21.08.2024

Jonathan Luke Austin and Albert-Dunker-Jensen (University of Copenhagen)

In 2024, Alberte Dunker-Jensen completed her MA dissertation in collaboration with HUD Principal Investigator Jonathan Luke Austin at the University of Copenhagen. The project focused on exploring the politics of political violence in Colombia, studying it as an ‘ecosystem’ in which different spaces – prisons, mountains, protests, and cities – are interconnected to produce deeply embedded violent dynamics. Alberte adopts what she calls a process of ‘radical co-design’ to guide her research, drawing on the work of Paulo Freire to suggest that:

Authentic thinking that is concerned about reality does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.¹Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 50.

In this, Alberte’s research connects closely to HUD’s overall focus on co-designing material, technological, and other interventions into humanitarian space. More specifically, the study fits within HUD’s early focus on unpacking through close social scientific study the dynamics of political violence in humanitarian settings before moving to proposing, as Alberte does towards the end of her study, possible interventions. Equally, the empirical focus of the study – ‘co-designing’ her research with former FARC combatants and victims of Colombian state violence – enriches HUD’s focus on humanitarian dilemmas in Colombia.

A summary of the project is immediately below, and an abridged version of the study follows after.

SUMMARY

This study explores political violence in Colombia as an ecosystem. It adopts a methodological approach of radical co-design and is based on six weeks of fieldwork in Bogotá, Colombia, conducted in the spring of 2024. The fieldwork included two primary groups of informants: formerly incarcerated ex-guerrilla combatants from the FARC and people who have survived ocular trauma inflicted by the police at national protests that took place between 2019-2022. Furthermore, it included observational studies from Bogotá and insights from conversations with average Colombians. The study is synthetic as it explores theoretical insights and passages of storytelling simultaneously to bring my informants’ stories to the front and foster honesty about my role as a researcher. Guided by my informants’ accounts, I identify four spaces of violence that will structure the thesis: prisons, protests, cities, and mountains.

Drawing inspiration from assemblage theory and using the body as a primary concept for analyzing violent dynamics across space and time within the Colombian context, the theoretical basis for exploring an ecosystem of political violence is laid out. Furthermore, two primary meta-concepts, oppression and resistance, are identified to facilitate the explanation of how the four spaces of violence come together in an ecosystem. Central to the understanding of these two concepts is how violence can be used as both a means of controlling subjectivities in the context of oppression as well as a mode of resistance for bodies that strive for liberation, creating politically violent tension.

In the analysis, the four spaces of violence are explored individually through the body, highlighting specific embodied concepts within each space, namely segregation, liberation, discipline, power, and resistance. Each space illustrates how bodies in interaction with physical space and society can be productive and create change – both towards violence and away from it. Oppression and resistance are present across all four spaces, and ultimately, the tracing of these two concepts showcases how violence can become the condition of its own reproduction, as the state’s fear of bodies leads to violent oppression, which leads to (potentially violent) resistance, in turn creating even more violent oppression, etc.

The study concludes on a note of hope by illustrating that this understanding of body and space implies that by changing physical conditions, embodied effects can change, too, and thus, violence might be halted. I argue that the fact that political good and political evil are united at their core by creativity means that love, non-violence, and free becoming can grow out of violence and oppression within the right physical environment.

1. POLITICAL VIOLENCE BEYOND THE PRISON

About six years ago, I was having dinner with a close acquaintance in a middle-class residential area in southern Bogotá. It was a slightly nicer neighborhood than most in this locality, with small parks scattered around, where hummingbirds eat nectar from hibiscus trees, and private security guards are on the lookout for suspicious people from small brick sheds constructed for the purpose. Over dinner, we discussed an article my friend had read in the Colombian Newspaper El Tiempo. The title read Storstrom, the Danish Prison that Looks Like a Luxury Hotel.²Rincón, D. (2018). Storstrom, La Prisión Danesa que parece UN hotel de lujo. Retrieved from: https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/europa/prision-de-storstrom-en-dinamarca-que-no-parece-una-carcel-170522 My friend disbelievingly reiterated what he had read about the supposedly lavish conditions people lived under in Storstrom and jokingly said:

Maybe I’d rather be a prisoner in Denmark than a free man in Colombia.

I did not think much of the comment then; I just laughed and listened to his stories about Colombian prisons with similar disbelief and curiosity. But as I have remembered it, it obviously made an impression. Thinking back, I find it interesting that these words were uttered in this safe area of hibiscus trees, hummingbirds, and private security guards. If, to him, trading his middle-class freedom in Colombia for privileged confinement in Denmark seemed a relevant joke, it might be a pertinent truth if the same option were presented to people living a short car ride away in Patio Bonito or Ciudad Bolívar, where the hibiscus trees are replaced with piles of trash that the municipality rarely picks up, and the private security guards with paramilitaries and gangs. The memory of this conversation foreshadowed a reality that revealed itself fully during the six weeks of fieldwork I conducted in Bogotá for this study. A truth about what it means to be free or confined in Colombia and the violence that this reality entails.

