Content area
Full Text
Political Policing: The United States and Latin America, by Martha K. Huggins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. 248 pp. $49.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-8223-2159-9. $17.95 Dauer. ISBN: 0-8223-2172-6.
Martha Huggins's informative and thought-provoking book assesses U.S. financial, training, and organizational support for police forces in various Latin American countries from the beginning of the twentieth century until the abolition of the U.S. Office of Public Safety in 1974. Just under half of the book is an extended case study of U.S. assistance to police Forces in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. Her research is based on extensive archival documentation especially among U.S. sources obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests; she also conducted a number of revealing interviews with U.S. and other officials and also with former Brazilian police officers or their relatives. The book raises significant analytical, empirical, and moral questions about the use and abuse of power by the U.S. and various Latin American governments.
Huggins's arguments are best understood at two levels. The first level is her maximum claim:
"[I]n its relationship with [Latin American) recipients of police assistance, the United States resembled a racketeer who creates a threat and then takes charge of its reduction" (p. 200)....