent

procedures of dealing with ‘crime ’, which were and still

are present in other cultures.

Nowadays, Western understandings of crime and the

mechanisms used for social control are so embedded in

the system that it can of en escape public scrutiny even

when it undermines human rights. Unfortunately, the



e Criminology of Madiba Mandela: A Tribute 2013).

Hence, it can be said that criminology has been an

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consequences of colonialism still persist. Likewise, the

Spanish colonizers killed the last Inca Atahualpa in the

XVI century based in the criminal law and practices

they created and imposed. In the XX century the

Chilean president Salvador Allende was assassinated as

a consequence of necolonialism practices. Indeed, this

is one of the most infamous cases of western dominance

over Latin America, which produced the torture and

death of thousands of innocent people. Again, this

is just an example of the continuing consequences

of colonialism. Nowadays, crime is one of the major

concerns of Latin American governments. Not only is it

within their main duty to preserve citizens’ security, but

also there is a trend of states governing through crime.

It can be argued that authorities justify their actions,

policies and practices as means to set their political

models and desired dimensions of governance (Simon J

control. Indeed, in 2008 in Ecuador, the Constitution

was amended and among many other changes it

introduced indigenous criminal justice. It recognized

Indigenous Judicial as a government branch, which

has the same power for administrating justice as the

ordinary judicial branch. It underpins the connection of

indigenous practices and rituals with the nature, which

seeks to reestablish order with the Pachamama (mother

nature). is is a key starting point to decolonize some

of the concepts of law and order. As Erin Fitz argues

‘this new legislation would signiﬁcantly challenge

Western conceptions of Nature as property and bring

indigenous understandings of the Pachamama into

law’ (Fitz-Henry 2012, 266). However, even though

this represents a big step in the justice and criminal

arena, there still remains little research developed about

criminology theory per se. Perhaps this new approach

of criminal justice can be an opportunity to go beyond

the traditional colonialist scope of criminology and to

better understands about how crime and violence can

be viewed within Latin America.

2

001, 250). Hence, many politicians have used the term

‘

war on crime’ as a marketing slogan for their political

campaigns, which has been translated into what is

known as penal populism.

For instance, the very well known ‘war on drugs’ as part

of the generic ‘war on crime’ have had many negative

impacts on Latin America, namely in Nicaragua,

Guatemala with the ‘Operation Cleanup ’, Colombia

with the ‘Plan Colombia’ and in Ecuador with the plot

with the right-wing party and its ‘war on drugs ’. For

example, it is interesting to observe in the Ecuadorian

case that due to the inﬂuence and pressure from the

United States, there is an inadequate application of

laws regarding drugs. For example, Law 108 in Ecuador

led to the unnecessary imprisonment of marginalized

people in the Ecuadorian criminal system. As a matter

of fact, between 1993 and 2007, over 40 percent of all

prisoners in Ecuador had been incarcerated for oﬀenses

related to drugs (Southwick 2013). ese are a few

examples of how the continuing process of colonization

has exploitative consequences in crime control,

which creates over-representation, racialization and

victimization. Moreover, as Summer claims, crime is a

However, it is important to mention that criminology

in Latin America has also had its own development,

in 1878 the Argentinean Jose María Ramos Mejía, was

the ﬁrst one to write about criminology, in 1898 Luis

María Drago wrote “Las neurosis de los hombres célebres

en la historia Argentina”, which was very famous and

recognized in the criminology arena, to the extent

that Lombroso was the person who wrote the preface

of the book. Also in 1888, the Criminal Anthropology

Society was founded in Buenos Aires. e academia

surrounding criminology, as it can be noted, had an

impact from biological and psychological positivism; it

is only af er Second World War, that in Latin America,

it starts to appear ideas of critical criminology, as a

consequence of the social inequality that the continent

was going through (Social 2011).

It is necessary to say that critical criminology “employs a

dialectical method of thought, in which contradictions

continually appear and disappear into new synthesis”

(John 2014, 90). e central ﬁgures in Latin America

were the Brazilian Roberto Lyra Filho “Criminología” in

1964; the Venezuelan Elio Gómez Grillo “Introducción

a la Criminología” (1966); the Colombian Alfonso

Reyes Echandía “Criminología” (1968); the Mexican

Luis Rodríguez Manzanera “Criminología” (1982) and

the Argentineans Osvaldo N. Tieghi, Roberto Victor

Ferrari and Eugenio Raúl Zaﬀaroni, one of the most

‘moral-political concept with culturally and historically

varying form and content’ (Chris 2011, 11) taking these

practices for granted is one of the major mistakes of

criminology and as a consecuence in criminal law.

