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Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022)

BIDIRECTIONAL VIOLENCE:

A CRITICAL APPROACH TO CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN

CESAR NIÑO

cnino@unisalle.edu.co

Associate Professor of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Sustainable Development,

attached to the Business and International Relations program at La Salle University (Colombia).

PhD in international law from Alfonso X el Sabio University, Master in national security and

defense from the War College and professional in politics and international relations from Sergio

Arboleda University.

CAMILO GONZALEZ

manuelc.gonzalez@usa.edu.co

Assistant Professor of the School of Politics and International Relations of Sergio Arboleda

University, master in politics from the University of Salamanca and professional in politics and

international relations from Sergio Arboleda University (Colombia).

Abstract

The central proposal of this paper is to approximate a theoretical model of women in criminal

violence based on some Central American dynamics. Through process tracing, the stages of

women as recipients of violence and women as vehicles of violence are raised. Indeed, the

relationship between gender and criminality reveals the interaction between two fundamental

facets: underground integration and criminal governance in the region. Underground and

criminal integrations are found to be much more effective to perform because transaction

costs between actors are lower, while, between states, by their own configuration, there are

more limitations and robust integration costs due to variables such as sovereignty, politics,

economy, and security. Based on the above, it should be mentioned that the reduction of

violence against women does not lie in the increase in penalties, but in the effective

functioning of justice operators. A reduction of such phenomenon must be based on greater

agility of investigations and the strengthening of criminal policy, to minimize the capacity for

action and coercion. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the policy seeks to increase

persuasion against potential members of criminal networks to desist from their participation.

Keywords

Criminal governance, underground integration, woman subject to violence, Central America.

How to cite this article

Niño, Cesar; González, Camilo (2021). Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central

American women. Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Vol12, Nº. 2, November

2021-April 2022. Consulted [online] at date of last visit, https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-

7251.12.2.4

Article received on September 22, 2020 and accepted for publication on September 3,

2021

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

BIDIRECTIONAL VIOLENCE:

A CRITICAL APPROACH TO CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN

CESAR NIÑO

CAMILO GONZALEZ

Introduction

The factors of instability and insecurity in Central America have been concentrated in

issues that jeopardize the states’ ability to control and fight organized crime.

Determinants such as drug trafficking, the presence of armed groups, gang violence,

species trafficking and human trafficking, among others, have reshaped the region's

security dynamics. This lends itself to a particular contrast in the way criminal groups,

unlike states, achieve greater synchrony in activities of integration and fluid dynamism

of illicit actions. In fact, regional integration models have been approached from a

conventional perspective that generates distortions when it comes to understanding the

phenomena that have made a special race to dominate the territories in the area. Issues

that have achieved important intersections in academic agendas and in the construction

of public policies such as violence, crime, and gender studies, have managed, from this

configuration, to expand the research approaches and understand a dynamic and quite

heterogeneous region. Therefore, academic approaches from Latin America have been

determined by variables specific to the region, such as commercial environments,

defense of democracy, human rights, economy, and politics. However, the region lacks

its own models for its more complex realities outside the traditional. In other words, the

most conservative analytical frameworks leave out issues that rival security policy

architectures such as criminal logics.

Within the studies of integration, regionalism, governance and globalization, the

literature reaches a great academic heritage in regular, conventional and traditional

dimensions (Meyer, 2007). That is, a theoretical apparatus and case studies have been

built referring to conventional models on integration with common economic, political,

cultural, geographical and even social denominators (Barrett & Kurzman, 2004). In this

order of ideas, the models of regional integration in Central America deal with alternatives

and solutions to trade, democracy and development to reduce vulnerabilities to the

constant sensitivities of the international system. Nevertheless, the region seems to have

a subregion, an underground dimension and even an alternative construction of

Article translated by Hugo Alves.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

integration and governance defined as a criminal model in which women become

recipients and vehicles of violence.

Based on the above, within the social constructions of crime, the role of women has been

relegated to a subordinate plane in the gender relationship. This situation enables new

approaches to understand a phenomenon little explored so far in the region and that

generates great concerns for the elaboration of decisions on public policy in security.

That said, this paper seeks to answer the following question: how are criminal

governance and underground integration built in Central America from gender violence?

