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The objective of this project is to explore the conjuncture of two powerful transnational discourses -- security and human rights -- examining their deployments and transformations in daily social practice to reveal the ways in which "security" ultimately can work to defeat "rights," as violent local actors operate within and against national and transnational formations of politics and law. The project examines, historically and ethnographically, the circumstances facing the indigenous residents of a marginal urban neighborhood in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a community to which the official institutions of law do not extend, and where people are essentially abandoned to face crime and violence without the protection of the democratic state and its rule of law. The project asks: What is the nature of security in the modern world, and to what lengths are individuals, communities, and societies willing to go to attain it?