Third World Quarterly

ISSN: 0143-6597 (Print) 1360-2241 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctwq20

Merging legality with illegality in Paraguay: the

cluster of order in Pedro Juan Caballero

Marcelo Moriconi & Carlos Aníbal Peris

To cite this article: Marcelo Moriconi & Carlos Aníbal Peris (2019): Merging legality with
illegality in Paraguay: the cluster of order in Pedro Juan Caballero, Third World Quarterly, DOI:
10.1080/01436597.2019.1636225

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1636225

Published online: 24 Jul 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ctwq20
Third World Quarterly
https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2019.1636225

Merging legality with illegality in Paraguay: the cluster of

order in Pedro Juan Caballero
Marcelo Moriconia and Carlos Aníbal Perisb
a
Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Center for International Studies (CEI-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal;
b
Department of Postgraduate Studies, Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Asuncion, Paraguay

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Paraguay is often described as a territory of drug trafficking, smuggling Received 14 June 2018
and commercial piracy. However, the country remains understudied by Accepted 21 June 2019
academics researching criminality and illegal markets. Pedro Juan KEYWORDS
Caballero, a city located on the northern border with Brazil, is an inter- Social order
esting case study to illustrate how legality and illegality merge in drug trafficking
Paraguay to create hybrid social orders. The daily life in the city, one of illegal markets
the best places in the world for cultivating marijuana, unfolds between social tolerance
the higher homicides rates and some of the lowest levels of common Paraguay
criminality in Paraguay. Far from being a matter of state weakness, the
expansion and tolerance of illegal activities is framed within a cluster
of order that combines both rational legal practices and neo-­patrimonial
norms. The presence and roles of state institutions are re-signified, gen-
erating alternative hierarchies, practices and values to supply social,
political and economic outcomes. Through in-depth interviews with
key informants, ethnography visits and analyses of aggregated data,
this paper describes the hybrid order of Pedro Juan Caballero by tallying
the incentives that encourage social and institutional tolerance of ille-
gality and describes how illegal practices create access to goods, ser-
vices, protection and expectations not provided by the legal
framework.

Introduction
Throughout the twenty-first century, Latin America has endured three scourges: violence,
corruption and insecurity. Alternately, these phenomena have appeared as the main prob-
lems of the region’s countries in international barometers,1 and only unemployment has
sneaked in among them. But despite being a territory of ‘violent democracies’2 and home
to the highest homicide rates in the world,3 societies in Latin American have maintained a
certain stability over the years. As Schultze-Kraft emphasises, ‘in the midst of a crime and
violence crisis of major proportions, Latin America has not witnessed any fully-fledged social
conflagration and/or return to some form of unveiled nondemocratic rule’.4 While several
studies have focused on explaining the political, institutional, social, economic and cultural

CONTACT Marcelo Moriconi marcelo.moriconi@iscte-iul.pt Center for International Studies: Avenida das Forças
Armadas, 1649-026, Lisbon, Portugal
© 2019 Global South Ltd
2 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

factors behind the persistence of violence and crime,5 few scholars have attempted to under-
stand the role of illegal markets and violent non-state actors in the construction of alternative
social orders and ‘democratic’ stability.6
Although it remains understudied by academics researching criminality and illegal mar-
kets, Paraguay is an exemplary case for bridging this gap in the scientific literature. Despite
many institutional reports and journalistic investigations denouncing the historical presence
of drug trafficking, massive smuggling, violence, commercial piracy and massive corruption
in the country, Paraguay maintains a democratic and social stability, and its economy con-
tinues to grow.7
This paper contributes to offset the gap of studies on Paraguay’s hybrid social order by
describing and explaining the ecosystem of legality and criminality implemented in the city
of Pedro Juan Caballero, capital of the department of Amambay. This locality has been
broadly labeled as ‘Paraguay’s most violent region’8 and as ‘Latin America’s drug trafficker
town’.9 This place, mainly for its illegal drug production and distribution market, is particularly
of interest to understand how a social order in which legality is ambivalent, and where state
and criminal actors interact to establish guidelines of coexistence, is created and reproduced.
Through in-depth interviews with key informants (21 in total, including local and national
politicians, journalists, academics and law enforcement agents10), several ethnographic trips
to the city and an analysis of aggregated data (criminal rates, volumes of illegal markets and
social and economic indicators), this article describes the cluster of order of Pedro Juan
Caballero, explaining the dynamics of its functioning and the roles and incentives of the
different social actors that take part in the organisation and development of the local hybrid
social order. Those actors legitimise the existence of certain illegal markets and practices,
while accepting the suspension, cancellation or arbitrary application of the rule of law.
The paper is structured in the following way: first, we look at the history of crime in
Paraguay, and the features of Pedro Juan Caballero as a case study are presented; then, we
discuss the state of the art and explain the analytical framework for the study of hybrid social
orders, where legality and illegality coexist and merge to create social stability and outcomes.
In the third section, the cluster of order of the city is described according the results and
evidence from the research. The results are followed by a discussion of their theoretical and
practical implications for the study of social order and criminality in Latin America.

The ecosystem of crime and illegality in Paraguay and Pedro Juan Caballero
Paraguay has long been denounced as a destination for illegal goods, either smuggled or
stolen from neighbouring countries.11 It is also linked to drug trafficking and forgery prac-
tices,12 and it is even accused of having ties with terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah.13 The
country exhibits a case of organised crime that has been understudied. The few investigations
aimed at explaining the culture of smuggling and criminality have focused only on the region
known as the ‘Triple Frontier’ between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.14
Smuggling and illegal practices, however, exist all over the country. According to the 2017
Annual Report of the US State Department, over 50% of the national gross domestic product
(GDP) may come from this underground market.15 This situation has intensified over the last
few decades: while the Paraguayan economy maintained a stable and respectable growth
of around 8% annually,16 illegal activities expanded far more than that. Moreover, the creation
 Third World Quarterly 3