Consequently, the role of women is the center of gravity for the invisibility of crime in

the region. In this way, criminal governance has managed to build the rules of the game,

institutionalization and normalization among criminal groups that allows them to obtain

a climate suitable for integration among them thanks to the institutional weakness of

states, the high capacity of adaptation of their structures and the low bureaucratization

for illicit businesses. Women's participation has not been addressed in depth in criminal

participation, but as a recipient of violence, an exclusion that adds to gender asymmetries

in security and organized crime studies.

Structurally, the text is divided into five parts. First, a theoretical and conceptual

approach will be made to criminal governance and underground integration. Then, the

phenomenon of women as subjects of violence will be exposed: between receiver and

criminal vehicle. Subsequently, the theoretical model to explain the role of women in this

phenomenon will be presented. Next, we will address underground gender integration as

a Central American phenomenon. Finally, some general conclusions will be offered about

the model and the horizon that the investigation of this phenomenon should follow.

Theoretical approach: criminal governance and underground integration

The construction of concepts that escape traditional theoretical approaches are strategic

challenges for the understanding and solution of the problems of contemporary Central

America. Approaches to criminal governance have been focused mostly on casuistic

dimensions in South America (Lessing & Graham, 2019). However, the commitment to

identify the criminal phenomenon and the relational nature between its power, territorial

control, illegal activities, violence and supplanting the state, respond to strategic

concerns about the gaps in public policy and justice systems in the countries with the

greatest institutional weaknesses. In this sense, works such as that of Desmond (2006)

and Lessing & Graham (2019), understand by criminal governance the convergence and

formation of structures between government officials, civil society and criminal actors,

resulting in systematic practices for the regulation of activities (Desmond, 2006).

It is a parallel order relationship that moves along the fine line between the conventional

and the unconventional. Indeed, criminal governance results in networks being

voluntary, reciprocal and horizontal patterns of communication and exchange (Keck &

Sikkink, 1998; Child, 2020). In this regard, codes of honor, reciprocal protection between

individuals, territorial control, patterns of conduct, value system, among others (Núñez

& Espinoza, 2017), are some characteristics that are projected on the imperatives of

governance. In short, it is a system based on a series of complex relationships that

connect the legal world with the illegal one (Garzón, 2012).

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

The last two decades have been permeated by major concerns about organized crime

(Schultze-Kraft, 2016) from countries in the Global South that threaten the stability of

the Global North (Ayoob, 1991; Benabdallah, Murillo, & Adetula, 2017; Sharp, 2011).

Those concerns have reached a robust and growing material in terms of citizen security,

but not in dimensions and explanations about the integration of networks and criminal

groups with each other in Central America. The definitional gaps are themselves the first

major problems for the design of policies and strategies.

In view of the above, while there has been a valuable attempt to resignify governance

under irregular, asymmetric and unconventional conditions, the same is not true for

integrations between criminal groups. In this manner, those integrations for the purposes

of this document and as a conceptual proposal, are understood as underground due to

their irregular condition and alternates to the classic models of integration between

states. Although there has not been a robust proposal, works such as Niño (2017) ensure

that terrorist groups from different geographies share patterns of communication,

behavior and models of understanding that facilitate dialogue between organizations that

do not always pursue common goals but do have similar vulnerabilities. For example, the

markets of violence and the entropic factor of crime have motivated illegal structures to

use parastatal resources to govern significant portions of territories and strategic

corridors (Duncan, 2014; Raffo & Gómez, 2017). Taking into account the theoretical and

conceptual approach applied to the Central American context, it is necessary to involve

the impact of gender violence on the phenomenon of underground integration (Niño,

2020). Indeed, the natural dynamics of criminal governance have a substantial impact

on women as the majority victims in the region. On the one hand, they are an actor that

serves as a recipient of violence; on the other, as a criminal vehicle. Illegal brokers

controlled by parastatal groups (O'Donnell & Wolfson, 1993) reach vital degrees of

marketing women as tradable goods and as subjects of violence (Truong, 2001).