Nevertheless, not all is pessimistic in the ﬁeld. In fact,

there are some countries in Latin America region

that are turning back their gaze to history in order to

understand and adopt indigenous practices for social

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critical theorists of the region (Social 2011). All of the

authors mentioned, have seen critical criminology

as a point of debate, as a theory that searches internal

contradictions and specially gaps in a system, it is a

point where something diﬀerent can emerge.

questions go beyond the scope of this essay; however,

it is not only interesting to look comparatively over the

Latin America to establish explore how diﬀerent types

of colonialism are potential factors to violence and

crime, but it also an important area that needs more

criminological investigation.

In the last years, many authors have dedicated entire

works to critical criminology, for instance Elena

Larrauri with “La herencia de la criminología crítica”

and Gabriel Ignacio Anitua “Historia de los pesamientos

criminológicos”; however, none of them has introduced

postcolonial theory as part of their postulates. As Jaumes

Peris Blanes says: “e emergency of postcolonial issue

in the Latin America studies in the 90´s showed the

limits of the debate on postcolonial interest” (Blanes

Although there is an urge of a corpus of postcolonial

work in Latin America, there is no deep research of

postcolonial studies in the region. us, as Fernando

Coronil has exposed the aim for postcolonial studies

should be to expand its geographical scope and also its

temporal depth by opting for a “tactical postcolonialism’,

which perceives the discipline ‘not as a fenced territory

but as an expanding ﬁeld for struggles against colonial

and other forms of subjection” (Coronil, 2013, p. 3).

Moreover, one of the roles of university academics and

intellectuals should be to reverse the colonial order

with the aim of achieving further alternatives for social

justice and democracy.

2

010) this statement it is not far from true, as it has been

said little interest from the criminology perspective has

been put into postcolonial theory in the region. Latin

America criminological knowledge cannot overlook

that although colonizers are seen to be long gone, their

legacy of the colonial structures lives on (Wolfe 2000).

erefore, borrowing Fanon’s words in such situation,

Needless to say, all this amnesia regarding colonialism

and its consequences might be one of the reasons of

the high rates of criminality in Latin America. It is

important to consider that the struggle for survival by

non-Spaniards people in their own land raised feelings

of anxiety and hatred. e oppression of people in

their own territory and the profound changes to their

social structures brought resentment. Also, it becomes

essential to take into account the systematically violent

intervention by neocolonial power forces in the region

occurred in the twentieth century. It is not that Latin

America’s homicide and crime rates are accidental, they

are product of history, which has to be critically revised

and reassessed. Furthermore, it is necessary to ﬁnd

the diﬀerences between the two genres of colonialism,

which Ashis Nandy’s draws on. One type was more

violent and it was focused in territorial occupation

whereas the second was committed to the conquest

not only of land, but also of minds and bodies (Ghandi

there is a claim of native intellectuals to go beyond

the domains of Western culture. More simply, this

epistemological stand should not be perceived as a

luxury, but as an obligation with their own people

(Brydon 2000). Concerning criminology, it should not

only aim to incorporate postcolonial theory, but also to

create a ‘tricontinenatlism’ criminology -using Robert

Young’s term, to include anticolonial thoughts of Africa,

Asia and Latin America in the discipline.

Furthermore, it is important to take into account the

type of criminological knowledge that has been thought

in Latin America, particularly in the South. Criminology

studies have a limited development in the region and to

even lesser extent in South America. In fact, the only

criminological centers that are dedicated to teaching

criminology have been constrained to neoclassical

and positivist repressive criminological theories,

which are mainly focused in policing, medical forensic

investigation, and prison administration. Indeed this

can largely be seen as a product of the hybridization of

culture-knowledge of the encounter between colonized

and colonizer.