However, this story doesn’t start with these questions of freedom and confinement. It begins with me returning to Colombia to conduct fieldwork about political violence in prisons for this study, and soon after arriving, realizing that prison violence as such was not what mattered most to the people I talked to who had been exposed to it. At least not as long as this violence was understood in a vacuum. Violence in Colombian prisons is exacerbated, but it is not exceptional, and a central question quickly became how prison violence is connected to the larger network of violence, inequality, and oppression, which is hard not to be confronted with in the Colombian capital. During my fieldwork, through the conversations, interviews, and observations I made, recurring sites of violence, including as well as going beyond the prison, began taking shape. They formed an entangled web of political and social dynamics that illustrated how the violence and oppression, exceedingly present in Colombian prisons, are enforced by and feed into a broader societal ecosystem of political violence. I got to explore these connections through four primary, interdependent sites: Prisons, Protests, Mountains, and Cities.

In this study, I will explore different concepts related to political violence by traveling through these four physical spaces, guided by the life stories of my informants and the observations I made. Throughout this “journey,” I will investigate the tension between oppression and resistance, something I identify as central to political violence, by answering questions such as the following: How are different forms of political violence connected across spaces? What are the violent characteristics of oppression? How do bodies, in their relation to society and physical space, respond to oppression, and what might these responses produce in terms of resistance? How do these tensions create potentially selfperpetuating dynamics of political violence? How might such dynamics be halted?

2. Traveling to Bogotá: Loose Plans and Unanswered Texts

Before traveling to Bogotá, I put a lot of effort into securing access to the field. In doing so, I went through two primary contacts. One was an old Colombian friend and colleague of mine, Salomé, who had a far-reaching network among Colombian Human Rights NGOs; the other was a Danish contact working with NGOs with partners in Colombia. Through these connections, I established contact with what became my two primary gatekeepers, Inés and Martina. However, a challenge occurred: the difficulty in getting answers and making plans, a fundamental cultural difference between Denmark and Colombia I seemed to have forgotten. Consequently, on the day that I left Denmark for the field trip, I had only a vague idea about what my fieldwork would entail, as neither Inés nor Martina had given me a very clear idea about their area of work (aside from it somehow being related to violence and prisons) or how they could assist me. They often did not answer my texts for weeks at a time. Instead of planning, they said, “Let me know when you arrive, and we will see.” Consequently, I did not know what this meant for my fieldwork. This was honestly quite stressful.

While planning my field trip, I was reading The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. Freire stresses that “Authentic thinking that is concerned about reality does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.”³Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, p. 50. He further explains that trust, humility, and capacity to love are essential to communication and communion with people.⁴Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p. 142-3. This notion came to influence the way I looked at the planning of my field investigation. As you might have noticed above, trust and humility were challenging to me in the initial planning phase. I was slightly annoyed with my gatekeepers because they could not give me clear answers, tired of waiting for their responses to my texts, and skeptical about whether they would keep their promises. Reading Freire made me aware of the importance of letting these feelings go and not imposing my ideas about “the right way to plan” upon my contacts and potential informants. It made me realize that I needed to change my approach to the study. Instead of following predetermined plans and theoretical notions of what my study was about, my gatekeepers, informants, and I created the paths of the investigation together⁵Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p.154., and as they suggested, along the way, when I had arrived. In other words, radical co-design became a methodological basis for and a practical approach to the investigation.⁶See, e.g. Perez, D. (2023). It is time for radical co-design. Flourish by Design, 113.

3. Cities and Segregated Bodies

In Bogotá, the people of the working class start and end their days in punches.

This is the slightly depressing but very accurate way in which Eduardo6, a middle-aged university professor with whom I had several black coffees throughout my six weeks in Bogotá, described daily life for the lower- and middle-class Colombians living in the country’s capital. You might expect the quote to symbolize the structural hardships that poor people in the unequal Colombian society must endure to make ends meet. However, as much as this interpretation could also be true, Eduardo’s meaning was, in fact, very literal. So, what does it mean to say that working-class Bogotanos literally start and end their days in punches? The short answer is that they need to go places. The long answer starts with the primary system of public transport in Bogotá called the Transmilenio. It is a network of exclusive-lane buses that go through most parts of the city. To enter the buses of the Transmilenio system, you need to go through stations situated at the center of the street. These stations are built to be complicated to enter without paying. They are small rectangular cages of glass and fence with poles sticking out of the ground separating the standard road for private cars from the lanes of the Transmilenio, preventing people from crossing the street illicitly and entering the station through the glass doors that open when a bus stops in front of them. Within the station, police officers and people in yellow vests guard both sides of the fenced walls. Boiling it down, the way Sofi, a volunteer lawyer at one of my contact organizations, described the Transmilenio, says it all: “It feels like you’re in prison.”

