Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado: landmines and rebel expertise in Colombian warfare

ABSTRACT

In Colombia, almost all antipersonnel mines are improvised. Crafted with ordinary materials, improvised mines are inexpensive and cannot be easily sensed by metal detectors. Their Spanish technical name is Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado. In this article, I purposefully maintain the name to emphasize the material, technical, and political nuances I observed during my eighteen-months of fieldwork with landmine survivors, demining experts, and guerrilla soldiers in rural Colombia. Here, artefacto explosivo improvisado is not only an empirical object, a deadly explosive device, it is also a conceptual tool through which I reflect on the “thing” to which it refers (i.e. the improvised landmines), as well as on the historical and material practices that make it possible and that are made possible by it (i.e. the asymmetrical war in Colombia and what I later frame as “rebel expertise”). Through this concept I analyze the fragile, ephemeral, and recalcitrant nature of the improvised landmines, highlighting the material, economic, and temporal peculiarities of war contamination in Colombia. I also use the words artefacto explosivo improvisado to consider the guerrillas’ material culture and the bodily practices and technical knowledge of explosivistas – those who design, assemble, and install improvised landmines. Highlighting their ingenuity and creativity, I frame their know-how as “rebel expertise.” That is, an embodied, local, and irregular knowledge that confronts the technocratic, standardized, and external expertise of humanitarian demining. Throughout the article, I confront the inseparability of improvised landmines and the technical and military actions that brought them into existence.

RESUMO

Na Colômbia, quase todas as minas antipessoal são improvisadas. Feitas de materiais comuns, as minas improvisadas são de produção económica e os detetores de metais não conseguem percebê-las facilmente. Na língua espanhola, as minas são conhecidas pelo nome técnico de “Artefato Explosivo Improvisado” (ou AEI). Neste escrito mantenho o nome em espanhol com o objetivo de enfatizar as nuances materiais, técnicas e políticas que observei durante meus dezoito meses de trabalho de campo com sobreviventes de minas, especialistas em minas e guerrilheiros em áreas rurais da Colômbia. Aqui, o dispositivo explosivo improvisado não é apenas um objeto empíricoou um dispositivo explosivo mortal, é também uma ferramenta conceitual através da qual eu reflito sobre a “coisa” a que se refere (isto é, minas improvisadas), bem como no contexto histórico e nas práticas materiais que tornaram possíveis as minas e que elas possibilitam (isto é, a guerra assimétrica na Colômbia e o que mais tarde descrevo como “perícia rebelde”). Com esse conceito, analiso a natureza frágil, efêmera e recalcitrante das minas improvisadas, destacando as peculiaridades materiais, econômicas e temporais da contaminação por guerra na Colômbia. Com o conceito de artefato explosivo improvisado, também considero a cultura material e as práticas corporais da guerrilha e o conhecimento técnico dos explosivistas, os rebeldes que projetam, montam e instalam minas improvisadas. Destacando sua engenhosidade e criatividade, enquadro esse conhecimento em termos de “perícia rebelde”: um conhecimento encarnado, local e irregular que confronta la experiência tecnocrática, estandardizada e externa da desminagem humanitária. Ao longo deste artigo, tento ilustrar a inseparabilidade das minas improvisadas e as realidades técnicas e militares que as criaram.

RESUMEN

En Colombia casi todas las minas antipersonal son improvisadas. Fabricadas con materiales ordinarios, estas minas no son costosas y los detectores de metales no pueden percibirlas fácilmente. En español se conocen con el nombre técnico de “Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado” (o AEI). En este artículo mantengo el nombre en español con el propósito de enfatizar los matices materiales, técnicos y políticos que observé durante mis dieciocho meses de trabajo de campo con sobrevivientes de minas, expertos en desminado y guerrilleros en zonas rurales de Colombia. Aquí, el artefacto explosivo improvisado no es solo un objeto empírico, un dispositivo explosivo mortal, también es una herramienta conceptual a través de la cual reflexiono sobre la “cosa” a la que se refiere (es decir, las minas improvisadas), así como también sobre el contexto histórico y las prácticas materiales que han hecho posibles las minas y que ellas hacen posible (es decir, la guerra asimétrica en Colombia y lo que luego describo como “experticia rebelde”). A través de este concepto, analizo la naturaleza frágil, efímera y recalcitrante de las minas improvisadas, destacando las peculiaridades materiales, económicas y temporales de la contaminación por guerra en Colombia. Con el concepto artefacto explosivo improvisado yo también considero la cultura material de la guerrilla y las prácticas corporales y el conocimiento técnico de los explosivistas, los rebeldes que diseñan, ensamblan e instalan las minas improvisadas. Al destacar su ingenio y creatividad, enmarco este conocimiento en términos de “experticia rebelde.” Es decir, un conocimiento encarnado, local e irregular que confronta la experticia tecnocrática, estandarizada y externa del desminado humanitario. A lo largo de este artículo, procuro ilustrar la inseparabilidad de las minas improvisadas y las realidades técnicas y militares que las crearon.

KEYWORDS:

• Colombia
• landmines
• humanitarian demining
• material culture
• ethnography

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:

• Colombia
• minas antipessoal
• desminagem humanitária
• cultura material
• etnografia

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Colombia
• minas antipersonal
• desminado humanitario
• cultura material
• etnografía

1. Introduction

Anti-personnel landmines have been a central military and political actor in the ongoing armed conflict in Colombia. Officially, they are responsible for the death and mutilation of more than 11,868 people in Colombia, including both civilians and military personnel, since 1991.¹ However, their ability to harm is not limited to devastating bodily effects. Landmines also occupy territories affectively, altering the relationships among the heterogeneous social actors that live in and make rural landscapes, which include peasants, fields, crops, animals, roads, and creeks. Irregularly planted by rebel groups in the ongoing civil war, landmines’ locations are uncertain; however, they are suspected to have contaminated more than 52 million square meters of land across the country. The media reports that these artifacts threaten a third of the national geography and according to the official figures, only four of thirty-two departments have been “freed from the suspicion of mines.” Imposing a presence that cannot be confirmed or denied, landmines have established suspicion as these actors’ affective relation with and in the countryside (even in the aftermath of war).

