Sufrimiento y agencia política: pesquisa sobre la condición de víctima en Bojayá, Colombia

The following article discusses the development of Colombia’s paramilitary army, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), beginning in the 1990s and ending with the destruction of the organisation in the late 2000s. The AUC was originally founded by three brothers surnamed Castaño as a private army designed to combat the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and other Columbian revolutionary guerrilla groups. The main argument put forward in the article is that when the AUC was initially founded, the primary goal of its leaders, the Castaño brothers, was a sincere desire to check and, if possible, destroy the power of the FARC. In the process of its development however, the AUC came to depend on the taxation of cocaine to fund its war against the guerrillas. When the Colombian state, which had been too weak to prevent the development of either the AUC or the FARC in the 1990s, strengthened its military power in the 2000s, it demanded the AUC cease its operations, demobilise its military forces, and aid the state in destroying the cocaine industry’s infrastructure in southern Colombia. The Castaño brother who had become the organisation’s sole leader, Carlos, was willing to comply, but his move to end the AUC’s association with the cocaine industry invoked the wrath of his subordinate commanders, resulting in his brutal murder. This event revealed that the AUC had gradually developed into a cocaine cartel in the guise of a paramilitary army despite the intentions of its leader, who was killed because his leadership became a threat to the profitable taxation of cocaine that his former subordinate commanders enjoyed.

This chapter considers the multiple efforts at engaging three armed groups in Colombia: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia [FARC]), the National Liberation Army (Ejercito Liberacion Nacional [ELN]), and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia [AUC]). I address the various demands for territorial and political control put forth by each of the two key rebel armed groups — the FARC and the ELN — as well as the efforts to either address those demands or simply recognize the security situation on the ground, and to reach cease-fires and engage in demobilization. This engagement appears to have failed, for various reasons, including the possibility that the incentives offered are not of significant interest to groups also engaged in the lucrative narcotics industry, or fearful of the heavy presence of the United States through Plan Colombia. Based on my fieldwork, carried out in summer 2006, I address the key concerns and objections of each armed group. Finally, although the umbrella group of right-wing paramilitaries, the AUC, has distinct historical origins and relations with the government, I address the demobilization of the AUC undertaken with the government’s guarantee of amnesty and a ‘concentration’ zone.

Nationalism, racism, violence, and militarism are incarnate in football itself, as indicated through an engagement with the history and theory of the sport. This chapter considers this context to question the identity of the state and who holds a monopoly on legitimate violence, through a case study of Colombia. It focuses on the 1980s and 1990s, an era dominated by putatively progressive guerrilla movements (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, or FARC), putatively unofficial right-wing paramilitares (the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC), and putatively populist narcotraficantes/Mafiosi. One aspect was not entirely shared in their tripartite struggle against each other and the state over who could terrorize the population most—the narcos' involvement in football. For while state militarism occupies an important role in the mental map of Colombians, especially since US intervention from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama via "Plan Colombia", it has been largely absent from football, though institutional violence and its symbolism have not.

This work investigates how personalised Music Emotion Recognition (MER) systems may lead to sensitive profiling when applied to musically induced emotions in politically charged contexts. We focus on traditional Colombian music with explicit political content, including (1) vallenatos and social songs aligned with the left-wing guerrilla Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and (2) corridos linked to sympathisers of the right-wing paramilitary group Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Using data from 49 participants with diverse political leanings, we train personalised machine learning models to predict induced emotional responses – particularly negative emotions. Our findings reveal that political identity plays a significant role in shaping emotional experiences of music with explicit political content, and that emotion recognition models can capture this variation to a certain extent. These results raise critical concerns about the potential misuse of emotion recognition technologies. What is often framed as a tool for wellbeing and emotional regulation could, in politically sensitive contexts, be repurposed for user profiling. This work highlights the ethical risks of deploying AI-driven emotion analysis without safeguards, particularly among populations that are politically or socially vulnerable. We argue that subjective emotional responses may constitute sensitive personal data, and that failing to account for their sociopolitical context could amplify harm and exclusion.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1140/epjds/s13688-025-00595-1.

This article investigates the role of cultural production as a practice with important implications for rebel legitimacy. Cultural production is employed to bolster rebel group legitimacy internally, by justifying existing hierarchical relations between the leadership and fighters, and externally by positioning the rebel group as a legitimate alternative to established elites and a rightful representative of the people. Building on a relational approach to armed groups legitimacy, the article analyses cultural production by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The analysis draws on FARC music production from 1988 to 2019, internal documents, artists’ testimonies, and field observations from 2017.

El primer intento de justicia transicional en Colombia se materializó con la Ley de Justicia y Paz (Ley 975 de 2005), en virtud del Acuerdo de Ralito entre las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia y el gobierno colombiano. Posteriormente, con la expedición de la Ley 1592 de 2012, se generó la posibilidad de que los miembros que no cumplieran las condiciones establecidas en la Ley de Justicia y Paz o que no cumplieran con los compromisos adquiridos al someterse a dicha legislación, pudieran ser excluidos de ella y continuar siendo investigados y juzgados en la jurisdicción ordinaria. Como resultado del Acuerdo de Paz entre las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia y el gobierno colombiano, nació la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, mediante la cual se juzgarán los delitos cometidos durante el conflicto armado. El presente artículo pretende evaluar la posibilidad que tienen los excombatientes de grupos paramilitares que, habiéndose postulado a la Ley de Justicia y Paz y que hayan sido excluidos por no cumplir con algunos de los requisitos o por no haber cumplido con sus compromisos, puedan someterse a la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz. Lo anterior se realiza a partir de la construcción de escenarios sobre casos icónicos de ex paramilitares excluidos de la Ley de Justicia y Paz.

