Chapter 1 begins with the story of the 2015 La Línea customs fraud scandal and its connections to the criminal structures mounted by military intelligence at the height of the 36-year civil war. Drawing on this illustrative example, the chapter reframes debates on post-conflict statebuilding and puts forward a novel argument about how counterinsurgent elites introduce institutional innovations that undermine core state activities. It further lays out the key theoretical contributions of the book, specifically as they relate to war and state formation and post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction. The chapter also introduces the Central American context and explains why it is a fruitful setting in which to explore the institutional legacies of civil war. It then discusses the book’s methodology and the unique archival and interview sources of data.