War In Colombia Research Articles

Building peace narratives between young conflict victims and university students: an analysis of participatory animation strategies in My story: The children who fought war in Colombia

ABSTRACT This article presents an analysis of the production of the animated documentary series My Story. The Children Who Fought War in Colombia. The series was developed through a participatory creation process between young victims of the armed conflict and student animators from the Visual Arts programme at Universidad Javeriana, Colombia. The objective was to construct narratives that promote peace and generate new imaginaries. Interviews with the series director, Mathew Charles, and an animator, along with a review of the creative process, revealed the distinctive elements of this production. The study concentrated on the manner in which participatory animation encourages the formulation of innovative paradigms that challenge the conventional representations of the conflict. The objective was to cultivate empathy and mutual understanding among the participants. The findings emphasise the importance of participatory animation in the reconstruction of peace narratives, offering innovative perspectives in post-conflict contexts. This research demonstrates the significance of artistic intervention, particularly through participatory animation, as a valuable tool for constructing narratives that encourage critical reflection and promote a deeper, empathetic understanding of the experiences of those who have endured war.

Relative Power and Costly Signals of Civilian Loyalty: Protest Behavior Against Armed Actors in the Colombian Civil War, 1990–2004

ABSTRACT The paper examines one of many actions that civilians employ to resists peacefully armed actors during civil wars: protests. I argue that the costs for mobilizing against armed actors depend on the level of control that armed actors exert in the territory. By examining the civil war in Colombia between 1990 and 2004, I find that civilians protest against the weaker actor to reveal their loyalty to the dominant actor and to prevent the strong side from conducting future violent actions against the population. Protesting works as a costly signal of loyalty. I reveal that non-combatants protest against the stronger actor when both civilians and combatants share the same political ideology. In that circumstance, punishment by the strong combatants is improbable as protesting against them is likely to be interpreted as a renegotiation of the contract or a reminder of its terms. Finally, I show that civilians in contested zones declare themselves neutral and protest against both sides. Non-combatants take advantage of the power contestation to improve their current situation. Any punishment by combatants in contested zones would lead to defection, and citizens protest against both actors knowing that armed actors cannot afford to punish non-combatants for their hostile attitude.

How to label our violence? The struggle for the denominations of war in Colombia

En este artículo intentamos recopilar las diferentes respuestas que se han dado al interrogante: ¿cuál es la naturaleza del conflicto armado colombiano? Para ello, hemos identificado seis denominaciones distintas: i) conflicto anti/ comunista; ii) conflicto agrario; iii) conflicto criminalizado; iv) guerra civil/ guerra contra la sociedad; v) conflicto internacionalizado; vi) amenaza terrorista. Para cada corriente, hemos analizado sus postulados, sus contextos de significación y los desafíos argumentativos que las sucedieron. Primero, concluimos que los cambios de los actores armados, sus repertorios de violencia y del contexto internacional son respondidos por masas críticas con nuevas denominaciones. Las denominaciones, así como el conflicto, son dinámicas. Segundo, mostramos que, aunque el conflicto armado ha sido considerado por varios analistas como muy único para ser comparado, en realidad sus definiciones han estado marcadas tanto por el contexto internacional (tres guerras globales), así como la literatura internacional desde la economía, la ciencia política y las relaciones internacionales.

La sociedad contra las élites: aproximación a las bases sociales del apoyo electoral a Petro en Colombia

