Espacio urbano,

comunicación y violencia en América Latina

The theme of violence is inherent to the history of Latin America and, therefore, it is inexhaustible in any of its many material and symbolic manifestations, from colonial origins to the present day. At the continental level, the praxis and discourse of violence can be pursued from the penetration and colonizing predation with which Latin America is inscribed in the cultural development of the West, to the most recent and subtle forms of cultural and economic models that in the different times radically impacted criollo and vernacular cultures. Latin America has thus historically suffered the consequences of a foundational violence, which condemned it to a peripheral position with respect to global systems whose centers have spread, in their corresponding areas of influence, the "rationality" of their own cultural and political and economic production. In this way, the social fabric that resulted from the colonialist matrix registered from the beginning the indelible traces of violence that manifested itself both at a racial and economic level, both in terms of gender policies and in relation to geocultural distribution of power, at all levels. The "dolorosas repúblicas hispanoamericanas" of which Martí spoke have since debated against the naturalized forms of violence of exclusion and authoritarianism, internal misery and imperialist predation, cultural penetration and political interventions, always protected by a legitimizing rhetoric that the ruling classes wielded in each case to perpetuate their power.