ABSTRACT
In 2011, the Guatemalan private sector launched the programme Alertos in Guatemala City. Inspired by New York’s Safe City Program, Alertos was an attempt of implementing a data-driven crime control strategy in one of Latin America’s most violent cities. It was a key component of the business community’s corporate social responsibility programme Mejoremos Guate (Let’s Improve Guatemala) that aimed at creating “a more prosperous, solidary, safe and just nation.” To improve public safety, the private sector proposed to strengthen the cohesion of local communities, provide them with new tools to report crimes, and fight the country’s infamous youth gangs. To advance this strategy, the think tank FUNDESA invited prominent champions of urban security reform like Giuliani to the country. Drawing upon field research conducted between 2012 and 2016 in Guatemala and the United States, this chapter explores how FUNDESA and international experts carved out a position for the “entrepreneurial reformer” in the country’s security reform field. The chapter demonstrates that the entrepreneurial reformers consolidated the imaginary of a violent crisis that originates in Guatemala’s broken society and criminal gangs. To control this situation, the private sector promoted zero-tolerance policing and community-based violence and crime prevention. By stressing individual responsibility, the new reformers have depoliticized security and dissociated violence and crime from structural inequalities. Finally, the private sector shifted the reform agenda towards economic opportunities, individual and community participation, and technology.