In Colombia, most anti-personnel mines are improvised. They are made from ordinary plastic containers, with recycled or homemade explosives, and little to no metal content. They are inexpensive, unstandardized, and difficult to detect. For many years, improvised landmines were colloquially referred to as “quiebrapatas” [leg-breaker], a rather cruel reference to the common bodily effect produced by their detonation. They have also received other names, the most common of which is Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado [Improvised Explosive Device].² In this article, I will purposefully maintain the term in Spanish to emphasize the material, technical, and political nuances I observed during my 18-months of fieldwork with landmine survivors, demining experts, and guerrilla soldiers in rural Colombia. Here, artefacto explosivo improvisado is not only an empirical object – it is also a conceptual tool through which I reflect on the “thing” to which it refers (i.e. the improvised landmines), as well as on the historical and material practices that make it possible and that are made possible by it (i.e. the asymmetrical war in Colombia and what I later frame as “rebel expertise”).³ This analysis implies but also exceeds a sense of embeddedness in which things are in the world and the world is in things (Dumit 2014). It takes artefacto explosivo improvisado as a “conceptual thing” (Ballestero 2019); that is an artifact with which to think, but also through which new categories and practices can be proposed to make sense of the world and to make the world.

On the one hand, artefacto explosivo improvisado allows me to name and analyze a specific material reality: the fragile, ephemeral, and recalcitrant nature of the improvised landmines. This concept highlights the material, economic, and temporal peculiarities that distinguish the military waste that pollutes the Colombian territory from the waste of other conflicts. Unlike explosive remnants of war in mined countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina (Henig 2019), Lebanon (Touhouliotis 2018), Korea (Kim 2016), and Laos (Sisavath 2019; Zani 2019), which are industrially produced and may remain active for 50–100 years on average, improvised landmines in Colombia are homemade, irregular, and have a shorter average lifespan (some experts talk about a “five-year window” of explosive operability). Given their makeshift materiality, they are particularly prone to malfunction and decay. Unlike industrial landmines, which can be more resilient to climatic variables and regain their explosive capacity seasonally (See Kim 2016), improvised landmines are especially vulnerable to environmental conditions. Wind, heavy rain, or animals can easily damage detonators (which are usually electrical or chemical), leaving explosives open and exposed to soil, water, and mud (Figure 1). The slightest disturbance can neutralize the explosive power of these improvised landmines forever. Nonetheless, such precariousness does not render them less frightening or less violently powerful. As I argue later in the article, their vulnerability may extend and increase their might as the temporal and spatial uncertainty around them deepens. Furthermore, produced with ordinary materials and recycled or homemade explosives, improvised landmines do not have the postwar harvesting potential of military waste present in other mined countries. Unlike the latter, they must be destroyed in situ, which entails that they cannot be collected (or potentially recycled) during demining operations. This does not mean that they do not have or participate in a lucrative afterlife – in Colombia, the humanitarian demining industry is growing and becoming economically significant. In fact, some experts point out that due to their irregularity, itineracy, and undetectability (and the fact that they are generally planted in remote rural areas with difficult access), clearing them can be much more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.

Figure 1. Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado found in El Orejón, Colombia. Source: courtesy of Norwegian People’s Aid.

On the other hand, artefacto explosivo improvisado allows me to trace the production trajectories of these devices and locate them within the guerrillas’ material culture. With it, I conceptualize the inseparability of these explosive technologies and the technical and military actions that brought them into existence. In this way, I advance the practical question for the “acculturation of landmines,” (Latour 2010, 27) the explosive culture through which these artifacts come into being – the actors, relationships, practices, and (infra)structures as well as broader social, political, and economic forces. Furthermore, artefacto explosivo improvisado opens up the exploration of bodily practices and technical knowledge of explosivistas – the rebels who design, assemble, and install improvised landmines. Highlighting their ingenuity and creativity, I frame their technical and material experience in terms of “rebel expertise.” By framing it as “expertise,” I intend to offer an ethnographic conceptual window into a set of skills, practices, and objects that emerge amidst the armed conflict in Colombia. I also aim to illustrate how this knowledge shapes and is shaped by historical and geographical specificities, profound bodily experiences, and attachments to war. By calling it “rebel,” I am not only seeking to emphasize that this is the expertise of insurgent actors involved in an irregular and asymmetric war. I want to highlight the subversive and unconventional nature of rebel expertise’s objects, practices, and categories and show how it defies the highly technocratic and standardizing expertise of humanitarian demining. Taking rebel expertise seriously, I suggest, is crucial for ongoing efforts of ecological and political demilitarization, such as humanitarian demining.

My empirical-conceptual approach to artefacto explosivo improvisado and rebel expertise stems from a specific historical and political juncture: The Pilot Project of Humanitarian Demining. Announced on March 7, 2015, the Pilot Project was the first (and perhaps the most important) of the “peace gestures” within the peace process between the Colombian National government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, or FARC-EP. The gestures sought to demonstrate both parties’ willingness to “make peace” before signing the final accord. In particular, the Pilot Project brought together soldiers of the National Army and the guerrilla (who were still at war) to live and work together to “clear and decontaminate” two heavily mined villages, El Orejón and Santa Helena. The project aimed to “build trust” among the parties, local communities, and rural lands while demining territories. They received the technical and political support of the renowned international humanitarian demining organization Norwegian Peoples Aid, or NPA. These villages were chosen not only because they were affected by war and explosive remnants, but also because they were considered “microcosms” of the Colombian political reality – small versions of a present war and a future post-agreement.⁴

In the Pilot Project, Army deminers and guerrilla soldiers composed “multitasking demining teams.” As part of these teams, explosivistas provided valuable information on the materiality, location, distribution, and planting patterns of artefactos explosivos improvisados. They also accompanied Non-Technical Surveys conducted with local communities to gather information about possible minefields. They also joined other related demining activities, such as Mine Risk Education, local community meetings, field visits, and monitoring activities. Politically, Army deminers and guerrilla soldiers worked together to dismantle the relationships of antagonism and suspicion so deeply embedded in the social fabric of their institutions and these institutions’ interactions with rural communities.

I conducted the ethnographic fieldwork that informs this article between 2015 and 2016 in the two Pilot Project sites, El Orejón and Santa Helena. Working as a translator and logistical coordinator, I lived in both basecamps with FARC-EP soldiers, army representatives, government officials, and international humanitarian workers. I followed their demining operations, including technical meetings, visits to minefields, one-day expeditions to suspected areas, and in/formal gatherings with campesinos, and also participated in the exchanges of everyday life – I shared meals, conversations, games and, with the female participants, even bedrooms. This article is framed by my extensive research project on improvised landmines and humanitarian demining in times of “political suspension.”⁵ As I conceptualize it, political suspension names the unsettled reality in which neither war nor peace are fully functional, but in which both are a possibility that looms over (and shapes) the moods, desires, and practices of the parties. Political suspension, I argue, is the temporal political condition of the Pilot Project. Amidst this hovering and unsettled political reality, enemies still at war (the Army and the guerrillas) strive to undo the historical violence that contaminated the countryside in an attempt to forge relationships of trust and reconciliation.

