Violence, Inequality, and Borders: changes and continuities in territorial patterns in MERCOSUR after the pandemic (2017–2023)

Various studies on the relationship between violence and inequality both in Latin America and elsewhere have corroborated their relationship to each other and explored that relationship’s many dimensions in greater depth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of governmental measures and practices to restrict mobility and the resulting border closures led to increased inequality in areas that are more dependent on informal and cross-border economies. This article seeks to determine the changes in the territorialisation of the relationship between violence and inequality at MERCOSUR's internal and external borders as a space for regional integration. Using different spatial econometric models, we examined violence’s territorial resilience and the transformations it underwent by comparing the years before and after the health crisis. Our findings suggest the resilience of homicidal violence in territories close to the bloc's borders and a change in the patterns in which it is configured and spreads as a result of the changing role played by local actors, regional institutions, the rigidity of the economic structures, and the absence of effective public policies on the part of governments.