For working-class Colombians, who typically live in the south part of Bogotá and in and around the center of the city, the Transmilenio is the quickest means of transportation. However, it is not fast per se. The buses and stations are vastly overcrowded, and during rush hour, getting on a bus and heading towards the center means starting your day in punches. Let me paint the picture of mobility in Bogotá:

You wake up at 5.00 am to make it to the Transmilenio station by 6.00 am. As you approach the station, you cross a long, winding metal bridge passing over the busy street below. You enter the station, pushing through a rotating barred door. The station is already filled with people hurrying along the platform to find the bus they need. You hurry along with them, looking at the color-, letter-, and number-coding directing you towards buses going in different directions. You find the right combination stuck above a line of glass doors where a crowd is already waiting. They are not forming a line but huddled together in front of each glass door. As more people join the huddle, they enter from the sides, trying to make their way as close to the door as possible. It is now 6.10 pm, and the first bus arrives. As it pulls up in front of the doors, already filled to the brim with people pressed against each other, the huddle starts to move. People push collectively forward, and as more people join from the sides, you are locked in the middle of the huddle and pushed backward. A particularly persistent man trying to press through the crowd is elbowing his way ahead, and the people around you defend their spot in the “queue,” pushing him and everyone else around them back. Several people yell out in discontent. The doors of the bus start to close while the crowd keeps pushing forward and someone in front of you yells “calma, someone is stuck in the door!”. Then, two people start pushing the bus door to each side while a third person pushes an arm through its opening. The person enters, the doors close, and the bus leaves. It’s now 6.20, another bus arrives, and the process repeats itself, but this time, you are more assertive with your elbows—you need to move ahead if you want to get to work on time. Still no luck. The third bus arrives a few minutes later, and this time, it is less crowded, so most of the people waiting at the station can enter. The crowd moves from behind, and you are almost carried into the bus. The doors cannot close, and the crowd is pressing tightly against each other, almost spilling out of the bus. The people at the platform help by pushing the doors, further compressing the bodies inside. It is now 6.30. The bus will arrive at your destination in an hour and a half. In 8-9 hours, when the day of work is done, you repeat the process.

As if this process of entering and exiting the overcrowded buses during rush hour wasn’t violent enough, this is not the only kind of everyday violence you encounter in the Transmilenio. Let’s start by looking at the price, which in 2024 is 2,950 Colombian pesos (0.76 USD). As more than 60% of the Colombian Population lives for under 10 USD per day, and about 20% live for under 3.65 USD a day, 2 dollars daily on transport is a significant amount.⁷See World Population Review. (2024). Wealth Inequality by Country 2024. Retrieved from
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country and World Population Review. (2024). Poverty Rate by Country. Retrieved from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country. For this reason, many people try to enter the station without paying, which is complicated by the fences, poles, bars, and guards. As a result, a lot of poor Colombians have died in an attempt to evade the fare, which in 2018 alone led to at least 11 deaths and 42 injuries.⁸See Cerón, J. (2019). Colados aumentan el número de víctimas de transmilenio. Retrieved from
https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/los-colados-entre-las-victimas-de-accidentes-entrasnmilenio-
321632. Another very recurring element of daily violence in the Transmilenio is sexual and gender-based violence. People are pressed up against each other, and many women experience groping and other unwanted approaches in this context. In an investigation by UN women, 26% of the questioned female users of the Transmilenio said that they had experienced sexual violence within the preceding week.⁹ONU Mujeres. (2018). Ciudades Seguras y espacios públicos seguros: Informe de resultados globales.
Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/es/digital-library/publications/2017/10/safe-citiesand-
safe-public-spaces-global-results-report. The report further showed that 38.4% of the women included had decided to not use the Transmilenio because of the fear of being exposed to sexual violence. An option not available to everyone.

What is described above is one of Colombia’s most common rhythms of everyday urban life – something as basic as public transport. However, it is essential to remember that this is the rhythm of life reserved for lower-middle- and working-class Bogotanos. The poorest of Colombians might sometimes have the money for the fare or be successful with bumming the ride but might also choose to avoid the trip to save money. People with more resources will typically opt to go by car or motorbike or have private drivers, allowing them to get work done while moving through the slow morning traffic of Bogotá. But essentially, for the less well-off Colombians, your mobility around the city is dependent on exposing yourself to long, exhausting trajectories in overcrowded spaces, where you constantly expose yourself to different types of aggression and violence. To live a life and keep a job, you literally need to start and end your days in punches.

It is not just the sheer injustice of this inequality that is interesting about the multi-layered segregation created by Bogotá’s system of public transport. The segregation also serves a political purpose. As Gabriela, an old friend of mine and a daily user of the Transmilenio, expressed it:

Marica¹⁰Marica is a term which, in its direct translation, is a derogatory word for a queer person. Today in Colombia, it isused positively to stress a point or call attention. It could be translated loosely to “buddy” or “dude”., people who spend 4 hours in transport every day don’t arrive at home and start planning the revolution.