of MERCOSUR (the free trade block of South American countries) in 1991 generated the ideal
circumstances to enhance criminal operations.
According to national journalist Anibal Zapata, although most of the illicit trade starts in
Ciudad del Este and Pedro Juan Caballero, there is a support system behind it, one that is
structured by both citizens and corrupt government agents who help the merchandise end
up in Asunción. The organisation basically created an east-to-west ‘hub’ for the distribution
of goods to the rest of the country. To meet the country’s demand, thousands of kilos of
merchandise are smuggled into Paraguay from Brazil daily, and it enters customs camou-
flaged as ‘petty trafficking’. The goods that pass customs as merchandise for personal con-
sumption are then re-shipped to Asunción for wholesaling at the Central Market, the largest
marketplace in the city.17
In 2003, President Nicanor Duarte Frutos promised to tackle these chronic problems by
imposing new types of legal relations among all trade actors. At the time, it was estimated
that over 20% of the national economy originated from transnational smuggling – of ciga-
rettes, videogames, arms and stolen cars18 – and that did not even include drug trafficking.
These intentions, however, did not translate into the expected results due to small budget
allowances and the scarce resources that were assigned to the state agencies. After several
years of combating an ever-growing illegal trade, the Paraguayan Minister of Commerce
finally concluded in 2014 that smuggling activities were an ‘unstoppable avalanche’19. By
2015, illegal markets attained a 40% share of the GDP,20 at approximately USD 11 billion, a
staggering figure that represents a 100% growth over a period of 10 years.
Pedro Juan Caballero has four characteristics that make it an interesting case study to
understand the setting-up and dynamics of hybrid social orders, in which legality and ille-
gality coexist and alternate: (1) a high annual homicide rate: 71.65 per 100,000 people, which
is 15.6 times higher than the Latin American average rate;21 (2) its geographical character-
istics, with no river and a long dry border with Brazil with no police controls,22 which places
the city in the middle of the continent and makes it a strategic transit zone; (3) a rising rate
of violence due to the confrontations between international organised crime groups related
to local illegal markets, including cases of kidnapping and extortion and the active presence
of hired assassins;23 and (4) the paradox that while the number of murders among criminals
is growing, the rates of common and property crimes (theft, robbery, burglary and assaults)
remain among the lowest in the country (see Table 1).
The study of this place also aids in understanding the limitations of the approaches that
oppose the crime and the state and see these two entities as rivals and contradictory.
In June 2016, Pedro Juan Caballero was the scene of an infamous homicide worthy of an
action movie. Mr Jorge Rafaat, known locally as ‘The Drug King’, was circulating through the
city’s streets in his armoured military-style vehicle on a quiet afternoon; alongside his Hummer
was a retinue of over 30 bodyguards. Despite his powerful army, Rafaat’s group was ambushed

Table 1.  Criminal indicators in Amambay and Paraguay (2017).

Department of Amambay in percentage of Amambay position in
Amambay Total country country representation country level
Homicide 104  511 20.3  1/18
Fraud   7   72  9.7 11/18
Robbery  16  573  2.7 13/18
Damage   2  129  1.5 15/18
Theft  22 1870   1.17 15/18
Source: National Police of Paraguay, Informe Estadistico. Asuncion: Paraguay, 2018.
4 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

by over 100 mercenaries who shot at them with specialised weaponry for more than four
hours. The attackers discharged large firearms, and even used anti-aircraft machine guns
during the hit.24
According to the authorities, the murderers were mercenaries hired by the First Command
of the Capital (Primer Comando Capital, or the PCC), which had initiated its war against Rafaat
after the latter denied the transport and commercialisation of PCC’s drugs. In 2014, Mr Luis
Rojas, former director of the Paraguayan Anti-Drugs bureau, stated that Pedro Juan Caballero
had become the operational centre for large and powerful criminal organisations, such as
the Red Brigade (Comando Rojo, or the CR) and the PCC. The two organisations started to
fight over the control of international traffic, even though they had been partners in criminal
endeavours in previous years.25
The conflict worsened as the trafficker organisations began to grow26 and spread to other
towns of the province. Because these areas along the border are ideal for the cultivation of
marijuana, the land lots were rented from poor local farmers. In a second phase of the busi-
ness, laboratories for cocaine production were installed in these lands, and the province –
mainly Pedro Juan Caballero – became a prosperous point of drug distribution to the
Americas and Europe.27
The national literature disregards the active participation of state actors in the criminal
activities of Pedro Juan Caballero. Researchers have chiefly explained the rise and normali-
sation of these practices by giving two different explanations. Some of them emphasise the
inefficiency of the bureaucratic apparatus, arguing that it enables the proper conditions for
these practices.28 Others warn that the state has been weak in its dealings with criminals,
and that it was actually on the verge of a crisis. Because the government cannot properly
enforce the law, it is forced to allow, accept and yield certain areas to criminals, negotiating
a type of ‘social compromise’ with them.29
These two narratives basically differentiate state affairs from criminal affairs, positioning
them in contraposition when it comes to their values, interests and expectations. However,
these two concepts are not opposed to each other. Due to the legacy of the dictatorship in
Paraguay, there has been promotion of a political culture where transgression became part
of the national idiosyncrasy. In this country, we are dealing with a hybrid order, where crim-
inality and legal rationality occupy the same territory in the ‘clusters of order and power’.30
The political culture usually determines values, social interests and the way communities
resolve their conflicts; it defines the real social order. In the Paraguayan case, due to the
permanent and necessary interaction between legal and extra-legal actors, this political
culture became a hybrid: as a result of the fall of the dictatorship, illegal activities were
democratised, de-centralised and re-opened for business with new agents, expanding all
over the country with a wide variety of goods and services.
Clavel31 observes that this conjuncture is well-recognised internationally. Despite the severity
and the magnitude of the illegality problems, it is notable that Paraguay has only one judge
assigned to work on smuggling cases, Mr Humberto Otazu. The institutionalisation of justice
there is based on a crooked political culture. As we have mentioned, state agencies lack human
and financial resources which, in turn, makes the proper delivery of justice impossible. The
current system essentially generates impunity. Of course, formal law exists, but it is not respected
by this hybrid social order, unless those within the order deem it necessary to utilise it.
Within this panorama and taking into account its role in the international market of drugs
as well as its geographical position, the city of Pedro Juan Caballero offers a crucial case to
 Third World Quarterly 5

study. It has a population of 80,000 inhabitants and is the biggest city along the 400-kilo-
metre frontier between Paraguay and the State of Mato Grosso in Brazil. One of its charac-
teristics is that people live and move freely between these two countries: they can go back
and forth from Paraguay (Pedro Juan Caballero) to Brazil (Punta Porá) at any time. Another
characteristic is that the cities were built next to other at the edge of their respective coun-
tries’ boundary line, and only a few metres apart: the two border communities are so inter-
connected that the two towns even share public plazas along their border.
The citizens of Pedro Juan Caballero do not deny the existence of trafficking activities in
their city. On the contrary, they recognise its capacity for promoting economic development
and social recognition. As explained by a key informant, a former police officer (interview 8):
In Pedro Juan Caballero everybody knows that the fastest way to make money is with the drug
business. Local politicians and police officers induce you into the business; they even give you
tips. The problem is everyone wants the same. The first law around here is about the value of
keeping your word; if someone were murdered, it’s because they had not complied with what
had been promised.32