1999). us, it leads us to ask if it is possible to suggest

that in colonized places in which more confrontation

and struggle of classes between the colonizers and

colonized occurred, is that where nowadays more crime

is seen? Is it just a matter of coincidence that in places

in Latin America, such as in Argentina, Uruguay and

Chile in which colonization could be seen as a type of

settler colonialism (which will be explained further)

are places of less violence in the region? Both these

e colonial process is embedded in ideological

constructions of colonial laws that have exploitative

consequences even today. Despite the comparatively

high levels of violence in Latin America, criminology’s

40

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contribution to analysing the harmful eﬀects of

colonisation and neo-colonisation in this part of the

world has been minimal.

stratiﬁcation, crime rates are high. It is important to be

clear, that one way of colonisation is not better than the

other, but it is crucial to do further research about the

topic in order to determine what makes one region very

diﬀerent from the other when it comes to violence and

crime issues.

One of the keys roles for criminology should be to

examine how diﬀerent types of colonialism intersect

and have continuing inﬂuence today. Here it should be

important to note Wolfe’s important distinction between

settler colonialism and other types of colonialism

based on economic and labour exploitation. Settler

colonialism could be seen to take place in states such

as Australia and e Unites States. Here the main

consideration for colonisation was the control and the

use of the land where there is no cessation of settler

colonialization, because the colonists never leave, with

the colonial structure remaining. Here the ‘logic of

elimination’ takes place whereby the settler population

with the native population being removed from the land

and assimilated into the colonial structure replaces the

native population. However, in Latin America there was

a diﬀerent type of colonialism, it was centred on the

economic and labour exploitation where wealth from

foreign lands were brought back to mainland Europe.

Unfortunately, data show that while in the rest of the

world the rates of homicide have decreased from 0 % to

-50%, in Latin America, the rates have increased to 12%.

Indeed, in the last decade more than one million people

have died in the region as a consequence of violence

and criminal acts (United nations Development

Programme 2013). Some questions arise in relation

to these statistics: what has criminology developed in

order to ﬁnd solutions to these problems? What makes

Eurocentric-Western criminology theorists believe

that programmes that are ‘oﬀ-the-shelf’ (Chris 2011,

15) will be eﬀective and aﬀective in the postcolonial

world? ere is something that criminology has (un)

intentionally forgotten to embrace. In the words of Biko

Agozino:

[ere is a] need to compare criminological

Criminology should then canvass the repercussions

that each type of colonialism has had in the colonised

countries. It is possible that the way in which

colonisation manifested in the region might be one of

the reasons for the high rates of crime. In places where

huge massacres of indigenous took place and then

those who survive were conﬁned to reservations there

is less rates of crime. Whereas in places in which there

were a constant labour exploitation and more class

theories and methods according to whether

they are pro-imperialist or anti-imperialist in

orientation in order to show what criminology

has been missing by ignoring marginalised voices

of the other in its institutional development

or what criminology could learn from anti

colonial struggles (Agozino, Counter-Colonial

Criminology: A Critique of imperialist Reason

2003, 350)

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, criminology has to embrace

postcolonial theory as a call for opening the dialogue

with other conceptions of crime and criminality.

Western criminological cannot escape its liability of

complicity with the imperialism project. erefore, it

should introduce postcolonial theory in order to have

better insights of the colonial past and its impacts on

the development of the discipline. Moreover, it might

incorporate experiences of crime and control that are

used in postcolonial countries in order to construct

a more reﬂexive and inclusive knowledge. Perhaps

these practices would be important tools towards the

decolonization of the discipline. However, the aim of this

essay is not to stay in the nostalgic terrain of colonialism

and its consequences, it is to exhort to Latin American

criminology intellectuals to develop and improve their

own criminology theories. e aspiration has to be that

western academics can incorporate to their criminology

teachings former colonized practices and visions of

crime and social control. At the end this will enrich

criminology. It would make it more pluralistic, real and

practical, especially for its application in places, such as

Latin America in which crime is a day-to-day issue. It is

a theoretically urge to dig into the archives of criminal

justice in Latin America in order to explore new paths

for developing the discipline of criminology. If it is the

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region will to become a safer place and step away from

the astonishing crime rates which are darkening Latin

America territory and communities, then it is necessary

to produce and not to only re-produce criminological

knowledge. It has to create their own theories according

to the regions’ own reality and necessities. Getting to

know the intersections between the ‘colonial past’ and

the ‘postcolonial present’ will aid to ﬁnd better counter-

measures to this social problem that aﬀects every person

in the region.

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