Writing Cartographies of Violence: Nation Building through State Failure

Abstract

Literacy and literature were central to the birth of the modern nation state. Yet few studies explore the importance of literature in contemporary state construction. In this article, the ongoing importance of literacy and literature in (re)producing the Colombian nation state is studied. Since the colonial era, literacy has conferred the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, first to an elite few and now to the vast majority of people. The democratization of the ability to author the nation has allowed common people to contest and contribute to elite narratives. In this article the content of competing stories of the nation state is analyzed. It argues that these writings have had contradictory effects, successfully consolidating national identity as a nation swathed in violence while undermining the state by revealing its inability to provide security for the majority of its citizens.

Notes

¹ Ernest Renan, “What is a Nation?,” in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 11.

² Jorge Franco, Rosario Tijeras (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Planeta, 2004), p. 84. All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

³ Ana Carrigan, The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993), p. 16.

⁴ Harvey Kline, State Building and Conflict Resolution in Colombia, 1986–1994 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1999); see also Paul Oquist, Violence, Conflict, and Politics in Colombia (New York: Academic Press, 1980); Daniel Pécaut, Guerra Contra la Sociedad (Bogotá, Colombia: Espasa, Editorial Planeta Colombiana, 2001); and Fernán E. González, Ingrid J Bolívar, and Teofilo Vásquez, Violencia política en Colombia: de la nación fragmentada a la construcción del Estado (Bogotá, Colombia: CINEP, Ediciones Antropos Ltda., 2003).

⁵ Thomas Fischer, “Colombia: Estado débil sin territorialidad entera. Una visión histórica,” in Dimensiones territoriales de la guerra y la paz (Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2004), pp. 183–195, 186.

⁶ González et al., la nacion fragmentada.

⁷ Pécaut, Guerra Contra la Sociedad, p. 36; see also Marco Palacios and Frank Safford, Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Mauricio García Villegas (eds), Emancipación social y violencia en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2004); and David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).

⁸ César A. Rodríguez, Mauricio García Villegas, and Rodrigo Uprimny, “Justice and Society in Colombia: A Sociological Analysis of Colombian Courts,” in Legal Culture in the Age of Globalization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 134–183, 38.

⁹ Margarita Serje, La Revés de la nación: Territorios salvajes, fronteras y tierras de nadie (Bogotá, Colombia: Ediciones Uniandes, 2005).

¹⁰ As quoted in Juana Suárez, Sitios de contienda. Producción cultural colombiana y el discurso de la violencia (Madrid, Spain: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2010), p. 115.

¹¹ Eduardo Posado Carbó, La nación soñada. Violencia, liberalismo y democracia en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Norma, 2006).

¹² Idelber Avelar, The Letter of Violence: Essays on Narrative, Ethics, and Politics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), p. 22.

¹³ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991 [1983]); see also Sara Castro-Klaren and John Charles Chasteen (eds), Beyond Imagined Communities (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2003); Doris Sommer, Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991); James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Angel Rama, La Ciudad Letrada (Hanover, NH: Ediciones del Norte, 1984); and Cristina Rojas, Civilization and Violence: Regimes of Representation in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001).

¹⁴ Elisabeth Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

¹⁵ Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

¹⁶ Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 6; see also François-Xavier Guerra, “Forms of Communication, Political Spaces, and Cultural Identities in the Creation of Spanish American Nations,” in Sara Castro-Klaren and John Charles Chasteen (eds), Beyond Imagined Communities, trans. John Charles Chasteen (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 3–32.

¹⁷ Jacques Derrida, “The Violence of the Letter: From Levi-Strauss to Rousseau,” in Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 101–140, 230–298; see also Renan, “What is a Nation?,” p. 11; Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol (eds), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Anderson, Imagined Communities, esp. “Memory and Forgetting”; Serje, La revés de la nación; Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, “Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of Political Violence in Venezuela,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 33:2 (1991), pp. 288–335; Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1997); Veena Das and Deborah Poole (eds), Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004), pp. 253–277; and Achille Mbembe, “Everything can be Negotiated,” in Boel Berner and Per Trulsson (eds), Manoeuvring in an Environment of Uncertainty (Ashgate, UK: Aldershot, 2000).