The participation of the police in the drug business, either actively or passively, was
denounced by the Minister of the Interior, Mr Francisco Vargas (in office from 2012 to 2016).
The Hollywood-movie-like murder of Rafaat, for instance, occurred 200 metres from a police
station and 100 metres from the local Crime Investigation Headquarters. Needless to say,
the institutional possibilities for imparting justice are limited: in the entire departmental
district of the town, there is only one anti-drug prosecutor.
Profits from drug sales also make the region attractive to rival groups. In the past, drug
trafficking developed into a form of hierarchy, while today it involves competition among
transnational cartel groups who are at war for the territory. The violent nature of this conflict
is still tolerated as an alternative ‘way of living’ to a legal one because despite the chaos, it
generates cash. The rise in the murder toll, as mentioned by all informants, is not perceived
as a rise in violence, but as a rise in the vengeance wreaked against those who failed to keep
their promises. The average person presumes that if someone is murdered, it is because they
had done something to deserve it.
Far from being a question of the virtual absence of the state, or its weakness when it comes
to controlling crime, the expansion of drug trafficking and violence is framed within a grow-
ing, rational hybrid order which produces alternative hierarchies, rules, values and incentives.
In such a scheme, state actors are crucial in providing the means for controlling, normalising,
expanding and naturalising illegal markets and activities. Although the higher authorities or
rulers of this ecosystem of criminality deviate from legal standards and rationality, they are
nonetheless legitimised and tolerated by segments of society, or at least partially accepted,
due to the outcomes they bring. Dewey et al.33 calls this conjuncture a ‘clusters of orders’,
where legal and illegal actors engage simultaneously to produce and deliver goods, services,
informal norms, and expectations that legal means alone could not offer.

Hybrid orders and the collapse of legality as a moral categorical imperative

For many years, studies on organised crime, collective violence and insecurity in Latin
America were marked by the division between two opposing entities: the state and the
criminals. This duality led to establishing theories that justified the emergence and expansion
6 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

of criminality due to the absence of their enemy, the state, or due to the weakness of the
state to impose the rule of law throughout its territory.34 For this literature, the creation of
a social order was, in addition to a state issue, a question of legality.35 In other words, law-
lessness produced only chaos, anomie and disorder.
Focused on trying to establish correlations that explain the causes of violent crime, this
narrative ignored the paradox that, despite the phenomenon being understood as a matter
of instability and a threat to regional democracies, violent societies, far from being unstable
democracies themselves, conform to the critical juncture and coexist with crime without
generating social conflicts of great magnitude.36 As we claim in this article, there is a process
of adaptation, naturalisation and tolerance of the violent coexistence in these societies.
In recent years, a set of works have shown how what was previously seen as a pair of
opposed entities is, in reality, a continuum in which legal and illegal practices and actors
merge to create hybrid social orders.37 These social orders generate behaviours, attitudes
Table 2.  The cluster of order in the Pedro Juan Caballero drug market.
Sector Roles and duties Incentives
Peasants Cultivation. Economic incentives.
To not misbehave or violate local norms. Access to the lowest ranks among the drug
dealers/traffickers.
Obtain resources to access better goods and
services in the formal and informal markets.
Protection/security.
Common people To tolerate and respect the values, practices Ensure their well-being.
and hierarchies of the hybrid order. Abolish unnecessary danger and fear.
Silence. (Informal) employment.
To not misbehave or violate local norms. Protection/security.
To accept illegal actors as the source of Social order.
protection and the existence of illegal
markets.
Police To provide protection. Economic incentives.
Supervision and control of merchandise and Possibility to become a member of a drug cartel.
goods. Promotion within police structures.
Protect the land for cultivation. Improvements at the operational level.
Creation of free zones. Employment stability.
Turning a blind eye.
Avoiding competition among different
groups and cartels.
Members of the Legal protection. Economic incentives.
judicial system To provide impunity for higher hierarchies Stability or even promotion in their careers.
within the hybrid order (discriminatory Security.
legalism).
To condemn those who do not respect the
hybrid order.
Avoiding extreme competition among
different groups and cartels (regulation).
Drug trafficker To control the production. Economic incentives.
To control the distribution. Social prestige and power.
To fund other sectors involved in the To control more and larger markets.
stability of the hybrid order. To expand the territory of influence.
To give protection, security and justice.
Politicians To turn a blind eye to illegal markets. Economic incentives.
Political protection. Social prestige.
To pass regulations beneficial for the Consolidation within the political structure.
consolidation of the hybrid order. Career promotion to the national level.
Supervision of all the actors involved. Access to more material and financial resources
To avoid competition among different (even for their political campaigns).
groups and cartels (regulation). Protection/security.
Source: Authors’ own creation based on collected evidence.
 Third World Quarterly 7

and incentives that determine channels of legitimation for both arbitrary implementation
of the law and certain illegal practices.
Dewey et al. have developed a conceptual framework for interpreting hybrid social orders.
The authors define a hybrid order one established by both legal and extra-legal actors and
regulated by a combination of rational bureaucratic norms and neo-patrimonial rules, and
that produces relevant social, economic and political outputs such as job creation, supply
of basic services, regulation of social expectations, and alternative hierarchies, authorities,
justice systems, value systems and citizen protection. In such orders, including our example
of Pedro Juan Caballero (Table 2), socially tolerated illegal markets, such as marijuana pro-
duction and distribution, play a decisive role. Dewey et al. define this type of social organi-
zation as a cluster of order: ‘a type of social order that produces alternative rules and authorities
that deviate from rational legal norms, but are still accepted by civil society (or at least parts
of it)’.38
The definition of a cluster of order is related to what Schultze-Kraft39 denotes as crimilegal
orders, characterised by the blurring of the social boundaries between legality and illegality
and/or criminality. What is formally illegal and/or criminal may be deemed legitimate, while
what is formally legal may be illegitimate. As we will present in the next section, this is what
happens in our case study (see Table 3). The governance of this hybrid order involves, as
Schultze-Kraft explains,
coordination between a range of State and non-State actors, serving (illicit) economic interests
but who are also reflective of broader particularistic concerns about guaranteeing political
stability and the de facto exercise of political authority, as well as the physical security of those
in power and, somewhat paradoxically, their judicial impunity.

Table 3. Legitimized legalities and illegalities.

