¹ Acción 10, 20 Nov. 2013.

² ‘Pinta’ is a stigmatising term for a barrio youth who ‘looks like’ a criminal, stemming from the shortening of ‘tiene pinta de delincuente’ (‘he looks like a delinquent’). I elaborate further on the term in the sections that follow. On its origin and use see for example ‘De pintas, chambrines y pichelas’, La Brújula Semanal, 25 Feb. 2009.

³ Goldstein, Daniel M., The Spectacular City: Violence and Performance in Urban Bolivia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; my emphasis.

⁴ O'Neill, Maggie and Seal, Lizzie, Transgressive Imaginations: Crime, Deviance and Culture (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Following Goldstein, Spectacular City, p. 18, I consider a ‘spectacle’ to be ‘a form of political action based on visual display, undertaken by specifically positioned social groups and actors attempting to stamp society with their own agenda’.

⁶ Dennis Rodgers has often described Nicaragua's gangs as alternative legitimising institutions with their own logics of protecting and ‘policing’ the barrio in the absence of the police in many poor Managuan barrios throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. See Rodgers, ‘Living in the Shadow of Death: Gangs, Violence and Social Order in Urban Nicaragua, 1996–2002’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 38 (2006), pp. 267–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The State as a Gang: Conceptualizing the Governmentality of Violence in Contemporary Nicaragua’, Critique of Anthropology, 26: 3 (2006), pp. 315–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rodgers, Dennis and Muggah, Robert, ‘Gangs as Non-State Armed Groups: The Central American Case’, Contemporary Security Policy, 30: 2 (2009), pp. 301–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Huhn, Sebastian, Oettler, Anika and Peetz, Peter, ‘Contemporary Discourses on Violence in Central American Newspapers’, The International Communication Gazette, 71: 4 (2009), pp. 243–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Such as the establishment of neighbourhood Comités de Prevención Social del Delito (Committees for the Social Prevention of Crime, CPSDs), the founding of the PN's Dirección de Asuntos Juveniles (Office for Juvenile Affairs, DAJUV) in 2003, and the involvement of voluntary police in community crime prevention. See also Savenije, Wim, Persiguiendo seguridad: Acercamiento de la policía a las comunidades con problemas de inseguridad en Centroamérica (San Salvador: FLACSO El Salvador, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁹ Ungar, Mark, ‘Policing Youth in Latin America’, in Jones, Gareth A. and Rodgers, Dennis (eds.), Youth Violence in Latin America: Gangs and Juvenile Justice in Perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 203–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ For an example of the positive, see Meyer, Peter J. and Seelke, Claire Ribando, Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and Policy Issues for Congress (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015)Google Scholar, available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41731.pdf (last access 14 Feb. 2018). For an example of the negative, see Rodgers, Dennis and Rocha, José Luis, ‘Turning Points: Gang Evolution in Nicaragua’, in Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), Small Arms Survey Yearbook 2013: Everyday Dangers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 46–73Google Scholar.

¹¹ Aminta Granera, ‘Modelo policial de Nicaragua 2010’, presentation, Panama, October 2010, available at http://www.policia.gob.ni/cedoc/ModeloPolicialfc.pdf (last access 14 Feb. 2018). A quarter of the presentation covers Visión Policial and positive visibility of policing in the media (pp. 22–35); all translations are mine.

¹² Ibid., p. 23.

¹³ Ibid., p. 25.

¹⁴ Though the police force changed names and uniforms after the PN was founded out of the Sandinista police upon the 1990 electoral defeat of the FSLN, the (Sandinista-oriented) structure of command remained largely intact. See Rocha, José Luis, ‘Mapping the Labyrinth from Within: The Political Economy of Nicaraguan Youth Policy Concerning Violence’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 26: 4 (2007), pp. 533–49Google Scholar.

¹⁵ See ibid. for a thorough assessment of the political and power divisions within the PN under the previous administrations (1990–2006).

¹⁶ Ortega (FSLN) has been re-elected twice, in 2011 and 2016, with increasing support but under increasing national and international criticism. President Ortega is simultaneously general secretary of the FSLN, president of the republic, and jefe supremo (supreme chief) of police, which entails that the police fall under direct command of the presidency. However, when Granera was appointed chief of police in 2006, before the Sandinista electoral victory, she inherited a police force already struggling with issues of credibility and independence (e.g. William Grigsby, ‘La Policía Nacional ante siete desafíos colosales’, Envío, 293 [2006]; online journal available at http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/3334, last access 15 March 2018). Whereas internal strife seems to have been resolved under Granera's command (at least from the outside), the apparently seamless alignment of the PN with the Sandinista government has been (heavily) criticised for its increasingly close relationship to the presidency and party politics (see e.g. Roberto Orozco, ‘La Policía Nacional se ha desnaturalizado para garantizar la seguridad del régimen’, Envío, 402 [2015]; online journal available at http://www.envio.org.ni/articulo/5074, last access 15 March 2018).