Utopian futurism is not often discussed as a motivating factor behind social science research, and in this article Colombian linguist Felix Manuel Burgos and US anthropologist Les W. Field take up that motivation in re‐assessing one period in the history of Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Founded in 1964 and impelled by events that exploded in 1948, FARC's history offers a window into a movement marked by a deeply dystopian trauma at its very start. In this article, with their utopian imaginations to one side, Burgos and Field dialogically consider the period of the Zona de Despeje (the demilitarized zone FARC dominated from 1998 to 2002), animated by the memory narratives of Félix Manuel Burgos who lived in that zone as a primary school‐teacher during those years. Through their dialogue, they consider the idea of “anti‐utopia” as potentially descriptive of the ZDD, specifically, as well as the FARC's overall historical character.

The Frontier Effect: State Formation and Violence in Colombia

Modernity from Elsewhere: Psychoanalysis, Ethnography, and Speculative Horizons of Self-Assertion

Despite efforts employed by the Colombian state to demobilize paramilitary groups and to tackle organized crime structures since 2003, Colombia today remains characterized by a repressive apparatus of social control by paramilitary successor groups in certain sectors of the population. Drawing on information from Colombia’s second-largest city – Medellín – and various rural areas of the Department of Antioquia, this work offers a characterization of the legacies of the paramilitary phenomenon, and its continuities and transformations in relation to one particular paramilitary confederation, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). In many regions, the AUC gained territorial, economic, and social control by managing the illegal drug economy and perpetrating political violence against leftist parties and social organizations. Paramilitaries have thus exerted what we refer to as status quo-oriented violence. As we illustrate for the case of Medellín, mechanisms of territorial, economic, and social control, as well as the particular manifestations of violence related to these mechanisms, have been transferred to paramilitary successor groups. The findings are mainly based on the outcomes of qualitative field research carried out in Medellín in mid-2015. Keywords: Medellín, Department of Antioquia, social, economic, and territorial control, paramilitary successor groups, organized crime, Colombia. Resumen: Paramilitarismo en un contexto post-desmovilización? Perspectivas desde el Departamento de Antioquia en ColombiaA pesar de los esfuerzos desplegados desde el año 2003 por el Estado colombiano para desmovilizar a los grupos paramilitares y hacer frente a las estructuras de crimen organizado, la Colombia de hoy sigue estando caracterizada por la existencia de un aparato represivo de control social ejercido por los grupos sucesores del paramilitarismo sobre ciertos sectores de la población. Partiendo de fuentes informativas procedentes de la segunda ciudad más grande de Colombia – Medellín – y de algunas zonas rurales del Departamento de Antioquia, este trabajo ofrece una caracterización de los legados del fenómeno paramilitar, sus continuidades y transformaciones en relación a una confederación paramilitar en particular, las Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). En muchas regiones del país, las AUC lograron establecer un control territorial, económico y social por medio de la gestión de la economía ilegal del narcotráfico y la perpetración de una violencia política contra partidos de izquierda y organizaciones sociales. Así, los paramilitares ejercieron lo que nosotros denominamos una violencia orientada al mantenimiento del status quo. Tal como ilustramos para el caso de la ciudad de Medellín, tales mecanismos de control territorial, económico y social, así como sus manifestaciones particulares de violencia inherentes a dichos dispositivos, han sido transferidos a los grupos sucesores del paramilitarismo. Los hallazgos de este estudio se basan principalmente en los resultados de una investigación de campo de carácter cualitativo llevada a cabo en Medellín a mediados del año 2015. Palabras clave: Medellín, Departamento de Antioquia, control territorial, económico y social, grupos sucesores del paramilitarismo, crimen organizado, Colombia.

Charles W. Bergquist (1942–2020)

Made in Havana: How Colombia and the FARC Decided to End the War

Nikolas Rose

In this text I am going to argue that unless it opens itself to discussions that dominate contemporary social and human sciences, and unless protection of the specificity of historical research is undertaken, there is a real risk that history might be reduced to the status of an auxiliary science of other human and social sciences that have thus far been more successful in interpreting contemporary events and phenomena which have traditionally been consigned to the field of history. I claim that the weak points of contemporary historical studies are methodology and theory separated from empirical research in such a way that they are unable to capture complex phenomena which have emerged with the advent of modernity. In order to link practice and theory, I propose to appropriate for historical research what has been called ”grounded theory”-theory developed out of data, and which uses comparative approaches and case studies as its main methods. The text contains two parts: in part one, I indicate ways in which theories in contemporary human and social science have failed to deal with historical change and in part two, I sketch a methodology of grounded theory.

ABSTRACTChildren, especially girls, are considered victims in armed conflicts. Children who participate in conflicts, as combatants, sexual servants, spies, informants and messengers, may be considered perpetrators of atrocities. These two classifications of children in armed conflicts do not consider their roles as agents who may also participate in peace-building efforts. This paper analyses how children involved in armed conflicts are classified and represented in the current peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo). We aim to understand if children are recognised in this peace process as participants and, in some capacity, as peace-builders. Dialoguing with the literature on critical security studies and childhood studies, we conduct a critical discourse analysis of the peace agreement documents. The study of the Colombian case enables an empirical analysis in which child soldiers are categorised as victims with the possibility of participating in peace-building and, at the same time, as potential challengers to the peace process.