Legality
Legitimate The constitutional-legal way of life’s means
(accepted) as indicators of a proper way of life.
The democratic election of politicians
(who defend and protect the hybrid
order).
To prosecute to the full extent of the law
those who do not respect the duties
and rules of coexistence of the hybrid
order.
Illegitimate Legality as a moral categorical imperative.
(not accepted) The constitutional-legal way of life as an
effective and credible means for
personal development.
Disarticulation and fines to illegal markets
that generate employment and
economic outcomes.
Outlawing of (illegal) markets and
activities that produce social outcomes
and establish alternative channels for
social protection and security.
Source: Authors’ own creation based on collected evidence.
Illegality
Smuggling and trafficking.
Imposition of non-democratic hierarchies
(as long as they offer a beneficial social,
economic and political outcomes).
Informal and/or illegal employment.
Cultivation and production of drugs
(mainly for exportation).
Selling drugs to adults.
Murders among drug traffickers and gangs.
Lynching of those who threaten the
security of common citizens, mainly
children, women and elderly people
(for instance, thieves and robbers).
Alternative methods of conflict resolution
and citizen protection.
Selling drugs to minors.
Murdering innocent people.
Violence and aggressions towards minors,
women and elderly wo/men.
8 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

While Dewey et al.40 consider that a cluster of order develops in precarious zones where
social needs are not guaranteed by rational legal institutions, Moriconi41 suggests that the
opportunity structure for a hybrid order to emerge is the collapse of legality as a moral
categorical imperative and the de-legitimisation of it as a means of social prestige.
For Moriconi, the problem of Latin American violent societies is that their model for the
legal lifestyle is no longer plausible for achieving high social standards and success.42 When
the legal system fails to promote welfare, informal institutions emerge to fill that void of
order, permissibility and expectations. Within this new frame, even dangerous activities may
be legitimised. And the disrepute of legality is not a matter of precariousness: the naturali-
sation of amnesties for tax evaders (recommended by international institutions as an accept-
able measure of economic governance43) or plea-bargaining implementation shows the
level of fusion between legal and illegal behaviours in modern social orders and the impos-
sibility of dividing the two entities as antagonistic and separate issues. The conception of
crimes as something bad or reprehensible is no longer efficient, and each social sector and/
or society will be empowered to legitimise and delegitimise legality and illegality according
to their needs and objectives.
In the following section, we describe the cluster of order in our chosen Paraguayan city,
explaining the informal norms and premises that rule and articulate social interactions and
the incentives that each actor has to engage in the reproduction of this way of coexistence.

The cluster of order in Pedro Juan Caballero

Analysing the social order of Pedro Juan Caballero while only considering the rates of vio-
lence is a cognitive limitation. Through an ethnographic visit and a set of interviews with
key informants, it can be perceived that a structured, well-known and respected social order
operates in the city, and homicides are understood as a collateral consequence of it. Following
Dewey, we identify a cluster of order where civil, state and criminal actors coexist and coop-
erate to settle values, rules, obligations and hierarchies very different from those stipulated
by the rule of law and by the constitutional-legal model of life.44
While legality, as a categorical imperative, remains in the background, the social aims of
the cluster of order are, paradoxically, those that the rule of law promises, but does not
deliver. In fact, the conjunction between state and non-state actors is socially legitimised
because it provides goods and services in a much more effective and credible way than do
state institutions alone. Employment, protection, security, justice, social mobility, social
expectations, and economic resources are outcomes that our informants and interviewees
consider the main reasons for social tolerance of illegal practices.
Paradoxically, while the rates of homicides are the highest in the country, the rates related
to common crime and citizen security are among the lowest (as seen in Table 1). For some
of our interviewees (interviews 1, 8, 12, 14 and 21),45 this is clear evidence that homicides
are the consequence of violent conflicts and confrontations between drugs gangs, and do
not affect common people. ‘They kill each other’, states a prestigious journalist of the region
(interview 12).46
An alternative morality exists, and it is the base for a set of norms, attitudes, duties and
practices that rule the coexistence. While this dynamic can be seen as ‘chaotic’ for a foreigner,
every action is meaningful and has its own rationality according to local morals and folkways.
As expressed by one of our informants (interview 2):
 Third World Quarterly 9

The most important rule is to keep your word, in order to be respected. In Pedro Juan, the usual
thing is that policemen, public advocates and politicians are all involved. It is not a case that
the drug traffickers hire them; they willingly engage into a business relation where everyone
can earn something, and if they can all earn that they want, it’s because there is a promise to
be fulfilled. Those who do not fulfil their promises are to be punished, murdered, or, if it’s a
policeman, they are banished to Asunción, where they will face depression once they see they
will no longer be able to get the juicy extra income.47

In the city, both legal rationality and criminality are practiced, arbitrarily and alternatively,
by state and non-state actors. Both types of entities coexist and one does not exclude the
other; they share norms, duties and profits, all of which mix and bind them together.
The state is the guarantor of the continuity of this hybrid order and of the economic
survival of its illegal markets. To that respect, a former councillor (interview 13),48 who served
at the Municipality of Pedro Juan Caballero for two consecutive terms, describes how the
state offers a guarantee to the traffickers so that they can operate freely, and how state
officials momentarily break with legality to gain advantage of a particular situation.
As you drive through Pedro Juan Caballero, you have to pass several police checkpoints. The
police are not after the drug lords, but they are there to protect their business. Drug trafficking
is not only a drug trafficker’s thing; it also involves policemen who want to make extra money,
politicians who need funding for their campaigns, and judges who need a little more control
to increase their influence. It’s a large chain of posts, one where everybody must comply with
a particular responsibility.49

During our visits to the city, we verified the existence of these police checkpoints. When
crossing them, we strictly followed the rules that our informers had given us in Asunción:
never lie, because in Juan Caballero everyone knows everything and not telling the truth
has consequences. When approached by the police, we explained our origin, our institutions
of ascription and our interest in conducting interviews with institutional actors about life in
the city. We had no problem passing the controls and we did not experience any setbacks
when it came to doing our work.
Legality as a core value for social interaction, as a categorical imperative, loses legitimacy
due to its inability to produce specific outcomes. In this perception, new, alternative lifestyles
arise, but according to informal guidelines. When legality and social legitimacy differ, legit-
imate illegalities arise. The criteria for tolerance, justice and the resolution of conflicts are
redefined based on new models of social interactions in order to access the desired social
recognition and mobility. In such a conjuncture, transgressions become more of a need than
a choice: the strict attachment to law inhibits personal development. According to one
informant, what is ‘morally legal’ generates doubt or even indignation:
What is normal in the United States? A policeman who arrests a criminal, and a politician who
wins elections by fighting crime. However, the normal thing here is that we all get involved in
the business; people become afraid if someone acts according to the law and they will treat
you differently. If you are doing the ‘right’ thing, there is surely something fishy going on. This
is the system we take advantage of, from which we draw a paycheck at the end of the month
or every five years.50

The cluster of order of Pedro Juan Caballero touches several social sectors: peasants and
common people, law enforcement agents and members of the judicial system, criminals
and policemen. Each sector has particular needs and incentives, but also roles and duties
(see Table 2).
10 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

The previously mentioned anti-drug officer (interview 1) explains the dynamics:

