The article discusses two paradoxes and one enigma that have developed in this country during the last decades: a process of democratisation that started in 1978 coming forward with increasing criminality rates, especially homicide; a nation constituted on the idea of cordiality and conciliation that changed recently its dominant ideas and developed vengeance mechanisms and uncontrollable aggressive behaviour for there was never a public discussion of pacification and forgiveness; the enigma of a fierce violence among men, mainly young men has affected women comparatively much less. This suggests a model of violence dissimilar to the model present in ethnic conflicts where everybody is victim. To understand them, I have used four dimensions: the international context related to drug and gun trafficking, the institutional inertia that explains the malfunctioning of the justice system; the importance and limits of macro social explanations for violent criminality, such as poverty and social exclusion; the necessary look at micro social processes concerning subjective formations on masculinity linked to exhibition of force, money and guns.
Urban violence; Drug trade; Vulnerability; Youth; Masculinity