Gabriela illustrates that segregation can also become an embodied mode of oppression. As someone who has traveled in the Transmilenio frequently during rush hour, I can attest that it is exhausting. As most working-class Colombians live in what is termed “popular neighborhoods” in the south and far north of the city and work in the center, it is not uncommon to spend two hours each way getting to and from work. Thus, the bodily limitation of becoming exhausted could be seen as a structural means of control of the population, which does not have the energy to resist the inequality and segregation that they face. I am not arguing that the harsh conditions of the buses are an intentional “evil scheme” for controlling the masses. But even when considering it un-intentional, the exhausting effect of the Transmilenio would be the same. The structure of segregation thus becomes a self-perpetuating system of oppression as long as the reality of it is as described above. Paulo Freire expresses that the division of people preserves the status quo and, thereby, the power of the dominators.¹¹Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p. 119. Combining the segregated city planning with the segregating public transport, the reality of a city like Bogotá is the division that these facts create. In Freire’s words, if the population is divided, they will always be easy prey for manipulation and domination.¹²Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, p. 118.

4. Mountains: Liberated/Disciplined Bodies

On a sunny afternoon in April, I was having lunch with a few of my informants on a farm in the mountains on the southern outskirts of Bogotá. The farm was the base of a social project, which was run by former FARC combatants and worked in different ways with the implementation of the peace treaty. I told one of them, Mariana, how calming I found the mountains and that I had not known that you could find such views just an hour and a half from the city center. She agreed with me, and I asked her how she enjoyed life in the city. She said that for security reasons, the city was a good option. Still, she had a hard time adapting to the chaos and the laziness that she felt characterized it: “People stay in bed until 11 here, and then they do not have any plans for their day. In the guerrilla camp, we would all get up at four in the morning”. She then went on to explain the structure of a day in such a camp:

You wake up at four in the morning, where everyone washes. Breakfast is served at five. Then, there is the morning meeting, where activities are assigned for the day. At six o’clock, it’s time for combat training until a snack is served at 11. Then people divide out for activities – cooking, education, washing, cleaning, building … what is needed. Lunch is served at 1, and practical activities continue after. Dinner is served at 6, followed by an evening meeting ending with a community sing-along and then relaxing before everyone, aside from the guards, would be in bed at 9. The same thing every day. This structure, to me, was very nice. Part of it I have brought with me to the city. It is a discipline that many “normal” people do not have. I would never stay in bed until 11.

In this section, I will investigate how guerrilla camps, such as the one Mariana lived in when she was a FARC militant, are connected to the other spaces of the ecosystem of violence I am tracing and the role they play in it. I explore the embodied experiences of life and violence in the guerrilla camps, as my informants have described it. I base the analysis on one central assumption: Inequality, segregation, and oppression, which are an ingrained part of society, are a central reason why violent insurgency has occurred to the extent it has in Colombia. However, more is needed to sufficiently explain why people take up arms. As many scholars have pointed out, if simply perceiving unfairness was enough to become violent, many more people would be.¹³Austin, J. L. (2020). The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil. Security Dialogue, 51(6), 537–556; Van Den Bos, K. (2018). Why people radicalize. Oxford Scholarship Online. Indeed, many more Colombians would be. Which part of the equation is missing?

Insurgency and armed conflict have played a crucial role in the entire history of Colombia¹⁴Tompkins, P. J. (2014). Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Colombia 1964-2009: viii., especially in the past fifty years of civil war where the guerrillas gained force, and FARC became the largest of its kind, counting more than 20,000 combatants at its peak.¹⁵BBC News. (2016). Who are the FARC? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latinamerica-36605769 This plays a crucial role in Colombian dynamics of violence. Coincidentally, I got the chance to study this topic as I was introduced to former FARC combatants who were all signatories to the peace treaty and had all been to prison. Although the initial focus of our meetings was talking about the time they spent in prison, the conversation never stuck to this topic – they all kept referring to their time in el monte¹⁶El Monte translates directly to “the mountain” but should in this context be understood conceptually as a reference to the mountains as the location of the camps – or in fact many different camps in many different mountains around all of Colombia., other political issues aside from prisons, and “normal society” such as the cities, where many of them lived post-peace treaty. Connections between spaces were taking shape, and in investigating these, the first question I wanted to answer was: Why do people join? In interviews and conversations with former guerrilleros, they all in one way or the other, described inequality, lack of opportunity, violence or oppression as their reason for joining the guerrilla, and often, they had very personal experiences of these concepts. Lucía, a middle-aged former guerrillera who now lives far out in the countryside in Antioquia and who frequently posts WhatsApp stories about her children, plastered in heart-shaped emojis, described her time in the mountains as lo máximo – the best time of her life. She joined the FARC when she was 15 years old and told me the following about her decision to do so:

Before, when I was at home, in the countryside, living a life, well, with my family. Eh … Living through unbelievable conditions of violence, which makes one think: why are we even alive? And all of that led me to start thinking differently and that is why I joined the FARC. This change, from living as a farmer as a child to joining the FARC, is very rough. Because you bring the life you lived at home with you. And then you go, and you pick up a rifle in the mountains to live the life of a soldier; it is not easy. No. So, that, for me, was a change.

