Eduardo Moncada is the son of two parents that escape from violence in Latin America and immigrated to the US. That trajectory has marked his work including the study of violence with the risk and difficulties it implies and his choice for ethnographic methods to unearth data where it doesn’t exist. He discusses here his book on urban violence in Colombia as well as his recent work on extortion, a pervasive phenomenon emerging as a result of state weakness that deprives citizens of basic public security in Latin America. He talks about its linkages to migration North and to the emergence of vigilantism seeking justice where the state does not provide it. Finally, Eduardo describes how criminal groups in Latin America have diversified into legal activities and have become part of global commodity chains showing how their survival goes beyond weak state into a global commercial system that accommodates them.