At the bottom of the chain, you have the peasants and the farmers. They act together by cre-
ating cooperatives for the cultivation of marijuana – whole communities of children, women
and adults who depend on the cultivation of the plant. Then, you have the police officers, who
work the most and are the most interested in the business. Their job is to protect the farmers,
supervise the transportation and logistics of the illegal market and go after those who threaten
the local order. Next, you have the drug traffickers who control judges and politicians. Judges
and other public officers come after the traffickers and are the higher positions in the chain.
Their vital role is to ensure that there are no orders for prosecution or for decommission against
the traffickers and to follow a legal protocol to provide them immunity.51

The interactions between these different actors are mediated by informal norms and
practices in which, alternatively, legality appears as a value to be respected, manipulated or
ignored. For instance, lawyers frequently use the legal strategy of delaying a lawsuit so that
the time allowed for the case expires; it is then filed away, and the defendant is freed based
on the expiration of the case. But, if needed, judicial or law enforcement actors can create,
manipulate, or destroy proof in order to have enough evidence to legally punish those who
deserve it for going against the cluster of order (interviews 2, 8, 13, 14 and 15).
The exchanges and relationships also establish devices and practices of different natures
that generate incentives and fulfil needs. For example, in the case of peasants and farmers,
drug traffickers usually advance money from future harvests if necessary. This way, forms of
financing and loans that would be impossible to acquire in the legal financial market are
established (interviews 1, 8 and 21).
According to our informants, the highest in the hierarchy of the cluster are the politicians.
According to a police officer (interview 5), they keep control of all the processes and collect
funds from traffickers, policemen and the rest of the institutional actors involved. The same
source assured us that ‘It’s a common thing that when someone has been arrested, he asks
the police to call a certain politician who will order their immediate release’.52
The startling thing in Pedro Juan Caballero is the openness with which the different key
informants recognise the existence of this cluster of order and agree with its internal dynam-
ics. A former councillor from the Liberal party (interview 4) emphasises that the acceptance
of the local way of living is based on the outcomes it produces.53 According to him, the rule
of law did not lose legitimacy because legality is not good, but because it proved ineffective
in meeting social demands. Paradoxically, local social demands are exactly the same as those
that democracy and the law have promised: security and protection, employment and eco-
nomic incentives, stability and social mobility. The fusion between legality and illegality in
Pedro Juan Caballero has come to modify the implementation of the rule of law and create
a less legal but more effective institutionality. As one of our sources expressed (interview 6):
We live in the country of impunity; it does not even provide you with anything. If some guys
appear and offer you something, knowing nothing will happen if you take it, why not take it?
There is misery, scarcity and uncertainty. Those who are involved in this [the drug traffickers]
represent the opposite: abundance, safety and wellness. They are the answers to the needs
created by poverty.54

In short, as Dewey et al. pointed out, a cluster of order gained social tolerance since legal
and illegal actors joined together to meet certain social demands, and supply services in a
more effective way than the rational state alone. This kind of cluster develops in
 Third World Quarterly 11

territories in which the rational institutions of the State are not able to guarantee the meeting
of basic social needs or to exert lawful and effective control over the use of force, and also fail
in securing the society’s compliance with legally sanctioned norms.55

A good example of unfulfilled demands is the case of citizen security. Drug traffickers
replace state officers as promoters of security and justice, generating a type of social tran-
quillity where levels of violence are related not to the number of crimes, but to the need to
execute those who do not respect the established order, its norms and its hierarchy.
A journalist who works in the region for an Asuncion newspaper (interview 15) assures
us that protection is provided in a tacit agreement, where ‘regular thieves, outside the drug
business, know that if they go after a certain neighborhood or house they will receive the
drug trafficker’s punishment’. The trafficking of drugs is accepted because the local society
considers that the production is for exportation and will not remain in the region. Several
of our interviewees emphasise that the drug ‘goes to Brazil, Argentina or Europe’. They know
it’s an unhealthy product to consume, but it provides resources and security for common
citizens. Who are common citizens? ‘The ones who, as long as they do not interfere with the
drug traffickers’ activities, won’t be noticed by the traffickers’, explain the journalist.56
Additionally, a Brazilian journalist working in the area (interview 6) noted the importance
of safety as a social value within a social conjuncture where there is a lot of criminal activity.
According to him, drug traffickers provide a type of protection that is willingly legitimised
by the people:
In a country like this, being sure that you have someone who looks after you, if someone tries to
rob your house or to assault you in the streets and makes sure that crime won’t go unpunished
is more than precious.57

Consequently, ‘seniors, adults and youngsters’ embrace this protection. It is a key element
in improving and pacifying coexistence in the streets of the city (interview 15):
In Asunción, when teenagers go out at night, either to party or to hang out with their friends,
they either go by car or taxi. You don’t see that here: guys come back home by walking. Do you
know why? It’s because the bosses are overseeing everything.58

Another informant explained the local social imaginary about homicides: if a guy was
killed ‘it is because he either misbehaved or violated a local norm, such as selling drugs at
schools or to minors. Thus, he got what he deserved’.59 Many people see homicides in Pedro
Juan Caballero more as a regulation of the social order than as a manifestation of a violent
ecosystem. They redefine the context of violence: the collective mind of the people recog-
nises the existence of murders, but also recognises that the innocents (according to the
norms of the cluster) should be left unharmed. Those who die have probably made a mistake
or misbehaved: they broke a rule, did not fulfil a promise or simply chose to be common
thieves, which is a very dangerous activity in Pedro Juan Caballero.
Social externalities of illegality are not limited to issues of safety in the city. ‘They also
provide jobs’, states a journalist and politician we interviewed (interview 5): ‘They offer infor-
mal employment and citizens who need it gladly accept it. All of this is what makes the
unjustifiable justifiable, providing a reason for illegal activities’.
But every social order has vulnerabilities that threaten its existence. In the case of Pedro
Juan Caballero, some of our informants consider the continuity of violence as a motivation
12 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

for disenchantment and promoting the de-legitimisation of the cluster of order (interviews
6, 8 and 9):
The material aspect is important to understand when this system can break down; however, is
not the only element. People are not outraged when a drug trafficker gets killed, but they are
when a minor is killed, when a girl is raped or when drugs are sold in a place minors frequent.
That very moment, people become aggravated and stop justifying the unjustifiable by stating:
this has gone too far.60

