Dangerous Liaisons: Organized Crime and Political Finance in Latin America and Beyond by Kevin Casas-Zamora (editor)

What happens when a government is unwilling or unable to protect its citizens from organized crime? The proposition was tested recently in Michoacán, when “citizen self-defense forces” took up arms against the Knights Templar cartel in the absence of the state’s ability to protect them. Ultimately, federal troops and police joined the citizen militias to push the cartel out of its principal stronghold, but it took citizen vigilantes stepping in to make that progress. Michoacán, unfortunately, is emblematic of struggles elsewhere in Latin America, where criminal networks have been able to...

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