Objective/Context: One of the effects of the internal war in Colombia was to hinder the expression of the social conflict and of the organizations that mobilize the popular sectors. The plebiscite to ratify the Peace Accord aimed at putting an end to the war was a politically polarized juncture channeled through the electoral process. The shift in the centrality of the issue of the internal war after the signing of the Accord opened the possibility of expression of the social conflict. However, in a country with weak social and political organizations to shape this conflict, it is expressed: 1) without politically aligned framings; 2) as a generalized discontent with the elites and a feeling of “tilted playing field”. Therefore, political polarization after the plebiscite is low. We develop this argument based on the analysis of voters’ positions in relation to the most important issues of the political agenda: Peace Agreement, redistributive agenda (taxes and welfare) and governmental management of the COVID pandemic, and gender agenda. Methodology: The article is based on 16 focus groups conducted between September and November 2021 in three regions of Colombia —Bogotá, Antioquia and the Caribbean— in which voters from the two main 2018 electoral options participated, with gender balance and variation in occupation and between middle and lower classes. Conclusion: The data show that there is no political polarization at the citizen level. Instead, a high level of discontent towards political and economic elites is observed, which may be at the basis of electoral support for Petro in 2022. Originality: The article offers an alternative look at the perception that many Colombians have that they live in a polarized society and contributes to the understanding of electoral support for an “anti-system” force in the 2022 election.

Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archivos y repertorios poéticos de la memoria de una nación en guerra y transformación

ABSTRACT Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres: archives and poetic repertoires of the memory of a nation in war and transformation – This article analyzes from a perspective of research in political performance, the process of creation and production of the play Antígonas Tribunal de Mujeres, composed of victims and survivors of the war in Colombia, who share in common have suffered state crimes. Taking this case as the object of study, it investigates the methodological routes of creation that these women have created to transform their own stories of pain and resistance into archives and poetic repertoires. Which we postulate as forms of production and transmission of incorporated knowledge, about the memory of a nation marked by violence.

Farianas, experiencias desde la insurgencia

This article aims to approach the experiences of women insurgents of the FARC-EP within the armed conflict context, before the signing of the Final Peace Agreement. The analytical references were presented from two perspectives: peace studies and feminism. The methodological approach is qualitative. Dialogical techniques were used with women who signed the peace agreement, and who are currently in the reincorporation process. The inquiry revolved around their role in the transformation of society, the construction of peace, and the guarantees of non-repetition of the different types of violence that took place during the armed conflict in Colombia. This work collects what these women expressed regarding equality, femininity, community life, maternity, and care, all mediated by the socio-historical context of the war in Colombia.

Explosiveness: Territories of war and technoscientific practices in Colombia

AbstractLa Serranía de la Macarena has been a crucial scenario in the Colombian war. In this region, the army and FARC‐EP guerrillas widely deployed aerial bombardment and improvised landmines to control the territory and contain their adversaries. This article is a collaborative ethnographic exploration of retazos—snippets of material‐discursive practices we collected in our fieldworks: a demining project and a state morgue. What can explosive military technologies and their aftermath tell us about the place of war in Colombia? Through two ethnographic retazos, we account of how forensic workers and mine‐removal experts engage with the material traces of explosives and produce bodies and landscapes as territories of war. We reflect on these topographies through the concept of explosiveness. Understood as a tendency, a condition, and a field of forces, explosiveness offers a distinct point of entry to reflect on the material and affective aftermath of landmines and bombs.

The Right to Truth in Colombia's Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Non-Repetition. A Direct Approach to the Intrinsic Relationship between its Mechanisms and Objectives

The peace deal between the Colombian Government and the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia established the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Non-Repetition, comprised of the Truth, Coexistence, and Non-Repetition Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and the Unit for the Search of Persons Presumed Disappeared in the context and because of the armed conflict. This set of mechanisms guarantee the rights to truth, justice, reparation, and measures of non-recurrence as stipulated in the Final Agreement for the Termination of the Armed Conflict and the Construction of a Stable and Lasting Peace. One of its most critical and imperative aspects is the right to truth for the victims of serious human rights violations and their relatives. This right, conceived primarily as a human right, coexists with the other three pillars of transitional justice, interacting and complementing them. This paper aims to define the content of the right to truth in the three bodies that make up the Comprehensive System, to conclude that, although each mechanism pursues a different kind of truth, there is a bond of complementarity between them, addressing the rights of its victims and their needs, structuring a collective memory on the war in Colombia.

