In 2002, the authorities of Colombia's Antioquia department conducted a march for non-violence and reconciliation. It was an exceptional peace initiative in an area still dominated by armed groups. For several days the participants walked on peacefully. But when the march had nearly reached its final destination, armed guerrillas carried out an attack and kidnapped, among others, the governor of Antioquia, Guillermo Gaviria. The governor was killed by guerrillas in 2003 when a military rescue operation was on its way.
In In/security in Colombia, Josefina Echavarría introduces the example of the institutional Peace Programme in Antioquia as one of the regional initiatives during the Democratic Security Policy (DSP), the national policy under president Álvaro Uribe. As Echavarría argues, the DSP made such regional peace initiatives virtually impossible. In her book she analyses how the DSP not only failed to end the armed conflict but also ultimately fed the violence it had pledged to halt. The author points to alternative ways to achieve peace and argues for an approach of multiple peaces.
President Uribe launched the DSP with the promise of bringing back security to all Colombians in response to the failure of peace negotiations with the main guerrilla movement, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC). Drawing on Michel Foucault and Michael Dillon, Echavarría analyses the DSP as a blending of geopolitical strategies of sovereign power and biopolitical measures to regulate the population. Although the DSP initially focused on the guerrillas, it was aimed at other armed groups too, including paramilitaries. It was an offensive strategy against armed groups that continued to fight, such as the guerrilla movements, but armed groups willing to relinquish their weapons were offered a settlement, as in the case of the paramilitaries. The DSP led to some progress: guerrilla groups attacked by the army were driven back to corners of the country and paramilitaries laid down their weapons, but soon new armed groups emerged all over the country.
One of the basic assumptions of the DSP is that it is possible to reach a situation of security. Echavarría challenges this starting point. She points to the paradox that a state needs insecurities to reproduce itself dynamically as the provider of security. Given that it is impossible to achieve security, Echavarría calls for the acceptance of uncertainty, vulnerability and insecurity. The notion of a secure peace ‘keeps postponing freedoms until the time when violence and authority give birth to peace’. Paraphrasing Hannah Arendt, the author recognises ‘that it is insecurity and uncertainty which make us free’. Striving for peace, as Echavarría notes, implies living insecurely and ‘hopefully enjoying the possibilities for imagining political options that stop the political violence that the DSP reinforces’.
In her analysis of the effects of the DSP, Echavarría notes that the DSP created political identities that strengthened the boundaries between two groups of Colombians: those on the side of the government and those who failed to cooperate actively with the government. The latter comprised not only all enemies of the state such as guerrillas, but also those who strived for an approach of non-violence. The DSP, as Echavarría argues, is a discourse that closes down possibilities; it excludes ‘otherness’ from formal political spaces.
The book presents several case studies of approaches to a peaceful settlement in which political dynamics continue to exist. The most interesting cases are those of Antioquia's non-violence programme and the resistance discourse of the indigenous group Paeces del Cauca. In both cases tension arises between regional or indigenous authorities and a national government that demands compliance with the DSP. In Antioquia the regional authorities try to carry out their own non-violent policy, though still within the framework of a national DSP that includes military attacks on guerrilla groups. So, when Antioquia's governor takes part in a non-violent peace march, his situation is ambiguous. The march is attacked by a guerrilla group and the governor abducted, not because of his non-violent intentions, but because he is still considered a representative of the national DSP with its offensive means.
The situation of the indigenous groups is complicated. They have never taken sides in the armed conflict, but have often fallen victim in the crossfire of warring parties. The Paeces del Cauca have come up with their own non-violent approach in order to stay out of the armed conflict. However, the national government imposes the DSP on the indigenous groups; they can choose to be part of it or be considered part of ‘the others’, the enemy. There is no space for alternatives such as non-violent approaches, no space for a multiple peace approach.
Echavarría's views on the DSP are convincing, but I would like to comment on the sharp distinction she makes between ‘state’, ‘us’ and ‘others’. Such boundaries are often blurred. In Colombia ties have been revealed between government officials and armed groups, especially the paramilitaries. The parapolítica scandal has revealed the involvement of members of parliament with paramilitary groups. It is possible that ties between politicians and these paramilitary groups have influenced the ultimate views expressed in the DSP. Theoretically, it would be interesting to extend the conceptual framework with a model of interactions between government and armed groups, much in the same way as Desmond Arias has analysed such interactions between authorities and local armed groups in Brazil (Drugs and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: Trafficking, Social Networks and Public Security, University of North Carolina, 2006). Altogether, this book is an important contribution to the literature on the Colombian armed conflict.
