In Latin America, states have often responded to the felt need to “cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil” of the hour. The last devil was communism; the new devil (one of them, anyway) is crime, and vulnerable citizens are once again left struggling to stand upright in the winds that blow when immediate results trump legal processes. From iron-handed law-and-order efforts like “super mano dura” criminal reform proposals in Central America, to illegal ones like extra-judicial executions, lynchings, and extermination groups, due process protections take a back seat to citizen security. When this happens, as the experience of victims of police violence makes clear, it is very difficult for courts alone to stand up to those winds, even if legal protections have not been formally abolished.