Search

This reflection paper aims to provide insights into the gangs in El Salvador based on expressions of identity reconfiguration produced in the frame of a participatory photography experience with a group of men who belonged to those collectives. With their accounts, descriptions, and exercises of action-reflection they created an encounter of voices and views that dialogically analyzes, interprets and rebuilds some fragments from their realities, anchored to their realities and the meanings thereof. Identity in the context of a gang, the forms and meanings of violence as mediation in the social relationships, and the social stigma as a device producing the otherness are the three analytical lines allowing understanding how difficult it is to build an identity in the context of a stigmatizing society. All this also allows for the new self-concept built after the distancing from the violent practices as well as the awareness on the possibilities for change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism is a matter diversely studied in Colombia, particularly associated with the political figure of the assassinated leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitén. This paper first evaluates the meaning of populism in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico parallel to similar Colombian factors. With these arguments, the paper makes some critical assertions on the "populist" adjective that have accompanied the public profile of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, focused on the populist parameters of the Cono Sur's populism, and his government programs designed and proposed during the 30s and 40s of the 20th century. Finally, the paper observes the personal character of Gaitan, asking first if the leader was at least rather a pale popular than a real populist leader, as can be concluded by checking Iris relationships with the paradigmatical labor unions of Antioquia. The second part evaluates the contradictions of his personal low-class condition, which made him a person with a clear proclivity to climb into the Colombian "little bourgeoisie". As a central matter, this paper works around diverse expositions from the Colombian researcher Marco Palacios, so it does not focus on the analysis of the Latin-American populism as a whole or the diverse political-electoral perspectives of "Gaitan's phenomena" in Colombia, which almost all are concerned with his obscure assassination in 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an invitation to think about art and the legacy of violence and injustice in the history of mankind and the efforts from different artistic projects on conflict resolution and the promotion of peace in the world. Some of these experiences are presented and analyzed and it is examined how they have been applied by different disciplines to solve or make progress on some of the problems society faces. It is also important to think about the use of art, theater and creativity as a methodological strategy and as an exercise of participatory research that allows transformative research in the field of violence and teamwork from the affected communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we intend to address an analysis of the publication of domestic violence and femicide cases, through a survey conducted with four Argentine newspapers during the first half of 2012. We are interested in enquiring who the privileged representatives by the media are when reporting on the phenomenon, in order to distinguish the space of enunciation that the press gives to diverse actors. Through the analysis of the stories of aggressors, family, justice and victims, we intend to observe the diverse positions and the arguments involved and elucidate who has a louder voice in defining and fixing the interpretations of femicide and gender violence. Based on this, we seek to catch a sight of the reduced space women take up in a sea of voices in counterpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transformations in actor-network collective action in the Process of Black Communities --pcn--, which were developed as a consequence of the armed conflict worsening in the Pacific region --specifically on the collective lands in the municipalities of Buenaventura and Suárez (Southwestern Colombia)-- in the last ten years. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews, observation records, analysis of audio/text documents on the organizations' claims and communiqués, and the drafting of aggregated data on displacement and conflictual facts in the region. Findings show a significant up surging of conflict within the period, in the face of which PCN's coalitions with local and global actors have come both to neutralize and make visible armed actors' actions against populations, and to reorient collective action, introducing innovations in the repertoires of action and setting new goals for this actor-network in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Colombia, there are quantitative databases on armed conflict, some of them public and open-access. This paper reviews the main theoretical and methodological traits in some of those databases and their main features when defining and measuring political violence. Based on the results of a research performed in a Colombian region, several methodological issues will be presented in order to process --statistically, spatially and cartographically? the information delivered by those databases. After the exposition, several procedures are described, which allowed to measure differences among databases. Those contents are addressed aiming to show the consequences that using one or another database has in the quantitative analysis of armed conflict, since the results of those analyses will depend on the source used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires into the production of memories on violent events in two Antioquia municipalities, which from the 80's have shown alarming violence indicators. Thus, in the municipality of San Carlos violent events memories are framed within a context of a catholic society having homogeneous economic conditions, elites historically pertaining to the Conservative party, accelerated development processes, and living under hegemonic armed rule. In this scenario a certain consensus is achieved in the narrative of violence, aiming at dignifying victims and highlighting the high costs armed confrontation entails. In the municipality of Apartadó, violence memory is framed within a pluri-ethnic, lay and marginal society, immerse in accelerated development processes and unstable armed rule. There, a split memory is produced, featuring political identities routinizing and eventually justifying violent events. In the face of these cases, an attempt is made to keep the reflection on what kind of memories are required to stop reproducing war? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to show, in first instance, the existence of some "artifacts" as devices of memory, born out from various exercises conducted among communities having undergone violence. These devices are the "living" embodiment of underground memories that were gathered within various inquiry and extension projects by the research group. In the second part, a more theoretical reflection is put forward on the Memory/ Power relationship as the frame of discussion within which these experiences are situated, emphasizing two aspects: making visible those "spaces of power" where both memories are situated within today's Colombian society so as to show specifically how those spaces of power appear, as well as the instruments they make use of, qualifying memories either as dominant or underground; and to show those spaces, just like any other social process, are not immutable or unchangeable phenomena, but are prone to be transformed, redefined and even reconfigured up to leading all the way to make changes to differently distribute the resources of power leaving their mark on them. In a third final part, a reflection "as a working hypothesis" is made, which could be the way to change the issue at hand and suggest new paths aiming to shift the place in society for those underground (marginal, hidden and scarcely visibilized) memories and make them emerge to surface so that they can develop all of their political potential and get their due place in Colombia's historical memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Commission to Inquiry for the Causes and Situations Present on inland Violence, better known as La Investigadora, was founded in 1958 at the dawn of the socalled National Front. This research paper explains, based on some documentary sources and newspaper accounts, how in a context of transition negotiated by elites, this initiative condensed a set of official practices and narrative plots structuring the way the Violence would be politically and socially processed and represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Violence" in Colombia in the 1950's was closed without a trial of responsibilities, without reparation to the victims or a process to assimilate the meaning of what had happened. This paper shows that general Rojas Pinilla's trial at the Congress of the Republic between August 1958 and April 1959, was not only a way to confer legitimacy upon the political agreement in the National Front, but also a privileged scenario to challenge and discuss the responsibilities on the events, as well as an arena to build and recreate collective memory at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the narrative uses of ideas and values in the Democratic Security-policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe's government, and in the symbolic donation of money from the Danish organisation, Rebellion, to the guerrillas of the FARC in October 2004. The article delves into depth in the epistemological implications of these narrative uses and their political consequences, suggesting that both are ways of totalising meaning and reinforce frames of understanding characteristics of modernity, legitimising violent practices. The theoretical frame-work is provided by the thought of the Latin American modernity/coloniality research program, phenomenological and existential anthropology, and I lannah Arendt's thought. The empirical material consists of Danish and Colombian media-representations on the donation, documents from Rebellion's web-site, field notes of conversations led with persons in Colombia on the donation, and interviews with a spokesperson from Rebellion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]