When Fear Chooses the Future - Public Security, False Jiwasa, and Vulnerable Body-Territory
When Fear Chooses the Future - Public Security, False Jiwasa, and Vulnerable Body-Territory
When security stops caring and begins governing through fear
Public security is a real necessity. No body-territory can flourish where there is extortion, threat, homicide, disappearance, trafficking, police abuse, militias, gangs, domestic violence, kidnapping, stray bullets, fear of movement, or loss of community control over the territory.
For this reason, criticizing the politics of fear does not mean denying the pain of victims. It means asking who uses that pain, for what project, with what return to the territory, and with what consequences for democracy.
In Latin America, fear has become one of the main political currencies. It appears in electoral campaigns, television programs, social networks, religious discourse, police operations, parliamentary disputes, promises of “order,” demands for militarization, and justifications for states of exception.
Fear is a legitimate emotion when it emerges from a real threat. But it can become a technology of control when it is organized, repeated, amplified, and transformed into votes, audience, obedience, or authorization for violence.
This is where we must ask:
is the public security agenda restoring Real Jiwasa or producing false Jiwasa?
Real Jiwasa, in this context, appears when public policy reduces violence, protects victims, strengthens communities, restores circulation, rebuilds trust, improves justice, cares for youth, confronts illegal economies, and returns belonging to the territory.
False Jiwasa appears when fear mobilizes crowds, but the body-territory remains vulnerable. People feel that something strong is being done, but the territory does not receive schools, health care, electricity, sanitation, income, opportunity, justice, public intelligence, prevention, and reparation.
In false Jiwasa, security becomes spectacle.
In Real Jiwasa, security becomes the capacity to live.
Fear as a political shortcut
The politics of fear is effective because it reduces complexity. It turns historical problems into visible enemies. Instead of asking about causes, it demands immediate punishment. Instead of asking about territory, it demands occupation. Instead of asking about illegal economies, it demands war. Instead of asking about lost childhood, it demands incarceration. Instead of asking about the circulation of money, it demands more weapons. Instead of asking about the absence of the State, it demands more State force.
This emotional shortcut has electoral power.
When a population is tired of living in fear, it may accept solutions that promise quick order, even when those solutions do not address the structure of the problem. That is why mano dura, or hardline policies, have gained strength in different Latin American countries. Recent research shows growing support for punitive strategies in democracies that were previously seen as relatively safe, such as Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay. A study associated with FLACSO and USACH, reported by El País, found that 67% of participants declared they felt fear, and 58% had a mostly positive perception of mano dura measures.
The point is not to ridicule this fear. The fear is real. The point is to ask whether the response being offered returns control to the body-territory or merely converts fear into authorization for more centralization, militarization, and control.
When fear chooses the future, democracy may continue to exist formally, but its breathing changes. Voting stops being collective imagination and becomes a request for protection. Politics stops disputing projects of life and begins disputing who promises the most convincing punishment.
Security without Tekoha becomes occupation
Tekoha is the place where life can happen. It is not merely a geographic area. It is a territory of belonging, circulation, memory, care, reproduction of life, bonds, and future.
A security policy without Tekoha looks at the map, but does not see lived territory.
It sees a “risk area,” but not families.
It sees a “dominated zone,” but not childhood.
It sees a “drug point,” but not the absence of opportunities.
It sees an “operation,” but not accumulated fear.
It sees an “enemy,” but not a body-territory already wounded.
When the State enters only as force, it may interrupt a visible dynamic of violence, but it does not necessarily rebuild Tekoha. Without functioning schools, reliable justice, mental health care, work, urban infrastructure, culture, sports, witness protection, financial intelligence, and control over weapons and money laundering, the territory remains vulnerable.
Militarization can produce presence, but presence is not belonging.
The armed presence of the State is not the same as the caring presence of the State.
