In their preface to Histories of Perplexity: Colombia, 1970s–2010s, editors Lina Britto and Ricardo López-Pedreros pose a foundational question: “Who is entitled to tell the stories of Colombia?” While the answer may initially appear straightforward—those who have lived through and suffered from the country’s violences—the question reveals the deep tensions inherent in Colombia’s historical narratives. Is the state a victim or a perpetrator of the violence that has marked the nation’s past? Do political elites, scholars, or international observers hold the authority to narrate this history? Or should priority be given to those historically excluded from the nation’s official memory?
Despite the abundance of scholarship on Colombia, the voices of Indigenous peoples, Afro-Caribbean communities, rural populations, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and victims of the drug war remain marginalized. One of the volume’s most powerful interventions is its insistence on recentering these perspectives. By engaging critically with dominant narratives, Histories of Perplexity reframes complexity not as a limitation but as a generative analytical lens. The editors conceptualize “perplexity” as a way to confront historical ambiguity, contradiction, and uncertainty—elements that are often smoothed over in more linear, state-centered accounts of Colombian history.
Bringing together contributions from more than 40 scholars based in Colombia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the volume spans a wide array of disciplines, including history, anthropology, political science, and cultural studies. Thematically, the essays analyze Cold War insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, neoliberal economic reforms, social movements, media dynamics, and the politics of memory. Each section of the book interrogates a facet of Colombia’s contemporary history, creating a mosaic of perspectives that highlight structural tensions and unresolved questions rather than offering a unified national story.
The first section, “Identifying Multiculturalism,” explores the intersection of cultural recognition and neoliberal reform. Following the 1991 Constitution, Colombia officially embraced its identity as a multiethnic and multicultural nation. Yet this symbolic shift coincided with the deepening of neoliberal policies that undermined the very communities celebrated in constitutional discourse. The authors show how multiculturalism, rather than empowering marginalized groups, often served to depoliticize their demands, transforming calls for land and justice into cultural issues that left economic inequalities intact.
In the volume’s second section, “Surveying the Territorial State,” contributors focus on grassroots resistance to state and corporate exploitation of natural resources. Through environmental justice struggles, these chapters examine how rural and Indigenous communities have resisted extractive policies and adapted the language of neoliberalism to assert territorial rights. Though rooted in local contexts, these movements offer insights into global struggles for land, sovereignty, and ecological survival.
The third section, “Unpacking Drug Trafficking,” addresses one of the most persistent and complex themes in Colombia’s modern history. While there is extensive literature on the drug trade, the essays here shift focus to its cultural, social, and symbolic dimensions. Contributors examine how drug trafficking has shaped everyday life, art, and public discourse. From music to visual culture, the section traces the emergence of narcoculture and narcoesthetics—forms of expression that challenge, reflect, and sometimes reinforce the pervasiveness of the illicit economy.
“Watching the Media,” the fourth section, examines how mass media and cultural production have constructed a neoliberal public sphere. The contributors demonstrate that the media is not a neutral platform but an actor that has shaped ideological consensus. In a context of political polarization, media outlets cater to segmented audiences, reflecting broader struggles between private, profit-driven narratives and precariously funded public initiatives. These chapters critique how the media reinforces or resists hegemonic visions of nationhood, citizenship, and democracy.
The fifth section, “Revisiting the Armed Conflict,” explores the lived experiences of those directly affected by violence, particularly women. Two chapters highlight how women in conflict zones have developed strategies of survival and resistance—often by navigating the very institutional frameworks that contributed to their marginalization. They also underscore how women have appropriated tools of the neoliberal state to carve out spaces of agency. A third chapter offers a novel analysis of a paramilitary leader, framing his failure not as a moral lapse, but as the result of his inability to form strategic alliances within the existing power structures.
The book’s final section, “Laboring with Memory,” explores how historical memory shapes and reshapes understandings of Colombia’s violent past and present. The authors address how different actors—state institutions, scholars, artists, and communities—engage in memory-making. One essay critiques the politics of truth, arguing that this is not merely an empirical matter but also an affective experience. Another chapter examines artistic forms of remembrance. The concluding essay revisits the Bojayá Massacre through a collaborative ethnographic lens. By integrating local conceptions of death and care, the author proposes a decolonial alternative to conventional forensic and legal responses to atrocity.
Throughout the volume, democracy functions as a deeply contested theme. Rather than portraying democratization as a linear or inevitable outcome, the book presents it as a fragile and ongoing process shaped by exclusion, violence, and resistance. The contributors reveal how formal democratic reforms, including those introduced after 1991, have often coexisted with structural inequalities and repression. Simultaneously, the book highlights alternative democratic practices enacted by communities and movements working from below.
Ultimately, Histories of Perplexity resists easy answers or grand narratives. Instead, it embraces the contradictions, silences, and tensions that define Colombia’s recent past. In doing so, it contributes not only to the historiography of Colombia, but also to broader debates about how to write history in times of crisis and uncertainty.
