Crímenes de Estado Colonial: Apuntes para el Desarrollo de un Concepto Socio-Jurídico

This article proposes a critical and innovative perspective on state crimes as an area of study that has been predominantly focused on countries of the global South and on which little has been theorized regarding its relationship with colonialism. Firstly, I intend to show that state crimes are a complex phenomenon that take place in most liberal democracies, both in the global north and south, and secondly, that the so-called democratic states of the global north have systematically incurred in criminal behavior under colonial contexts. Furthermore, it is shown that this political phenomenon involves a variety of agents and that in no way could it be considered an isolated phenomenon. Hence, I argue that state crimes and their relationship with colonialism must be studied from a multidimensional and critical perspective, which I have termed colonial state crimes.