This is a central issue for Latin America. The militarization of democratic politics in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico has been analyzed as a process that goes beyond public security, reaching politics, administration, and institutional life more broadly.
When the military becomes the answer to everything, politics loses imagination. The body-territory begins to be governed as threat or risk, not as the foundation of the State.
Organized crime as a false State
Fear also grows because, in many territories, organized crime does not appear only as violence. It appears as governance.
Criminal groups control markets, circulation, services, punishments, debts, transport, parties, family conflicts, prisons, neighborhoods, borders, mines, ports, forests, and urban peripheries. In some cases, they offer a local order where the State is absent, corrupt, fragmented, or merely repressive.
Recent studies on criminal governance in Latin America show that a significant portion of the population reports that local criminal groups provide order or reduce crime. An article by Andrés Uribe, Benjamin Lessing, Noah Schouela, and Elayne Stecher estimated that about 14% of respondents in the region reported some form of criminal governance, corresponding to tens of millions of Latin Americans living under forms of criminal order.
This finding is decisive for our matrix.
When crime provides order, the problem is not only criminal. It is civilizational. It means that the State has lost the capacity to produce Real Jiwasa in certain territories. Where the State does not return belonging, some other group may offer false belonging: protection, identity, fear, income, quick justice, status, or revenge.
Organized crime can function as false Jiwasa because it offers group, code, protection, and belonging, but charges for it through violence, submission, silence, fear, and the capture of the future.
Young people do not enter crime only because they are “bad.” Often, they enter because the territory has already been abandoned by legitimate forms of future.
Merchants do not pay extortion because they agree with crime. They pay because they need to stay alive.
Families do not remain silent because they support gangs. They remain silent because they do not trust that the State can protect them.
This is the point: when the State does not produce Tekoha, crime can produce a caricature of Tekoha.
And that caricature is an extreme form of false Jiwasa.
Militarization and the spectacle of control
Militarization often appears as a quick response because it produces the image of control. Troops in the streets, armored vehicles, helicopters, mass arrests, televised operations, uniforms, sirens, and the language of war communicate strength. The public feeling may be: “now someone is doing something.”
But public security cannot be measured only by the intensity of the image.
The body-territorial question is: after the operation, does the territory breathe better?
Do people circulate more freely?
Do children sleep better?
Do schools function?
Do families trust justice more?
Have illegal economies lost financial capacity?
Does the police investigate better?
Does homicide fall without displacing violence elsewhere?
Does youth find a path outside criminal recruitment?
Does the community cease to be hostage both to crime and to State abuse?
Recent research on criminal networks shows that harsher punishments do not always disorganize crime linearly. A 2024 study on criminal organizations using evolutionary game theory found hysteresis, resilience, and robustness in criminal networks, indicating that purely punitive strategies may not produce the expected result if they fail to consider adaptation, network structure, and the balance between criminal security and efficiency.
This does not mean defending impunity. It means defending intelligence.
The Real Jiwasa of security requires legitimate force, but it also requires causality. Without causality, force can become theater. And security theater generates votes, audience, and a sense of order, but does not necessarily return the territory to the people.
When fear becomes audience
The media also participates in the politics of fear.
News about crime is necessary. The population needs to know what is happening. But the repetition of violent images, constant dramatization, selective case framing, emotional intensification, and lack of causal analysis can turn public security into an attention market.
Fear holds the gaze.
Fear increases clicks.
Fear generates sharing.
Fear builds audience loyalty.
Fear simplifies slogans.
Fear reduces nuance.
Fear produces enemies.
Fear organizes bubbles.
When journalism shows violence without showing its causal chain, it can produce false Jiwasa. The public feels belonging through indignation. Groups form through anger. Leaders gain a stage. But the affected body-territory remains without a solution.
The metacognitive question for the reader is:
is this crime story helping me understand the cause or merely training my fear?
