La exaltación del deseo en la propaganda militar de Colombia

Abstract

The Colombian armed conflict has been widely studied from various approaches and disciplines, so in some academic circles it is claimed that the phenomenon has even been over-diagnosed. In spite of this, it is possible to notice the few investigations that address the propaganda speech that the various armed actors have carried out in order to obtain popular support for their cause. For this reason, this investigation addressed the television propaganda speech made by the Colombian State in the campaigns Los heroes en Colombia si existen and La desmovilizacion es la salida, which were aimed, in the first place, to improve the image of the Colombian Army before the public opinion and before their same members and, secondly, they tried to increase the number of deserters in the armed groups that fought the State. The study was carried out through a textual analysis of the television spots broadcast by the various national television channels of Colombia between 2006 and 2012. The investigation showed that, contrary to what one might expect from propaganda, campaigns escape from moral or ideological topics and make desire the main element on which almost all of the spots are articulated. So, while members of the Army present themselves as objects of desire before the viewer, guerrilla organizations present themselves as obstacles to accessing what is desired.