Political frustration is at the heart of Lucía’s decision to join a guerrilla. Another informant, Fercho, described how seeing the realities of Colombian society gave him “[…] certain clarities, convincing [him] that [he] should support the fight from the left.” José said about FARC: “Estamos para defender el pueblo”—we are here to defend the population. But, as I have already mentioned, although this ideological motivation is important, it is insufficient.

In search of the missing link of why some people join movements of violent resistance, I point to a tension in what Lucía said to me. Initially, without hesitation, she describes her life in the mountains as the best time of her life. This was the case for nearly all my informants. But she immediately goes on to describe it as something that was also incredibly hard—again, recurring for most of my informants. Initially, I did not know what to make of this paradox. Which of the two representations was true? If leaving behind your family and the life you know to live a life of violence is indeed hard (which I believe most of us could agree that it would be), how are people capable of doing it, and how does the process end up even being recalled as happy? In Austin’s words, “How does somebody really forget, give up on, and turn away from one world in order to enter another?”¹⁷Austin, J. L. (2020). The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil. Security Dialogue, 51(6): 544. Lastly, what implications does this have for understanding insurgency as part of the ecosystem of violence?

In the former section, I argued how confinement and oppression of Colombian society deprive people of the opportunity to engage in critical reflection.¹⁸Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 58. This relates to questions of education. Education was a prevalent theme among the ex-combatants, who described it as a crucial part of their experience with the FARC. In this context, it is essential to understand the difficulty of accessing education in Colombia. In the countryside, small children travel great distances by foot or animal to get to school, and from middle school and up, public education might not be accessible at all in remote parts of the country.¹⁹El Espectador. (2022a). En colombia 3 de cada 10 personas en edad escolar no están estudiando, ¿Por
qué? Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/educacion/en-colombia-3-de-cada-10-personas-en-edad-escolar-no-estan-estudiando-por-que-noticias-hoy/ This also means that three out of ten school-age children are not studying. Public schools are of inferior quality, and private schools are expensive, meaning that children from impoverished families are less likely to receive a good education.

For this reason, FARC supported the education of their members and aspiring members. Fercho described this as “arming yourself academically for the organization,” which he saw as crucial to being a good guerrillero. I came across many accounts of how FARC would pay for the high school education of children of members or youth who had shown interest in joining the forces.²⁰Semana, R. (2024). Internado Construido por farc en el Yarí Pasará a manos del estado y gobernación de meta; Busto de Gentil duarte fue retirado. Retrieved from https://www.semana.com/politica/articulo/internado-construido-por-farc-en-el-yari-pasara-amanos-del-estado-y-gobernacion-de-meta-busto-de-gentil-duarte-fue-retirado/202443/ My informants would also tell me about the different kinds of education they would receive in the mountains, such as lectures by more educated members, discussions, and readings that they would be assigned as part of their daily activities or be taught to read or write if they were not able to. Lucía put this experience very plainly:

I’m truly very grateful to the leaders of FARC. They shaped me, helped me, saw me grow up, and gave me theory. How incredible it is that they gave me formación.

I believe the Spanish word formación to be central here. The word has several meanings and is indeed closely related to the word education; in some contexts, it might even make sense to translate it as such. But the word formación conveys a deeper understanding of what education means: a more personal experience of developing and taking shape, to form yourself rather than being molded by a society that does not provide access to critical inquiry. As Freire puts it, “education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncompleted beings in a likewise unfinished reality.” ²¹Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 57. Violeta, the older sister of Mariana, expanded on this point when she said:

They want us to stay dumb.²²Originally: “Nos quieren brutos”. “They”, meaning “the ones in power” and “us” meaning “the poor.” And that is precisely why we educate ourselves.

She stresses how the lack of access to education is perceived as a means of oppression and, thus, how formación becomes a tool of resistance and liberation. Fercho stressed this point: “Knowledge is what makes us free.” Education, therefore, produces a feeling of becoming oneself and being able to take part in shaping an “unfinished reality” – in being able to fight and resist. This implies that I see formación as an embodied experience. Something which is perceived as liberating and which, for many members of FARC, could not have been achieved otherwise. In essence, what FARC does in providing education is that they take a bet, expecting that by getting access to education, their (prospective) members will see past the smoke screen obscuring the reality of injustice and oppression as the modes of ocular violence I described in the former section did. They will want to revolt against it. In other words, they take a bet that potential members, through education, will go through a process of deformation of the way they have already been molded, allowing them to cultivate a revolutionary identity, which is, in turn, a first step in the process of removing yourself from society and going to the mountains.

5. Prisons: The Body as Power

I want to bathe in a pool full of subversive blood.²³Author’s translation of “Me quiero bañar en una piscina llena de sangre subversiva.”

This is the chant that José described being sung every day by the guards in La Picota prison in Bogotá when they were doing counts or marches around the prison. It was just one of the examples he gave in explaining the relationship between correctional officers and incarcerated guerrilleros, a relationship that my informants felt was characterized by targeted repression toward them.