¹⁷ For this overview I draw on Rocha, ‘Mapping the Labyrinth’; Rodgers and Rocha, ‘Turning Points’; Rocha and Rodgers, Bróderes descobijados y vagos alucinados: Una década con las pandillas nicaragüenses 1997–2007 (Managua: Envío, 2008)Google Scholar; Rodgers, ‘Living in the Shadow of Death’; Rodgers, ‘When Vigilantes Turn Bad: Gangs, Violence, and Social Change in Urban Nicaragua’, in Pratten, David and Sen, Atreyee (eds.), Global Vigilantes (London and New York: Hurst and Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 349–70Google Scholar; and Savenije, Persiguiendo seguridad.

¹⁸ It has been claimed that these organisations were used by disgruntled neighbours to initiate investigations of one another under the guise of ‘counter-intelligence collection’. Ericka Gertsch Romero, ‘De los CDS a los CPC’, La Prensa, 16 June 2010; available at https://www.laprensa.com.ni/2010/05/16/politica/24768-de-los-cds-a-los-cpc, last access 15 March 2018. The Consejos de Poder Ciudadano (Councils for Citizens’ Power, CPCs) were established by the Sandinista government when they regained power in 2007, and were deemed reminiscent of the older CDSs and CDCs. Officially, they were created to promote direct participatory democracy, but they were criticised for being partisan and in effect pitching neighbours against one another. As of 2017 the CPCs are known as Consejos de Familia (Family Councils).

¹⁹ Rocha, José Luis, ‘Pandilleros: La mano que empuña el mortero’, Envío, 216 (2000), pp. 17–25Google Scholar.

²⁰ Due to the civil war the Sandinista police had operated almost exclusively in the urban centres. Moreover, at the time, police work was not considered as important or prestigious as military service or a job with the Ministry of Interior's Inteligencia del Estado (State Intelligence) Department. While these institutions were preoccupied with issues of national security in the face of an armed counterinsurgency movement sponsored by the United States, the police had to deal with regular and ‘petty’ criminal activities such as domestic violence, drunken brawls and traffic management.

²¹ See note 17 above.

²² See Rodgers, Dennis, ‘The Moral Economy of Murder: Violence, Death and Social Order in Nicaragua’, in Auyero, Javier, Bourgois, Philippe and Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (eds.), Violence at the Urban Margins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 21–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ This occurred especially under the Bolaños administration (2001–6). See also Savenije, Persiguiendo seguridad.

²⁴ Presupuesto General de la República de Nicaragua (General Budget of the Nicaraguan Republic), 2008 and 2016: see de Hacienda, Ministerio, Presupuesto General de la República (Managua: Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 2008), p. 132Google Scholar and Hacienda, Ministerio de, Presupuesto General de la República (Managua: Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público, 2016), p. 338Google Scholar.

²⁵ Nacional, Policía, Sistematización del Modelo Policial Comunitario Proactivo de Nicaragua (Managua: CEDOC, 2011)Google Scholar.

²⁶ Most of these terms were also used to refer to pandilleros, most commonly the term ‘vago’ – the prime activity of the pandillero being ‘vagar’, i.e. not doing anything productive.

²⁷ Exceptions are German Rey on crime journalism, El cuerpo del delito. Representación y narrativas mediáticas de la (in)seguridad ciudadana (Bogotá: CIC-UCAB, 2005)Google Scholar and Los relatos periodísticos del crimen. Cómo se cuenta el delito en la prensa escrita latinoamericana (Bogotá: CIC-UCAB, 2007)Google Scholar; Jesús Martín-Barbero's exploration of the mediated relation between crime and fear ‘The City: Between Fear and the Media’, in Rotker, Susana (ed.), Citizens of Fear: Urban Violence in Latin America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), pp. 25–35Google Scholar; Santisteban's, Rocío Silva El factor asco: Basurización simbólica y discursos autoritarios en el Perú contemporáneo (Lima: Fondo Editorial Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2008)Google Scholar, and studies that combine ethnographic methodologies with mass media research, such as Goldstein, Spectacular City; Guevara, Alberto, Performance, Theatre and Society in Contemporary Nicaragua: Spectacles of Gender, Sexuality and Marginality (New York: Cambria Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Caldeira, Teresa, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and Robert Samet, ‘Deadline: Crime, Journalism, and Fearful Citizenship in Caracas, Venezuela’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University online repository (2012), available at https://purl.stanford.edu/dn875vt7129 (last access 5 May 2017).

