Call for papers - Cálamo 24

Central Theme (Dossier)

State Violence: Institutions, Practices and Resistance

The relationship between the State and the exercise of violence is a topic of traditional legal discussion whose relevance and timeliness are undeniable. The State not only exercises violence directly through its coercive apparatus, but also configures legal, economic, and political structures and institutions that perpetuate systems of exclusion, exploitation, and dispossession or expropriation of human life and nature. These structural and systemic forms of violence are not anomalies within the legal-political order, but rather mechanisms that consolidate asymmetrical power relations and perpetuate historical domination, discrimination, and inequalities. Furthermore, the processes of state formation and reproduction, and particularly the state in Latin America, have been accompanied by various forms of violence, which can be interpreted in terms of race, class, and gender. Their analysis is urgent in this militarized world, with a surge in organized crime and other forms of violence, some more visible than others, and which require our attention to consider a present and future compatible with a dignified life.

These forms of violence materialize in various forms. The most obvious are direct physical acts, such as police or military repression, aggravated in many contexts by the militarization of public security, which has contributed to the erosion of democratic guarantees. Equally serious is the instrumentalization of the law by privileged sectors against vulnerable populations, which contributes to violence being linked to the processes of state reproduction. However, there are multiple, less visible and equally destructive mechanisms of state violence, such as territorial dispossession, labor exploitation, or the violation of human and natural rights, whether by action or omission. Contemporary forms of state violence also include diverse and close relationships with business actors for the commission of economic and environmental crimes, massive precariousness of living conditions, structural racism, labor exploitation and the absence of social guarantees, gender-based violence and sub-discrimination, forced displacement, and the normalization of states of exception. A growing symbiosis between state and private actors, the consolidation of corruption networks that capture public institutions, the criminalization of vulnerable sectors, and the use of new technologies for surveillance and repression exponentially increase the range of possibilities for state violence.

This is the production of violence in contexts where the state is constructed and reproduced between legitimacy and illegitimacy, between legality and illegality, in a rarefied landscape that makes violence an inherent element of the functioning of states today. In parallel, in the face of this violence, struggles for human rights and the rights of nature are rising, resisting state action and building counter-hegemonies, while activating state mechanisms to obtain guarantees, protection, and reparation. The clear contrast between the State, as an actor in violence, and the Law, as a state structure and instrument called upon to serve as guarantor, protector, and even promoter of human rights and the rights of nature, in the face of violations committed by the State or by private actors with its acquiescence, is evident here. In this sense, it is no coincidence, for example, that one of the most important banners of struggle for social movements around the world today is precisely the fight against state crimes.

This contrast, discussed above, occurs both within national borders and in the supranational arena, where tensions are increasingly evident. Specifically, international law has been a key tool for denouncing and punishing serious human rights violations. From the Inter-American Human Rights System to the International Criminal Court, various mechanisms have attempted to establish limits on arbitrariness by the state and its agents, as well as to guarantee justice for victims. However, the effectiveness of these systems remains a matter of debate. The persistence of impunity, failure to enforce judgments, and the lack of political will to comply with international standards reflect the structural limitations of international law as an instrument for real transformation. It is undeniable that, in many cases, states have developed strategies to evade their responsibility for international crimes, serious human rights violations, and political repression. These strategies include the delegitimization of international organizations, the failure to enforce judgments, the manipulation of the domestic judicial system, and the co-optation of oversight mechanisms. Likewise, we find ourselves in a historical moment in which criminal structures are also supranational, whose actions challenge the very ability of the State to guarantee its monopoly on physical force, social well-being, and freedom from impunity. In the face of these challenges, the struggle of human rights organizations and social movements has been key in pressuring States to comply with their international obligations and highlighting the shortcomings of global justice systems.

State violence, avenues for resistance from social organizations and movements, and the possibilities of a counter-hegemonic use of law are the starting point of this dossier. The objective is to bring together research works that reflect on the multiple dimensions of violence carried out by the State, as well as the forms of resistance that emerge in the face of these acts and the strategies of communities, organizations, human rights defenders, and defenders of nature who confront and challenge these regimes of oppression. In this context, a critical analysis of the role of law in legitimizing and resisting these new forms of violence is of particular interest.

We invite you to participate in this call with papers that propose reflections and research results from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives.

We will accept papers that:

• Employ innovative methodologies and combine diverse disciplines, such as Law, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, History, or Philosophy;
• Analyze specific cases and offer proposals for transforming legal practices and public policies;
• Adopt a comparative, transnational, and multi-sited perspective, identifying both global patterns and local particularities, and examining the dynamics that demonstrate impacts at different scales;
• Explore law and its mechanisms for responding to violence, including the analysis of criminal justice systems, public policies for guaranteeing rights, and reparation practices;
• Propose different theoretical and methodological perspectives to address the relationship between law and state violence, fostering interdisciplinary approaches and promoting debate on legal practices.

Thematic Axes

Research articles and essays within one of the thematic areas detailed below will be accepted preferably, but not exclusively.

1. Structural Violence and Discrimination

• Institutional Racism and Internal Colonialism: Analysis of state policies, practices, and omissions that perpetuate the subordination of racialized peoples and limit their access to human rights.
• Repression and Criminalization of Indigenous and Racialized Peoples: State violence as a response to territorial, cultural, and political demands.

2. Repression and Criminalization of Protest

• Criminalization of social protest and selective repression: Strategies of judicialization and persecution of organized groups that challenge state policies, arbitrary arrests, and criminal prosecution of social leaders as methods of control and discipline.
• Repression of the collective subject and criminalization of strikes: Persecution of trade unionists and workers' organizations, denial or restriction of the right to collective bargaining, criminal repression of strikes and labor mobilizations, and reduction of union rights in companies.

