Urban Violence and Public Health in Latin America

Cad. Saúde Pública, Rio de Janeiro, 21(6):1629-1664, nov-dez, 2005 of the widest range of relations 1 in both the private and public spheres, stems from the article’s approach (unless we have misread it) to violence as a kind of disorder that parasitizes a society, that acts as foreign body in it and is therefore something to be extirpated. This point of view has consequences for the final focus of research and the localization of violence in specific geographic areas of cities, and in certain human groups, like youth and the poor, in certain regions of the country, placing the rest of society in the position of victims, which at least in the Colombian case has generated an infernal circular perpetuation of violence. The other concept refers to the urban. The author’s reflection on the distinction between “city, citizenship, and violence” is highly interesting. What is out of sync is that he has introduced something as a footnote which in our opinion should link the overall argument together, due to its huge explanatory potential. In our opinion 2, urban violence does not relate necessarily to the topography where it occurs, but to the violations of various types of rights and freedoms that occur in interactions among citizens, and between the latter and the state or other organizations (all of whom are actors in our contemporary urban society); to the logics and dynamics woven into the construction of the urban and the city and its characteristic as a horizon for conflicts that gives rise to violence as a multifaceted and ubiquitous phenomenon.