Studies on politicization in Brazilian social media show that topics such as crime, drugs, and the economy can quickly shift into political debates, especially during electoral periods. A work by Marcelo Sartori Locatelli, Pedro Calais, Matheus Prado Miranda, João Pedro Junho, Tomas Lacerda Muniz, Wagner Meira Jr., and Virgilio Almeida proposed measuring politicization through topic shifts in online conversations and found evidence that adjacent subjects, such as crime and drugs, tend to migrate into politics on platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok.
This helps us understand how fear can become an electoral pathway. A news item begins as a fact. Then it becomes a narrative. Then it becomes identity. Then it becomes a vote.
Security, voting, and the capture of the future
The relationship between organized crime and politics is one of the most serious dimensions of contemporary Latin America.
A study by Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero and Nayely Iturbe on political assassinations in Mexico argues that many such assassinations are driven by criminal organizations seeking to influence candidate selection, control local governments for rent extraction, and retaliate against State actions. The study analyzed assassinations of candidates and mayors between 2000 and 2021 and shows how criminal groups attempt to capture local governments.
Here, fear stops being merely a social emotion. It becomes an architecture of power.
When fear controls who can be a candidate, who can vote, who can denounce, who can move, and who can govern, the body-territory is no longer in a full democracy. Elections may exist, but the territory is coerced.
For this reason, public security is not only a police issue. It is a condition of popular sovereignty.
Without real security, voting can become choice under threat.
Without real justice, local politics can be captured.
Without territorial protection, the State becomes an empty form.
The Jiwasa question is direct:
is the political group that uses the security agenda returning power to the body-territory, or merely using the fear of the body-territory to reach power?
The savior model and the risk of false Jiwasa
In every crisis of fear, the figure of the savior appears.
The savior promises immediate order. Promises to end crime. Promises to do what “no one had the courage to do.” Promises to ignore bureaucracy, rights, courts, guarantees, and negotiations. His strength lies in appearing faster than democracy.
In Latin America, hardline criminal policies and mass incarceration have gained strong regional visibility in recent years. The case of El Salvador under Nayib Bukele has become a reference for many defenders of tough measures, because crime rates fell significantly. At the same time, organizations and analysts have raised concerns about due process, mass arrests, human rights, and whether the model can be transferred to countries with different criminal dynamics.
The analysis here should not be simplistic.
It is necessary to recognize that populations subjected to crime desire real relief. When homicides fall, when people circulate again, when families feel less fear, that has concrete weight. But it is also necessary to ask: what is the institutional cost, who is imprisoned without evidence, what power is concentrated, what rights become suspended, what model is exported as spectacle, and what happens when fear legitimizes permanent exception?
False Jiwasa can appear even when there is immediate result.
Because false Jiwasa is not defined only by the feeling of relief. It is defined by the absence of integral return to the body-territory. If the people gain silence in the streets, but lose democratic control, due process, transparency, protection against abuse, and the ability to question the State, belonging remains incomplete.
Security without freedom can become obedience.
Freedom without security can become abandonment.
The challenge is to produce Real Jiwasa: security with belonging, justice, and body-territory.
Vulnerable body-territory
The vulnerable body-territory is not only the individual victim of crime. It is the entire territory placed in a state of threat.
It is the mother who changes her child’s route.
It is the child who recognizes gunfire by sound.
It is the merchant who pays twice: tax to the State and extortion to crime.
It is the teacher who teaches in fear.
It is the young person who sees more future in the gang than in school.
It is the community leader who does not know whether to denounce or remain silent.
It is the poorly paid, poorly trained police officer thrown into permanent war.
It is the Indigenous person threatened by illegal mining.
It is the quilombo pressured by land grabbers.
It is the periphery treated as collectively suspicious.
It is the city that begins to accept living in fear as normal.
When fear becomes normality, the body-territory becomes ill. Sleep changes. Movement changes. Breathing changes. Relationships change. Trust changes. Childhood changes. Politics changes.
