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This paper focuses on the opportunity, in the short and medium term, for a Colombia that is an OECD member and NATO partner to face the challenges of the public security transition, despite no explicit mention of it appearing in the Peace Agreement (or Final Agreement). To do this, an anomaly will have to be overcome: the so-called 'Lleras Camargo duality', which has facilitated excessive decisional autonomy of the security forces, scant parliamentary control and insufficient political leadership of defence. The paper is divided into contextual and a priori section, with another analytical section focussing on conceptual clarifications and practical lessons of a comparative nature. The final part is dedicated to Colombia's particularities and the presentation of a proposal for addressing eight major challenges: three general, two focused on external security, and three on internal security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how extreme socioeconomic inequality and the criminalisation of the poor constitute a threat to the guarantee of peace in Colombia. The study analyses the factors that lead to and sustained the boom in so called 'false positives' in Colombia. These are conformed of a series of extrajudicial executions carried out against people in poor economic circumstances, particularly those belonging to marginalised sectors of society. The victims of the false positives were assassinated by members of the armed forces, in many cases in collaboration with illegal groups, and the murdered people were presented as members of illegal armed groups who were legally shot down in combat. These crimes were committed during the period between 2002 and 2008, and at least 3000 executions have been registered. The practice of false positives constitutes one of the most atrocious crimes committed by a state in the 21st century, with flagrant attempts to achieve impunity for those responsible, while their victims are still fighting for justice and clarity. For this reason, this paper sustains that it is necessary to confront the extreme socioeconomic inequality and cultural imaginary that surround people effected by poverty in Colombia. Effectively, extreme inequality and its social representations have legitimised the dehumanisation of the country's most oppressed groups, and have contributed to the denial of, and even justify, the crimes committed against them. This facilitates the conditions that allow these crimes to occur and be granted impunity. Until responsibility is taken for these aspects. The most vulnerable will continue to be victimised and the construction of peace will not transcend those who are part of the privileged elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/context: In this paper, we describe the evolution of municipalitylevel homicide rates, during the 2003-2014 period in Colombia. Methodology: Quantitative analysis with multi-level regression models and finite-mix models. Conclusions: Our results show an important and statistically significant reduction of violence at the national level, and a large variability across geographical areas. We identify an association between profiles of change and a general government performance index, which provides support to the hypothesis of a differentiated State across time and space, and motives further studies and differential public policies across municipalities. Originality: The relationship between homicidal violence and the role of the State has been commonly analyzed on an aggregated level that ignores the disaggregated territorial view and heterogeneity of microterritorial realities. This article recognizes the local differences for the design of public policies that reflect contextual realities and assume that the performance of the State is heterogeneous and not static. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an analysis of the concept Populism and how it relates to the violence in Colombia during the 20th-century last three decades and the 21st-century first decade, putting special emphasis on the pioneer work by historian Marco Palacios. We explore the idea that the conceptualization of populism in Colombia develops concurrently, on one hand, with the dispute around the notion of violence in the 20th-century second half and, on the other hand, with the idea that the "incomplete populism" was a causal explanation to the times of the bloody armed fights in Colombia. In addition, these events have made the Colombian political case instilled with an idea of exceptionality as compared to the other countries of Latin America. To do this work, we gathered some theoretical contributions from the conceptual history by Reinhart Koselleck and from the history of political languages by Elías Palti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the first year of the presidency of Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia, Víctor Julio Suárez Rojas, alias Rodrigo Briceño or 'Mono Jojoy', commander of the guerrilla FARC, was killed. In this paper I examine that case from the spechees of president and the insurgent group. The aim is to reconstruct the resources and ways through which the speeches build relationships of political opposition. The case is studied on the theoretical basis of contemporary rhetoric and polemical discourse. The paper represents and describes the rhetorical amplification as the main method of structuring of political discourse in both texts analyzed. Then I describe the operation of the rhetorical strategy of "said unsaid", this is the explicit enunciation of what the adversary can not and should presumably say in public space (Olave, 2015). I argue that the amplification and unsayability are functional to the construction of the political opposition in the discourse. This type of resources shows the important role of the muted in the polemics interactions between FARC and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Since 1993, when the System of Surveillance of Deaths of External Causes (SVMCE, in its Spanish acronym) was established -- today the Security Observatory -- a reliable record of homicides has existed in Cali which has allowed the control of organised crime to be evaluated as a strategy for reducing homicides. This strategy has been based on the pursuit and prosecution of urban criminal gangs, placing emphasis on intelligence and investigation, as well as coordination between the Police and the justice system. Drug trafficking allowed urban criminal gangs to develop that have had a significant effect on the homicides in Cali and other cities in Colombia. This paper evaluates the impact of the fight against criminal gangs implemented across the whole city of Cali from 2013 to 2015. The deactivation of several criminal gangs and the reduction in the overall homicide rate in the city have brought positive results, above all in the category of "organised crime", but also to some extent in "common crime". