Displacing, Returning, and Pilgrimaging: The Construction of Social Orders of Violence and Non-violence in Colombia

Abstract

This article analyses the repatriation of a group of internally displaced persons which took place in 2003 in north-western Colombia. Starting with the question of why, in spite of all reservations, the displaced families were taken back to a war zone, the author demonstrates how, on the one hand, the repatriation was part of a power game between the protagonists in the armed conflict and how, on the other, the return of the families was a way of resisting the violent social orders that the paramilitary, the army and the guerrillas had established in the region. The repatriation was the starting point for the creation of a social order based on non-violence. Thus it was the scene of a struggle about social orders or, to put it in another way, about the principles on which Colombian society should be based – a struggle fought out with violent and non-violent means.

Notes

 1. CODHES, Desplazados en el limbo. CODHES Informa 56 (Bogotá: CODHES 2005). The statistics vary considerably: estimates by the NGOs are, in general, considerably higher than those made by the government. For a comparison see the following websites: www.codhes.org, www.accionsocial.gov.co, accessed 17 Nov. 2009.

 2. Fernán E. González, Ingrid J. Bolívar and Teófilo Vázquez, La violencia política en Colombia. De la nación fragmentada a la construcción del Estado (Bogotá: CINEP 2003).

 3. In total, I stayed 14 months in Colombia (March 2003–March 2004, November–December 2004, February 2007) to explore how people who were displaced by the armed groups made efforts to reconstruct their lives. My aim was to answer the question in what way the interplay of IDPs' grass roots organisations with state institutions and national and international human rights and aid organisations shaped these processes of reconstruction. In this context, I also learned a lot about the (re-)construction of social orders, both violent and non-violent.

 4. This section is based on field notes I took in May 2003.

 5. All names and information concerning the identity of the persons and social organisations mentioned in the text have been changed for reasons of safety.

 6. Red de Solidaridad Social, Proceso de Retornos (unpublished document 2003).

 7. For a history of the violence in Colombia see, for example, González et al. (note 2). For an overview of Colombian history see Hans-Joachim König, Kleine Geschichte Kolumbiens (Munich: Beck 2008).

 8. La Violencia was the last of the civil wars between the Liberal and the Conservative Party, which was fought out very cruelly. In fact, it was more than a confrontation between the two traditional parties; in many ways it was also a class conflict. Its complexity is reflected by the diversity of the actors who were involved in it: the military, the police, conservative death squads and paramilitary organisations supported by politicians and big landowners, liberal and communist guerrillas, peasant self-defence groups and bandits. For more information on La Violencia see, for example, Gonzalo Sánchez and Donny Meertens, Bandits, Peasants, and Politics: The Case of ‘La Violencia’ in Colombia (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press 2001); Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda and Gonzalo Sánchez (eds) Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources 1992).

 9. González et al. (note 2), pp.116–19.

10. González et al. (note 2), pp.116–19

11. For a detailed history of the paramilitaries see Gustavo Duncan, Los señores de la guerra. De paramilitares, mafiosos y autodefensas en Colombia (Bogotá: Planeta 2007).

12. On recent developments see, for example, the reports on the website of the Colombian human rights NGO CINEP: < www.cinep.org.co>, accessed 17 Nov. 2009, and International Crisis Group, Colombia's New Armed Groups, Latin America Report 20 (Bogotá/Brussels: ICG 2007).

13. See Fidel Mingorance, Flaminia Minelli and Hélène Le Du, El cultivo de la palma africana en el Chocó. Legalidad Ambiental, Territorial y Derechos Humanos (Quibdó: HREV, Diócesis de Quibdó 2004).

14. For an overview of the causes, dynamics and consequences of displacement in Colombia see Martha Nubia Bello (ed.) Desplazamiento forzado: Dinámicas de guerra, exclusión y desarraigo (Bogotá: U. Nacional, UNHCR 2004).

15. See Jan Marco Müller, ‘Migraciones generadas por la violencia en Colombia durante la última década: dimensiones, características y consecuencias’ in Günter Mertins and Maria Skoczek (coord.) Migraciones de la población latinoamericana y sus efectos socio-económicos: materiales del seminario polaco-alemán ‘Migraciones y sus efectos socio-económicos. Estudios regionales comparativos’, Varsovia 22–23 noviembre 1996 (Warszaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski 1998) pp. 59–87.

16. Daniel Pécaut, ‘La pérdida de los derechos, del significado de la experiencia y de la inserción nacional: a próposito de los desplazados en Colombia’, Teoria & sociedade 5 (2000) pp.163–81.

17. Caritas Colombiana and CODHES, Desafíos para construir nación: el país ante el desplazamiento, el conflicto armado y la crisis humanitaria, 1995-2005 (Bogotá: Conferencia Episcopal, CODHES 2006).

