The violent disconnection: the logic of protest violence in contemporary Latin America

Abstract

Scholars have extensively debated the causes of recent anti-government protests in Global South democracies. However, little attention has been given to explaining why and how some of these protests became more violent than others despite occurring under relatively similar circumstances. In contemporary Latin America, most countries have experienced mass anti-government protests, but only a few escalated into highly destructive, nationwide, and prolonged street violence. This puzzle set the central question of this PhD research: How can we explain variation in the intensity of protest violence in low-middle quality democracies? I argue that the intensity of protest violence is shaped by the degree of deterioration in state-citizen relations through two mechanisms: the strength of intermediary organisations (political parties, unions, social movements) in the political system, and the endurance of memories of state violence. Strong intermediaries help channel grievances, facilitating negotiations with state authorities and preventing radical factions from gaining traction. Conversely, weak intermediaries fail to address solutions, increasing public alienation and legitimising violent actors. Societies with strong collective memories of state repression are more likely to avoid violence, as both authorities and protesters recognise its costly consequences. When these memories fade, the likelihood of both state repression and radical behaviour rises. I claim that the interplay of these two factors results in three distinct patterns of protest violence: restrained, disruptive or transgressive. Using extensive historical research, newspaper reports, cross-national surveys, written testimonies, protest art, video footage, political cartoons, and 63 in-depth interviews conducted during fieldwork, I undertake a process-tracing controlled comparison of protests in Argentina, Chile and Colombia. I focus on the largest mobilisations in each country between 2017 and 2020. My analysis shows that differences in the strength of intermediary organisations and the significance of past state violence in collective memories help explain the distinct trajectories of protest violence. In Argentina, where strong intermediaries engaged with authorities and memories of state violence remained vivid, protest violence remained largely restrained. In Colombia, weak intermediaries combined with strong memories of state atrocities resulted in disruptive violence. Meanwhile, in Chile, where intermediaries were weak and collective memories of past repression had faded, protests escalated into transgressive violence. This PhD research contributes to existing literature on contentious politics in three ways. First, it builds a novel theory on the variation in protest violence, shedding light on the black box of mechanisms by which certain mobilisations become more violent than others. Second, by challenging prevailing theories on deterministic understandings of violence, this research provides a more nuanced and interactional analytical framework for studying protest violence. Finally, it advances into new empirical terrain by offering fresh ground-level data on variations in protest violence from a cross-national comparative perspective.