This temporality is crucial to understanding the material and affective capacity of the artefacto explosivo improvisado. As I will illustrate throughout the article, landmines’ power exceeds their capacity to maim soldiers and villagers in times of war and of so-called postwar (Cohen 2015, 2012; Counter 2018; Franco Gamboa 2013). Active even in their explosive ineffectiveness, they produce political and ecological relationships marked by suspense, uncertainty, and anxiety. I call these “suspicious landscapes.” Informed by my research on political suspension and the non-explosive capacities of landmines, this article draws on my fieldwork with FARC-EP fighters and humanitarian demining experts during my time with the Pilot Project.

Using the term artefacto explosivo improvisado to organize my narrative, I begin with artefacto. In this section, I explore two elements: the rumors and “fictions” that arise around this insurgent technology and the manual and skilled labor required for its production and deployment. In explosivo, I detail the acquisition of volatile matters, highlighting frugal and resourceful guerrilla practices (i.e. recycle, reuse, and repair) and the materialities and temporalities of war. Improvisado, the following section, focuses on the guerrillas’ impromptu creativity and the unstandardized nature of landmines. In the last section, I consider “rebel expertise,” a know-how that challenges the categories and practices of the state and humanitarian demining operators, and argue for the need to inherit, reimagine, and repurpose this unorthodox and elusive technical knowledge.

2. Artefacto

On August 24, 2016, I interviewed Sara,⁶ a former demining officer at one of the world’s most prominent humanitarian organizations and a consultant for a Mine Action agency in Colombia. The same day, the national government and the FARC-EP announced the signing of the final point of their negotiation agenda: the bilateral ceasefire and the disarmament plan for the guerrillas. Sara and I agreed to meet at the Parque de los Hippies, in the capital city of Bogotá, to celebrate the announcement amidst an arguably small group of people. After the celebration, we would move to a nearby bar to converse. Discussing the idiosyncratic, unstable, and ever-improving materiality of landmines in Colombia, Sara recalled that early in her humanitarian career, circa 2010, there was a rumor: the guerrilla groups were producing and installing metal-less mines.

The rumor that spread rapidly through the Mine Action sector sparked numerous technical debates among national and international experts. The possibility that these devices existed was worrisome – mine clearance operations (at that time) relied heavily on metal detectors. Experts, nonetheless, quickly dismissed the rumor and concluded that it was only speculation or an exaggeration at best, as explosive devices require a detonator, typically a 10-centimeter long piece of metal. Some of them even suggested that this rumor, like many others, sought to explain the increase in landmine victims in the military and justify the ineffectiveness of mine removal techniques. Referring to army reports about landmines with five-centimeter detonators, Sara insisted: “‘Minimal metal content’ is not the same as ‘zero metal content’!” She used her five-years of experience in minefields in northeastern Antioquia as confirmation: although the landmines they had detected in that region were not functional, all contained metal, without exception.

It is worth noting that technical impossibility was not the only reason why these experts ruled out the existence of metal-free mines. As I learned throughout my fieldwork, it did not escape demining experts that these invisible, mobile, and indiscriminate explosive devices were affective weapons of war. The uncertain presence and materiality of these mines were used by official and rebel armed forces to scare the local population and increase their own territorial and social control. Rumors, such as those of the metal-free mines, were essential ingredients in the transformation of ordinary stuff, fellow peasants, and fields into dubious objects, subjects, and fields. As I suggest elsewhere (Pardo Pedraza 2019), the uncertainty that mines quite literally plant in the ground has given them a central military force in the Colombian warfare and has made them a crucial actor in the production of “suspicious landscapes.” Indeed, rumors have the “power to undo everyday life” (Das 2007, 105). Considered hearsay, the metal-less mine was dismissed – it was a made-up story, an unproven threat seeking to disorient and create geographies of anxiety and terror.

After years of speculation and dismissal, Sara learned that the allegedly “fictitious” artifacts were real! Working as a technical advisor for the Non-Technical Survey in Santa Helena, the second site of the Pilot Project, she had the opportunity to speak extensively with Andrés, an experienced explosivista and a guerrilla delegate for the demining initiative. Talking about the manufacture and composition of mines, he acknowledged having made the infamous metal-less mines himself. Andrés explained the technique to her: Instead of putting the entire detonator in the mine, the guerrillas extracted the explosive and placed it directly on the caps of the syringes, which are used as activation mechanisms in many of these improvised devices. The aim was to reduce the chance of detection and therefore increase mines’ tactical value. The “extraction process” required patience and time. Sara recounted the rebel’s words:

I filed it [the detonator] for just a couple of minutes, trying to take out some explosives grains. I knew when I could not do more on that day. The next day I would come back to it and continue filing. It could take me a week.

Pointing to the danger of such a laborious and intimate process, Sara acknowledged that this is a kind of “suicidal task” – or rather, a disabling task: “friction could activate the thing and leave Andrés without hands.” Sara seemed both uneasy and amazed. Concluding, she said: “there is so much violent premeditation in the production and assemblage of these mines. Yet, there is also so much skill.”

I know Andrés would agree with that statement. For more than six months, and up to a few weeks before my interview with Sara, I lived in the Santa Helena basecamp with Andrés and the rest of the Pilot Project team. While we played cards (UNO), watched soccer games, or shared meals, Andrés and I used to talk. Typically, we weren’t alone; there was always someone else in the game and joining the conversation. On one occasion, reflecting on his time in the guerrilla army and his experience as an explosivista, he said: “making landmines is sort of an art.” As he explained, mine-making is an “art” because it entails the manual ability to transform everyday objects into (deadly or maiming) explosive devices. It requires the knowledge to convert plastic bottles, PVC tubes, or ordinary syringes into dangerous containers; fertilizers into flammable materials; staples, bolts, and screws into small projectiles; gas cylinders into large-caliber weapons; and cellphones into mechanisms of activation.

Mine-crafting also demands concentration and dedication: collecting and assembling explosive materials by hand is a tedious and time-consuming practice, more so if one is making mines difficult to detect. Working with volatile elements (many of which might not be intended for warfare) in quite stressful situations also imposed a particular pace and temperament: the explosivista should not rush, nor should he be too fearful. “One must learn to master anxiety,” Andrés said. Mine-makers must have “nervios de acero” [nerves of steel]. Or, to put it in terms that evoke the manual and attentive work of filing the detonator, they must have steady hands. Such mastery is also necessary in their emplacement: as many of these devices are sembrados [sown] within the development of hostile actions and in the heat of the armed conflict, explosivistas must be able to master not only the anxiety produced by the volatile materiality of the mine, but also by the enemy’s presence and attacks.

