Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000: Waging War and Negotiating Peace (review)

Given the dreadful situation prevailing in Colombia today it seems churlish to criticise any work that might shed light on the current violence. Nonetheless, I found Violence in Colombia a perplexing and somewhat unsatisfying volume. The work's laudable aim is to "provide English readers with a deeper understanding of the political crisis facing Colombia today" (p. vii), but I am not certain how far it succeeds in this goal. The reason for this is firstly that, although the SR publicity flier for the book claims that it is directed at all "those interested in Latin American history and political violence," in fact, it assumes a considerable degree of knowledge about Colombia. For example, the volume, while providing a large glossary and map, gives no indication of where such pivotal locations as Puerto Boyacá are located. Its ten chapters by and large offer neither a detailed exploration of the causes of Colombia's woes nor an historical introduction to them. Rather, the chapters, most of which are translations of works by Colombian social scientists, provide specific and not always overlapping studies of the Constitution of 1991, the impact of drug money on the Colombian economy, or the language used by paramilitary organisations in their communiqués. These chapters, some of which are excellent (Charles Bergquists's comparison of the late nineteenth-century War of a Hundred Days with the current guerrilla movement, for example, or Donny Meertens's analysis of the gendered impact of violence), do not really cohere into a satisfying whole. Issues raised in one chapter are not followed up in the next. The fine opening chapter by Gonzalo Sánchez, for example, hints repeatedly that useful contrasts might be made between today's Colombia and Central America in the 1980s, but it is followed, not by a sustained comparison between these two regions, but by a (historically under-researched) comparison between Colombia and Bolivia. This seems a missed opportunity. Secondly, many of the chapters, aimed as they originally were at an informed Colombian readership, do not provide the sort of detailed evidence necessary to satisfy a non-specialist audience. For example, Luis Alberto Restrepo repeatedly asserts that human rights organisations have directed their criticisms solely at the army, ignoring atrocities committed by leftist guerrillas, but he provides no evidence whatsoever for this perhaps correct claim. Similarly, Fernando Cubides insists that paramilitary organisations should not be confused with death squads (p. 129), but he does not offer any explanation of how such groups might differ. Many of the chapters are also supported by the most minimal of footnoting. I still don't know where Marx described "human rights" as "merely a cunning class ideology" (p. 111), because the chapter by Restrepo provided no references that might have allowed me to find out.

Although this book did not clarify to me why Colombia is now suffering from such a multiplicity of violences and strife, I did learn a great deal about the ways in which Colombian academics have been approaching these issues. Political and land-related interpretations are apparently regarded as inadequate; most contributors placed considerable emphasis on the futility of attempting mono-causal explanations. Nonetheless, the failure of the Colombian state to guarantee the safety of its citizens sits firmly at the heart of all analyses. The volume also includes a long and excellent "documents" section, which includes extracts from the Colombian government's 1999 Plan Colombia, from the 1992 correspondence between a group of Colombian intellectuals and the Coordinadora Guerrillera Simón Bolívar, and other contemporary texts. This section, while again tied only loosely to the ten analytical chapters, is interesting and provides a further sense of the flavour of current Colombian discourse. I should also add that the book has been highly praised by a number...