Women as subjects of violence: between the recipient and the criminal

vehicle

By 1970, some criminological research drew attention to certain studies associated with

the causal relationship between female offenders and female emancipation (Smart,

1979). In the same order, it was argued, on the one hand, that wage-earning mothers

raised children who would become criminals, while, on the other hand, the hypothesis

was maintained that emancipated women become more crime-stinging due to their

association with "masculine" values at work and their contact with opportunities for crime

outside home (Smart, 1979). This was an argumentative construction that managed to

generate distortions about the role of crime in society, a selective notion about the female

role in society and crime associated with a subordination of the role of women in society

and even in crime. Subsequently, works with a gender focus and different investigations

that tried to depart from the classic configuration and causal relationship between

emancipated women and crime, such as that of Chesney-Lind (1986), showed

substantial changes and advances in the matter. This research warns about the visibility

of generalized violence against women, but at the same time recognizes that to

determine the analytical equity in this regard, it must be borne in mind that there is no

clear information about violent women who attack other women.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

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Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

On the other hand, it was also possible to construct a perspective in which the

controversy about criminal and violent women has stimulated concern for the causes and

correlates of female criminal behavior, particularly that of a violent nature in criminal

structures (Bunch, Foley, & Urbina, 1983).

At the beginning of the 21

century, the research of Rushforth and Willis (2003) shed

new perspectives on the relationship between women and crime. The authors mention

that women's drug use is a defining factor in their involvement in crime and argue that

the severity of women's drug use is more closely related to their criminality than to men

(Willis & Rushforth, 2003). Likewise, female offenders are more likely than men to be

incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, such as drug offenses, while men are more likely to

go to prison for violent matters (Nazario, 2019; Willis & Rushforth, 2003). This opens up

a new spectrum of analysis to dimensions in which women facilitate criminal activities for

illegal networks based on the probability of association with minor crimes.

Women constitute a minority in the current global criminal context (Loinaz, 2016).

However, the invisibility of women as protagonists of criminality has been constant both

in the criminal sphere and the bibliographic and academic dynamics; also, though,

women represent a sustained increase in captures, investigations, convictions and

imprisonments in recent years (Loinaz, 2016). Global estimates in 2010 showed

important results warning that 25% of offenders belonged to an exclusively female

population, concentrating on the 10% being violent and 5% associated with sexual ones

(Cortoni, Hanson, & Coache, 2010; Loinaz, 2016). And yet, the remaining 10% do not

have an attribution and record for an absolute and determined type of crime.

Lastly, Central America is one of the most violent regions in the world, besides

asymmetrical and volatile in terms of domestic conflicts, in particular the most unequal

(Dalby & Carranza, 2019). On the other hand, it is also a region in which large

manifestations of violence against women are estimated and its receptive character has

attracted attention worldwide, contradicting the thesis of the works of the 1970s, in which

a relationship between criminal women and their emancipation process was warned

(Blanchard, 2003; IEEP, 2017). Undeniably, within the framework of criminal

governance and underground integration, women become the turning point as subjects

of violence in two dimensions: as receivers and vehicles. This phenomenon configures

the two-dimensional proportion of violence (Niño & Méndez, 2020), a kind of dimension

in which women have traditionally been violated but also have a participation in violent

structures.

Proposal for theorization of women in violence

To address the phenomenon of women as subjects of violence in the Central American

context, process tracing method will be used. This method makes use of documentary

evidence to infer the causal chain between the causes and outcomes of a given

phenomenon (George & Bennett, 2005). Specifically, it will be used the variant of

theory-building process tracing (Beach & Pedersen, 2019) to elaborate a theoretical

proposal that expresses the underground integration from the gender perspective in

Central America from the incorporation of the phenomena of women as recipients of

violence and vehicles of violence.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

The theoretical model assumes that there is a structural and visible phenomenon such

as women as recipients of violence that is expressed in variables such as social behaviors

towards women and the action of the state for the protection of their rights:

WRP= SPW+DPP

The Woman Recipient of Violence (WRV) is the result of the confluence of factors such as

the social perception of women (SPW) and the distortions of public policies (DPP) to face

their vulnerability to the phenomena of gender violence.

