In this chapter I develop my argument to explain variation in the processes and mechanisms that lead to distinct strategies of resistance to criminal extortion. I first define the core concepts that readers will encounter throughout the book. Next I explain the logic of the argument to show how the intersection between the time horizons of criminal actors, the nature of local political economies, and whether there is criminal capture of the police shapes the strategies of resistance that victims pursue. I then outline the parameters under which I expect the argument to hold, and discuss how my study builds on insights into existing research. I conclude by discussing the research design, case selection, and the methodologies that I used to collect and analyze data.

This chapter analyzes cases of piecemeal vigilantism in El Salvador to show why victims resist extortion through ad hoc and sporadic acts of extralegal violence against criminals in coordination with individual police. I first situate criminal extortion within gang politics in El Salvador before turning to the cases of gang-led extortion of small-scale farmers in two rural localities. The small-scale farmers in these localities lacked preexisting organizations to advance collective resistance and had negligible ties to local governing authorities. But the local police were autonomous from the criminal gangs given the latter’s explicit strategy of targeting police as part of the broader state–criminal conflict. Victims in the two cases thus enlisted individual police as collaborators in occasional acts of piecemeal vigilantism. Over time victims faced pressure to scale up their coercive capacities, territorial reach, and extralegal violence amid their inability to end victimization outright. Efforts by victims to do so ultimately distorted their objectives and contributed to their dismantling by national-level judicial authorities.