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a first instance, the following article proposes an analytical itinerary around three "cursed" words (violence, populism and Gaitanism) of the Colombian historiography. In a second instance, an inquiry is suggested over those categories and over their own digressions under the light of a non-pejorative interpretation of both populism and Gaitanism. Finally, the article exhibits an exploratory hypothesis and argues that Gaitanist populism could be thought of as a particular way of processing and stopping political violence. To illustrate this proposition two specific dimensions are described to understand the Gaitanist process between 1924 and 1948: its political-comunicative practices and the oscillations between rupture and integration in the Gaitanist discursivity. By analyzing Gaitán and his followers' discursivity, we can consider that Gaitanism, as a framework of political-communicative practices, contributed to process popular demands that diminished bipartisan tensions in Colombia in the first half of the 20th century. The construction of a popular subject, and the "face to face" presentation between the leadership and the masses in the public arena, among other elements of the Gaitanist identity, served to process --in a belligerent but peaceful way-- the political and social discontent of the time. Likewise, Gaitanism as an identity process --between 1944 and 1946-- raised as a movement that arrogated the representation of a "true country" (rupture) and the construction of a restoring order for Colombian democracy (integration). In short, the proposed disquisitions in this paper seek to highlight the relevance of thinking historical processes, such as populism, through a conceptual framework aimed at the study of political identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a comparison between the drug violence in Peru and Colombia. These two countries are the greater cocaine producers in the world, but present different levels of violence. In the case of Peru there are low levels of violence, whilst in the case of Colombia, the levels are high. The paper argues that the cocain cultivation and production in itself is not a source of high levels of violence. The intensity of the violence depends on the presence of other variables that will be proposed and analized here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of victim has been applied in the human rights (HR) field with a series of different connotations in each country. In this paper we aim to reflect on its uses and appropriations within the context of a series of laws and government programs designed to compensate the victims of state terrorism in Argentina and of the armed conflict in Colombia. Based on the gathering of documents and fieldwork with public servants and diverse groups of people who have been identified as victims, we analyze the meanings that this category has acquired and its possible applications in heterogeneous social contexts. O conceito vítima vem sendo aplicado no campo dos direitos humanos (DH) com uma série de conotações particulares em cada país. Neste trabalho, ocupamo-nos de refletir sobre seus usos e apropriações no âmbito de um conjunto de leis e programas governamentais destinados a reparar as vítimas do terrorismo de Estado na Argentina e do conflito armado interno na Colômbia. A partir da recopilação de documentos e do trabalho de campo com servidores públicos e diversos grupos de pessoas que têm sido identificadas como vítimas, analisamos os sentidos que essa categoria e suas possíveis aplicações adquirem em contextos sociais heterogêneos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies certain forms of violence which occurred during the conquest of Antioquia between 1540 and 1550. As this province was a border area, both because of the aboriginal resistance and because of the confrontation between the governorates of Cartagena and Popayan, war and punishment against indigenous peoples was gruesome, even for the context of the Conquest. The aim of the paper is not to study the uniqueness of Antioquia, but to show that the border war was an imperial problem and that it relaxed morals allowing a punitive system foreign to civilized confrontation but valid in peripheral areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is a matter diversely studied in Colombia, particularly associated with the political figure of the assassinated leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitén. This paper first evaluates the meaning of populism in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico parallel to similar Colombian factors. With these arguments, the paper makes some critical assertions on the "populist" adjective that have accompanied the public profile of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, focused on the populist parameters of the Cono Sur's populism, and his government programs designed and proposed during the 30s and 40s of the 20th century. Finally, the paper observes the personal character of Gaitan, asking first if the leader was at least rather a pale popular than a real populist leader, as can be concluded by checking Iris relationships with the paradigmatical labor unions of Antioquia. The second part evaluates the contradictions of his personal low-class condition, which made him a person with a clear proclivity to climb into the Colombian "little bourgeoisie". As a central matter, this paper works around diverse expositions from the Colombian researcher Marco Palacios, so it does not focus on the analysis of the Latin-American populism as a whole or the diverse political-electoral perspectives of "Gaitan's phenomena" in Colombia, which almost all are concerned with his obscure assassination in 1948. [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]

