Book contents
- Undermining the State from Within
- Undermining the State from Within
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Institutional Origins
- 3 Civil War in Central America
- 4 The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala
- 5 Ordering Police Violence
- 6 Land and Counterinsurgency
- Part III Institutional Persistence
- Appendix List of Interviews and Archival Collections
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Ordering Police Violence
Extrajudicial Killing in Wartime Guatemala
from Part II - Institutional Origins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2023
- Undermining the State from Within
- Undermining the State from Within
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Foundations
- Part II Institutional Origins
- 3 Civil War in Central America
- 4 The Wartime Institutionalization of Customs Fraud in Guatemala
- 5 Ordering Police Violence
- 6 Land and Counterinsurgency
- Part III Institutional Persistence
- Appendix List of Interviews and Archival Collections
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Chapter 5 examines the wartime origins of undermining rules governing extrajudicial killing by Guatemala’s National Police (PN). It argues that the development of such procedures is rooted in the specialization of the police force and the broad discretion granted to concentrated groups of police elites amid the late 1960s period of perceived threat escalation. Specifically, with the creation of highly insulated elite investigative units like the Detective Corps [Cuerpo de Detectives], previous extralegal violence waged by right-wing death squads was institutionalized as routine state activity. The new rules were sanctioned by top military intelligence officials, who devised clear procedures for how to frame the resulting killings to the public.
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- Undermining the State from WithinThe Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America, pp. 111 - 127Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023