Between the police initiative and neighborhood participation: coercion, public security and State in Lima during the first years of the republican era

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the state's coercive actions in relation to public security in Lima,
during the early republic. It is argued that the deployment of police agents in the city, which had begun in
the late eighteenth century, generated new types of relationships between the State and society. The
population went through a learning process through which they could identify and take advantage of the
possibilities generated by the permanent presence of police officers in the city, to safeguard their safety. In
that sense, the Lima people came to them not only when their security was threatened or violated, but also
that of their neighbors. In this way, not only police intervention was generated in the streets, but also in private spaces, which allowed to repress practices based systematically on physical violence, which could
lead to homicides.