Violence affects not only those who die. It also affects those who learn to live as if they could die at any moment.
For this reason, public security must be thought of as territorial health.
Without this, the State will continue to treat violence as a police event, not as a rupture of Nerope.
Broken Nerope: security as vital flow
Nerope can be understood as vital flow: the minimum condition for life to circulate, breathe, work, learn, sleep, play, care, and project a future.
When there is crime, extortion, threat, and permanent fear, Nerope is broken.
But when the State responds only with force, without rebuilding the territory, Nerope may remain broken. The body stops fearing only crime and begins to fear the State as well.
The question is not whether the State should act. It should.
The question is: what kind of action restores vital flow?
Action that reduces homicide, but also reduces arbitrariness.
Action that arrests criminals, but also dismantles money laundering.
Action that protects borders, but also protects peoples who live on them.
Action that fights gangs, but also interrupts youth recruitment.
Action that investigates economic chains, not only arrests foot soldiers of crime.
Action that returns school, culture, energy, health, and income to the territory.
Action that recognizes security as belonging.
Public security as Real Jiwasa
A security policy oriented by Real Jiwasa would begin with a different question.
It would not begin only by asking: how do we eliminate the enemy?
It would begin by asking: how do we restore the territory’s capacity to produce life without fear?
This changes priorities.
Financial intelligence becomes as important as armed operations.
Witness protection becomes as important as imprisonment.
The recovery of schools and public spaces becomes as important as police presence.
Mental health becomes as important as crime statistics.
Police transparency becomes as important as police authority.
Youth are seen as a future to protect, not as a threat to neutralize.
The biome is seen as a target of illegal economies, not merely as a landscape.
Body-territory becomes the unit for evaluating public policy.
The question is not only: did crime fall?
It is also:
does the community trust more?
has circulation improved?
does the school breathe?
do young people have alternatives?
has commerce stopped being extorted?
is the police more legitimate?
has fear decreased without increasing abuse?
has the biome been protected?
has the territory gained a future?
If the answer is no, there may be an improvement in indicators and still no Real Jiwasa.
Metacognition for the reader
In the face of any news story about security, the reader can ask seven questions:
1. Are they informing me, or training my fear?
2. Does this agenda show the cause, or only the effect?
3. Who gains votes, audience, budget, or power from this narrative?
4. Which vulnerable body-territory became invisible?
5. Does the proposed solution restore Tekoha, or merely occupy the territory?
6. Is fear producing Real Jiwasa or false Jiwasa?
7. What material, social, and territorial return goes back to the community after the security policy?
These questions do not prevent action. On the contrary: they prevent blind action.
Public security needs urgency, but urgency without causality becomes spectacle.
And the spectacle of security is one of the strongest instruments of contemporary false Jiwasa.
Conclusion: security means returning the future to the territory
When fear chooses the future, politics narrows.
The voter begins to vote for protection.
The media begins to sell urgency.
Platforms begin to monetize indignation.
Governments begin to compete over force.
Criminals begin to dispute territory.
And the vulnerable body-territory remains between two powers: the illegal power that captures through threat and the State power that often arrives through force but does not remain through care.
The solution is not to deny security. It is to deepen it.
Security is not only the absence of crime.
Security is the presence of future.
It is being able to move without fear.
It is sleeping without alarm.
It is trusting justice.
It is seeing youth with alternatives.
It is having open schools.
It is having living public squares.
It is having legitimate police.
It is having protected biomes.
It is having a State that arrives before crime, not only after.
It is having Nerope restored.
It is having Tekoha protected.
It is having Real Jiwasa.
Fear can be a sign that something needs care. But when fear becomes a method of government, it stops protecting and begins capturing.
Therefore, the final question is not only: who promises more security?
The question is:
who returns more body-territory to the people living in fear?
