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This article examines the technopolitics of prevention in postwar Guatemala. In the 2010s, experts and policymakers shifted security governance in Central America's most populous country towards anticipation. Against the background of rising gang violence, they implemented a set of sociopolitical and techno-material measures – based on the latest crime-control technologies, new policing strategies and urban design methods – in Guatemala's most violent municipalities. The stated goals were to reconstruct state sovereignty and to improve public security by strengthening community resilience and inducing positive behavioural change in 'at-risk' citizens. Zooming in on the case of Villa Nueva, the article examines the emergence and effects of Guatemala's 'prevention assemblage'. It demonstrates that this technopolitical project has failed, as prevention turned into a new layer of control that shifted responsibility to local communities, further securitized urban spaces and populations, and reproduced exclusionary and repressive security governance.

Mary Kaldor, Saskia Sassen (eds.): Cities at War - Global Insecurity and Urban Resistance. New York: Columbia University Press 2020. 978-0-231-18539-4

Following the abolition of the Army, narratives celebrating Central America's most peaceful nation have masked a militarized policing model shaped by U.S.-sponsored counterinsurgency.

This Special Issue explores Latin America's recent wave of militarism across countries, the militarization of the rule of law, and its consequences on everyday life. It draws on the region's recent history of giving militarized responses to seemingly intractable social, political, and economical problems. We argue that the presence of military values, beliefs, and mentalities have permeated processes in which nations absorb and aspire to military practices, modes of organization, and martial discourses that require greater scholarly attention. The articles address a series of issues including various forms of militarism and the militarization of family, culture and education, diplomacy, policing, and public security in urban and rural settings. The contributions engage systematically with the roots of militarism and give evidence of militarization at the individual, national, and international levels, including a variety of case studies from across the Western Hemisphere.

Introduction: Complexity, Resilience and the 'Local Turn' in Counterinsurgency / Moe, Louise Wiuff (et al.) 1-27. - A Struggle for Control and Influence': Western Counterinsurgency and the Problematic of Autonomy / Kienscherf, Markus 29-50. - Ethnographic Intelligence: The Human Terrain System and Its Enduring Legacy / González, Roberto J. 51-73. - Grey's Anatomy Goes South: Biometrics, Racism, and Counterinsurgency in the Colonial Present / Bell, Colleen 75-95. - The Peacebuilding-Counterinsurgency Nexus in the Occupied Palestinian Territory / Turner, Mandy 97-118. - Counterinsurgent Warfare and the Decentering of Sovereignty in Somalia / Moe, Louise Wiuff 119-140. - The 'New Path' to Peace: Cultivating Masculinities in Southern Thai Counterinsurgency / Streicher, Ruth 141-162. - Countering Criminal Insurgencies: Fighting Gangs and Building Resilient Communities in Post-War Guatemala / Hochmüller, Markus (et al.) 163-186. - The Locals Strike Back: The Anbar Awakening in Iraq and the Rise of Islamic State / Andersen, Lars Erslev 187-205. - Western Strategic Thought and the Devaluation of Counterinsurgency / Jones, David Martin 207-223