²⁸ E.g. Garland, David, The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Many of the ‘indices of change’ that he explores are present in contemporary Latin American societies, including Nicaragua, and often accelerated through policy transfer and political pressures (such as those around the war on drugs).

²⁹ E.g. Rotker (ed.), Citizens of Fear; Caldeira, City of Walls.

³⁰ Ungar, ‘Policing Youth’, p. 203.

³¹ Peetz, Peter and Huhn, Sebastian, ‘Violencia, seguridad y el Estado: Los fundamentos discursivos de las políticas de seguridad ciudadana en Centroamérica’, in Rivera Vélez, F. (ed.), Seguridad multidimensional en América Latina (Quito: FLACSO – Ministerio de Cultura del Ecuador, 2008), pp. 351–68, p. 365Google Scholar, available at http://www.flacsoandes.edu.ec/agora/violencia-seguridad-y-el-estado-los-fundamentos-discursivos-de-las-politicas-de-seguridad (last access 14 Feb. 2018).

³² E.g. for a discussion of the reinforcement of the ‘bandido’ imaginary through the news in Brazil, see Willis, Graham Denyer, The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime, and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015), pp. 74–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Goldstein, Spectacular City, p. 16.

³⁴ Ibid., p. 18; my emphasis.

³⁵ Guevara, Performance, Theatre and Society, p. 3; my emphasis.

³⁶ Robert Samet has stressed the media's denunciatory role in Latin America, focusing on the Venezuelan case. See Samet, ‘Deadline’; Samet, ‘The Denouncers: Populism and the Press in Venezuela’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 49: 1 (2016), pp. 1–27Google Scholar.

³⁷ Cohen, Stan, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: Creation of Mods and Rockers (New York: Routledge, 2002 [1972])Google Scholar. Hall, Stuart, Critcher, Chas, Jefferson, Tony, Clarke, John and Roberts, Brian, Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 [1978])CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

³⁹ Hayward, Keith J. and Presdee, Mike (eds.), Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 3Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Peetz and Huhn, ‘Violencia, seguridad y el Estado’, p. 366.

⁴¹ According to the independent firm AMCHAM's annual research over 2013, whose results were broadcast on Acción 10 on 11 Sept. 2013, 89 per cent of Nicaraguans watch television daily, the rate rising to 90 per cent in Managua. The evening news programme Acción 10 is the preferred news show of 56 per cent of the Managuan television audience and of 41 per cent of the rest of the country. In terms of ratings it beats its main competitors Crónica TN8 and Noticias 12 by more than 12 per cent, which is why I focus mainly on this news show for the purpose of this study.

⁴² This quote, and all those that follow – unless otherwise stated – are taken from Acción 10, 11 Sept. 2013.

⁴³ For a historical analysis of the nota roja in Mexico, but in general terms also applicable to Central America, see Picatto, Pablo, ‘Murder of nota roja: Truth and Justice in Mexican Crime News’, Past and Present, 23: 1 (2014), pp. 195–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Picatto states that, already by the mid-twentieth century, ‘nota roja reporters were always close to the police […] and became the lowliest example of journalism's ethical poverty’, noting furthermore that ‘cultural critics […] see the nota roja simultaneously as a pornographic escape from everyday life and as a hyperrealist depiction of ordinary violence’ (pp. 198–9).

⁴⁴ Acción 10, 16 Sept. 2013. Acción 10 is most loyally watched in poor urban barrios and markets, and its tone is set to cater to this large sector of the Nicaraguan population. As the channel's further programming includes the most popular Mexican and Colombian telenovelas (soap operas) and Hollywood blockbuster movies, many market stalls and shops keep it on throughout the day and well into the night.

⁴⁵ Acción 10, 16 Sept. 2013.

⁴⁶ Only two other channels have such good free reception: Canal 2, originally an independent channel, and Canal 6, which has been a Sandinista channel since the 80s. Other publicly broadcast channels include Telenica Canal 8, VosTV (Canal 14) and Canal 12, all of which host their own news shows.