As mentioned before, the guerrilla movements in Colombia, including the FARC, have been responsible for many atrocities in the country.²⁴Comisión de la Verdad. (2022). Cifras de la Comisión de la Verdad Presentadas Junto con el informe final. Retrieved from https://web.comisiondelaverdad.co/actualidad/noticias/principales-cifrascomision-de-la-verdad-informe-final Considering this and the fact that these movements are created with a revolutionary ethos challenging the existing political establishment, it should come as no surprise that the Colombian government has responded militarily to the growing of violent insurgent movements within its borders. Without going too far into this discussion, it could easily be argued that counterinsurgency, especially in response to violence against civilians, is necessary and justified. However, one thing is the government response; another is if counterinsurgency matches, or surpasses, the violence levels that the response is allegedly fighting. The notion of correctional officers “wanting to bathe in subversive blood” hints at a culture of counterinsurgency characterized by “blood thirst” rather than protection. In this section, I will thus explore how Colombian counterinsurgency is carried out by looking at the treatment that my informants experienced during their incarceration, seeing the prison as a heterotopic space, which mirrors and contradicts dynamics present in general society. It should however be made clear that while mirroring wider society, the prison is also a space of violence, where real bodies are affected in tangible ways. The arguments presented in the following should thus be considered an account of both.

Prison in Colombia was not described as a pleasant experience for anyone there. However, my informants all highlighted that as incarcerated FARC combatants, they faced targeted and systematic repression, which, according to their perception, went beyond the general conditions of violence in the prisons. As my informants have given very detailed accounts of the repression that they experienced within the prison specifically, I choose to interpret the prison as a heterotopic microcosm of Colombian counterinsurgency, aiming to illustrate through this analysis how the state utilizes bodies in a convulsive attempt at asserting its power.

In aiming to give an idea of the violence that my informants experienced in prison, José introduces Colombian prisons in the following way:

They make sure that you know where you have arrived. Initially, in the way the guards treat you. They strip you; they punch you; they insult you. Then, in the look of the cells with no access to water … dirty with rats. In every way, the prison makes it clear to you that you are going to have a horrible time here.

This general experience of the prisons was echoed across all interviews. Insults from the guards, specifically directed towards them as “subversives,” being randomly kicked or punched, the prison’s architectonic structure, and indeed the lack of access to water and other types of basic infrastructure were some of the conditions I will investigate further.

To this end, I wish to introduce Román. A grandfather of three who, post-peace treaty, works as an auto mechanic in a village outside Bogotá and who is also known to be the FARC combatant who has spent the longest time in prison. He was punctual, very polite, and blatantly honest. He was incarcerated for over 20 years, and he spent more than three hours describing this period of his life in detail. While his story was, of course, centered around the violence perpetrated against him, he would not shy away from sharing stories about his own violent behavior. As he said: “If you treat me like an animal, an animal is what you get. But if you treat me like a person, that’s what I’ll be”. Animalistic treatment was indeed evident in my informants’ accounts of the prisons. Román showed me some of the scars that he had acquired from the torture he had been exposed to when he was initially captured by the military, explaining different surgeries he had needed to retain normal functions afterward. Many of my informants had been in custody by the Colombian military for days before being presented before a judge, a time during which they would undergo different kinds of torture. They typically feared that they would be killed and forcibly disappeared.

Once they had been transferred to the prison, the physical violence continued as “a constant repression of being beaten, gassed with pepper spray … or in many cases being isolated,” as Fercho described it, something that was a general way of punishing all prisoners, but which was exacerbated towards the combatants. Román explained how he had been put into isolation cells for months at a time without any explanation and, at one point, was in almost constant solitary confinement for five consecutive years. Another method of isolation was the continuous relocation of the combatants between maximum-security prisons to keep them from building too strong connections or gaining influence. Furthermore, Fercho highlighted that:

A process of persecution begins inside the prisons towards our families. So, the restriction for political prisoners … to have visitors was very significant. Our families were persecuted. At the time of admission, it was… A lot of harassment was committed.

Fercho described how family members would receive death threats and be detained or abducted as they were leaving or entering the prison. Women would need to dress in short skirts and low-cut blouses to be allowed to enter by the guards who did body searches on them. Román described how wives and girlfriends of the combatants would, in some cases, become victims of rape by guards or other prisoners. Aside from the obvious mental terror of such cases, it also meant that the prisoners would distance themselves from their loved ones in an attempt to keep them safe, resulting in further isolation and distancing from the world outside the prison and, in some cases, outside the guerrilla.

Upon re-examining this violence as a reflection of broader counterinsurgency strategies, it becomes evident that the violence inflicted by the Colombian state on incarcerated combatants extends beyond simply neutralizing them as a source of violence. This raises an important question: what purpose does this excessive political violence serve? I will argue that it primarily serves two connected purposes: 1) unmaking the world of the people subjected to it and 2) asserting the state’s power. About the first purpose, Lucía described how the conditions of the prison, “where everything is torture, where everything is limited” […] “would shut down (apagar) any human being.” Fercho said that in prison, “You die while still being alive.” Román said, “If you are not very clear, that’s it. You lose who you are/you lose your personhood”²⁵Original quote: “se pierde la persona”, which could alternatively translate to “the person gets lost”. Could meangetting lost as much as losing something., or as you will recall, if you are treated like an animal, you become an animal. Elaine Scarry argues that pain is a profoundly individual experience as it can neither be shared nor denied.²⁶Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 4. Through this process, it isolates and challenges the sense of self and reality of the victim.²⁷Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 36. Tying this argument, to the experience of being “shut down” or “dying while alive,” what can be identified is a process of destruction. A loss of the formación of themselves that they gained in the mountains – a loss of who they are – caused by the intense pain they are exposed to in the repression of the prison, obliterating their psychological content.²⁸Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 34.

