A Micro-Sociology of Violence by Jutta Bakonyi Berit Bliesemann de Guevara

Author:Jutta Bakonyi, Berit Bliesemann de Guevara [Jutta Bakonyi, Berit Bliesemann de Guevara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Military
ISBN: 9781317977957
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-06-11T04:00:00+00:00

The Repatriation of IDPS and the Construction of Social Orders of Violence

A fundamental problem in repatriating displaced peasant families to the Catatumbo was that they were brought back to a region where armed groups were still present and war was still going on. This fact was repeated time and again by the government officials who carried out the return, and it was criticised by the NGOs accompanying the peasants. If the conditions for repatriation under humane circumstances did not exist, why, then, I wondered, did the institutions and organisations which claimed to act on behalf of the displaced families support the decision of the peasants to return home? Why, in spite of all reservations, would they take them back into a war zone? Why did they not try to improve the living conditions in the town so that the IDPs could stay there?

Besides the statements of the government officials and NGO workers, there were many other hints during the journey of return that the Colombian state was not able to guarantee the security of the returning families, because it did not control the region but had to share its power with other forces. While the urban centre of the municipality of Convencion and its surroundings were controlled by the paramilitary and the military, the rural zone and its hamlets were dominated by the guerrillas. The most obvious signs that the Catatumbo region was divided into several realms of power were the AUC and military checkpoints we came across during the journey and an encounter with ELN guerrilleros.

The AUC stopped us when we re-entered the Catatumbo region during a second visit to see how the returned families were doing. At a road junction about two hours from Convencion a group of men, armed to the teeth, wearing military uniforms and bracelets with the AUC initials, awaited us. After a short talk with the representative of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) their commander allowed us to continue our journey. A few hours later we passed by a group of young men with short-cut hair and wearing military trousers. They were sitting in front of a small farm house watching us driving past with apparent disinterest – a group of ELN guerrilleros who were resting in the shadows of the verandah after having bathed in the nearby river, laundered their clothes and cleaned their weapons. On our way back the next day there was no sign of either the guerrillas or the paramilitary. In a village not far from Convencion we encountered a checkpoint set up by the military. A young soldier told us to get out of the car. Two others checked our identity cards, controlled our luggage, searched the male passengers for weapons and then let us go.

Besides these encounters with the different actors involved in the armed conflict – the guerrilleros of the ELN, the combatants of the AUC and the military – there were many other indirect hints during the repatriation that to get

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