Abstract

ZAJAC, Joaquín. Argentinian National Gendarmerie and management of conflicts and violence in informal neighborhoods of southern City of Buenos Aires. Runa [online]. 2021, vol.42, n.1, pp.351-368.  Epub Apr 21, 2021. ISSN 1851-9628.  http://dx.doi.org/10.34096/runa.v42i1.8731.

The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the interventions of the Argentine National Gendarmerie (GNA) in situations of conflict and violence in informal neighborhoods in southern Buenos Aires between 2016 and 2019, its public policy framework and the institutional representations involved in those practices. I analyze the tensions and difficulties that Gendarmerie has to face addressing certain demands that exceed some institutionally weighted functions as “their own”. Also, the way in which these interventions illuminate a constructive dimension of “police power”, as well as the particular technology that the state uses for governing its “margins” and their demands and conflicts. The article is based on the analysis of documentary sources, and by an ethnographic fieldwork with members of the Gendarmerie in neighborhoods of the south of CABA between 2016 and 2017, and with inhabitants of these neighborhoods in 2019.

Keywords : Gendarmerie; State; Conflict; Violence; Informal neighborhoods.

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