¿Donde están? Pretrial detention and the practice of forced disappearance in Guatemala

Kevin Lewis O’Neill

Environment and Planning D: society and space2026https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261429842article
AJG 4ABDC A
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0.50

Abstract

Cold War counterinsurgency campaigns pioneered the practice of forced disappearance during Guatemala's genocidal civil war (1960–1996). It was a systematic practice of violent repression that did not necessarily end with the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords. Today, more than a quarter century later, criminal organizations, drug cartels, and transnational street gangs not only disappear people in the dead of night but also experiment with ever more sophisticated ways of doing so. One recent innovation has been to have people arrested on false charges and then disrupt their legal proceedings to such an extent that they disappear—from society, certainly, but also from the criminal justice system. This article, in response, follows the case of someone held in pretrial detention for 1805 days to assess how and to what effect criminal and state actors weaponize administrative incompetence to subtract people from society.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261429842

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@article{kevin2026,
  title        = {{¿Donde están? Pretrial detention and the practice of forced disappearance in Guatemala}},
  author       = {Kevin Lewis O’Neill},
  journal      = {Environment and Planning D: society and space},
  year         = {2026},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758261429842},
}

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¿Donde están? Pretrial detention and the practice of forced disappearance in Guatemala

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Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

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