3. Security, Militarization, and the Crisis of the Rule of Law

• States of emergency and suspension of fundamental rights: abusive use of emergency regimes to restrict rights and concentrate power, prolonged declarations without effective judicial oversight, restriction of civil liberties under the pretext of a national emergency.
• Militarization of public security and serious human rights violations: expansion of the role of the armed forces in policing, disproportionate use of force against civilians, torture and sexual violence in contexts of state repression, structural impunity for crimes committed by military personnel and police, reforms to police and military bodies that seek futures other than militarization and militarism.
• Institutional violence in prisons: extreme overcrowding and collapse of prison infrastructure; institutional violence, torture, and murder in prison; lack of access to basic human rights and inhumane conditions of confinement; absence of effective rehabilitation policies.
• The State and Organized Crime: Drug trafficking, judicial corruption, and the capture of democratic institutions by criminal actors; co-optation of the judiciary and police apparatus; corruption in the administration of justice, institutional protection, and impunity for criminal networks; the illegal economy and money laundering; the role of the State in facilitating illicit financial flows and protecting business structures linked to organized crime.

4. Economic Violence and Neoliberalism

• Neoliberal policies and violations of social rights: impact of fiscal austerity on public services (health, education, and others), weakening of social security, deprivation of the right to housing.
• Job insecurity: labor reforms restricting rights to job stability and security, wage cuts, tolerance of extreme forms of exploitation, permissiveness of situations of contemporary slavery such as serfdom and forced labor.
• Economic crimes: looting of public funds, systemic corruption and financial speculation, crimes committed by powerful actors, major financial fraud and structural corruption, corruption as a mechanism of political control, impact of embezzlement on the weakening of essential public services such as health, education, and housing.

5. Gender-based Violence and State Violence

• State inaction and femicides: institutional lack of protection against femicides, impunity, and re-victimization of women.
• State involvement, through action or omission, in violence and discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people: discriminatory policies, limitations on access to rights, discrimination in the application of laws, institutional biases and stereotypes.
• Denial of sexual and reproductive rights: criminalization of abortion, barriers to access to sexual and reproductive health, obstetric violence.
• Political gender-based violence: institutional permissiveness toward attacks against women participating in politics in order to prevent, limit, or coerce their actions.
• Androcentric-patriarchal legal structures and state violence: promotion or maintenance of discriminatory norms, institutional behaviors that maintain male domination, and discrimination in the judicial sphere.

6. Extractive Activities and State Violence

• State violence in extractive contexts: territorial dispossession, violation of collective rights, and state complicity in processes of appropriation and exploitation of natural resources.
• Territorial dispossession and commodification of common goods: appropriation of lands and strategic resources through legal frameworks that favor private interests and displace communities, land accumulation mechanisms linked to forms of state collusion.
• Ecocide and state responsibility in environmental crimes: State participation in massive environmental damage; state acquiescence in predatory extractivism; destruction of ecosystems and forced displacement of communities; expansion of extractivism and violations of collective rights; relationships between nature, state violence, and peasant and indigenous communities.
• Climate crisis and state denialism: inaction against climate change as a form of state violence, failure to comply with international agreements on environmental protection.

7. International Law, impunity, and obstruction of international justice

• Mechanisms of impunity and state cover-up: lack of investigations and sanctions for international crimes and political repression, use of amnesties and pardons as mechanisms of impunity.
• Obstruction of investigations into crimes of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity: refusal to declassify military archives, disappearance of evidence and intimidation of witnesses, use of criminal law to criminalize protest and protect repressors, protection through prolonged or flawed judicial processes, resistance of security forces to prosecution, political pressure to avoid accountability processes, and pacts of silence.
• Disregard and delays in the enforcement of international judgments: denial of jurisdiction or denunciation of international treaties, failure to comply with decisions of the International Court of Justice in disputes between States, disregard of rulings on violations of international humanitarian law, border conflicts, and sovereign rights, disregard of judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

8. Resistance and the Fight Against Impunity

• Strategies of memory, truth, justice, and reparation: Transitional Justice, People's Tribunals, and symbolic justice; Truth Commissions; collective memory, sites of commemoration, and the creation of museums, monuments, and community archives; strategic litigation and international pressure; use of international law to denounce violations and demand justice in combination with social mobilization and advocacy campaigns; art and culture as tools of resistance; repertoire of resistance and experiences with justice.
• Role of international human rights systems.
• Mechanisms to prevent impunity: universal justice, review and strengthening of international sanction mechanisms, and diplomatic restrictions on officials responsible for state crimes.

Dossier Coordinators

Fidel Jaramillo Paz y Miño holds a law degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador (2008) and a Master's degree in Law from Columbia University in New York (2011). His areas of specialization are international human rights law, international criminal law, and transitional justice. He is currently conducting doctoral research on "Ecocide as an international crime" at the Faculty of Law of the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Adoración Guamán Hernández is a professor of labor law at the University of Valencia and a visiting professor in several postgraduate programs in Latin America and Europe. She holds a PhD in Law from the Universities of Valencia and Paris Nanterre; she coordinates the CLACSO Working Group "What Work for What Future"; and her current research focuses on the relationship between human rights and transnational corporations, with special attention to the phenomena of contemporary slavery from a feminist and intersectional perspective.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7405-7478

Google Scholar: https://shorturl.at/Pi9F7

Indications

• Articles, reviews, and interviews should be submitted through our website using the Submissions button, until Monday, July 21, 2025.
• Contributions can be written in Spanish, English, or Portuguese.
• Only contributions that adhere to the Editorial Policy, style manual, and citation rules of the magazine will be accepted.
• All contributions must be original and cannot be simultaneously submitted to other journals.
• Submission of articles, essays, reviews, and interviews implies knowledge of and agreement with our Code of Ethics.