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The Contours and the Theory 1 Colombia is the third most populous country in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico, and as of 2012 is fourth in size in gross domestic production after Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. It was among the very few countries in the region with almost uninterrupted positive economic growth since the mid-1940s. Such development led to a common saying in Colombia that “it is a country of no busts and no economic miracles,” allowing the country to avoid the demons of the “lost decade” and the debt crises of the 1970s and 1980s, which plagued most of the region. Such stable economic performance contrasts sharply with the country’s political history marred with protracted wars and narcotrafficking. The country’s violent history has led some social scientists and policy makers to believe that an inherent cultural character has contributed to such violent outcome. Such belief is based on the fact that Colombia is one of the most violent countries in the world because of its high rates of political violence, criminality, and homicides amounting to 63.7 per 100,000 in 2000.1 The Colombian strand of violence has generated a fine literary genre, mostly in Spanish, attempting to address the root causes of violence focusing on its socioeconomic and political roots. The violontologos, as the students of violence are called in Colombia, have employed multidisciplinary approaches in their studies of this phenomenon that has caused in the last two decades more than 350,000 deaths and 2 million internal refugees threatening the social fabric and the very existence of the country.2 Moreover, in the last few years, Colombia’s violence reached higher proportions, spilling over its borders into Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Panama and becoming a threat to regional and international security. Cross-border military incursions, weapons contraband, and narcotrafficking are almost daily occurrences expanding the radius of the conflict increasingly involving new actors. Furthermore, narcotrafficking and its political economy compounded the problem, drawing into the conflict the U.S. War on Drugs. By 2000 the Colombian conflict became more entangled than ever with the competing interests of the different U.S. government organizations, agencies, multinational corporations, and politicians. Each of these groups has found in Colombia something to capitalize on, particularly after Colombia became –1– 2 SYSTEMS OF VIOLENCE the third highest recipient of foreign aid after Israel and Egypt. Consequently, Colombia will no doubt occupy a prime position in U.S. foreign policy in the succeeding American administrations. One will tend to assume that all of the above would have prompted more research and studies of the beleaguered country, but that was not the case. There is a serious paucity in the literature that almost every text written on Colombia starts by mentioning the lack of in-depth studies similar to the ones on Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Central America. This lack of interest in the United States has many causes, including the orientations and foci of the Latin American studies programs in the major universities, reinforced by the secondary position Colombia occupied in the U.S. foreign policy and strategic considerations. My study is an attempt to fill some of the scholarly void and to advance our understanding of Colombia. This book focuses on the conflict that ensued since the 1960s, which became the longest conflict in the country’s history and in Latin America. The protraction of the civil war in Colombia is by no means unique today since forty-nine similar conflicts are raging in Asia and Africa, which makes this study urgent. According to a study group from the University of Hamburg, of the forty-nine wars and armed conflicts, twenty-six had their origins during the 1990s, another eight during the 1980s, eight during the 1970s, five during the 1960s, and one started in the late 1940s.3 This book addresses two key issues: why conflicts protract, and when they do, what type of socioeconomic and political structural configurations make their peaceful resolution difficult to obtain. Addressing these two issues also can be useful to guide studies of other prolonged interstate wars. Most studies on revolutions and political violence are relatively silent on the causes of the protraction of civil wars and pay little attention to the functions of violence in the case of their long duration. The causes and outcomes of revolution received extensive scholarly attention during the last three decades, producing an impressive body of literature. Comparative studies of revolutions include...

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