⁴⁷ See for example: ‘Tendencia de estudios sobre nota roja en Nicaragua’, El Nuevo Diario, 21 Feb. 2013, and the special report ‘Noticieros sangrientos’, La Prensa, 3 April 2011. La Prensa and El Nuevo Diario are Nicaragua's leading newspapers. Both aim for the same educated, middle-class public – albeit from two different ideological vantage points, one could argue. They often feature well-written editorials and opinion sections (see also Huhn et al., ‘Contemporary Discourses on Violence’). The smaller newspaper Hoy is the exception to this established trend and aims at a lower-class public, mostly market vendors, and often has similar content to the television news reports. Likewise it focuses on local news such as crime, traffic accidents, fiestas patronales and weekly price variations in staple food goods.

⁴⁸ ‘Noticieros sangrientos’. To date this ‘restraint’ has meant blurring out the worst bits of the bloodiest messes and occasionally warning about (very) ‘strong’ images – e.g. bits of brain on the tarmac or severed limbs – though this is done haphazardly and often not very well (the blurring often appears later than the image itself, for example).

⁴⁹ The Ortega-Murillo influence over the Nicaraguan mediascape is often criticised in La Prensa, the country's largest newspaper – see for example ‘Frenética entrega de frecuencias de radio y TV’, La Prensa, 16 April 2011.

⁵⁰ Canal 10 is officially owned by Ratensa, an anonymous company that is said to be funded by the Mexican businessman Ángel González, who owns another significant proportion of Nicaragua's mediascape. Though he denies this, González is said to have agreed on the distribution of radio and television networks directly with Ortega. Canal 10 positions itself as apolitical and they indeed do little reporting on political issues. See ibid. and ‘Minimiza Ratensa relación con Ortega’, La Prensa, 22 June 2011.

⁵¹ Jewkes, Yvonne, Media and Crime (London: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 147Google Scholar.

⁵² Granera, ‘Modelo policial’, p. 31.

⁵³ Acción 10, 16 Sept. 2013.

⁵⁴ I watched the news on 74 occasions, mostly tuning in to Acción 10 (69 times) and occasionally to Crónica TN8 (thrice) and Noticias 12 (twice). I took notes on all items related to crime and crime prevention. I later classified these news items into six categories. These are by number (excluding international news): (a) assault and robbery by youths, youth violence and gang-related crime: 110 items; (b) homicide and murder (of men): 83 items; (c) femicide, rape, domestic violence and the reform of Ley 779 (Ley Integral contra la Violencia hacia las Mujeres, Integral Law against Violence against Women): 70 items; (d) institutions of crime prevention, including presentations of new crime-fighting plans, items focusing on chief of police Aminta Granera and official police commemorations: 65 items; (e) fraud, assault and robbery by non-youths and/or organised crime: 64 items; (f) drug-related crime: 62 items. As might be expected of nota roja news shows, violent crime and murder take the lead with a key focus on the perpetrator of concern: the young pinta. What called my attention to the dynamic between youth crime, the media and the police, however, was the number of items centring on the PN.

⁵⁵ The PN and reporters often use the depersonalising terms sujetos (‘subjects’) or elementos (‘elements’) on news items.

⁵⁶ See also ‘De pintas, chambrines y pichelas’.

⁵⁷ On the malandro see Ferrándiz, Francisco, ‘Malandros, María Llonza, and Masculinity in a Venezuelan Shantytown’, in Gutmann, Matthew C. (ed.), Changing Men and Masculinities in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 115–33Google Scholar, specifically pp. 116 (source of ‘incurable delinquents’ quotation) and 121. On the bandido Denyer Willis, Killing Consensus, pp. 74–9. It must be underlined that these imaginaries are specifically gendered: in Latin America violence has frequently been ascribed to the reproduction of machismo as an intricate part of the performance of masculine gender identities (see for example Gutmann, Matthew C., ‘Trafficking in Men: The Anthropology of Masculinity’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 26 (2007), pp. 385–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Previously, I have argued that ‘machismo has a discursive embodiment so strong that machista ideals of pride and shame considered archaic by the current generation have in fact been translated to contemporary street culture’: Weegels, ‘The Prisoner's Body: Violence, Desire and Masculinities in a Nicaraguan Prison Theater Group’, in Frerks, Georg, Ypeij, Annelou and König, Reinhilde Sotiria (eds.), Gender and Conflict: Embodiments, Discourses and Symbolic Practices (London: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 151–73, here pp. 155–6Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Cintron, Ralph, Angel's Town: Chero Ways, Gang Life, and the Rhetorics of the Everyday (Boston, MA: Beacon Press Books, 1997), pp. x–xiGoogle Scholar. In his research Cintron noted that ‘not only uses of language but also a wide range of artefacts and bodily gestures became consistently mobilised during the making of disputes’ and interpreted ‘the surfaces of public culture […] as performances, as rhetorical gestures emerging from the desire to persuade others of the propriety of certain identifications and, implicitly, of the impropriety of other identifications’. The indisputability of certain identifications – such as identification of the pinta with crime, or the pinta’s being imagined as always carrying some kind of weapon – is repeated on the news to such an extent that certain youths become imagined as pintas: pinta identifications are inscribed on to particular youths’ bodies and into the TV viewer's imaginary.

