New Forms of Governance to Reduce Violence

Whether we live in the North or in the South, many of us love the city – its beat and its speed, the hum that announces the arrival of evening in its canyons of glass and steel, the smell of asphalt, its summer heat and autumn frost. What we don't like is its violence, a spectre that haunts it permanently. The guises in which this spectre comes, the techniques it makes use of vary according to period and civilisation. Civilisations come and go – they are born, become urban, die – subject to the spectre's movements (Pedrazzini 2006).

Very often, it is not the cities or urbanisation process, nor the individuals with the decision-making power within them, who are considered to be the causes of this violence, but rather the poorest people. Safety strategies are adopted to combat them: our societies are rapidly becoming branded by fear (Davis 1992). Urbanism itself divides the urban space into high-security fortresses and slums that are adjacent to each other but separated by internal boundaries that multiply and divide contemporary societies. This securing of the urban space through police stations and army barracks offers no solution to urban violence. We need an alternative concept of what urban violence and security are about. Only by (re)thinking them within the context of the violence generated by urbanisation and within the context of globalisation can we achieve such a new vision.

In order to develop these new concepts of urban violence and fears about law and order, we must take into account the point of view of the poor and, amongst them, give priority status to the "bad boys", the outsiders, the hoodlums, those who live beyond the legal pale. We must (re)discover the city and its gangs. When everything appears to be gridlocked, the "poor people's perspective" – especially the point of view of those who are perceived as violent – opens new paths for the pacification of the urban territory. A study on street gangs in Caracas (Pedrazzini 1995) has shown that with the "breakdown of the 'great integrators' family-school-work" in the Venezuelan metropolis, the gangs have become the only means of socialising and learning how to survive amidst the violence (Pedrazzini 2006, p. 5). For the people who live in the poor areas of Caracas, the malandros (or gang members) are a source of violence, but they are also a way to mitigate the impact of other violence - for instance the economic or state violence that excludes them from the prosperity visible in other areas of the city - through their various dealings.

"Consequently, instead of marking his exclusion, one can consider the malandro as a social partner, the phenomenon of the gangs can be considered as a problem that the gangs are capable of solving themselves, or at least with their agreement: no governing without the malandros! In Caracas, it is essential to see the gangs as a part of life, because without them life is simply unthinkable ..." (Pedrazzini 2006, p. 5)

Taking into account the malandros by no means guarantees success in diminishing violence, but it is without a doubt one of its conditions.

By clicking on the link in the right-hand column, you can read a text that summarises the challenges of reducing violence in South American cities and gives examples of where including the poorest has helped combat violence:

Of course, as shown in the text, it is only possible to respond to the question of violence by taking into account all aspects of it, i.e. also the political, social and economic conditions that are part of the violence. By acknowledging the existence of a gangster culture, one can give a voice to these youth and, from there on, start to understand the question of violence in all its complexity.