I bring these two ethnographic moments, the rumor of the mines without metal and the confirmation of their existence, to talk about the artefacto – the improvised landmine carefully crafted by explosivistas. As I pointed out in the introduction of this article, I use the Spanish name to maintain its etymological connotation and material particularities. In the international and increasingly standardized vocabulary of Mine Action, artefacto has an English translation: device. I don’t use this term. I do not believe that it offers the material-semiotic implications of the practices described by my interlocutors. Even when “device” acquires great conceptual and empirical capacity, moving away from passive, static, and a mere functionalist understanding such as in recent STS work; (See Ballestero 2019; Law and Ruppert 2013; Muniesa, Millo, and Callon 2007), it is still caught in the language of technical or political utility and instrumentality. Artefacto, I suggest, is a more capacious term: it comes from the Latin word arte, meaning “by or using art,” and the word factum, “something made.” Artefacto is something made with talent, a fact of art, a human invention. By keeping the term in Spanish, I then seek to foreground the manual, skilled, and risky labor of these explosivistas and to distinguish the explosive object as a material and affective “fabrication of war.”

The production of improvised landmines is a craft – it requires technique. Tekhnē, Tim Ingold (2000, 295) reminds us, is “an ability that depends upon the craftsman’s or artisan’s capacity to envision particular forms, and to bring his manual skills and perceptual acuity into the service of their implementation.” As Andrés’ description illustrates, making these war technologies entails creative ability, mental readiness, and bodily dexterity. The expert is required not only to devise an object that does not yet exist, but also to shape it, handling its explosive components with expertise, attention, and serenity. To produce it, he must know or at least be willing to learn (at the cost of his own body) the malleability of the materials and the movements needed to transform it. As a skilled practice, mine-making produces an artefacto; a “thing that is made.” “Artefacts,” says Ingold (2000, 88), “are not given in advance but are rather generated in and through the practical movement of one or more skilled agents in their active, sensuous engagement with the material.” Here, it would be appropriate to remember that in Colombia improvised landmines are also known colloquially as “artesanales” [hand-crafted] and “hechizas” [homemade]. While the former emphasizes the manual production of mines and perhaps the dexterity of the producer, the latter highlights mines’ improvised materiality and DIY nature. The term artefacto encompasses these multiple connotations, bringing attention to the meticulous, bodily, and material cunning that landmine-making entails, which is not only a matter of life and death, but evidently of disability.

Indeed, the object (a functional and undetectable mine with tactical value) as well as the explosivista’s own physical integrity depend on the mastery of the technique. Mine-making exposes one’s body – it is a dangerous, explosive business. As I learned early on in my fieldwork, guerrilla members are frequent victims of their own devices. As indiscriminate weapons, landmines do not distinguish between civilians and combatants or between friends and enemies. Numerous rebels die or are seriously injured and maimed in the process of production or de/re-installation of these devices (about which I say more in the next section). Their death or disability has intensified the already difficult task of producing a clear picture of mining contamination in the country: without detailed records or maps of minefields, the spatial reference to these devices disappears along with those who made and installed them.

It is precisely due to the material uncertainty of landmines, to the unknowability of their presence and composition, that artefacto explosivo improvisado emerges as “fabrications of war.” Fabrication not only in the sense that it is produced, but also in that it is presumed to be a rumor, an exaggeration, a fiction. Consider, for example, how the metal-free landmine was deemed a material impossibility – an inexistent object – and an affective war strategy. Artefacto, then, also serves to evoke the fictitious, and at the same time, the material character of these explosive technologies. They are factishes (Latour 2010): they are fabrications that are real. Artefacto therefore echoes Navaro-Yashin’s (2012, 6) concept of make-believe, which brings the phantasmatic and the tangible in unison. “The imagination that goes into fabricating something,” she says, “is part and parcel here of the materiality of this manufacture, a process of making-and-believing, or believing-and making, at one and the same time.” The artefacto explosivo improvisado is a make-believe object, it is a phantasmatic thing that is material. In the next section, therefore, I use the concept of Explosivo to discuss the sourcing of explosive components that make improvised landmines a material reality.

3. Explosivo

Jorge, the FARC-EP political ideologist in Santa Helena, the second site of the Pilot Project, finally agreed to give me a formal interview. He was the only guerrilla member on site authorized from Havana, where the peace talks were taking place, to make official commentary to the public on the demining initiative. Until then, I had only had casual, unstructured conversations with the other rebels, including Andrés, and generally only during our daily routines in the basecamp. I started the interview by explaining my research briefly: I investigate improvised landmines, and I am particularly interested in their “non-explosive capacities.” I unfolded: I want to move beyond mines’ explosive might and pay attention to how their presence, as well as absence, impacts and rearranges rural life, even when they do not explode.

My short research statement triggered an immediate reaction: “You need to think the other way around!” Suggesting that my approach might be missing the point, Jorge prompted me to bring my attention back to the explosives. Loosely referring to manuals and warfare theorists, he argued that “when deployed adequately, explosives are eighty percent of the war.” Explosives, in fact, had been essential to his organization: “We [FARC-EP] have survived for fifty-two years thanks to explosives.” Highlighting the warfare in which his organization was “clearly disadvantaged,” Jorge claimed that landmines were not only a legitimate war mechanism but also a tactical necessity: landmines have allowed them to achieve a relative military equilibrium to confront their foe. “Our enemy,” Jorge emphasized, is well-equipped and has airpower “at his fingertips.”

Recognizing the “unintended” consequences of landmines (i.e. civilian victims), Jorge insisted on the military and economic reasoning for their production and deployment: they are “simple and inexpensive,” he said. A landmine can cost between 4600 and 14,000 Colombian pesos [USD$1.50 to $4.60]). The low cost, Jorge explained, was due to the ingenuity and thrifty practices of the guerrillas. He offered several examples: while the army may use three grenades per enemy, FARC-EP would use the same number of explosives to face and “acabar con” [finish with] 100 men. “A mine has a radius of action of seven meters,” Jorge explained. “If ten bombs are distributed over one hundred seventy meters using an electric initiation system, only one person could deal with an enemy troop of fifty men.” Rebels also collected and recycled explosives from unexploded ordnance and other artifacts launched or left by the army. Jorge offered more numbers:

with a 120 mortar, which has a little less than 10 pounds of explosives, imagine how many mines we make. Do the math, Diana! Divide 10 pounds into 36 grams. That is how much [explosive] we put into a small mine.

Taking notes, I hardly followed Jorge’s estimations. However, I do remember understanding the logic he tried to illustrate with his examples: unlike the army, guerrillas have a rather frugal approach to explosives.