¹⁸ Sarah Radcliffe and Sallie Westwood, Remaking the Nation: Place, Identity and Politics in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 82.

¹⁹ Veena Das, Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007); see also Teresa Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Såo Paulo (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000); Michael Taussig, Law in a Lawless Land: Diary of a Limpieza in Colombia (New York: New Press, 2003); and Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992).

²⁰ Radcliffe and Westwood, Remaking the Nation, pp. 86–106; see also Guerra, “Forms of Communication.”

²¹ Homi Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 3; and George Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

²² Rogers Smith, Stories of Peoplehood: The Politics and Morals of Political Membership (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 46.

²³ Julián G. Casabuenas, “The Contribution of Colombian Civil Society Organizations to E-Government for the Improvement of Transparency through the Use of Information and Communication Technologies,” in Danilo Piaggesi, Kristian Sund, and Walter Castelnovo (eds), Global Strategy and Practice of E-Governance: Examples from Around the World (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2011), pp. 324–337, 329.

²⁴ Anderson, Imagined Communities; see also Castro-Klaren and Chasteen, Beyond Imagined Communities; Sommer, Foundational Fictions; Holston, Insurgent Citizenship; Rama, La ciudad letrada; and Rojas, Civilization and Violence.

²⁵ Rojas, Civilization and Violence; Rama, La ciudad letrada.

²⁶ Rojas, Civilization and Violence, p. 53.

²⁷ Ibid., 11, 53.

²⁸ Ibid., 50; see also Rama, La ciudad letrada, p. 41.

²⁹ Rojas, Civilization and Violence, p. 54.

³⁰ Sommer, Foundational Fictions, p. 4.

³¹ Jorge Isaacs, María (Editorial Voluntad, 1991 [1867]); José Manuel Marroquín, Tratado de Ortología y Ortografía de la lengua Castellana (Bogotá: Academia Colombia de la Lengua, 1994 [1914]); Miguel Antonio Caro and Rufino José Cuervo, Gramática de la lengua latína (Bogotá: La Luz, 1915, 7th edition). Caro was appointed to the vice presidency by Nuñez, who was too ill to fulfill the presidency, such that Caro was acting president throughout Nuñez's two terms in office.

³² Herbert Braun, Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia (Boulder, CO: University of Colorado, 1994), p. 17.

³³ Carrigan, The Palace of Justice, p. 58.

³⁴ Sommer, Foundational Fictions, p. 177; see also Avelar, The Letter of Violence, p. 141; and Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 30.

³⁵ Anderson, Imagined Communities, pp. 28, 33, 35; see also Castro-Klaren and Chasteen, Beyond Imagined Communities. Newspapers did shape the nation, but not before independence, as described by Benedict Anderson. Newspapers were not widely produced or distributed in Colombia until the twentieth century, and unlike Anderson's “homogenous time,” they continued to promote public oration, cyclical flashbacks, and religiosity.

³⁶ Gabriel García Márquez, Vivir Para Contarla (Bogotá, Colombia: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002), p. 244.

³⁷ In Vivir Para Contarla, García Márquez remembers that his friends could not understand why he wrote stories “in a country where poetry was the highest form of art” (pp. 306–307).

³⁸ Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, p. 163.

⁴¹ See Mauricio Perez-Abril, “Resultados relevantes desde al escuela y alguna hipotesis explicativas,” in Hábitos de lectura, asistencia a bibliotecas y consumo de libros en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundalectura, 2006), pp. 87–106, 94–95.

