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2. The Problem as a Condition for Success: The Construction of Colombia as a “Problematic Country”

Author : Manuela Trindade Viana

Published in: Post-conflict Colombia and the Global Circulation of Military Expertise

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the main processes by which Colombia came to be framed as a problematic country through the consolidation of a specific rendering of violence: the activities of “narcoguerrillas” – and, since 9/11, “narcoterrorists” – funded by drug trafficking. First, it shows how, by the late 1990s, the Colombian problem was crystallized by bringing together specific understandings of the “problem of violence”, the “problem of drugs”, and the “problem of the guerrillas” around the issue of public order. Furthermore, it reveals how these renderings intermeshed with the so-called supply-side approach to the war on drugs advanced by U.S. agencies, thus also defying portrayals of Colombia as a mere receptacle of interventionist policies. By doing so, the chapter argues that these processes not only converged towards a delinquential and depoliticizing approach regarding violence in Colombia, but, fundamentally, that such approach defined the horizons of possible solutions sustaining the country’s “success story”. Once the problematization calcified as an issue of public order deriving from the activity of narcoguerrillas and narcoterrorists with military capacities paid for by drug trafficking, it became natural to see police, military, and intelligence counternarcotic expertise as the main ingredient for conceiving solutions.

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previous chapter Introduction

next chapter The Success and Its Monsters: Disputing the Metrics, Dodging Criticism

The “false positives” scandal involved the systematic killing of civilian non-combatants as combatants by the Colombian Military Forces. Their bodies were then dressed in guerrilla uniforms and presented as members of those armed groups killed in combat. In 2002, investigations led to the identification of 1,302 cases. For more information on the “false positives”, see: FOR and CCEEU (2014).

For an analytical overview of the literature on violence published in Colombia during the 1990s, see Peñaranda (2003) and González et al. (2003).

Periodizations such as this one are only used in this book as a general reference for the reader, for the determination of both a beginning and an end of an armed conflict is unescapably problematic. One of the main sources of inspiration for the way I see and approach armed conflicts stems from Cynthia Enloe’s works, despite the differences they present in relation to this book in terms of analytical object, methodology and arguments. When did the war in Iraq end?—asks Enloe in one of the chapters in Nimo’s War, Emma’s War (2010). By discussing how the war in Iraq has affected the trajectory of Maha and her family, by killing her husband, restricting her options for jobs, and narrowing the places where safety could be found, Enloe shows that, for Maha and her children, the effects of war surely transcend the ceasefire. I hope to provide in this book elements that allow for us to be as uncomfortable as Enloe as regards sharp periodizations of numerous violent chapters in Colombian historiography, as if one had no connection with the others and, above all, as if ceasefires and other official agreements sufficed for us to understand how war carries on in people’s lives even after no gun is shot.

See, for instance, Sánchez G. et al. (1962), Cardona (2008), and Pizarro (1987a).

The Commission was constituted by: Jaime Arocha R., Álvaro Camacho G., Darío Fajardo M., Álvaro Guzmán B., Carlos Eduardo Jaramillo, Carlos Miguel Ortiz S., Eduardo Pizarro L., Gonzalo Sánchez G. and General (r) Luis Alberto Andrade A.

Intriguingly, one year before President Barco appointed the Commission of Studies on Violence, he created another, formed by his minister of Government, Fernando Cepeda, and other members of the government, as well as renowned lawyers and high-ranked military officers. The mission assigned to this 1986 Commission was quite different: it was expected to study anti-terrorist legislations of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, given the concern of the government with mounting levels of violence (Orozco 1992: 174). Here, “terrorism” was understood in similar lines to what the Commission of Studies on Violence considered to be the most concerning kind of violence facing Colombia: one which was notably urban and non-political, and mainly perpetrated by civilians against other civilians.

In the original: “para producir un flash analítico, que a la vez que lee lo que pasa, recete algo fácil de digerir y operar en política pública”.

In particular contexts, guerrillas, drug traffickers and paramilitary groups tactically appropriated terms such as “political delinquent” depending on the benefits granted to this category, in order to obtain an advantageous position in a negotiation with the government, for instance (Orozco 1992).

In the original: “Una concepción punitiva del derecho internacional público, concebido a manera de un derecho público interno mundial, y cuyo corolario principal es una definición delincuencial – no política – de la guerra”.