Editor's letter

Our last issue for this year of Latin American Policy (LAP) opens with an article written by Alain Fairlie and Erika Collantes assessing the commercial repercussions of the Pacific Alliance, considering other regional trade agreements like the Andean Community and the Southern Common Market. The authors conclude that the Alliance has not significantly affected trade flows among its members or with other South American regional trade agreements. Pablo Garcés Velástegui then explores four irreducible cultures and their respective development models that currently prevail in South America, to consider the issues inherent to development theories. Charles G. Ripley explores the importance of South–South alliances in aiding the establishment of relations between Colombia and Venezuela (2008–2010), in handling Argentina's financial crisis (2003–2007), and in ending over 50 years of civil war in Colombia (1964–2016). Luis Diego Segura R., Annemarie van Zeijl-Rozema, and Pim Martens offer a complex study of climate-change adaptation policies in Central America, considering if and how much they have been implemented. On a related environmental topic, Jennapher Lunde Seefeldt explores the growing contention between local communities and mining companies over water use for extracting lithium resources in Chile. The author concludes that activism and company and government responses can facilitate improved negotiations between stakeholders and allow for access to lithium while protecting more the environment and the peoples that survive in the desert. Finally, Nicolas Didier assesses the effectiveness of the Chilean training system, focusing on how it can improve wages. LAP has also invited two distinguished Brazilian scholars, Monica Herz and Leticia Pinheiro, to prepare a special issue on Bolosnaro's foreign policy and the departure from previous Brazilian commitments in both multilateral fora and regional associations. The product is an excellent collection of eight research articles—also blind-reviewed by anonymous referees—that contributes to a thorough understanding of major policy changes affecting this key country in the Latin American region. We hope our readers may also benefit from this special issue.

The rise of South–South relations: Creating space for resistance, development and peace in South America

AbstractThis article examines South–South relations by exploring the South American experience. Emerging from the rise in leftist political movements at the turn of the millennium, the region engaged in a broad range of initiatives to address economic and security concerns. By excluding the influence of the United States and international financial institutions, South America opened space for economic policies and conflict‐resolution strategies that otherwise would never have been considered. Despite the value of South–South relations, this trend has attracted little scholarly attention. Yet, this study finds that this unique set of alliances played a crucial role in reestablishing relations between Colombia and Venezuela (2008–2010), resolving Argentina's financial crisis (2003–2007), and ending over 50 years of civil war in Colombia (1964–2016). Even more ambitiously, this study develops an innovative theoretical framework called post‐hegemonic regionalization. This new framework is necessary because traditional theories have not kept pace with South–South relations and thus yield little insight into South America. This study, therefore, fills an important gap in the literature. It offers compelling and rich accounts of unfamiliar yet crucial events in South American politics and addresses a theoretical deficiency.

Self-Supervised Sentiment Analysis in Spanish to Understand the University Narrative of the Colombian Conflict

Sentiment analysis is a relevant area in the natural language processing context–(NLP) that allows extracting opinions about different topics such as customer service and political elections. Sentiment analysis is usually carried out through supervised learning approaches and using labeled data. However, obtaining such labels is generally expensive or even infeasible. The above problems can be faced by using models based on self-supervised learning, which aims to deal with various machine learning paradigms in the absence of labels. Accordingly, we propose a self-supervised approach for sentiment analysis in Spanish that comprises a lexicon-based method and a supervised classifier. We test our proposal over three corpora; the first two are labeled datasets, namely, CorpusCine and PaperReviews. Further, we use an unlabeled corpus conformed by news related to the Colombian conflict to understand the university journalistic narrative of the war in Colombia. Obtained results demonstrate that our proposal can deal with sentiment analysis settings in scenarios with unlabeled corpus; in fact, it acquires competitive performance compared with state-of-the-art techniques in partially-labeled datasets.