³⁹ Serje, La revés de la nación, pp. 54–55; see also Miguel Centeno and Patricio Silva (eds), The Politics of Expertise in Latin America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998); and Jorge Domínguez (ed.), Technopols: Freeing Politics and Markets in Latin America in the 1990s (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997). While most literature on technocrats poses the rise of educated “experts” who run the state as a relatively new phenomenon, limited to economic policy, there was no rise of a new, technocratic class, but rather the international legitimation of the old elite and their paths to political and social power.

⁴⁰ Mary Giraldo Rengifo and José Alberto Guerra, “Las bibliotecas en Colombia: espacios públicos para la lectura y la investigación,” in Hábitos de lectura, asistencia a bibliotecas y consumo de libros en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundalectura, 2006), pp. 53–85, 82.

⁴² El Tiempo, “Leer empieza por casa,” Section 1-22, Editorial, April 28, 2007.

⁴³ Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá, Bogotá Capital Mundial del Libro 2007, application packet (Bogotá, Colombia, March 22, 2005).

⁴⁴ Stacey Hunt, “Languages of Stateness: A Study of Space and El Pueblo in the Colombian State,” Latin American Research Review 41:3 (2006), pp. 88–121.

⁴⁵ Alcaldía Mayor, Bogotá Capital Mundial, p. 10; see also Jorge Orlando Melo, “Bibliotecas y lectura en Bogotá,” in Hábitos de lectura, asistencia a bibliotecas y consumo de libros en Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia: Fundalectura, 2006), pp. 201, 37–42.

⁴⁶ Alcaldía Mayor, Bogotá Capital Mundial del Libro, pp. 10–11; see also Rama, La ciudad letrada.

⁴⁷ Melo, “Bibliotecas y lectura en Bogotá,” p. 197.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 199.

⁴⁹ Alcaldía Mayor, Bogotá Capital Mundial, p. 11.

⁵⁰ Germán Castro Caycedo, Con las manos en alto (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Planeta Colombiana, 2001), p. 10.

⁵¹ Casabuenas, “The Contribution of Colombian Civil Society Organizations to E-Government,” pp. 324–337, 329.

⁵² Carrigan, The Palace of Justice, pp. 49, 60.

⁵³ Ibid., 19.

⁵⁴ Coronil and Skurski, “Dismembering and Remembering.”

⁵⁵ Carrigan, The Palace of Justice, p. 24.

⁵⁶ El Tiempo, “Gobierno busca alinear lenguaje diplomático,” Section 1-4, June 13, 2005.

⁵⁷ President of the Republic and Ministry of Defense, Democratic Defense and Security Policy (2003), p. 43.

⁵⁸ Serje, El revés de la nación.

⁵⁹ Hunt, “Languages of Stateness.”

⁶⁰ Nazih Richani, Systems of Violence: The Political Economy of War and Peace in Colombia (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), p. 65.

⁶¹ Ibid., 42.

⁶² Gary Leech, “(Un)Democratic (In)Security in Caquetá,” Colombia Journal On-line (March 2004), < http://www.colombiajournal.org/collaboration.htm>.

⁶³ Leech, “(Un)Democratic (In)Security.”

⁶⁴ Presidencia de la República y Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, Política de Defensa y Seguridad Democrática (Bogotá, Colombia: Presidencia de la Reública y Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, 2003), p. 30.

⁶⁵ Maria Fernanda Lander, “The Intellectual's Criminal Discourse in Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo,” Discourse 25:3 (2003), p. 76.

⁶⁶ As quoted in Juana Suárez, Sitios de contienda. Producción cultural colombiana y el discurso de la violencia (Madrid: Iberoamericana/Vervuert, 2010), p. 127.

⁶⁷ Peter Wade, Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), similarly looks at the racialization of regions.

⁶⁸ Radcliffe and Westwood, Remaking the Nation.

⁶⁹ Gabriel García Márquez, Noticia de un secuestro (New York: Penguin Books, 1996).

⁷⁰ Clara Rojas, Cautiva: Testimonio de un secuestro (Bogotá, Colombia: Atria, 2001), p. 10.

