It's amusing that an academic/pundit can have these insights and yet they do not interfere with his policy proposals, which completely contradict the insights themselves.

Author reviews several cases pending against former rulers for corruption. He says,
Few Latin American countries are exempt from these judicial vendettas. The victor attempts to liquidate the vanquished. In those nations, the law is not an instrument to regulate civilized coexistence but a mace to crush the adversary's head.
, which is quite true.
Benito Juárez (Mexico's first Indian president, mid-19th century) put it best, after the ten-year civil war and insurgency against conservatives and monarchists: "For my friends, clemency; for my enemies, the law."
The author's suggestion for a remedy is to revisit a Spanish colonial practice, called "judgments of residence." Instead of a remedy, however, they would become just another example of the evil that the author describes: the law as a club with which to be

beat one's enemies not as what we consider "justice," or finding the truth. These "judgments of residence" seem to be similar to the Chinese practice of "talking bitterness." A government functionary is brought up before the public and humiliated by former victims of his corruption.
It's a good idea, but not for "bringing order" to the chaos of political culture in LA. It's a good idea for revenge.