Drug trafficking can be tolerated so long as it generates revenues and other tangential
benefits, but not wars between drug traffickers. In Pedro Juan Caballero, there is no tolerance
for the existence of rival groups, since it threatens the structure of the social order. Behind
the murder of Rafaat, for instance, behind the presence of the PCC or the CR in the area and/
or behind their territorial dispute, there is the struggle for dominance in the cluster. Ultimately,
it is a race to control the most policemen, judges and farmers, who in turn choose the highest
bidder, to obtain the higher profits.
In this sense, journalists, citizens, politicians and former members of the security forces
agree that in these instances, the state has to intervene. This state intervention is marked
by one of the central functions of the political and judicial power: the regulation of the
system. The regulation should not pursue the eradication of the drug trafficking business.
It determines the need to intervene in the intensity of conflicts between rival gangs and, if
necessary, to take political action and to provide protection to one sector at the detriment
of the other. In the same line of thinking, as indicated by Snyder and Durán-Martínez,61 the
efficiency of the state in providing safety for citizens and prosecution of criminals remains
a key variable for the control of violence within organised markets and organised crime.
Flom62 has emphasised that state actors, mainly politicians and police, are important to
regulate drug trafficking and keep levels of violence low. According to Flom, for an effective
type of regulation, a good level of coordination within the police force is necessary. Political
competitions ‘can decrease political control of the police’ and thus negatively affect the
results, since ‘uncoordinated police carry out particularistic negotiations with drug traffickers
that exacerbate criminal violence’. It is beyond the scope of this article to analyse the levels
of political and police coordination in the implementation of illegal market regulations in
Pedro Juan Caballero. However, this is an important issue to be investigated in future studies.
In fact, the recent cases of settling scores between rival gangs and the dismantling of import-
ant leaderships, in sectors of both the PCC and the CR, could determine a reconfiguration
within the state dependencies and produce new bases of protection and regulation that, while
helping to maintain the cluster of order, are more effective in controlling levels of violence.
This is an important issue that leaves open the possibility to continue working on the subject.

Final remarks: practical and theoretical implications

Paraguay presents several interesting characteristics for the study of crime and the social
tolerance of illegality in Latin America. However, the literature addressing these scourges in
Paraguay is scarce. This work helps to fill this gap in the literature by describing and explaining
the social order in the most violent areas of the country. The case of Pedro Juan Caballero
shows the existence of a hybrid order that legitimises practices, behavioural guidelines and
social values that would normally be condemned and punished under the conventional rule
 Third World Quarterly 13

of law. The city represents what Dewey has described as a cluster of order and can be used
as an example of what Schultze-Kraft has defined as a crimilegal order.
There, state actors, civilians and criminals establish practical relations and conform to a
cooperative way of living in which illegal markets and practices, together with rational
bureaucratic norms, are alternatively implemented. Formal and informal institutions are
important for the establishment and legitimisation of a hybrid order that produces relevant
social, economic and political outputs. In this sense, the case of Pedro Juan Caballero provides
evidence to show that the creation of a social order is not a matter under the charge of only
the state and produced by mere rational-legal norms. In this case, legal and illegal actors
interact to produce a particular local order, norms, morality and hierarchies. For this
Paraguayan case, those theories that understand the relation between state and crime as
confrontation and collision are not valid.
The case studied here also serves to demonstrate that violent contexts and the repro-
duction of illegalities is not a matter of state weakness or absence. In Pedro Juan Caballero,
the formal institutions of the state are present and strictly comply with what, in the cluster
of order, is their duty.
Violence and institutional setting in Pedro Juan Caballero are redefined in a normative
frame where both legality and illegality serve to maintain coexistence and popular ethics
and to generate the resources to fulfil society’s expectations and needs and to avoid social
conflicts among common people. It is important to remark that local needs and expectations
follow traditional patterns, or, in other words, what the constitutional-legal way of life is
expected to provide (but fails to do so): protection, security, justice, employment and income,
social mobility, access to goods and services, and expectations for a better future. Traditional
morality also affects the processes of de-legitimisation of legality and of legitimisation of
illegalities, mostly by defending minors, women and elderly people from criminal activities
and violent behaviours. The same can be said about local beliefs that illegal production of
drugs is for exportation and they are not to be sold in the area, and that innocents should
be out of the reach of deadly violence.
It is important to emphasise that Pedro Juan Caballero’s social order does not indicate an
opposition to the rule of law, but rather is an alternative step towards effectively meeting
these expectations, since these goals would be impossible to meet if standard guidelines
for legality were used as a categorical imperative. As Moriconi has claimed, rule of law and
democracy are means, not objectives. Their legitimisation is based in the belief that they are
better ways to achieve a good coexistence. And a good coexistence is defined by a set of
outcomes that should be achieved. In the case studied, we have seen that the objective of
the hybrid order is precisely to achieve the basic objectives of a good coexistence by other
means, since pure legality and the strict implementation of the rule of law has been ineffec-
tive for some of our informants, and impossible to set up for historical and cultural reasons
for others.
Something similar happens with the sense of violence. Violence is also a means, not an
end. Although today’s violence is considered a priori negative, a few decades ago, it was
considered by various groups to be the best possible means for political struggle. Even
sectors of the church defended it as a political weapon for emancipation and liberation. The
case studied here demonstrates, as Moriconi has warned, the necessity to understand the
meaning and sense that is locally given to violence and to avoid cultural prejudices. Focusing
only on the high rates of violence in Pedro Juan Caballero and believing that the city lives
14 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

in chaos do not allow us to see the practical and normative dimensions of the phenomenon,
which ends up being understood as a central element for stabilising coexistence and regu-
lating low rates of common crimes.
However, we must not confuse the resignification of violence with the desire to keep it
active. In Pedro Juan Caballero, the collective desire is to lower the murder rate, and that
goal can be fulfilled by following the logic of the cluster of order. In this sense, state actors
(politicians, judges and security forces) have the double task of providing protection and
regulating illegal markets, while avoiding confrontations between groups. While it can be
said that the protection of the existence of illegal markets (through several actions, such as
free zones, turning a blind eye, creating institutional obstacles for an effective rule of law,
and using the power of law in the form of juridical sanctions towards those who threaten
the structure that allows for the reproduction of the cluster of order) has been effective,
there has been a lack of coordination and effectiveness with regard to the regulation of
markets and, fundamentally, to the war between rival gangs.
For all the above, Paraguay, as a country that has mostly been ignored in studies regarding
violence and crime, is an important source of information for understanding how legality
and illegality can merge to form hybrid social orders in which practices deemed heinous,
cruel and punishable to external common sense are understood as the collateral conse-
quences of a structured coexistence and the means for its stability.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Acknowledgements
This publication was supported with funding from the strategic programme of the Centro de Estudos
Internacionais ISCTE – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ref. no. UID/CPO/03122/2019). The authors
want to thank all the informants that were interviewed. Their insightful information was crucial for the
research. They also thank professors Thomas Whigham (University of Georgia), Luís Fretes (ISCTE-IUL),
Victoria Taboada (University of Göttingen) and Bridget María Chesterton (Buffalo State College) and
the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on early drafts of this paper. At different stages,
Steve Guilbault helped with the English language revising and editing.

