Colombia in the Crucible: Civil War, Citizenship and the Disintegration of the State

Abstract

Colombia is in a prolonged spiral of political and economic crisis, at least as profound as the infamous violencia of the 1940s-50s. Arguably the current situation is even more desperate. Today the national territory is being fragmented as a multi-dimensional battle is waged for state power in which the government finds its ability to rule challenged by a number of organisations which have become a law unto themselves. A minimal (Weberian) definition of a nation state is that the central government monopolises the use of legitimate force, certainly above the level of individual criminals or small crime syndicates. Its laws are normally not challenged except by legal means and the military might be assumed to control the national territory. None of these conditions applies in Colombia today. Among the organisations challenging the state are revolutionary movements, some of which have been in the field since shortly after the Cuban Revolution. Within the greater nation-state they have set up virtually autonomous enclaves where they are the arbiters of justice and in which they run their own crude taxation regimes. There are also a number of paramilitary groups with fairly obvious links to off-duty police and military figures. Finally, a series of drug cartels have at times challenged the political sovereignty of the state as well as flouted its laws.