Violence and Transnational Criminal Organizations on the Borders of the Amazon: An Analysis of Conviviality in Local Communities
Marcial Suárez (Fluminense Federal University, Rio de Janeiro)
The lecture analyses the correlation between the porosity of state borders, the presence of criminal actors, and the modes of governance that are established between state and non-state actors. This governance directly influences the levels of crime that impact local communities in the Amazon region, especially in the triple border region between Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
In this context, socio-environmental conflicts emerge as a central theme, with harassment and violence against traditional communities being the first signs of rampant exploitation in the Amazon. Public security plays a crucial role in these areas, protecting both local inhabitants and their territories. Borders become arenas where many of these dynamics of illegality and violence manifest themselves.
The Amazon region has a multiplicity of languages, ways of life, and interactions between indigenous and traditional people, migrants, nomadic miners, biomes, mythologies, beliefs, and nation-states. This density of social realities, making up diverse “Amazons”, challenges the statistical concept of a "demographic void".
Marcial A. G. Suárez holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and professor of Political Science and International Relations at the Fluminense Federal University (Universidade Federal Fluminense – UFF), in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. He is a former research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School (2006-2007) and was a senior fellow at the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre for Conviviality and Inequality in Latin America (MECILA) in São Paulo (2024). His research focuses on violence and its dynamics from a comparative perspective, with a particular interest in modes of criminal governance in Latin America. He has edited the books Power Dynamics and Regional Security in Latin America (2017, Palgrave Macmillan), Brazil in the Contemporary Political Context: Challenges and Perspectives (2021), and International Politics in the Americas: Challenges and Tensions (2022), the latter two published by the Fluminense Federal University Press. Marcial Suarez coordinates the International Politics Analysis Group at the Fluminense Federal University, focusing on issues related to the study of violence in its various forms and at different levels, whether local, national, or international.
Chair: Tilmann Heil
Date:
16 July 2025
17.54-19.19
Venue:
Seminar Room S252
Classen-Kappelmannstr. 24, 50931 Köln
This event is co-organized by the Thematic Area South South Relations of the Global South Studies Center (GSSC)