⁷¹ Ingrid Betancourt, No hay Silencio que no termine (Bogotá, Colombia: Aguilar, 2010).

⁷² María Carolina Rodríguez, Diario de mi cautiverio (Bogotá, Colombia: Norma, 2008).

⁷³ Luis Eladio Pérez and Darío Arizmendí, 7 años secuestrado por las FARC (Bogotá, Colombia: Aguilar, 2008).

⁷⁴ John Frank Pinchao, Mi fuga hacia la libertad (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 2008).

⁷⁵ See Lucy Artunduaga Vega, Amores que el secuestro mata (Bogotá, Colombia: Círculo de Lectores, 2008); and Fernando Araújo, El Trapecista (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 2008).

⁷⁶ Margarita Jácome, La Novela Sicaresca: Testimonio, sensacionalismo y ficción (Medellín, Colombia: Fondo Editorial Universidad EAFIT, 2009), pp. 56–57.

⁷⁷ García Márquez, Noticia de un secuestro, documents the kidnapping of ten prominent public figures.

⁷⁸ German Castro Caycedo, Con Las manos en alto (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 2001); see also German Castro Caycedo, Más allá de la noche (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 2004). Alape and Montero, whose prolific works have focused almost solely on such issues, have far too many to note here.

⁷⁹ Rosse José Serrano Cadena and Santiago Gamboa, Jaque Mate (Bogotá, Colombia: Norma, 2000).

⁸⁰ Margarita Jácome, La Novela Sicaresca: Testimonio, sensacionalismo y ficción (Medellín: Fondo Editorial Universidad EAFIT, 2009), p. 61.

⁸¹ Carrigan, The Palace of Justice; Olga Behar, Noches de Humo (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 1989); see also Ana Maria Jaramillo, Las horas secretas (Bogotá, Colombia: Cal y Arena, 1990).

⁸² Mary Daza Orozco, Los muertos no se cuentan así (Bogotá, Colombia: Plaza & Janés, 1991).

⁸³ Albalucía Ángel, Estaba la Pájara Pinta Sentada en el Verde Limón (Medellín, Colombia: Editorial Universidad de Antioquia, 1975).

⁸⁶ Franco, Rosario Tijeras, p. 84.

⁸⁴ Laura Restrepo, Delirio (Bogotá, Colombia: Alfaguara, 2004).

⁸⁵ Ibid., 238, see also 236 and 183.

⁸⁷ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, El ruido de las cosas al caer (Bogotá, Colombia: Alfaguara, 2011).

⁸⁸ Fernando Vallejo, La virgen de los sicarios (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Santillana, 1994).

⁸⁹ Alonso Salazar, No Nacimos pa' semilla (Bogotá, Colombia: CINEP, 1990); see also Víctor Gaviria, El pelaíto que no duró nada (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 1991); and Franco, Rosario Tijeras.

⁹⁰ Jácome, La novela sicaresca.

⁹¹ Victor Gaviria, Dir., Rodrigo D: No futuro (FOCINE, 1990, Film); Barbet Schroeder, Dir., La virgen de los sicarios (Canal+ and Vértigo Films, 2000, Film); Emilio Maillé, Dir., Rosario Tijeras (FIDECINE and United Angels Productions, 2005, Film).

⁹² Jácome, La novela sicaresca, p. 190.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 131.

⁹⁵ Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 28.

⁹⁶ Restrepo, Delirio, p. 41.

⁹⁷ Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 125.

⁹⁸ Jacome, La novela sicaresca.

⁹⁹ Franco, Rosario Tijeras; Fernando Vallejo, El fuego secreto (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 1987); see also La virgen de los sicarios.

¹⁰⁰ Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 109.

¹⁰⁴ Restrepo, Delirio, p. 55.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 125.

¹⁰² Alcaldía Mayor, Bogotá Capital Mundial, p. 11.