Notes on contributors
Marcelo Moriconi is a researcher and assistant professor at the Centre for International Studies (CEI-
IUL) of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL). He obtained his PhD from the University of
Salamanca, Spain, and has researched and taught in several countries in Europe and Latin America.
His research interests are corruption, illegal markets, organised crime, violence and insecurity, and
integrity and corruption in sport, especially match-fixing. His more recent publications include
Corruption in Latin America: Stereotypes of Politicians and Their Implications for Affect and Perceived
Justice (with Miguel Ramos); ‘Reframing Illegalities: Crime, Cultural Values and Ideas of Success (in
Argentina)’; and Atlas de la Violencia en America Latina (edited with Juan Mario Solís and awarded the
Premio Justicia Ahora for the best academic research, 2018).
Carlos Aníbal Peris is the director for postgraduate programmes and a professor of sociology at the
Universidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA). His main lines of research include social transformation of
urban areas in Paraguay and Paraguayan sociological thought. He has been a visiting researcher at the
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, Germany.
 Third World Quarterly 15

Notes
1. Galvani, Cómo se Construye un Policía, 21.
2. Arias and Barnes, “Crime and Plural Orders” ; Whitehead et al., Violent Democracies.
3. Miranda, “Las terribles causas y consecuencias de que Paraguay sea el mayor productor de
marihuana de Sudamérica.”
4. Schultze-Kraft, Chinchilla, and Moriconi, “New Perspectives on Crime.”
5. Moriconi, Desmitificar la violencia; Arias, Criminal Enterprises and Governance; Hoelscher and
Nussio, “Understanding Unlikely Successes”; Muggah, Researching the Urban Dilemma; Imbusch,
Misse, and Carrión, “Violence Research in Latin America and the Caribbean”; Neumann, “(Un)
Exceptional Violence(s) in Latin America”; Pearce, “Perverse State Formation”; Snyder and
Duran-Martinez, “Does Illegality Breed Violence?”; Trejo and Ley, “Federalismo, Drogas y
Violencia”; Chinchilla, “A ­Hard-to-Escape Situation.”
6. Dewey, “Illegal Police Protection”; Beckert and Dewey, Architecture of Illegal Markets; Dewey,
Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion”; Moriconi, Reframing Illegalities; Moriconi and Peris,
“Análisis Sobre el Tráfico de Drogas.”
7. Tapia-Pérez, “La inseguridad pública,” 103.
8. Vargas, Informe de Gestión, 12.
9. Duffard, De Aquí Proviene la Droga, 2.
10. The interviewees were anonymised and numbered from 1 to 21.
11. Dewey, “Illegal Police Protection,” 680.
12. Miranda, “Las terribles causas.”
13. Humire, La Red Financiera de Hezbollah, 19.
14. Mora, Informe de Narcóticos en América Latina, 9.
15. Duffard, De Aquí Proviene la Droga, 3.
16. Miranda, “Las terribles causas.”
17. Zapata, “Paseros ingresan.”
18. Garat, Paraguay: la Tierra Escondida, 6.
19. Zapata, “Paseros ingresan,” 4.
20. Samaniego, Informe Económico.
21. Peris and Amarilla, Seguridad Publica, 42.
22. Furlan, Muros Fronterizos, 3.
23. Garat, Paraguay: la Tierra Escondida, 9.
24. Zapata, “Paseros ingresan.”
25. Cooper, Derechos Intelectuales y Sus Desafíos, 31.
26. Suarez, Relaciones Formales entre el Narcotráfico y la Sociedad, 17.
27. Salazar, El Narcotráfico de Latinoamérica, 21.
28. Peris and Amarilla, Seguridad Pública, 52.
29. Guttandin, Pobreza Campesina desde la Perspectiva, 51.
30. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion,” 683.
31. Clavel, Estudio revela que la economía ilegal equivale a 40% del PIB, 2.
32. In March 2017, Asunción – Paraguay.
33. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion.”
34. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion”; Moriconi, “Ampliación del campo de batalla.”
35. Scott, Institutions and Organizations; Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion”;
Moriconi, “Ampliación del campo de batalla.”
36. Schultze-Kraft, Chinchilla, and Moriconi, “New Perspectives on Crime”; Beckert and Dewey,
Architecture of Illegal Markets; Chinchilla, “A Hard-to-Escape Situation”; Arias and Goldstein,
Violent Democracies in Latin America.
37. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion”; Arias, Criminal Enterprises and Governance;
Moriconi, “Ampliación del campo de batalla.”
38. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion,” 685.
39. Schultze-Kraft, “Making Peace in Seas of Crime.”
40. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion.”
16 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

41. Moriconi, Ser Violento; “¿Ilegalidad Justificada?”; Reframing Illegalities.

42. Moriconi, “Reframing Illegalities”; Ser violento.
43. Moriconi, Reframing Illegalities, 506; Desmitificar la corrupción.
44. Moriconi, Ser Violento, 84–87.
45. In February, March, April, May and June 2017, respectively, Asunción and Pedro Juan Caballero –
Paraguay.
46. In March 2017, Asunción – Paraguay.
47. In February 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero, Asunción – Paraguay.
48. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
49. In April 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
50. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
51. In February 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
52. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
53. In February 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero, Asunción – Paraguay.
54. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
55. Dewey, Míguez, and Saín, “Strength of Collusion,” 398.
56. May 2017, Asunción – Paraguay.
57. March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
58. In April 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay
59. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
60. In March 2017, Pedro Juan Caballero – Paraguay.
61. Wagner, “Narcotraficantes en la Presidencia del Paraguay,” 3.
62. Flom, Who Protects Whom?