Idler, Annette. Borderland battles: violence, crime, and governance at the edges of Colombia's war. xxx, 466 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2019. £25.49 (paper)

Journal of the Royal Anthropological InstituteVolume 28, Issue 1 p. 362-363 Book and film reviews Idler, , , Annette. Borderland battles: violence, crime, and governance at the edges of Colombia's war. xxx, 466 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2019. £25.49 (paper) Jacobo Grajales, Jacobo Grajales University of LilleSearch for more papers by this author Jacobo Grajales, Jacobo Grajales University of LilleSearch for more papers by this author First published: 11 February 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13679Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume28, Issue1March 2022Pages 362-363 RelatedInformation

The memory of earth and land dispossession in Urabá

In this article, the authors discuss their work in Coquitos from 2019–2021 with the Colombian Truth Commission and Forensic Architecture. They consider conflicts around land tenure, violent land dispossessions and land grabbing as the sedimented articulation of multiple environmental, legal, economic, and violent processes that are drawn out over decades. Their mode of analysis is based on a visual methodology using ‘situated testimony’ of ‘earthly memory’ that reflects the need to combine modes of seeing and understanding earth systems through the historicity of such slow violence. This focus on earthly memory allows for an approach to violence that resists the commodification of the environment and its reduction to an inert object, or a mere prize of war (what is often reduced to a ‘conflict over resources’). Rather, by focusing these situated testimonies on the theme of earthly memory, the authors pursue an analysis that underscores the environment as an active agent in the conflicts and forms of violence that are at the heart of land dispossession. The environment should be understood, they argue, as both a mode and medium through which violence is conducted, rather than a passive victim on which violence is executed. This is how they arrive at a method of situated testimony that could be employed as a way of addressing the role of earthly memory in the long history of the Colombian war.

Containment in Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios

Doris Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios is a widely revered installation, one of the first to bring the artist to an international stage in the early 1990s. Yet virtually no critical account of her work provides a comprehensive and nuanced history of the context that instantiated it. This article presents an entirely new art historical investigation of Atrabiliarios read through the context of the Cold War in Colombia. I argue Salcedo’s installation can be understood as a critique of the logic of Cold War containment, alluding to US influence on the Colombian conflict. I argue that Salcedo is intentionally attempting to disrupt a safe distance between a perceived barbaric other of Colombia and the ‘civilised’ subjects of the global north. The artist manipulated the space of the exhibition so that, through her work, viewers are placed in close relation to the indices of those already met with violence and pervasive indifference.

Mental health among displaced and non-displaced populations in Valledupar, Colombia: do inequalities continue?

ABSTRACT During the long-lasting civil war in Colombia, thousands of people were displaced mainly from rural to urban areas, causing social disruption and prolonged poverty. This study aimed at analyzing the traumatic experience many years ago on the current psycho-emotional status of displaced families as well as the ongoing inequalities regarding displaced and non-displaced communities in one of the most affected areas by the armed conflict. An interview survey was conducted among 211 displaced families and 181 non-displaced families in 2 adjacent compounds in Valledupar, Colombia. The questionnaire used questions from the validated national survey and was revised and applied by staff members of the departmental secretary of health who conducted additional in-depth interviews. The study showed that the living conditions of the displaced community were precarious. The past traumatic events many years ago and the current difficult living conditions are associated with psychological problems being more frequent among the displaced people. The displaced people had experienced more violent acts and subsequently had a larger number of emotional symptoms (fright, headache, nervousness, depression, and sleeplessness). Other stress factors like economic problems, severe disease or death of family members and unemployment prevailed among displaced persons. The non-displaced lived in a more protected environment with less exposure to violence and stress, although belonging to a similarly low socio-economic stratum. It is recommended to take measures for a better protection of the displaced community, improve their access to the job market, offer different leisure activities and facilitate public transport.

Annette Idler, Borderland Battles: Violence, Crime, and Governance at the Edges of Colombia's War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. xxiii + 466, £22.99, pb.

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Extractivism and Territorial Dispossession in Rural Colombia: A Decolonial Commitment to Campesinas’ Politics of Place

Linked to extractive practices, territorial dispossession can be traced back to the colonisation of Abya Yala. From a decolonial commitment, this article complicates notions of dispossession and extractivism as merely emerging from war in Colombia and focuses on their presence in Campesinas territories. Based on the conceptualisations of the coloniality of power and coloniality of gender, I narrate how territorial dispossession and extractivism are felt in women’s ‘body-lands’ through foreign tourism/conservation development and new export crops in two rural veredas in the Colombian Andes and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta where I conducted participatory visual projects in 2016. From a relational understanding of place, I also demonstrate the ways that the rural population is resisting and negotiating within these processes. Ultimately, I make a call for feminist scholars to politically commit to the dismantling of the coloniality of gender, and to the resistances to territorial dispossession and extractivism (epistemic and economic) that rural women are leading in place in the Global South.

RAZVOJ NARKO-TERORIZMA KROZ PRIZMU MORFOGENETSKE TEORIJE – STUDIJA SLUČAJA FARK-A

The subject of this paper is the development of narco-terrorism before and after the Cold War. It is noticed that many terrorist groups have intensified their activities in organized crime, and especially in drug trafficking after the 1990s, one of which was the Colombian insurgent group FARC. In the paper, we will try to prove the hypothesis that criminal activities of terrorist groups rise as their ideological basis become weaker and that it is a rational choice which terrorist groups make to survive. We will try to offer the answer by analyzing the development of FARC, and by using a morphogenetic approach. This theory is based on critical realism and therefore it acknowledges the equal importance to the structure and actors and it allows us to track their interaction through time. That is why we think that it is most suitable for the analysis of complex and dynamic occurrences like narco-terrorism. At the beginning of the paper, we present a literature review with different conceptions of narco-terrorism, after which we highlight the main presumptions and advantages of morphogenetic theory. At the end of the paper, the author will offer her analysis of the development of FARC through a morphogenetic approach and will review the main factors that caused its intensified involvement in drug trafficking from the 1990s, like the decline of ideology in the group and the international arena, but also the fight for survival in the hostile environment of class war in Colombia.

Individual and group factors that impact the exchange of information among intervention programs: a structural view

The exchange of information between appliers of mental health interventions is essential to guarantee effective program implementation. The study aimed to examine how individual and group factors influence the exchange of information among the implementers of a psychosocial intervention program targeted to victims of the war in Colombia. A cross-sectional exploratory design was developed. Interviews were held with 18 psychologists, 22 social workers, 10 community promoters, and a nurse. The study used the E-i index and the visualization of interclass and intraclass links. There is no homophilic tendency in the exchange of information among the three professional categories. Empowerment predicts the nominations received in the request for information network (β = 0.296, p < 0.006). To be central in the preference network is the principal predictor of receiving requests for information (β = 0.562, p < 0.0001). Empowered professionals and those who exchange information on the implementation process are considered key informants that can improve the program's effectiveness.

A dialogue to animate education and peace in Colombia

&lt;p&gt;Relatos de Reconciliación es una experiencia transmedia que recopila las memorias de personas que han convivido con la violencia y la guerra en Colombia. Sus historias son el guion de un largometraje animado y un documental interactivo. Este proyecto, dirigido por Carlos Santa y Rubén Monroy, nació en el año 2015, como respuesta a la necesidad de abrir oportunidades para que los estudiantes de animación del SENA - Centro para la Industria de la Comunicación Gráfica, se vincularan con la industria y el desarrollo de proyectos reales, de tal manera que fortalecieran su desempeño como animadores y las empresas de la industria creativa generaran confianza en su formación. Fue una experiencia en la que se mezcló, o mejor, reconcilió la técnica, la investigación, la expresión artística y las formas de producción comercial y experimental, con el fin de aportar en la construcción del tejido social; que orientara a los estudiantes a desarrollar un pensamiento crítico relacionado con un tema tan complejo como la guerra en Colombia.&lt;/p&gt;