Commented references after 2021
1. Sebastián A. Cutrona. “Conceptualizing Mano Dura in Latin America” - 2025
Supports the discussion of mano dura as a broad concept and not merely an electoral slogan. The article shows that Latin American governments have adopted different punitive strategies to confront gangs, organized crime, and social fear, while also noting the lack of conceptual clarity around the spectrum of these policies. It helps ground the analysis of fear as a political shortcut.
2. Sebastián A. Cutrona. “Between security and democracy” - 2026
Supports the analysis of growing social support for mano dura policies in Latin American democracies historically perceived as safer, such as Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay. It helps show that fear can alter democratic expectations and expand acceptance of punitive responses.
3. FLACSO / USACH study reported by El País - 2024
Supports the claim that fear, perceptions of organized crime sophistication, and support for mano dura have grown in countries such as Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay. The report states that 67% of participants reported fear and 58% had a mostly positive perception of punitive measures.
4. Lucía Dammert, recent debates on security and politics in Latin America - 2024/2025
Supports the reading that organized crime, fear, illicit money, money laundering, and infiltration into formal economies are reshaping regional politics. Dammert is a central Latin American reference in public security, fear, and State-society relations.
5. Andrés Uribe, Benjamin Lessing, Noah Schouela, and Elayne Stecher. “Criminal Governance in Latin America: Prevalence and Correlates” - 2025
Supports the idea that organized crime can operate as a form of local governance. The article estimates that about 14% of respondents report that local criminal groups provide order or reduce crime, corresponding to tens of millions of Latin Americans living under some degree of criminal governance.
6. María Angélica Suárez. “Transnational Organized Crime and Hybrid Governance in Latin America” - 2025
Supports the notion of hybrid governance and non-State armed actors with capacity to govern territories, markets, and populations. It helps show that organized crime is not merely criminal deviation, but may dispute State functions in vulnerable territories.
7. Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero and Nayely Iturbe. “Causes and Electoral Consequences of Political Assassinations: The Role of Organized Crime in Mexico” - 2024
Supports the connection between organized crime, elections, and the capture of local governments. The study argues that political assassinations in Mexico are often driven by criminal organizations seeking to influence candidate selection, control local governments, and retaliate against State action.
8. Javier Pérez Sandoval. “The Persistence of Latin America’s Violent Democracies” - 2023
Supports the discussion of Latin American democracies crossed by violence, State militarization, and non-State armed actors. It helps show that elections and formal institutions can coexist with territories governed by fear.
9. “La militarización de la política democrática en América Latina” - Íconos / FLACSO - 2026
Supports the analysis that militarization in Latin America is not limited to public security, but reaches broader areas of democratic politics, administration, and institutional life. It helps distinguish State presence from caring State presence.
10. Casper van Elteren, Vítor V. Vasconcelos, and Mike Lees. “Criminal organizations exhibit hysteresis, resilience, and robustness by balancing security and efficiency” - 2024
Supports the critique of purely punitive responses. The study shows that criminal organizations can exhibit hysteresis, resilience, and robustness, challenging the idea that harsher punishment always disorganizes crime in a linear way.
11. Marcelo Sartori Locatelli, Pedro Calais, Matheus Prado Miranda, João Pedro Junho, Tomas Lacerda Muniz, Wagner Meira Jr., and Virgilio Almeida. “Topic Shifts as a Proxy for Assessing Politicization in Social Media” - 2023
Supports the analysis of how topics such as crime, drugs, and the economy can migrate into political debates on social media, especially during electoral periods. It is useful for discussing how fear and security become pathways for politicization, engagement, and narrative dispute.
12. Inter-American Development Bank / Reuters, regional alliance against organized crime - 2024
Supports the regional dimension of the problem. Reuters reported that 16 Latin American and Caribbean governments, with support from the IDB and other institutions, launched an alliance against organized crime; the IDB estimated that crime costs the region an average of 3.4% of GDP. This reinforces that public security is also an economic, institutional, and territorial development issue.