During my time with the Pilot Project, particularly through my participation in the daily technical meetings with explosivistas and deminers, I learned that the guerrillas have other sparing practices around volatile materials. A significant number of explosives are, like the artifacts themselves, homemade. The most common raw materials used to make explosives are ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate, chemical compounds predominantly used as fertilizers. During a daily technical meeting in El Orejón, an army deminer explained that to extract the volatile components, explosivistas mix the fertilizer with water and boil it. The residue is combined with other substances to produce specific explosive materials: the explosive known as R1, for instance, is the combination of 70% ammonium nitrate, 20% black aluminum and 10% sawdust; R14 is 85% potassium permanganate and 15% aluminum in powder. Some of these materials are relatively easy to acquire as they are available in regular agricultural markets; others are more complicated to find and are acquired through an extensive black market or through military raids.

Repairing and redeployment were also part of the guerrillas’ repertoire. Reproducing an image that I encountered many times of the hidden soldier waiting to attack, Jorge described landmines as “willing” objects, always attentive to the passage of the enemy. Nonetheless, things go wrong: some landmines are armed but do not explode. “We then have to figure out what the interruption was,” Jorge said, “to find out what went wrong and try to fix it.” Using words such as “repair,” “mend,” and “change pieces,” Jorge insisted that his organization did not have many supplies at hand and that they “could not afford to lose it [the mine].” Furthermore, rebels use one landmine up to 10 times. Rebel-laid mines can be “easily” deactivated in order to be later moved to more strategic locations – a practice that is nonetheless deemed dangerous in humanitarian demining and is therefore forbidden. As a result of these supposed de/re-installations, some areas remain “factually” mined for short durations: one night, one week, a couple of months. This is the case in tactical minefields. However, the situation is different with landmines planted amid the chaos of armed confrontation. As Jorge explained, in el corre-corre [the haste], mines that were supposed to be temporal, that were only there to hold the enemy back, “ended up staying for good.” Defensive mines are particularly easy to forget (Figure 2).

Figure 2. This is a single mine found far from the rest of the Confirmed Hazardous Areas in Santa Helena. It was suspected to be a forgotten mine rather than a minefield. Photo by the author.

Jorge’s testimony invited me to turn my attention back to the volatile matters that make landmines brutally threatening and powerful. Like the Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado, the volatile matter used to fabricate it is improvised: produced or obtained through informal, illegal, and irregular practices. If artefacto points to the deeply embodied, technical, and dangerous know-how of the guerrillas, explosivo highlights the shrewd practices with which they managed to obtain volatile components for over 30 years. Indeed, guerrilla soldiers have developed strategies that have allowed them to “do more with less” in a war that they insist is profoundly asymmetrical and irregular. These practices may be described as “frugal innovation” (Bhatti and Ventresca 2013), technologies developed under conditions of resource scarcity, limited affordability, and need for greater reach. Others may describe them as “malevolent creativity” (Cropley, Kaufman, and Cropley 2008; Gill et al. 2013): creative practices and products devised to damage others.

In contrast with these descriptions, I do not intend to characterize the economic or moral dimension of improvised landmines or qualify the financial rationale of their production and deployment. Rather, I am interested in how the guerrilla’s frugal and resourceful practices, which imply practices of maintenance, repair and reuse, shed light on the coproduction of explosive materialities between the Army and the guerrilla. Jorge described this relationship in terms that highlighted their differences more than their co-constitution. For him, there was a clear asymmetry between the state’s air power and the FARC’s underground power. I use underground here to highlight both the subterranean and clandestine character of the rebel group, as well as the hidden and buried-in-the-ground quality of landmines. Nonetheless, his description of guerrillas’ procurement of volatile matters may suggest what Weizman (2012, 189) calls, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “a cycle of co-evolution.” These are adaptive military practices that are inspired by and that reuse the forms of violence that confront them. That is, “[m]ilitary capabilities evolve in relation to the resistance, which itself evolves in relation to transformations in military practice.”

Based on accounts from experts and armed groups about the increasing importance of explosives in the Colombian war, one may argue that the most recent cycle of coevolution (and co-destruction) can be traced back to the early and mid-2000s. It began with President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s Política de Seguridad Democrática and the technological enhancements of the national Army afforded by Plan Colombia. As counter-insurgent operations (including airstrikes) increased in areas controlled by guerrillas, the rebels boosted their deployment of explosive devices. The material urgency to produce less detectable and more effective and reliable landmines intensified over the years as the Army equipped itself with manual and canine detection technologies. Explosivistas were also compelled to make them less lethal but more harmful – a tactic to demoralize enemy troops and slow down their military attacks. “Mine sowing” became an institutionalized guerrilla technique and accidents increased dramatically.

The military dynamics initiated during those years also explain, at least in part, the peculiar temporality of artefactos explosivos improvisados in Colombia. As I suggested in the introduction, improvised landmines are materially precarious and are, therefore, quite ephemeral. They do not last long. But Jorge’s testimony also indicates another temporality, one no longer tied to mines’ operability – to whether they explode – but rather to their spatiality – to whether they remain in place. In the examples cited by Jorge, their im/permanence is dictated by their strategic value in war, as in the case of the path mined for a few days or weeks to stop, or at least slow down, the enemy’s advancement. Their im/permanence is also determined by unintended circumstances, as in the case of the forgotten mine amidst the confrontation. While in the former, the landmine is as temporary as it is removable and mobile, in the latter, it is simply enduring as it stays behind and remains. However, both circumstances produce and prolong feelings of anticipation that force rural inhabitants to be on guard, to wait for the explosion ahead. The blast might not happen – explosive artifacts might have lost their explosive potential or been removed from the suspected minefield – but people do not know; therein lies their non-explosive power. Itinerant and easy-to-forget, mines seem unknowable and able to evade attempts to be understood. To continue my exploration of mine’s uncategorizable nature, in the next section I consider the inventiveness of the guerrillas and how artefactos explosivos improvisados elude indexing efforts by experts in humanitarian explosives.

4. Improvisado

“The explosivista is the person who stands out because he likes to experiment and play with explosives,” Julia said in a room full of Army deminers, guerrillas, humanitarian workers, and a couple of academics – myself included. We were in the basecamp of the Pilot Project in El Orejón, on the second day of a three-day Lessons Learned workshop. Facilitated by the Colombian National University and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD), the workshop sought to collect and discuss the Pilot Project members’ experiences and learnings. The hope was that these lessons would inform the implementation of other “peace gestures,” for example, one on the voluntary substitution of illicit crops, which was deeply linked to the mine-contamination problem in Colombia. Julia’s intervention was framed in particular by a conversation about the guerrillas’ technical contribution to the Pilot Project and the encounter between “formal” and “informal” knowledge practices about explosives. Arguing for the need to acknowledge the experience of the explosivistas, Julia continued:

our people were constantly innovating with [explosive-making] techniques during the war. Most of the time, we did not bring experts from anywhere else. When they [the army] began to detect our mines, our explosivistas themselves started to study and decipher how to make them undetectable.

