This special issue brings together scholars interested in the analysis of the social, cultural and affective dimensions of violence. The contributions explore the connections between situated experiences of violence and shifting affective states, relations, sensations and contingencies in contemporary Latin America. The articles consider how violence might constitute a nexus for the production of subjectivities and forms of identification, relationality and community, alterity and belonging, in a range of Latin American contexts including Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico and in the Mexican diaspora in Spain.