Violent Democratizations: Social Movements, Elites, and Politics in Colombia's Rural War Zones, 1984-2008 (review)

Colombia's political culture defies simple analysis. Oligarchs dominated its traditional bipartisan system, La Violencia cost several hundred thousand their lives, four major guerilla groups emerged during the National Front period, narcotics traffickers distorted the political system and created a potent black economy, governments alternately extended peace overtures or supported paramilitary action against guerillas, and international actors exploited the ongoing crises for ideological or geopolitical objectives. Leah Anne Carroll explores these national complexities through a multivariate regional focus and an insightful analysis that warrants close reading.

Violent Democratizations develops two complementary perspectives—the modeling of political processes and the analysis of contemporary Colombian history. Carroll examines Urubá, Cartagena de Chairá, and Arauca, all recently colonized zones with persistent social movements, guerrilla activity, and repression. Each region experienced a period of reform (1982-1992) during which social movements took advantage of political openings, and a counter-reform (1992-2008) wherein paramilitary and state armed forces limited the scope of democratization. The electoral gains of the reformist Patriotic Union (UP) stimulated the emergence of the repressive Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), which symbolized the post-1992 movement away from political democratization.

The dissection of local electoral processes is central to the success of the work. In Urubá, two unions grew in tandem with the rapid expansion of the banana industry in the 1980s. A ceasefire (1984-1985) between the federal government and guerilla groups led to the creation of political affiliates, UP for the FARC and ELP for the Popular Front, with impressive electoral success. Elite repression paralleled leftist political gains, compounded by violence between the FARC and ELP as the latter demobilized and reached a "pacted" agreement with elite forces. The FARC attacked the ELP-influenced Esperanza, Paz y Libertad party, and paramilitary forces ravaged UP candidates in the mid-1990s, sharply reducing the capacity of the left to sustain alternative political spaces. The author's attention to the sometimes collaborative and often conflicting political strategies of guerrilla organizations in the context of local electoral processes is a strength of the work.

Local and export-oriented economic activities shaped the scope and success of social movements in the three regions. Banana production in Urubá sustained a social movement closely linked with trade unions; oil production in Arauca yielded revenue that permitted a broader pattern of social investment controlled by municipal governments; while coca production in Cartagena de Chairá limited the profitability of legal political processes, enhancing conflict over territorial control.

The study pays nuanced attention to the influence of political process by forces from above and from below. Carroll notes that "state institutions and local political-military realities . . . shape social movements" and their repertoires (p. 306). The Colombian case, she concludes, supports the theoretical predictive value of the importance of movements from below. Political openings such as those of the regime of Belisario Betancourt moderate "social movement tactics and ideology, social movement unity, increased mobilization, and success and steps toward more institutional expressions of conflict" (p. 295). Gains by leftist politicians and social movements provoked a violent elite backlash in all regions, often with state collusion, resulting in the failure of social movements and enhanced elite power.

Carroll illustrates Charles Tilly's assertion that forces of globalization increasingly influence national social movements. During the counter-reform period, U.S. advocacy of neoliberal economic policies in the 1990s, and its powerful support for President Álvaro Uribe's repressive tactics under Plan Colombia altered the Colombian landscape. So too did U.S. congressional investigations, which along with anti-drug certification and the activities of transnational activity networks (TANs), reduced the repressive activities of the Colombian government in its support for the AUC and permitted groups such as the San José de Apartado Peace Community to influence the success of social movements in Urubá. The TANs narrowed the repertoires of social movements, as external members...