In a private conversation later that day, sitting on the bedroom at the basecamp, Julia told me a little more about the “forced inventiveness” of the explosivistas and offered a specific example, la bomba fantasma [the phantom bomb]. This was a type of artefacto explosivo improvisado that had been deployed in the region, although not in El Orejón. She described it as a cylinder full of explosives hidden under the ground that, when activated, is thrown into the air and explodes. Capable of “sweeping everything away,” this artifact was hastily devised and produced by a rebel when he and his troops, some of them “reduced by fever and fatigue,” were cornered by an “impressive” Army (with capital A to emphasize it was an attack by the national forces) military attack. “With that [phantom] bomb he se bajó toda esa operación de encima [got rid of that whole operation]. It was tenaz! [tough!].”

Julia also contended that the Front 36, the military division of the FARC-EP that dominates the region where El Orejón is located, had the reputation of hosting the best explosivistas in the country. “It is not something to be proud of, but at a certain moment, they did play a very important role in the containment of the army’s large-scale military operations.” Julia concluded: “the result of this is that these three gentlemen, here, are expert mine-makers.” She pointed to Hugo, Dilan, and Morales as examples. Interested in collecting information for future demining efforts, one of the facilitators asked her if that “same technical knowledge” was to be found in other areas controlled by FARC-EP. A bit exasperated since, apparently, she had been asked this question over and over again, she replied: “We have explained it before. This [demining] team needs to understand that nothing is as straight, as standardized as it seems.” Knowledge and practices around explosives vary. This is not only due to the specific geographical conditions of the regions where FARC-EP is present or the shifting dynamics and tactics of the armed conflict, but also to the creative initiative of the explosivistas in each bloc. They have all developed their own techniques and practices.

Dissatisfied with Julia’s response, Jack, an American who worked for NPA as an operational technical officer, continued the interrogation. He wanted to know if there was a local mass production of core explosive components that were later transported and assembled by the users or if explosivistas manufactured their own fuses. Jack explained his interest: Having worked in different countries in the Middle East contaminated with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), he needed to understand the production chain of landmines in Colombia, which many had qualified as unique. He also hoped to comprehend the chemical composition of the explosives used in Colombia because many of the names used to describe them did not correspond to the classification system that he knew, which followed international vocabularies. “Everyone talks about R1, but R1 is not the name of an explosive. It is a category of risk that means ‘explosive when dry.’” Knowing the exact component, he explained, would help to implement future mine disposal techniques. “We have to know what we are releasing into the atmosphere,” he said, referring to the possibility of deploying the mine-disposal method known as “open burning,” which was being considered by different mine-clearance operators.

Silent until then, Dilan, one of the renown explosivistas pointed out by Julia during her intervention, laughed. I had noticed that Dilan had been moving his head back and forth in disapproval while Jack questioned the expertise of the guerrillas. Sitting upright in his chair to talk, with a half-smile on his face that he then covered, Dilan said: “la guerra nos fuerza a ser curiosos” [war has forced us to be curious].

Dilan’s words and attitude still resonate with me. In fact, they inspire many of my reflections in this article. They highlight the tension that I observed between the knowledge of the explosivistas and that of the demining experts (I also noted friction between the latter and the situated knowledge of local population). Influenced by decades of irregular warfare, guerrillas have extensive experience with explosive materials. Nevertheless, demining specialists such as Jack believe that this proficiency is not technical, much less scientific. For them, rebels know how to use explosives, but they do not know how or why explosives work. As his comments suggested, they do not even get the technical names “right.” Jack was not alone. I heard national and international demining experts qualify the experience of guerrillas as “simply empirical” many times. This is not to say that they fail to recognize explosivistas as critical actors in humanitarian demining. On the contrary, experts insisted on the importance of their information and the need to collect it and process it – but that is precisely the point. For demining experts (and government employees), rebels’ knowledge was information about the location and materiality of mines and, as such, it was extractable and susceptible to standardization and quantitative analysis. Captured in forms, sketches, and maps, it could be translated into rigorous, objective, and measurable data. In fact, one of the workshop facilitators reiterated the idea of ⁣a summit of explosivistas that would enable the construction of a comprehensive database. More than co-experts, explosive technicians, or practitioners, rebels were repositories of information that would make mine clearance efforts faster and less costly.

However, as Julia pointed out in the workshop and urged on numerous occasions, neither the knowledge of the guerrillas nor the objects or practices that were produced by them can be simply collected and systematized. The difficulty of this task does not lie in the death, dispersal, or demobilization of the explosivistas, nor does it lie in the lack of detailed records of their artifacts and minefields, as so many demining and political pundits pointed out. It also lies in their improvised nature. Improvisation here reflects the temporality and materiality of their production: both their knowledge and their creations emerge extemporaneously, in response to specific and situated conditions, military or otherwise. The landmine’s improvised nature does not mean that there is no training, premeditation, or broader military logics. Like many other roles within the guerrillas, becoming an expert in explosives required hours of apprenticeship. Andrés, for example, told me about his enrollment in several year-long courses on explosive manipulation, which were taught by national and foreign experts in the so-called “special forces column.” Additionally, certain artefactos explosivos improvisados, those whose composition is complex to make them more lethal and more difficult to detect, as experts like Sara described – of “second” or “third generation” – , may require days or weeks of production. However, this knowledge and these artifacts develop in practice and during times of intense military pressure or confrontation. They emerge, evolve, and are improved in anomic situations, in instances of instability and uncertainty. Consider, for example, Julia’s phantom bomb.⁷

Improvisation also alludes to the fact that landmines are made with whatever is conveniently at hand – whatever materials and instruments are available. So, although mines generally are composed of three elements (main charge, detonator, and initiation system), they are assembled with different stuff and vary in shape and size. These characteristics are also determined by the creativity and the technical ability of the producer. Explosivistas of different guerrilla blocs and fronts are usually recognized for their mastering of certain materials or techniques. Mines’ irregular nature makes it difficult to produce indexed classifications, which is why the latter abound. One national army report, for example, suggests that there were at least 12 types of mines, including betún [shoe polish], Cajón [drawer], Abanico [fan], borradora [eraser], and Camándula [rosary]. The national Mine Action office has also provided classifications: house-borne IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs, booby traps, anti-personnel mines, and improvised land-service ammunition (Parra Gallego 2009). While the former sorts the artifacts based on their material, shape, and/or mode of activation, the latter focuses on location and military targets, translating local explosive artifacts into global technical categories. Sara, the humanitarian demining expert I mentioned in the second section (artefacto), also has a classification system. According to her, there are three generations of improvised landmines. The first had significant metal content (staples, bolts, and screws), were badly permeabilized, and were usually composed of a pressure activation system. The second had less metal matter, was better permeabilized (sealed with silicone and covered with plastic), and could also be activated by pressure relief, tension, and/or tripwires. More “sophisticated,” the third generation had an activation mechanism separate from the initiation system. Mostly electric, the batteries in these mines were exposed and easily replaceable, creating a maintenance system of some kind. Although these classifications are quite inclusive, none of them are widely adopted in the Mine Action sector.

