A Sociological Approach to Revolutionary Violence in Colombia

Abstract

Pizarro's main purpose in Insurgencia sin revolucion is to analyze the causes of the success and failure of revolutions. Systematically theorizing about violence and describing several armed conflicts, especially in Latin American countries, he offers a useful typology for understanding the process. With regard to Colombia's recent history, he argues that because of the social-political and institutional context, guerrilla warfare has become not a real alternative source of power but a phenomenon of chronic insurgency. His fundamental proposition is that the subordination of political aims to military action by the armed leftist groups leads to distortions in social life and the political system. Pizarro tends to be pessimistic about Colombia's fragile process of democratization. The persistence of state and civil society weakness, authoritarian practices within political parties, and armed violence by guerrillas and paramilitaries threatens the nation. The emergence of drug trafficking has deepened the crisis, with negative consequences for progress toward a democratic regime. The negotiation of a peace agreement in a context means addressing the problem of transforming an armed political actor into a civilian political actor. Will the ruling class accept profit sharing and power sharing for the sake of political stability? How should the paramilitaries be handled? What is the role of the international community? Who is to finance the peace process in a situation of economic crisis? In the first chapter, is defined as a complex process of sudden political and socioeconomic change due to a violent confrontation between insurgent groups and state power. All actors are of equal importance in determining the unpredictable final result. For Pizarro, revolution is not a universal concept as in Marxist theory but historically limited as Tilley proposes. He points to the different strategies for recent Latin American struggles: the revolutionary focos of 1959 (the Cuban Revolution) to 1967 (Guevara's death) and the prolonged popular war beginning in 1979 (the Nicaraguan Revolution). Reviewing the literature on Cuba and Nicaragua's successful revolutions, he notes that both were small countries with mainly