Nonetheless, this element of the model is what we could refer to as traditional in studies

on violence and gender that identify only one side of the violence that is exercised against

women. Our theorization proposal goes further by incorporating into the explanation the

phenomenon of Women as Vehicles of Violence (WVV), which is characterized by the

instrumentalization of women for criminal activities and that highlights the progressive

change in the imaginaries and roles of women in criminal organizations:

WVV= WRV*CA

In the same sense, the state inability (SI) to regulate the activities and displacement of

the state itself in the exercise of classical functions such as defense, effective border

control and security, or the provision of public goods (Wickham-Crowley, 1987) suggests

that the phenomenon as a whole has an intermestic nuance, and that there is a

continuous interaction between domestic and international levels around gender

violence. The sum of domestic violence at the structural and criminal actor levels,

reinforced by the incapacity of the State, generates what we have called Underground

Gender Integration (UGI):

WRV(IE)+WVV(SI)=UGI

The state incapacity (EI) is, thus, the constant in the dynamics of underground gender

integration. Namely, it affects the process in a differentiated way with special emphasis

on the woman who receives violence because it is she who implements weak public

policies for the prevention of violence and protection of women.

One also mut consider – and in addition to the above – the inability of the state in its

basic functions in accordance with the protection and effective territorial control, that

increases the probability for women to mutate from a recipient to a vehicle of violence

because they become an actor part of the criminal chain. Indeed, this involvement of

women in criminal organizations has its center of gravity in the stimuli and incentives

offered by the porosity of borders, the learning of criminals about the strategic value of

women in their structures and the weakness of public institutions to prevent recruitment

for such activities.

For the Central American context, this means that the region includes a phenomenon of

violence

, where such determines the dimensions and roles assumed by women in the

Northern Triangle; therefore, crimes such as femicide, sexual and symbolic violence

produce violent scenarios against women.

Concept coined by the authors referring to violence as a phenomenon transversal to social relations in all

its dimensions.

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Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

In this respect, for the purposes of this article, the underground integration of gender is

the product of a violent and criminal process around the role of women in the region.

Based on the foregoing, there is a structural cause that is the woman receiving violence

evidenced in abuse, discrimination, and crimes against women. Due to the violence and

presence of criminal actors, a new notion of women as a vehicle of violence is configured.

The latter has become a criminal strategy and innovation that allows the underground

integration of gender due to the little effective control of the territory that occurs

especially in the border areas. Causal mechanisms such as state instability, border

porosity and the exploitation of the role of women in society by criminal groups are vital

for the understanding of the role and participation of women in transnational crime.

Underground gender integration: a Central American phenomenon

The woman of the Northern Triangle is constructed as a subject of violence from a

convergence of structural variables such as the perception of women in society and their

economic autonomy. Additionally, symbolic violence opens a new unaddressed spectrum

of violent women, whose roles in criminal structures build underground circuits of

delinquency. Consequently, we find that public policy designs are focused on mitigating

the first dimension (woman receiving violence), leaving aside the prevention of the

phenomenon of violent women. Women opt for violence and crime as a plausible space

to protect their active role within a structure, generate codes of respect and aspirations

for promotion in a criminal pyramid.

For the first dimension on women as recipients of violence in the region, it is configured

in various ways: sexual, economic, emotional, or psychological (IEEP, 2017). According

to the above, the countries belonging to the Central America Northern Triangle showed

the highest rates of violent deaths of women in the world during the period 2007-2012

(Montti, Bolaños, & Cerén, 2018). Namely, El Salvador was the one that during the

recorded period had the highest rate of violent deaths of women in the world with 14.4

women killed per hundred thousand, then Honduras with 10.9 violent deaths and in third

place Guatemala with 9.3 deaths of women (OHCHR, 2014). Consequently, women

configure a center of gravity in the reception of violence due to cultural factors such as

violent masculinities, the historical behavioral normalization of cultural violence, violent

family environments and the invisibility of violence.

On the other hand, the crimes of trafficking and smuggling of women have an interesting

point for analysis on criminal governance frameworks

. Both smuggling and trafficking

have become attractive crimes for criminal organizations in the region such as El

Salvador's "Los Perrones". They possess the routes, contacts and an architecture of

underground integration with illegal Honduran, Cuban, Mexican, Panamanian,

Colombian, European and even African groups (Pérez, 2014), but in particular their

closest underground associations are with Barrio 18 and Mara Salvatrucha (InSight

Crime, 2016).

While human trafficking has a characteristic of the victim's voluntariness with the event and involves the

crossing of borders, the trafficked woman, despite her will and consent, is also a victim. In the area of

trafficking, contact is under deception and coercion and the consent of the female victim is flawed and does

not involve the crossing of a border. (SEGOB, 2011).

