Reflexiones sobre seguridad ciudadana y activismo en derechos humanos

The article describes the stresses that take place in the field of security when it is confronted with the issue of institutional violence. Those stresses, it is argued, result partly from the fact that the field of security is not a homogeneous whole but a dispute space where different notions of security come into play, and partly from the actions and strategies of human rights activism. Through the brief presentation of two cases of institutional violence (one stemming from an arbitrary police arrest and another because of the handing of life sentences to five youths) whose litigation involved international instances, and bringing forth an analysis proposal that endeavors to interpret them according to different scales of representation, we analyze the problems that stress the subject of citizen security understood as a public policy and political action.