Some authors characterize Latin America as a region of ‘Permanent Peace’. Indeed, the low incidence of interstate conflict corroborates this perception. Yet, inter-state rivalry, domestic violence and transnational crime abound in this part of the world, prompting others to name it a ‘Violent Peace’. What lessons can we take from the ambivalent security environment in Latin America and are they transferrable? The objective of this course is to look at the evolution of the security challenges in Latin America in order to understand the complexity of its development since the end of the Cold War. The endurance of both peace and conflict in the region offer us more general insights into the overlap and differences between traditional and non-traditional threats, the interplay of structures, agents and institutions and, ultimately, the dialectic between domestic violence and war in our times. close

Battagliano, Jorge. 2012. "The coexistence of Peace and conflict in South America toward a new conceptualization of types of peace." Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional 55 (2): 131-152. Buzan, Barry, and Ole Waever. 2003. Regions and Powers. The Structure of International Security. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, Ashton, William Perry, and John Steinbruner. 1992. A New Concept of Cooperative Security. Washington, DC: Brookings. Donadio, Marcela, and María de La Paz Tibiletti. 2012. A Comparative Atlas of Defence in Latin America and Caribbean. Buenos Aires: RESDAL. Kaldor, Marry. 2012. New and Old Wars. Organized Violence in a Global Era. 3rd. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mares, David. 2011. Violent Peace: Militarized Interstate Bargaining in Latin America. New York: Columbia University Press. Mares, David, and Arie Kacowicz. 2016. Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security. New York: Routledge. Tulchin, Joseph , Hugo Frühling , and Heather Golding. 2003. Crime and Violence in Latin America: Citizen Security, Democracy, and the State. Pennsylvania: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. Villa, Rafael, and Brigitte Weiffen. 2014. "South American re-armament: from balancing to symbolizing power." Contemporary Security Policy 351 (1): 138-162. Wendt, Alexander, and Micheal Barnett. 1993. "Dependent State Formation and Third World Militarization." Review of International Studies 19 (4): 321-347. close