Bibliography
Arias, Desmond. Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Arias, Desmond, and Nicholas Barnes. “Crime and Plural Orders in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.” Current
Sociology 65, no. 3 (2017): 448–465. doi:10.1177/0011392116667165.
Arias, Desmond, and Daniel Goldstein, eds. Violent Democracies in Latin America. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2010.
Beckert, Jens, and Matias Dewey, eds. The Architecture of Illegal Markets: Towards an Economic Sociology
of Illegality in the Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Chinchilla, Fernando. “A Hard-to-Escape Situation Informal Pacts, Kingpin Strategies, and Collective
Violence in Mexico.” Crime, Law and Social Change 69, no. 4 (2018): 533–552. doi:10.1007/s10611-
017-9763-6.
Clavel, Tristán. Estudio revela que la economía ilegal equivale a 40% del PIB. Washington, DC: Insight
Crime, 2016.
Cooper, John. Derechos Intelectuales y Sus Desafíos en el Estado de Derecho. Asunción: Universidad
Iberoamericana, 2017.
Dewey, Matias. “Illegal Police Protection and the Market for Stolen Vehicles in Buenos Aires.” Journal of
Latin American Studies 44, no. 4 (2012): 679–702. doi:10.1017/S0022216X12000831.
Dewey, Matias, Daniel Míguez, and Marcelo Saín. “The Strength of Collusion: A Conceptual Framework
for Interpreting Hybrid Social Orders.” Current Sociology 65, no. 3 (2017): 395–410. doi:10.1177/
0011392116661226.
Duffard, Eugenia. De Aquí Proviene la Droga que se Consigue en Argentina. Buenos Aires: TN-ARTEAR,
2017.
Flom, Hernán. Who Protects Whom? Politicians, Police and the Regulation of Drug Trafficking in Argentina.
Notre Dame: Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, 2018.
Furlan, Fernando. Muros Fronterizos. Madrid: Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos, 2016.
Galvani, Mariana. Cómo se Construye un Policía. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2017.
 Third World Quarterly 17

Garat, Guillermo. Paraguay: la Tierra Escondida. Examen Del Mayor Productor de Cannabis de América
Del Sur. Bogotá: Programa de Cooperación en Seguridad Regional, 2016.
Guttandin, Friedhelm. Pobreza Campesina Desde la Perspectiva de Las Madres Beneficiarias Del
Programa Tekopora. Asunción: GTZ y UNFPA, 2007.
Hoelscher, Kristian, and Enzo Nussio. “Understanding Unlikely Successes in Urban Violence Reduction.”
Urban Studies 53, no. 11 (2016): 2397–2416. doi:10.1177/0042098015589892.
Humire, Joseph. La Red Financiera de Hezbollah en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Infobae, 2014.
Imbusch, Peter, Michel Misse, and Fernando Carrión. “Violence Research in Latin America and the
Caribbean: A Literature Review.” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 5, no. 1 (2011):
87–154. doi:10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.141.
Miranda, Boris. 2016. “Las terribles causas y consecuencias de que Paraguay sea el mayor productor
de marihuana de Sudamérica.” BBC, Octubre 27. Accessed July 4, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/mun-
do/noticias-america-latina-37791983
Mora, Julián. Informe de Narcóticos en América Latina. Buenos Aires: UNASUR, 2013.
Moriconi, Marcelo. “Ampliación del campo de batalla: el delito como medio, orden y necesidad.” En
Seguridad Pública Ciudadana en Paraguay: Enfoques, saberes, debates y prácticas, edited by Carlos A.
Peris C. and José María Amarilla, 203–218. Asunción: Universidad Nacional de Asunción, 2017.
Moriconi, Marcelo. “Desmitificar la Corrupción: la Perversidad de su Tolerancia… y su Combate.” Nueva
Sociedad 276, (2018): 118–128.
Moriconi, Marcelo. “Desmitificar la Violencia: crítica al Discurso (Técnico) de la Seguridad Ciudadana.”
Revista Mexicana de Sociología 73, no. 4 (2011): 617–644.
Moriconi, Marcelo. “¿Ilegalidad Justificada?: Clientelismo Controlado en la Administración Chilena.”
Perfiles Latinoamericanos no. 38 (2011): 227–247.
Moriconi, Marcelo. “Reframing Illegalities: Crime, Cultural Values and Ideas of Success (in Argentina).”
Crime, Law and Social Change 69, no. 4 (2018): 497–518. doi:10.1007/s10611-017-9760-9.
Moriconi, Marcelo. Ser Violento. Los Orígenes de la Inseguridad y la Víctima-Cómplice. Buenos Aires:
Capital Intelectual, 2013.
Moriconi, Marcelo, and Carlos Peris. “Análisis Sobre el Tráfico de Drogas en la Ciudad de Pedro Juan
Caballero.” Religación. Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades 3, no. 9 (2018): 202–215.
Muggah, Robert. Researching the Urban Dilemma: Urbanization, Poverty and Violence. Ottawa:
International Development Research Centre, 2012.
Neumann, Pamela. “(Un) Exceptional Violence(s) in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society
55, no. 1 (2013): 168–175. doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2013.00188.x.
Pearce, Jenny. “Perverse State Formation and Securitized Democracy in Latin America.”Democratization
17, no. 2 (2010): 286–306. doi:10.1080/13510341003588716.
Peris, Carlos, and José Amarilla. Seguridad Publica – Ciudadana en Paraguay. Asunción: Universidad
Nacional de Asunción, 2017.
Scott, W. R. Institutions and Organizations. Thousands Oaks, CA: SAGE, 1995.
Salazar, Antonio. El Narcotráfico de Latinoamérica. Santacruz: SVM Editores, 2016.
Samaniego, José. Informe Económico, un país en crecimiento. Asunción: PRO, 2018.
Schultze-Kraft, Markus. “Making Peace in Seas of Crime: Crimilegal Order and Armed Conflict
Termination in Colombia.” Crime, Law and Social Change 69, no. 4 (2018): 475–496. doi:10.1007/
s10611-017-9759-2.
Schultze-Kraft, Markus, Fernando Chinchilla, and Marcelo Moriconi. “New Perspectives on Crime,
Violence and Insecurity in Latin America.” Crime, Law and Social Change 69, no. 4 (2018): 465–473.
doi:10.1007/s10611-017-9758-3.
Snyder, Richard, and Angelica Duran-Martinez. “Does Illegality Breed Violence? Drug Trafficking and
State Sponsored Protection Rackets.” Crime, Law and Social Change 52, no. 3 (2009): 253–273.
doi:10.1007/s10611-009-9195-z.
Suarez, Julio. Relaciones Formales Entre el Narcotráfico y la Sociedad. Medellín: GFS-UL, 2016.
Tapia‐Pérez, José. “La inseguridad pública: causas y consecuencias.” El Cotidiano 180, julio-agosto
(2013): 103–112.
18 M. MORICONI AND C. A. PERIS

Trejo, Guillermo, and Sandra Ley. “Federalismo, Drogas y Violencia. Por Qué el Conflicto Partidista
Intergubernamental Estimuló la Violencia Del Narcotráfico en México.” Política y Gobierno 23, no. 1
(2016): 11–56.
Vargas, Francisco. Informe de Gestión. Asunción: Ministerio del Interior de la República del Paraguay,
2016.
Wagner, Gerardo. 2016. “Narcotraficantes en la Presidencia del Paraguay.” Diario Siglo XXI, Asuncion.
Whitehead, N. L., Fair, J. E., & Payne, L. A. Violent Democracies in Latin America. Duke University Press,
2010.
Zapata, Anibal. 2016. “Paseros ingresan por valor de US$10.000.” ABC Color, June 16.