⁵⁹ Acción 10, 6 Sept. 2013.

⁶⁰ Acción 10, 8 Aug. 2013.

⁶¹ When the pinta detainees are asked about their involvement in the murder of Umberto's father at the end of the news item, one of them attempts to defend the group to the camera: ‘We went out with only stones and machetes […] they were the ones with the gun or rifle’, and a younger detainee seconds this. But their version of events is discredited directly after their declarations: ‘Either way’, the voice-over concludes, ‘they will be questioned in respect of their crimes’.

⁶² Goffman, Erving, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963), p. 3Google Scholar.

⁶³ Ibid.

⁶⁴ Ibid.; my emphasis.

⁶⁵ A video of this news item can be found on YouTube. It is, ironically, titled ‘La persecución – Una película de Managua, Nicaragua’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ToKQO1s8E (an Acción 10 news item published to YouTube on 8 Jan. 2011, last access on 17 Feb. 2018).

⁶⁶ Remember how the destruction of the home of the detained youth in the introductory news item was justified to the viewers by stating that it ‘functioned as an expendio’.

⁶⁷ Crónica TN8, 1 April 2013.

⁶⁸ A video of this news item too can be found on YouTube: ‘Detenido a mano limpia por andar de rapidito’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trw52pXAk4c (a Crónica TN8 news item published to YouTube on 23 July 2012, last access on 17 Feb. 2018). I recommend watching this item as it provides visual clarification of my argument.

⁶⁹ Acción 10, 24 Jan. 2014. The officer speaking is the chief of police of San Juan del Sur.

⁷⁰ The latter causes frustration among residents, as many of these youths are argued to be innocent. A poignant example can be found on YouTube: ‘Operativo policial en el Reparto Schick y Milagro de Dios’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpOxZ_c4DjU (Acción 10 news item uploaded on 9 Aug. 2011, last access 17 Feb. 2018). Interestingly, we see the same dynamic of visual disqualification occurring even if the youths are innocent. While both the detainees and fellow residents argue their innocence, the cameras zoom in on those attributes that mark the former as potential delinquents.

⁷¹ Rocha, ‘Mapping the Labyrinth’, p. 542.

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ See for a clear example the Canal 2 news excerpt ‘Operativo contra delincuentes en Nicaragua’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVPuYxIapWk, published to YouTube on 10 Aug. 2008, last access 15 Feb. 2018). Note that this item is from before the enactment of the communitarian policing model.

⁷⁴ Rocha, ‘Mapping the Labyrinth’, p. 544.

⁷⁵ O'Neill and Seal, Transgressive Imaginations, p. 2.

⁷⁶ Guevara, Performance, Theatre and Society, p. 3.

⁷⁷ See for example Denyer Willis, Killing Consensus, or Fassin, Didier, Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013)Google Scholar. Cf. Rodgers, Dennis, ‘Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs, Mano Dura and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America’, Development and Change, 40: 5 (2009), pp. 949–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁸ Ungar, ‘Policing Youth’; Ungar and Enrique Desmond Arias, ‘Reassessing Community-Oriented Policing in Latin America’, Policing and Society, 22: 1 (2012), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ungar and Leticia Salomón, ‘Community Policing in Honduras: Local Impacts of a National Programme’, Policing and Society, 22: 1 (2012), pp. 28–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vásquez, J. C. Ruiz, ‘Community Police in Colombia: An Idle Process’, Policing and Society, 22: 1 (2012), pp. 43–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.