Brazil: violence in (merged thread)

[Azor]

I attended a lecture yesterday in London @ LSE on 'Militarised Response to Transnational Crime', a book now published and one speaker, ex-BBC reporter Misha Glenny, referred to his time living in a Rio favela (Rosina? Rochina) and an interview with a boss (now deposed or dead):Finally Misha raised a point IIRC appears here irregularly on other threads; non-state bodies are beating the nation-state in providing stability.

See Journal article:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...upport-operati

Well, to be fair, this is hardly a phenomenon unique to Brazil, and can also be notably found in Colombia (albeit on a much-decreased basis), Mexico, much of Africa, Syria, Iraq, the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon.

The first mission of the state is security. The state itself is derived from the army, the first human bureaucracy. The army originated from a group of militants who would conquer, extort and protect a community, which was typically engaged in farming and animal husbandry.

In this respect, the leader of the gang in the Rio favela or the head of the cartel in Juarez imitates the emergence of the very first kings, and his sicarios, the very first warrior aristocracy. We may refer to these organizations as "non-state bodies", but they form in areas of anarchy, chaos and lawlessness, and are as much a historically-accurate attempt at establishing a state, as the black markets of North Korea are at establishing free markets.