By highlighting the inconsistent and improvised nature of landmines in Colombia, I do not seek to emphasize distinctions between infrastructures “from above” and “from below.” Nor do I attempt to reinforce binary hierarchies between “cutting-edge” and “cheap” technologies that assume the former as “precise” and “humane” and the latter as “indiscriminate” and “savage.” I remain critical of technoscientific discourses that stress (fallaciously) technical and tactical distinctions. As scholars examining high-tech surveillance programs and warfare technologies and practices remind us (Kaplan 2006; Chamayou 2015; Terry 2017), the emphasis placed on the supposed efficiency, surgical precision, and calculated losses of these artifacts overlooks the absent distinction between combatants and civilians in their operation, the unequal distribution of their violence, and the myriad and pervading forms of occupation and control of the air and the ground that these artifacts enact. Analyses that focus on the “low cost,” “savage,” “unruly” and “in/non-human” nature of Improvised Explosive Devices (or IEDs) can reinforce the same technological distinctions they seek to disrupt by positioning the latter as an insurgent technology against the seemingly all-powerful (though failing) military infrastructure of countries like the United States (Grove 2019).

5. Rebel expertise

Guerrillas are more than mere “informants” or “reinsertados” former soldiers searching for social and economic reintegration. They are inventive and sagacious practitioners – even if their inventions are brutal. Thinking with and through artefacto explosivo improvisado, I have come to understand the craftsmanship, resourcefulness, and creativity of guerrilla soldiers as “rebel expertise.” It is rebel not only because it emerges in and from insurgent practices and transpires in (and is shaped by) an irregular, asymmetric, and bloody war, but also because it defies methods of standardization and exposes the limits of technoscientific categories, procedures, and materialities. It is expertise because it requires the cultivation and practice of skills, the mastering of requirements of the (battle)field, and the capacity to respond to a variety of different (technical) circumstances. I contend that rebel expertise reveals the politics of knowledge at stake in the current Colombian political landscape and the need to rethink it for a stable and lasting post-agreement (to tweak the frequently cited refrain of the recent peace process: “a stable and lasting peace”).

As an embodied, local, and informal knowledge practice, rebel expertise displaces conventional knowledge production and hegemonic notions of technical proficiency, particularly in the world of Mine Action. It interrupts entrenched images of the spaces, subjects, and networks involved in the production of knowledge and technologies. Rebel expertise emerges and evolves in battlefields, jungles, and remote (explosive) laboratories; it mostly involves young, illiterate, and rural soldiers; and finally, it belongs to informal circuits and outlaw armed groups (Gómez-Morales 2013; Guerrero 2017; Moreno 2018). Emerging from particular spatial, temporal, and military conditions, this rebel expertise is mobile, unpredictable, and irregular. Like landmines, it does not lend itself to be cataloged, standardized, or pinpointed. Contrary to international military and demining practices (with their protocols and shared vocabularies), rebel expertise cannot easily be transported. It is a knowledge grounded in the battlefields on which and in relation to where they were produced. Deeply rooted in the places, times, and bodies that made it possible, this knowledge resonates with what Tim Ingold (2000, 196) calls taskscapes: an assemblage of dwelling activities that, mutually intertwined, cannot be unraveled from the landscapes they produce and in which they are produced. Taskscapes are intrinsically temporal: founded in embodiment, the passage of time is, “indeed, none other than our own journey through the taskscape in the business of dwelling.”

Hence, rebel expertise also confronts the extractive logics of postwar reconstruction initiatives, including humanitarian demining, that might see guerrillas as mere informants rather than as knowledgeable experts. Like the “economies of subtraction” in post-war scenarios described by Castillejo Cuéllar (2005), these mine-clearance initiatives, for example, may view explosivistas as war actors whose testimony provides important information to understand and tackle war contamination (location, materiality, and typologies of mines), making their experience the objective of capture in the early stages of information gathering (known as Non-Technical Survey). Therefore, demining experts may establish a short-term, subtractive, and unimaginative relationship with rebels. Their conception of the relationship loses sight of the way in which “data” is connected to broader worlds of knowledge production, one whose existence challenges, but can also enrich, their own technical premises. This kind of engagement assumes that the information is there, available, and ready to be collected and processed. However, reality is different. Consider, for example, the minefield sketches offered by the explosivistas in El Orejón, which were considered “rough,” “imprecise,” and “of little use” by demining experts who expected to receive maps with spatial references and standardized coordinates. These sketches were illustrations of lived spatial imaginaries of war and corporal sensibilities – they sought to represent references such as: “on the right side of the stick,” or “about 300 meters from the second bush.” Derek Gregory (2015, 91) calls these kinds of visual representations corpographies: “a way of apprehending the battle space through the body as an acutely physical field in which the senses of sound, smell and touch were increasingly privileged in the construction of a profoundly haptic or somatic geography.” As such, these corporeal knowledges are difficult to represent; that is, to be captured visually or otherwise.

Exceeding efforts that seek to capture and exploit it, rebel expertise nonetheless offers a window of understanding into the war, the multiple armed actors that made it possible, the military habits and knowledge that sustained these actors and their struggle, and the explosive technologies they produce and may leave behind. Taking rebel expertise seriously, I advise, is urgent in the current political and ecological landscapes of Colombia and for the design of possibilities of/for peace. My ethnographic engagement in this article suggests that humanitarian demining may be one of the post-agreement sociotechnical scenarios where rebel expertise could play a significant role. The embodied, local, and unusual knowledge of explosivistas may contribute to ongoing demilitarization efforts, socio-economic inclusion processes, and (always-partial) attempts to “undo the harm” of war. As humanitarian demining becomes a possibility and a hub for disarmament, reintegration, and redress measures addressed in the recent peace agreement, we must undertake not only the ongoing remnants of war (i.e. landmines), but also the explosive culture and epistemic configurations that made them (i.e. rebel expertise).⁸ How can we inherit, reimagine and repurpose this elusive and unorthodox technical knowledge to strengthen the possibility of peace?