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Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

A second dimension of study is that of a vehicle for crime. Women are used as means of

committing crimes such as extortion. Research conducted by Demoscopía S.A. (2007) on

gender composition has shown that women make up between 20 and 40% of Central

American gangs. They assume functions of collecting information on potential victims

and collecting extortion (Bonello, 2019), the main source of income for these

organizations. In this regard, women have been strategically involved in the criminal

chain, exploiting the advantages offered by judicial loopholes when it comes to

persecuting them.

This dimension redefines the historical role of women, transforming their passive role

into an active one within criminal organizations. Social construction and "otherness"

(Mouffe & Laclau, 2007; Prozorov, 2015) have allowed their participation to become a

hinge between groups and networks and, at the same time, a blind spot in front of

security and justice operators.

Conclusions

This work reflects an academic effort to build a new concept and involve it in the regional

debate on violence and criminality associated with women, as well as a contribution to

the state of the art of such knowledge. Underground integration, from a gender

perspective, has been built from two dimensions associated with women as subjects of

violence: receiver and criminal vehicle. This is a commitment to resignify regional

integration in terms of new problems that imply strategic solutions. In short, integration

is also understood from alternative and unconventional points, such as trade and politics,

but are extended to spheres where the state is not the center of gravity and criminality

reaches to design less bureaucratic underground ecosystems, yet with high lucrative

returns.

On the other hand, the limited academic and documentary sources on violent women

represent a difficulty in building a state of the art on this field. Subsequently, this

research is an invitation to deepen and expand academic advances on two phenomena

that have been addressed in a traditional, way such as gender and regional integration.

On the one hand, gender as an explanation of new mobility of women in the social

structure and on the other, regional integration as a phenomenon that has multiple edges

that deserve to be studied such as criminal governance, the roles of conventional and

unconventional actors, corruption, the supplanting of states by irregular actors,

organized crime with the capacity to overwhelm the system and regular institutions. In

fact, for crime there are no borders comparable to the conception of states; in crime,

institutions are created irregularly to compete and even replace the rules of the state

game. This modifies and reconfigures the regional, geopolitical, economic, and legal

space on which traditional regional integration models are built.

In fact, one of the main challenges to correct regional weaknesses in this area is to

standardize and systematize statistics and data on gender violence, which are mostly

aimed at evidencing the phenomenon of women who have been violated and to show in

the same way the dimensions in which violent women integrate the criminal structures

of the region. On the other hand, criminal policy must incorporate a differentiated gender

and regional component. In this way, to agree on public policy strategies that imply the

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

Vol. 12, Nº. 2 (November 2021-April 2022), pp. 46-58

Bidirectional violence: a critical approach to Central American women

Cesar Niño, Camilo González

protection of women who have been violated and, at the same time, the disengagement

of women from criminal structures. In effect, private companies must facilitate the

insertion of women into the workforce while state operators must redefine and conquer

natural spaces of their constitutional configuration. Finally, in social terms, the

community must assume an active role in the denormalization of violence as a social

practice.

It should, hence, be mentioned that the reduction of violence against women does not

lie in the increase in penalties, but in the effective functioning of justice operators. A

reduction in the phenomenon must be based on greater agility of investigations and the

strengthening of criminal policy to minimize the capacity for action and coercion. On the

other hand, the effectiveness of the policy seeks to increase persuasion against potential

members of criminal networks to cease from their participation.

Security strategies must be built based on the particularities and phenomenologies of the

region and be solved in that the gender approach, beyond the discussion between

femininities and masculinities, contributes to the understanding of criminal governance

and underground integration against women as subject and tradable pattern of regional

violence.

Overall, this document is an effort to try to explain what concerns a phenomenon of great

concern to regional security and justice operators. The role of women in the criminal

spheres as victims and criminals has led to some of the invisibility that is of concern when

developing public policies and comprehensive security strategies. Throughout the study

it is determined that underground and criminal integrations are much more effective to

perform because the transaction costs between the actors are lower, while, between

states, by their own configuration, there are more limitations and robust costs of

integration due to variables such as sovereignty, politics, economy, and security.

This work also seeks to contribute to future new lines and agendas of research in Latin

America. Gender studies have been related to explaining issues concerning equity,

participation, women's demands with politics, rights, access to justice, work, and the

economy. Overall, this research seeks, among others, to contribute from gender studies

to the understanding of the phenomenon of integration, particularly in Central America

and in new approaches to the role of women in security dynamics.

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