¹⁰³ Fernando Quiroz, Tanto Bogotá (Bogotá, Colombia: Planeta, 2011), p. 162.

¹⁰⁵ As quoted in Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 120.

¹⁰⁶ Ibid., 121.

¹⁰⁷ Mario Mendoza, Santanas (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Planeta, 2002).

¹⁰⁸ Gabriel García Márquez, Cien años de soledad (Madrid, Spain: Cátedra, 1995 [1967]).

¹⁰⁹ Márquez, Vivir para contarla, p. 22.

¹¹⁰ Ibid., 79–80.

¹¹¹ Ibid., 38.

¹¹² For example, Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia, p. 180.

¹¹³ Márquez, Vivir para contarla, pp. 79–80.

¹¹⁴ Restrepo, Delirio, p. 36.

¹¹⁵ Eduardo Bechara Navratilova, La novia del torero (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial la Serpiente Emplumada, 2002).

¹¹⁶ Jacome, La novela sicaresca, p. 144.

¹¹⁷ Juanes, “Rosario Tijeras,” Mi Sangre (Universal Music Latino, 2004, CD).

¹¹⁸ Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001).

¹¹⁹ Vásquez, El ruido.

¹²⁰ Restrepo, Delirio, p. 81.

¹²¹ Franco, Rosario Tijeras, p. 134.

¹²² Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 117.

¹²³ Ibid., 112–113.

¹²⁴ Laura Restrepo, Leopardo al sol (Bogotá, Colombia: Alfaguara, 1989).

¹²⁵ Luis Fernando Macías Zuluaga, Ganzúa (Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial El Propio Bolsillo, 1990).

¹²⁶ Néstor García Canclini, “Culture and Power: The State of Research,” trans. Philip Schlesinger, Media, Culture and Society 10 (1988), pp. 467–497, 481.

¹²⁷ Anderson, Imagined Communities; see also Castro-Klaren and Chasteen, Beyond Imagined Communities; Sommer Foundational Fiction; Holston, Insurgent Citizenship; Rama, La ciudad letrada; and Rojas, Civiliation and Violence.

¹²⁸ Ibid.

¹²⁹ Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983); see also García Canclini, “Culture and Power,” p. 473; and Tom Nairn, The Breakup of Britain (London, UK: New Left Books, 1977).

¹³⁰ Bhabha, “Nation and Narration,” p. 3; see also Yúdice, The Expediency of Culture.

¹³¹ Hunt, “Languages of Stateness”; see also Anderson, Imagined Communities; and Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

¹³² Hunt, “Languages of Stateness.”

¹³³ Smith, Stories of Peoplehood, p. 46; see also Radcliffe and Westwood, Remaking the Nation.

¹³⁴ Pécaut, Guerra contra la sociedad; see also Palacios and Safford, Colombia: Fragmented Land; and Fischer, “Colombia: Estado debil.”

¹³⁵ Carbó, La nación soñada.

¹³⁶ Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 21.

¹³⁷ See Anderson, Imagined Communities.

¹³⁸ See Deborah Poole, “Between Threat and Guarantee: Justice and Community in the Margins of the Peruvian State,” in Veena Das and Deborah Poole (eds), Anthropology in the Margins of the State (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2004), pp. 35–65.

¹³⁹ Chris Ballard, “The Signature of Terror: Violence, Memory and Landscape at Freeport,” in Bruno David and Meredith Wilson (eds), Inscribed Landscapes: Marking and Making Place (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002), pp. 13–26, 14.

¹⁴⁰ Max Weber, in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (ed. and trans.), Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958); see also Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, States of Imagination: Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

¹⁴¹ Coronil, The Magical State; Das and Poole, Anthropology in the Margins; see also Derrida, “The Violence of the Letter,” pp. 101–140; 2002, 230–298; and Mbembe, “Everything Can Be Negotiated.”

¹⁴² Súarez, Sitios de contienda, p. 120.