Scarry’s exploration of violence and pain extends beyond the body, and comments on the connection between the self and the material world. She argues that torture converts every aspect of the event and its surroundings into an agent of pain.²⁹Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27-28. Intense pain becomes world-destroying, and violence in this regard represents the structure of unmaking.³⁰Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 23, 29. In other words, the torturer uses the person’s aliveness (their body) to crush the things he lives for, such as freedom, relationships, opportunities, and ideas, thus rendering them less of a threat.

Moving on to the second purpose of this repression, Scarry describes that the infliction of pain can be used as an active means of control of the bodies that suffer it and elaborates that:

[…] physical pain is so incontestably real that it seems to confer its quality of “incontestable reality” on that power that has brought it into being.³¹Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27.

Thus, “human pain can be converted into a regime’s fiction of power.”³²Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 18. This implies that as the Colombian state is systematically inflicting pain upon the already incarcerated bodies of insurgents, it is attempting to assert its power through an excessive display of agency. A critical thing to note is that it is precisely the fragility of the regime’s power that leads to the utilization of violence in an attempt of asserting that the reality of its power is as tangible as the pain it produces. In other words, the genuine threat that the guerrillas, and other movements of rebellion and protest, pose to the power of the Colombian state, is what leads the state to take up the extreme means of violent repression that my informants describe.

Going a step further, I suggest that this analysis implies that the Colombian state is not just fighting the violence of guerrilla insurgency but also the ideas behind the insurgency. Throughout the interviews, my informants referred to themselves as being perceived as “the internal enemy” of the state. However, the internal enemy was not just the combatants, who have taken part in violent movements, but also had a more abstract form; Marta, a friend of a friend who had worked with political prisoners for many years, termed this abstract internal enemy “the communist ghost.” Noting that until 2022, Colombia has never had a left-wing government.³³Murphy, M. (2022). Gustavo Petro: Colombia elects ex-rebel as first left-wing president. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61860887, I suggest that socialist ideas are, in fact, much more feared than the guerrilla combatants themselves. The attempts at not just pacifying the combatants by putting them in jail but also destroying their sense of self and world is a testimony to that. However, ideas are much harder to encircle and grasp than bodies and, thus, much more difficult to control and repress. Ideas cannot be locked up or shot dead in (or outside of) combat. Consequently, the bodies of the combatants become the battleground of fighting socialist ideology. The only possible way the Colombian state can assert its power over the revolutionary thought that is also constantly produced in the mountains alongside violent skills.

6. Protests: The Body in Resistance

From 2019 to 2021, Colombia witnessed widespread, largely peaceful protests sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and then-President Iván Duque’s proposed reforms that would increase the cost of living.³⁴Cascio, A. (2022). Un año de la movilización que cambió todo en Colombia. Retrieved from https://www.elsaltodiario.com/america-latina/fotogaleria-ano-paro-nacional-movilizacioncambio-todo-colombia During the protests, which spread to all the big cities, Colombian NGOs and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) registered high numbers of police violence against protesters, including 46 protesters killed, 1,970 cases of detention, 60 cases of sexual violence, at least 192 cases of disappearance, and 103 cases of eye injuries between the 28th of April and the 26th of June of 2021 alone.³⁵The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR). (2021). El Paro Nacional 2021: Lecciones Aprendidas para el Ejercicio del derecho de reunión pacífica en
Colombia, diciembre 2021 – Colombia. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/report/colombia/el-paro-nacional-2021-lecciones-aprendidas-para-elejercicio-del-derecho-de-reuni-n Because these protests were so recent and violent, they were a recurring theme in conversations I had in Bogota. One group of people’s stories will be at the center of this section: the people who suffered injuries to their eyes.