The Pilot Project of Humanitarian Demining was a recent, if incipient, example of what can be done when the guerrillas are recognized as valid technical and political interlocutors. As an unprecedented experiment of peace, it was riddled with tension and friction – the conversation around demining professional expertise and the “simply empirical” knowledge of explosivistas is one example. However, the Pilot Project was a space for interaction and exchange that offered critical lessons about how to redirect the rebel expertise. It also confronted challenges for future demining actions with ex-combatants (e.g. to the extent that they have to comply with national and international standards, explosivistas certainly have to learn and follow official vocabularies, standardized practices, and safety protocols). Today, several Army deminers and guerrilla delegates who participated in the Pilot Project are working together in Humanicemos DH [which can be translated as Let’s Humanize Humanitarian Demining], the first mine-clearance organization founded and composed mostly of former FARC-EP combatants. Humanicemos seeks to offer socioeconomic incorporation of demobilized populations as well as to contribute to peace consolidation by participating in the comprehensive process of mine-clearance. There are other wonderful and unexpected examples of how to reorient the knowledge produced in and for war: former guerrillas leading projects of ecotourism, adventure sports, and specialized agricultural products. All of these efforts are, nonetheless, contingent and prey to the peace accord’s precarious implementation process.

6. Conclusion

In this article, artefacto explosivo improvisado is a conceptual thing that I use to contemplate and analyze Colombia’s explosive contamination, mainly its improvised landmines. I approach the fragile, unstable, and irregular nature of these devices by means of their material precariousness and the enhancement (rather than diminishment) of their explosive and non-explosive capacities. I understand the latter as a material affect: landmines are material and affective “fabrications of war” that can plant disinformation, uncertainty, and suspicion in rural territories and their inhabitants. Through artefacto explosivo improvisado I also address the guerrillas’ explosive culture – their material practices and technical knowledge of explosives. I explore ethnographically the skilled and risky bodywork of the explosivistas, their frugal practices to procure volatile matters, and the improvised character of guerrilla soldiers’ creations. This allows me to illustrate exactly how guerrilla soldiers produce knowledge and innovative technologies and frame their experience in terms of rebel expertise – an embodied, local, and informal knowledge practice able to challenge and enrich humanitarian demining practices and reconciliation and peace efforts.

In understanding their material and technical practices in terms of rebel expertise, I believe we might be able to imagine, engage, and bring together these experts and their embodied and creative know-how into promising – if humble – efforts that strengthen the possibility of peace. This article is motivated by my desire to pose questions about the potential role(s) of guerrilla soldiers, and particularly explosivistas, in times of post-agreement. As I have already stated, this inquiry is deeply informed by my ethnographic experience with guerrilla soldiers (and army deminers), who deployed their military expertise to clear landmines from contaminated rural territories. This is not an exclusively Colombian experience; on the contrary, the world of humanitarian demining is populated by former military personnel, many of whom start working in minefields that their armies installed. But this reality, more than offering clear cut answers, opens more urgent questions. I wonder: How can we inherit epistemic warfare stories and material configurations differently and generatively? How do we value and mobilize expert military knowledge in times of so-called postwar? How do we repurpose warfare expertise and practices without falling into the reproduction of martial (toxic) structures, so commonly present in the current humanitarian world? Finally, how do we include “rebel expertise” into increasingly professional peacemaking spaces, mostly populated by educated national and international authorities?

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Jennifer Terry, Julia Morales, Jessica Slattery, and Kirsten Zehring, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their generous readings of earlier versions of this paper. This article greatly benefited from their insights. I am also indebted to the explosivistas and demining experts with whom I talked throughout my fieldwork and with whom I still have candid and stimulating conversations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Diana Pardo Pedraza is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University, and a former Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Gender and Sexualities Studies at UC Irvine. She received a PhD from the University of California, Davis in Cultural Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Feminist Theory and Research. Her ethnographic work, based in rural Colombia, considers (de)militarized landscapes, post-conflict economics, environmental politics, and multispecies relations of aid and care.

Additional information

Funding

The author received financial support for the research of this article from the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies Dean’s office at UC Davis.

Notes

1 See Descontamina-Colombia’s official website for updated statistics. Information obtained on July 12, 2020, from http://www.accioncontraminas.gov.co/Estadisticas/estadisticas-de-victimas.

2 Recently, the Mine Action sector has agreed to call them “improvised antipersonnel mines” or, in Spanish, “minas antipersonal de fabricación improvisada.” Facing the increasing and systematic deployment of Improvised Explosive Devices in different conflicts around the world (for example, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria), this new term emphasizes the validity and scope of the provisions of the 1999 Ottawa convention, which prohibited the production and use of anti-personnel mines. Understanding them as a “mainly humanitarian problem,” rather than a technical one, the term favors “intentionality” over “materiality:” Improvised antipersonnel mines are designed to be activated by the victim and do not discriminate between citizens or combatants (I address this last point later in the article).

3 Inspired by Bruno Latour’s (2004) notion of “thing,” which he takes from the distinction proposed by Heidegger, I understand artefacto explosivo improvisado as an empirical thing that is already and always a knot of relationships, a gathering of material and semiotic practices.

4 On July 10, 2016, the government and the FARCE-EP announced the second preaccord peace initiative, the Pilot Project of Voluntary Substitution of Illicit Crops, which covered 11 villages, including El Orejón. This region was, and continued to be, an important supplier of coca leaves and presumably hosted several coca laboratories.

5 Political suspension is neither a transitional condition nor the privilege of a “post-conflict” enclave. Rather, it challenges the linear temporality and dichotomous states of these narratives. I am particularly critical of the term post-conflict. As it emerged in my fieldwork, post-conflict was a concept of profoundly political pacification that sought to appease the disagreements that have historically relegated and silenced local communities.

6 All names in this article are pseudonyms.

7 One can also suggest that the improvised nature of landmines in Colombia entails that they have an improvisational capacity – that they can do things beyond or even in spite of their explosive function. They act in unexpected, uncalculated, and even subversive ways. Landmines produce unscripted arrangements and incite ordinary and yet remarkable sociomaterial practices. The latter is evident in the movements, strategies and habits that local peasants developed and learned, by force and violently, to survive and coexist with the uncertainty of landmines and suspicious minefields. Faced with a permanent and permeating war, locals also had to divert, devise, and improvise.

8 In concrete terms, the 2016 peace accord included Mine Action in four of its six chapters. In chapter three, it does so through the abandonment of arms and the reincorporation of ex-combatants into civilian life; in chapter four, through the cleaning and decontamination of areas affected by landmines; in chapter five, through demining as a form of reparation and justice; and, finally, in chapter six, through coordination of demining processes with indigenous communities.