18. ACNUR/UNHCR, Balance de la política de atención al desplazamiento forzado en Colombia, 1999–2002 (Bogotá: ACNUR 2002); ACNUR/UNHCR, Balance de la política de prevención, protección y atención al desplazamiento interno forzado en Colombia, 2002–2004 (Bogotá: ACNUR 2004); ACNUR/UNHCR, Introducción, conclusiones y recomendaciones del balance de la política pública de atención integral a la población desplazada por la violencia 2004–2006 (Bogotá: ACNUR 2007).

19. Red de Solidaridad Social (note 6). My translation.

20. On the relation between social order and violence in Colombia, see Daniel Pécaut, L'ordre et la violence: evolution sociopolitique de la Colombie entre 1930 et 1953 (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 1987).

21. Daniel Hoffman and Stephen C. Lubkemann, ‘Warscape Ethnography in West Africa and the Anthropology of “Events”’, Anthropological Quarterly 78/2 (2005) pp.315–27.

22. Interview with a displaced peasant, March 2004.

23. Andrés Peñate, ‘El sendero estratégico del ELN: del idealismo guevarista al clientelismo armado’ in Malcolm Deas and María Victoria Llorente (comp.) Reconocer la Guerra para Construir la Paz (Bogotá: Ed. Uniandes – Cerec – Ed. Norma 1999) pp.53–98. On the combination of violence and non-violent strategies of persuasion, see also María del Pilar Castillo and Boris Salazar, ‘Tres juegos para el conflicto armado colombiano’, Controversia 175 (1999) pp.41–57.

24. Duncan (note 11).

25. On the political economy of the armed conflict in Colombia, see Nazih Richani, ‘The Political Economy of Violence: The War-System in Colombia’, Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 39/2 (1997) pp.37–81.

26. Michael Taussig, ‘Culture of Terror – Space of Death: Roger Casement's Putumayo Report and the Explanation of Torture’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 26/3 (1984) pp.467–97. See also Ulrich Oslender, ‘Geografías de terror y desplazamiento forzado en el Pacífico colombiano: conceptualizando el problema y buscando respuestas’ in E. Restrepo and A. Rojas (eds) Conflicto e (in)visibilidad: retos en los estudios de la gente negra en Colombia (Popayán: Universidad del Cauca 2004) pp.35–52.

27. Bettina Reis, ‘Die Kolumbien-Politik der EU und Deutschlands’ in Kolumbien-Hearing zur sozialen und politischen Situation in Kolumbien: Öffentliche Anhörung der Fraktion Die Linke im Bundestag am 2. Juni 2006 (Berlin: Die Linke 2006) pp.27–35; Bettina Reis, ‘Zauberformel “integrale Aktion”: EU-Friedensprogramme und zivil-militärische Kooperation in Kolumbien’, ila 314 (2008) pp.24–5.

28. Some examples are the smuggling of fuel, cattle breeding, agroindustrial enterprises such as the export-oriented cultivation of bananas and oil palms, and the tourism sector. See Mingorance et al. (note 13); Raul Zelik and Dario N. Azzellini, Kolumbien – Große Geschäfte, staatlicher Terror und Aufstandsbewegung (Köln: Neuer ISP-Verlag 1999).

29. In 2003, two young women who were spending their holidays at the Tairona National Park on the Caribbean coast were raped and killed by two local men. A few days later, the presumed perpetrators were found dead in the park. It is very probable that they were executed by the paramilitaries controlling the zone and the tourism industry of the area.

30. González et al. (note 2).

31. For a critique of the representation of refugees and IDPs as passive victims at the mercy of external forces, see, for example, Stephen C. Lubkemann, Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War (Chicago, IL, London: University of Chicago Press 2008) pp.1–46.

32. For information on the TPP, see < www.peaceobservatory.org/en/11592/permanent-peoples-tribunal-session-on-Colombia>, accessed 5 Mar. 2009.

33. Field notes, November 2003.

34. Field notes, February 2007.

35. For more information, see Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, La Tramoya. Derechos Humanos y Palma Aceitera: Curvaradó y Jiguamiandó. Caso Tipo 5 (Bogotá: CINEP, Justicia y Paz 2005). For information on and analysis of other communities of resistance and the peace movement in Colombia, see Gretchen Alther, ‘Colombian Peace Communities: The Role of NGOs in Supporting Resistance to Violence and Oppression’, Development in Practice 16/3–4 (2006) pp.278–91; CAVIDA, Somos tierra de esta tierra: Memorias de una resistencia civil (Cacarica: CAVIDA 2002); Mauricio García Durán (ed.) Alternatives to War: Colombia's Peace Processes, Accord: An International Review of Peace Initiatives 14 (London: Conciliation Resources, CINEP 2004); Ulrich Oslender, ‘Espacio, lugar y movimientos sociales: hacia una “espacialidad de resistencia”’, Scripta Nova 6/115 (2002), online at < www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-115.htm>, accessed 25 June 2008; Victoria Sanford, ‘Peacebuilding in a War Zone: The Case of Colombian Peace Communities’, International Peacekeeping 10/2 (2003) pp.107–18.