Papers - Conference 2009 - Institute of Latin American Studies

parapolitica) drug-related violence steeped in terrorism and all kinds of so-calledordinary criminality. During the Nineties, the annual number of violent deathsoscillated between twenty-five and thirty thousand, representing a national rate ofeighty deaths per one-hundred thousand inhabitants, one of the highest rates in theworld. At least thirteen percent of these deaths (three to four thousand) are due topolitical violence that is massacres, disappearances or homicides perpetrated bystate agents or members of one of the armed groups in conflict against civilianpopulation. (CCJ, 2004, 4).The multiplicity of actors, the loss of the war ideology (because of the use ofterror instead of the appeal for social support), and the fuelling of the conflict bydrug trafficking have led to Colombia’s diminished position in terms ofinternational humanitarian law and also resulted in territorial fragmentation.The current situation has been shaped by a difficult and changeable politicalcontext based on: the collapse of the peace dialogues during the Pastranagovernment (1998-2002) with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia(FARC) guerrilla group; the dismantled or demilitarised zone in 2002; the electionby absolute majority of President Alvaro Uribe and the suspension of the peacedialogues with the guerrilla force Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN). Afterthe new president took office in August 2002, a series of new and highly contestedmeasures were taken by the new government: the declaration of a state ofexception; provisions allocated for a million civilian informants or“colaboradores” as paid by the government; the election of a re-elected president,as if he were new; and the peace dialogue between the Uribe government andparamilitaries (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC) with the purpose ofdemobilising the paramilitary structure and inserting it into civil society, underthe so called “Peace and Justice law” 2 . In the context of ongoing conflict, theincreasingly complex dynamics of war, the regionalising of motives and actors,and the rapidly changing territorial configurations, the search for examples ofsocial reconstruction is not an easy task. Rodrigo UPRIMNY speaks of the2law 975 of 20055