The edited volume by David Smilde, Véronica Zubillga and Rebecca Hanson on “The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela. Revolution, crime and policing during Chavismo” offers an interdisciplinary and multi-method examination of a paradox, that is, the marked increase of violence despite notable poverty and inequality reduction, and its consequences for society, state institutions, politics, and subjectivities. Violence in Venezuela has risen steadily over the last three decades. While violence and crime were already a problem in the 1990s, violence reached unprecedented levels under the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. This occurred in the context of a significant reduction in poverty and inequality, fuelled by rising oil revenues. Between 2004 and 2011, the Venezuelan government expanded social policies and socio-economic indicators improved across the board. At the same time, violence skyrocketed; official statistics show that violence tripled during the Chávez period (p. 3). Not only has Venezuelan society become more violent, but the security forces have become far more deadly and cruel. During Maduro’s presidency, “necropolitical governance has become the dominant mode” (p. 205).

Building on the deep contextual knowledge of a diverse set of authors and in dialogue with the wealth of literature on crime, politics and violence in Latin America, the book offers a much-need analysis of the multiple dimensions of crime and violence in contemporary Venezuela. Moreover, the book locates the case study in the framework of broader debates on the linkages among violence, inequality, and the state, encouraging a reorientation of prevalent theories. The analysis likewise contributes to debates on security governance and the effects of mano dura policies in Latin America.

In the introductory chapter, the editors bring together the collective findings into a conceptual framework to explain both the upsurge of violence and the relationship of this phenomenon to Chavista governments. Hanson, Smilde and Zubillaga identify proliferation of guns, illicit economies, and the pluralization of violent actors as pivotal trends shaping the development of violence in Latin America. Against this regional background, they argue that the rise of violence in the country is the result of four overlapping and mutually reinforcing factors: the hypertrophic growth of the state and economy, contested revolutionary governance, failed security reform and reliance on militarized policing, and the persistence of concentrated disadvantage. The conceptual framework developed in the book is a powerful heuristic to approach violence in Venezuela and disentangle the apparent contradictions between the redistributive policies implemented by the Chávez government and the parallel strengthening of the carceral state and the rise of violence.

The book encompasses twelve chapters, grouped into four parts: the shape of violence (chapters 1 and 2), causal processes and cycles of violence (chapters 3 to 5), from civilian police to resurgence militarized policing (chapters 6 to 9), and responses to violence: looking back, looking forward (chapters 10 to 12).

The first part focuses on the magnitude and characteristics of violence in Venezuela over time and across space. In the first chapter, González Mejías and Kronick review the problems with homicide statistics in Venezuela and propose an alternative way of measuring lethal violence. Using a novel dataset, the authors show a sustained increase of violence since 1999. Chapter two broadens the national overview provided in the previous chapter. Here Fernández Shaw Guerra examines the increasing heterogeneity of violence from a subnational perspective. His analysis reveals a changing geography of violence, with notable intensification in areas outside major urban centres, a significant increase in firearm deaths since 2008, and strong links between increased violence and various illicit economies.

The second part is devoted to the causes and functions of violence. In chapter three, Bruni Celli and Rodríguez analyse violent death rates from an economic perspective. Their research indicates that the relationship between socio-economic indicators and violent death rate is mediated by institutional variables. The authors argue that oil rents may determine this pattern. Specifically, the windfall of oil revenues increased the opportunities for crime. This coincided with a weakening of institutional capacity, including disinvestment in law enforcement. Building on years of ethnographic research, chapters four and five offer an account of the role of violence in the (re)production of order and its entanglements with gender and class. In chapter four, Antillano states that Venezuela experienced a detachment between rising income, on the one hand, and the persistence of limited job and social mobility opportunities, on the other. The limitations of redistribution policies to address concentrated disadvantage went hand in hand with the strengthening of massive incarceration policies as a way for the state to deal with excluded populations in the context of declining state capacity for social regulation. Looking at the connections between prisons and impoverished barrios as spaces of socioeconomic and institutional exclusion, Antillano argues that violence works as a way for the revalorization of excluded subjects, as a mechanism for the configuration of sovereignties outside and in lieu of the state, and as a tool for the extraction of revenue. In the fifth chapter, Zubillaga analyses the transformative effect of handguns on the social life and subjectivities of men and women in the popular urban sectors.

The third part of the book focuses on security policies and their impact on criminal violence. In chapter six, Gabaldón examines policy approaches to the reduction of crime and violence. Chávez’s approach was based on the premise that reducing poverty and inequality through the expansion of social policies would be sufficient to eliminate crime and violence. Meanwhile, competing approaches, fragmentation and institutional weaknesses hindered the effective development and implementation of police reform and gun control initiatives. In the face of rising violence, the military’s involvement in public security expanded under Chávez. Hanson and Smilde provide a detailed analysis of the obstacles to police reform in chapter seven. Political polarisation, infighting within the ruling coalition and public perceptions of crime and violence help to explain the lack of public support for reform. The problem of violence in Venezuela is not the result of a weak or failing state. Rather, the state is a major perpetrator of violence. Using the conceptual lens of necropolitics, in chapter eight, Ávila analyses the militarisation of citizen security. The author emphasizes the “acceleration of the war machine” through militarised police raids and massacres in post-Chávez Venezuela. This part of the book concludes with the chapter written by Gómez and Hanson on mano dura policy and the militarisation of the police during the Maduro government. Under this government, adopting a fully militarised vision of security “led to the most lethal period of policing in Venezuelan history” (p. 204). For the authors, Maduro’s rationale marked “a transition from a period in which the police had the right to kill to a stage in which they had a direct mandate to exterminate groups considered a threat to society” (p. 193). Far from being effective against crime, systematic killings led to an organisational and geographical reconfiguration of gangs and more prevalent competition between them and against the state.

The fourth and final part of the book deals with responses to violence. In the tenth chapter, Lorens looks at the effects of chronic violence and at the responses of the communities. He also discusses the manifestations of local activism and peace initiatives. Taking a comparative perspective, chapter eleven by Arias examines strategies used by countries experiencing similar levels of violence to combat violence. Drawing lessons from successful reforms in Brazil and Colombia, he considers the appropriateness and feasibility of such initiatives for Venezuela. In the final chapter, the editors summarise the main findings and draw out the theoretical implications. In particular, this book encourages a more complex understanding of how violence and crime are linked to poverty and inequalities. This relationship is not straightforward, but rather influenced by state institutions and policies, as the case of Venezuela shows. Similarly, the editors caution against the assumption that crime varies directly with economic growth or that there is a direct relationship between lethal violence and other types of crime. They conclude by discussing possible ways out of Venezuela’s crisis of violence, focusing on police reform and transitional justice.

The edited volume certainly provides an extensive and enlightening analysis. However, I find that there are two aspects that it does not sufficiently address. The first is the rural face of violence. While the study shows that violence has lost its predominantly urban character, there is not much detail on its dynamics in rural areas. For instance, the chapters that are based on ethnographic approaches build on research that was conducted in urban settings. The second aspect concerns the role of race and racialised violence. While class and gender are prominent in exploring the causes, forms and patterns of violence, race remains largely absent as a category of analysis. Rather than a critique of the volume, my inquiries point to further avenues of research motivated by its profound and original insights.

The Paradox of Violence in Venezuela is one of the most complete, nuanced and multi-faceted accounts of violence in Venezuela and its linkages to politics, state institutions, oil economy and crime. It is an essential resource for anyone keen on delving into the connections between politics, the state, and criminal violence in Latin America and beyond.