In this paper I analyze the continued existence of the Colombian state despite widespread crime and violence. Contemporary theorists posit that the state must subscribe to the image of an entity that is relatively autonomous from civil society and able to monopolize violence. However, citizen culture (cultura ciudadana), the innovative crime reduction policy I study here, is based on the premise that the state is unable to provide security for its inhabitants given the existence of a culture of violence. The policy encourages citizens to assume responsibility for their own security provision by adopting a culture of citizenship. I argue that citizen culture functions to legitimize the state despite ongoing violence by transferring responsibility for security provision from the state to civil society. It does so by inundating public space with educational spectacles, symbols, and slogans that circumscribe public debate and instruct citizen's behavior. Citizen culture uses educational and symbolic programming to shift responsibility for security provision from the state to society, thereby altering the boundary between state and society and redefining the very essence of the modern state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este artículo presentamos los primeros resultados del trabajo de campo realizado en el marco de la investigación Narrativas de la violencia sexual en la guerra irregular en el Caribe colombiano: voces de homosexuales, transexuales, intersexuales, bisexuales y lesbianas, cuyo objetivo es narrar literariamente casos de violencia sexual perpetrados por los grupos paramilitares arraigados en esta zona del país contra la población LGTBI del Caribe colombiano. Para desarrollar nuestro propósito, en la introducción presentamos una breve reseña de los fundamentos teóricos de nuestra investigación; luego, en la sección "Una aguja en un pajar" narramos la difícil búsqueda de víctimas decididas a dar testimonio; en la sección "El territorio, el viaje y la música" describimos el contexto en el cual se realizaron las entrevistas que dieron lugar a las narraciones literarias que presentamos en la sección "Voces vivas y voces ausentes", para finalmente mostrar algunas de las conclusiones de esta segunda fase de nuestra investigación. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic violence is a complex issue nowadays in Colombian society. According to the latest report from the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, during 2013, 68.230 cases of domestic violence took place. 77.58% was against women and 22.42% against men. In the context of this reality, academics have focused their interest in the analysis of the implementation, social consequences and the reception of rules against domestic violence. Taking into account this, the objective of this paper is to report the state of the art of legal and social research on domestic violence in Colombia. The methodology used for this literature review was to analyze secondary references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to carry out a reflection on the vulnerability of children, who are victims of the armed conflict in Colombia. This was used at the beginning of the self-eco-organization and the inter-retroactive loop. Violence is a complex phenomenon of multiple interactions, non-linear features, and a self-eco-organizational tendency, which affects the notion of subject and alters the way that children interpret the world and their interactions. [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]

The paper examines how the Colombian indigenous community Nation Misak deals with the political issues related to the protection of nature and the territory. Specifically, the paradigmatic role of women and their participation in the community are discussed, as even when referring to the community life and cosmogony, the woman is the protector and safeguarding of the natural heritage, in the private sphere and in the indigenous cabildos and organizations, women are victims of various types of violence. To investigate this, we take into account different gender practices of the indigenous community and the relationship between the Misak woman and natural resources. This paradox becomes evident by means of a qualitative study based on four interviews conducted with four women and three men from the Misak community. As a conclusion, some new initiatives and peaceful struggle strategies adopted by the Misak women are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many other regions in Colombia, Nelson Mandela's district has created a new social order in the absence of the state, with its own rules and regulations created and sanctioned by illegal groups. In this context, this article tries to analyze how the networks and phenomenology of the actors, agents and residents of this particular district reflect and unfold the whole department of Bolivar. The role played by paramilitary groups in this region along with the genesis of their combatants and supporters are analyzed through different emotions and basic concepts related with the ideas of revenge, loyalty, success and order. This research shows that the absence of justice, the presence of different cycles of violence and paranoia, along with the permanent referent of success and a local context of cultural impoverishment, are the main factors that explain why part of the population turns into mafias. In the midst of a troubled notion of order, this paper notes that the oppressed and subordinate residents of the district are able to reproduce structures of patronage which manipulate the armed group for community affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate a dynamic panel data model to determine the effect of various institutional factors on the performance of a sample of Colombian companies during the period 2002-2007. Our results indicate that the analysed companies are affected by these factors. Institutions associated with property rights and contract compliance have significant effects on the growth of the firms. On the other hand, financial development does not have a significant effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, there are quantitative databases on armed conflict, some of them public and open-access. This paper reviews the main theoretical and methodological traits in some of those databases and their main features when defining and measuring political violence. Based on the results of a research performed in a Colombian region, several methodological issues will be presented in order to process --statistically, spatially and cartographically? the information delivered by those databases. After the exposition, several procedures are described, which allowed to measure differences among databases. Those contents are addressed aiming to show the consequences that using one or another database has in the quantitative analysis of armed conflict, since the results of those analyses will depend on the source used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformations in actor-network collective action in the Process of Black Communities --pcn--, which were developed as a consequence of the armed conflict worsening in the Pacific region --specifically on the collective lands in the municipalities of Buenaventura and Suárez (Southwestern Colombia)-- in the last ten years. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews, observation records, analysis of audio/text documents on the organizations' claims and communiqués, and the drafting of aggregated data on displacement and conflictual facts in the region. Findings show a significant up surging of conflict within the period, in the face of which PCN's coalitions with local and global actors have come both to neutralize and make visible armed actors' actions against populations, and to reorient collective action, introducing innovations in the repertoires of action and setting new goals for this actor-network in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires into the production of memories on violent events in two Antioquia municipalities, which from the 80's have shown alarming violence indicators. Thus, in the municipality of San Carlos violent events memories are framed within a context of a catholic society having homogeneous economic conditions, elites historically pertaining to the Conservative party, accelerated development processes, and living under hegemonic armed rule. In this scenario a certain consensus is achieved in the narrative of violence, aiming at dignifying victims and highlighting the high costs armed confrontation entails. In the municipality of Apartadó, violence memory is framed within a pluri-ethnic, lay and marginal society, immerse in accelerated development processes and unstable armed rule. There, a split memory is produced, featuring political identities routinizing and eventually justifying violent events. In the face of these cases, an attempt is made to keep the reflection on what kind of memories are required to stop reproducing war? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to show, in first instance, the existence of some "artifacts" as devices of memory, born out from various exercises conducted among communities having undergone violence. These devices are the "living" embodiment of underground memories that were gathered within various inquiry and extension projects by the research group. In the second part, a more theoretical reflection is put forward on the Memory/ Power relationship as the frame of discussion within which these experiences are situated, emphasizing two aspects: making visible those "spaces of power" where both memories are situated within today's Colombian society so as to show specifically how those spaces of power appear, as well as the instruments they make use of, qualifying memories either as dominant or underground; and to show those spaces, just like any other social process, are not immutable or unchangeable phenomena, but are prone to be transformed, redefined and even reconfigured up to leading all the way to make changes to differently distribute the resources of power leaving their mark on them. In a third final part, a reflection "as a working hypothesis" is made, which could be the way to change the issue at hand and suggest new paths aiming to shift the place in society for those underground (marginal, hidden and scarcely visibilized) memories and make them emerge to surface so that they can develop all of their political potential and get their due place in Colombia's historical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Violence" in Colombia in the 1950's was closed without a trial of responsibilities, without reparation to the victims or a process to assimilate the meaning of what had happened. This paper shows that general Rojas Pinilla's trial at the Congress of the Republic between August 1958 and April 1959, was not only a way to confer legitimacy upon the political agreement in the National Front, but also a privileged scenario to challenge and discuss the responsibilities on the events, as well as an arena to build and recreate collective memory at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Commission to Inquiry for the Causes and Situations Present on inland Violence, better known as La Investigadora, was founded in 1958 at the dawn of the socalled National Front. This research paper explains, based on some documentary sources and newspaper accounts, how in a context of transition negotiated by elites, this initiative condensed a set of official practices and narrative plots structuring the way the Violence would be politically and socially processed and represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: the purpose of this paper is to show how in violence situations, the body has a constant transition from being the object of violence to be incorporated in it.I In the Bourdian sense , to reflect it in the reconfiguration of social practices that would otherwise be culturally unacceptable. Materials and methods: it begins with a theoretical reconciliation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu's conceptions of the corporeal in order to contrast ethnographic examples of the fieldwork carried out in the Colombian Municipalities of Marsella (Risaralda) and Trujillo (Valle). Results: some theoretical results emerged from this experience with people who had gone through violent events which permitted to characterize some post-conflict scenes in Colombia. Conclusions: in conclusion, it is important to reflect about the social and cultural ways to assume post-conflict practices and scenarios in Colombia, based on the premise that post-conflict does not mean "absence of", but it is a phenomenon that becomes more complex through the reconfiguration of different forms of violence, in this case, violence facts on the body that are incorporated, and are made visible in the society practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some nations criticize Colombian efforts to fight against the violence. However, Colombia doesn't have real support from some of its neighbors (Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela) as well as other actors to combat guerrillas or paramilitary groups which, in turn, are related to the drug traffic. It is necessary that the international community understand the Colombian effort to carry out its struggle against ilegal drugs as well as the violence that results there from. Colombia has increased its spending in Security and Defense during the last decade especially against narcotrafficking. Does Colombia have real support from its neighbors and allies to combat this crime? This paper evaluates the cooperation that Colombia has obtained from other actors in this struggle not only in economic terms, but also in terms of institutional support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]