Overview
In AdiÓs NiÑo: The Gangs of Guatemala City and the Politics of Death, Deborah T. Levenson examines transformations in the Guatemalan gangs called Maras from their emergence in the 1980s to the early 2000s. A historical study, AdiÓs NiÑo describes how fragile spaces of friendship and exploration turned into rigid and violent ones in which youth, and especially young men, came to employ death as a natural way of living for the short period that they expected to survive. Levenson relates the stark changes in the Maras to global, national, and urban deterioration; transregional gangs that intersect with the drug trade; and the Guatemalan military's obliteration of radical popular movements and of social imaginaries of solidarity. Part of Guatemala City's reconfigured social, political, and cultural milieu, with their members often trapped in Guatemala's growing prison system, the gangs are used to justify remilitarization in Guatemala's contemporary postwar, post-peace era. Portraying the Maras as microcosms of broader tragedies, and pointing out the difficulties faced by those youth who seek to escape the gangs, Levenson poses important questions about the relationship between trauma, memory, and historical agency.
Full Product Details
Author: Deborah T. Levenson
Publisher: Duke University Press
Imprint: Duke University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.60cm
, Height: 1.80cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.445kg
ISBN: 9780822352990
ISBN 10: 0822352990
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 09 April 2013
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Reviews
A study that will take us beyond the common sense of what we know about gangs. Levenson creates a deep and dense explanation about death, violence and evil. The case under study --the Guatemalan gangs-- is a paradigmatic one about how ordinary people become evil. This book is the result of an incredible, original, ethnographic fieldwork, developed --as usual in a country like Guatemala-- in dangerous conditions. For this reason, this study also offers many methodological lessons for researchers. Adios Nino plunges us into the deep darkness of the underworld. This is a first-class piece of social interpretation, and an example of high quality anthropology. --Manolo E. Vela Castaneda, author of Los Pelotones de la Muerte: La Construccion de los Perpetradores del Genocidio Guatemalteco
A must-read account of how the gangs of Guatemala were shaped by war and politics. Chilling and important. --John M. Hagedorn, author of A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture<br>
Author Information
Deborah T. Levenson is Associate Professor of History at Boston College. She is the author of Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985 and a coeditor of The Guatemala Reader: History, Culture, Politics, also published by Duke University Press.