Seen through this angle, the 1936 Penal Code actually inaugurated an expansion process that has never ceased in the following decades, with obvious repercussions to the Colombian penitentiary system (see, for instance, Uprimny et al. 2017).

Here, possession or trafficking was subjected to 3 to 12 years of imprisonment (Uprimny et al. 2017: 18).

See Articles 8–13 of the 1986 National Statute on Stupefying Substances.

In the original: “El que con el fin de crear o mantener un ambiente de zozobra, o de perturbar el orden público, emplee contra personas o bienes, medios de destrucción colectiva, incurrirá en prisión de diez (10) a veinte (20) años, sin perjuicio de la pena que corresponda por los demás delitos que se ocasionen con este solo hecho”.

In the original: “pánico a la revolución inminente por la vía insurreccional”.

In the original: “Los rebeldes o sediciosos no quedarán sujetos a pena por los hechos punibles cometidos en combate, siempre que no constituyan actos de ferocidad, barbarie o terrorismo”.

According to Thoumi (2002: 108), “In reality, these were not truly cartels with the capacity to exclude and control production but rather were syndicates that improved the efficiency of distribution. Smaller syndicates remained in the shadow of the two main ones”.

In the original: “operaciones de alto riesgo contra objetivos de alto valor, estructuras delincuenciales y organizaciones criminales tanto en ámbito urbano como rural, con el fin de preservar la convivencia y seguridad ciudadana en todo el territorio nacional”. This excerpt was removed from the COPES’ official institutional video, available at: https://www.policia.gov.co/especializados/copes#resena-historica. Accessed on 12 January 2021.

As with “narcoterrorism”, the category of “narcoguerrilla” had already been fermented in Colombia. The reports published by the DIJIN in 1987, for instance, highlight that “The re-emergence of violence in rural zones as a result of the merging between guerrilla and drug trafficking, which for years has been disturbing harmony and tranquility in rural Colombia, has reached unpredictable levels” (Policía Nacional de Colombia 1987: 226). In the original: “El resurgimiento de la violencia en las zonas Rurales como resultado de la fusión de guerrilla y narcotráfico que desde años atrás viene perturbando la armonía y tranquilidad del campo colombiano, alcanza imprevisibles niveles”.

Colombia was de-certified in 1996 and 1997, and certified on the grounds of national interest in 1998—all of them during Ernesto Samper’s administration (1994–1998). For more information on the tensions involving the U.S. and Colombia during this period, see: Crandall (2001), Isacson (2005), and Chernick 2008.

Importantly, the externalization characterizing the problematization of drugs in the U.S. also had effects inside its territory. By the early twentieth century, the prohibitionist discourse was based on the “moral degenerated habits” of specific social groups (mostly immigrants and blacks), to whom drug addiction was discursively associated (Campbell 1992: 205; Rodrigues 2008). According to Campbell, “Although they make up only 11 percent of the population, the black community's percentage of drug arrests has risen from 30 percent to nearly 40 percent since the emergence of crack” (Campbell 1992: 206). Although falling outside the scope of this book, which is concerned with how the logic of externalization affected the construction of Colombia as a “problematic country”, the analysis developed by Campbell highlights this double effect of externalization: identifying the “source of the problem” both in the “drug producing countries” and in the “outsiders” within U.S. society.

It is noteworthy that, although the paramilitary groups were also involved in the production of cocaine (Ronderos 2014), the expression coined by the U.S. government only refers to the guerrillas—asymmetry which is also evident in the operations backed by the U.S. (Villa and Viana 2012).

Chernick (2005) and Pécaut (2006, 2010), for instance, argue that the mobilization of drug trafficking resources by the guerrillas is not a sufficient condition for us to infer that these groups have put their political projects aside. According to these authors, the resources pursued by the FARC in narco-trafficking are in service of a political project. For Chernick (2005: 205), “[t]he Colombian experience suggests that resource mobilization (greed) alone does not explain the origins or the duration of the war. Other factors – such as grievances, ideology, leadership, military strategy, and international factors – are also key”.

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Title: The Problem as a Condition for Success: The Construction of Colombia as a “Problematic Country”
Author: Manuela Trindade Viana
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Post-conflict Colombia and the Global Circulation of Military Expertise
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-96102-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-96103-9

Copyright Year: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96103-9_2