Although law enforcement agents engaged in acts of intimidation, harassment, and brutality during mano dura operations, it is perhaps the measures they implemented to concentrate violence in low-income communities that most contributed to the premature death and proximity to harm that barrio and public housing residents experienced. I argue that mano dura promoted an uneven distribution of risk, harm, and death by tacitly allowing the proliferation of violence within economically and racially marginalized communities. To demonstrate how policing intensified forms of violent exclusion, I focus on mano dura contra el crimen, or iron fist against crime, a law enforcement initiative that sought to eliminate drug-related crime and violence by targeting public housing and other low-income spaces around the island for joint military and police raids during the 1990s. ![]() ![]() In this essay, I trace how punitive policing in Puerto Rico has deepened existing racial, spatial, and class-based inequalities and further limited life chances for some of Puerto Rico's most vulnerable citizens.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |