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The starting point for this paper is the Colombian 'success story'. That is, the claim that a transition has taken place from a problematic conflict situation to a successful postconflict one. As the debates about the Colombian success story revolve around the presence or absence of violence, a proposal is made here to think of the postconflict period in terms of the transformation of the rules on the use of violence. The main aspects of the professionalisation programme accelerated and deepened via the Plan Colombia are analysed in an attempt to grasp the terms under which the Colombian military's expertise is understood. Finally, the reorganisation of violence in the postconflict period is discussed by mapping out the main features of military training programmes in the context of peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze how the strategies of counterinsurgency warfare undertaken in Colombia during the sixties and seventies recreate an immunity politics device. I argue that this device is based on a notion where the nation is under - stood as a social body threatened and infected by communist ideologies and where the idea of safety and protection involving the administration of violence. I argue that this immunity politics device operates under a self-destructive logic and a notion of delocalized threat that encouraged the militarization of society, the management of fear and the maintenance of State in a permanent emergency. These facts, in turn, enabled to the appeal to the constitutional exceptionalism as a form of standardized government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to analyze the transformation process of the Colombian Army between 1960 and 1965, which was driven by the political decisions of the rulers, the intervention of the Armed Forces, and by factual gambles made by the military to eliminate the first revolutionary guerillas. Through this, we expect to argue two hypotheses: first that the relationship between the Army and the civilian government was ambiguous during a period of institutional transition; and, second, that political subordination and military autonomy were breached by the intromission of military players in the political scene, and by rulers in the military scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]