On the 8th of March, I went to the International Women’s Day march with a group of potential informants. They were all formerly incarcerated women and were part of an organization fighting for the rights of female prisoners. The contact with the organization did bear fruit, but participating in the demonstration shaped the study. The people who were going to participate in the Women’s march united in the business center of Bogotá, right outside the Ministry of Labor. A lot of people had shown up. Drums were playing, people were chanting, and small explosions went off, filling the air with purple and green smoke—the colors that represent the feminist fight and the fight for free abortion in Latin America. Happiness and anger seemed to fill the air, as well as a social electricity I have only experienced in Latin America. The procession was walking along the Carrera 7 towards the Transmilenio station of the National Museum. Getting closer to the station in front of the museum, the crowd began to chant: “Pinta, pinta, pintapintapinta!”³⁶“Pinta” translates to “Paint!” in the imperative form. and “cerdo, cerdo, cerdo.”³⁷“Cerdo” translates to “pig”. The object of these chants was impossible to overlook. The Transmilenio station was surrounded by officers with their faces covered by helmets and dressed entirely in black combat uniforms, all holding transparent shields with the word Policía written across them; they were ESMAD officers, Colombia’s strongly militarized mobile anti-disturbance squadron.³⁸Amnesty International. (2023). Colombia’s riot police left more than 100 people with eye trauma during national strike. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/11/colombia-esmad-eye-trauma/ Around 40 of them, looking like a small army of Darth Vaders, were passively surrounding the entrances to the bus station. This, however, did not prevent women in balaclavas from painting over the station’s walls with graffiti slogans such as “ACAB”29 and “El estado opresor es un macho violador”³⁹Translation: “The oppressive state is a male rapist/violator”, or breaking the glass doors with bricks wherever they could get past the wall of officers before running away.

We are back at the Transmilenio stations. What I experienced at the Women’s Day protest was, in fact, a light version of a very common dynamic at these stations during protests and strikes in Colombia.⁴⁰Quintero, S. C. (2024). Vandalismo en transmilenio ha dejado pérdidas por miles de millones de pesos a Los Bogotanos: Esta es la cifra que se reveló en el concejo. Retrieved from https://www.infobae.com/colombia/2024/06/18/el-vandalismo-a-transmilenio-ha-dejadoperdidas-de-17000-millones-de-pesos-a-los-bogotanos/ During the national upheaval in 2019-21, it was common practice for the protesters to do blockades or other activities such as talks, dance, or song at the stations, generally preventing commuters from entering.⁴¹Pulido, A. M. P. (2021). ¿VA de Regreso a casa?: Estas Son Las Zonas afectadas por el paro. Retrieved from https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/bogota-zonas-y-estaciones-de-transmilenio-afectadaspor-paro-nacional-585717 This practice was adopted as a way of being noticed, disrupting the daily rhythms and flows of movement in the cities and preventing people from going about their day in a normal way. Because of the disturbance these blockades caused, protesters were often removed from the stations with force by the ESMAD, and the Transmilenio station became a site of violent confrontation between police and protesters.⁴²El Espectador. (2022b). Así Habrían ocurrido las torturas y detenciones Ilegales en Portales de Transmilenio. Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/bogota/asi-habrian-ocurrido-lastorturas-y-detenciones-ilegales-en-portales-de-transmilenio/#google_vignette However, even when the stations were not the sites of demonstrations, they were targeted with vandalism by the protesters and protected by force by the police.

At the time of the demonstration, I found this dynamic puzzling. Especially considering that the people who typically participate in the vandalism are also the ones making the most use of public transport—the working class.⁴³CityTV. (2023). Transmilenio: ¿Quiénes utilizan más el sistema y Cuánto Gastan en el Mismo? Retrieved from https://citytv.eltiempo.com/programas/citynoticias-del-mediodia/transmilenioquienes-utilizan-mas-el-sistema-y-cuanto-gastan-en-el-mismo_64125 One afternoon, having lunch with Salomé, I asked her about this. She replied that the attack on the Transmilenio was an attack on everything that it represents – the lack of (social and physical) mobility, the violence, the inequality, the machismo – in other words, on the many different modes of oppression that average Colombians experience daily. One of my informants, Dylan, put this quite plainly when I asked him about this dynamic at the stations during protests: Well, because the people are looking for ways to damage31 the state, the same way the state is damaging the people.

Connecting these statements with the understanding of the Transmilenio as a space representing the dynamics of oppression made sense. As noted, non-violent objects can be experienced as agents of pain.⁴⁴Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27-28. The same then counts for the connection between the material world and oppression. The concepts that Salomé described the Transmilenio to symbolize are abstract social structures that, like ideas, are hard to fight. I suggest that the targeting of the Transmilenio stations happens because it is one of the most universally relatable material symbols of everyday oppression, and targeting the stations represents a need to direct the fight at a physical object, to make the battle visible and “incontestable”⁴⁵Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27. —an assertion of resistance through objects that somewhat parallels the state’s assertion of power through bodies, with the tangible difference that in this case it is objects that are hurt rather than people. Similarly, this analysis helps explain the state’s seemingly excessive need to protect the stations.

In light of the argument that the government fears revolutionary ideas as much as it fears revolutionaries’ violent methods, it is interesting to look into the government’s response to the 2019-22 protests and strikes, especially considering these protests as a legitimate democratic and peaceful way of resistance.

Puse mi ojo por ti, mi pueblo, soñando que el cambio sea un hecho.
I sacrificed my eye for you, my pueblo, dreaming that change would become a reality.⁴⁶Alternative translation: I kept an eye on you, my people, dreaming that change would become a reality.

This was a line in a play set up by victims of ocular trauma, which I was invited to see. The Spanish quote has a double meaning, so it could be translated in two ways. Poner ojo means to keep an eye on or look out for something, but the verb poner in this context can also mean to give or to “sacrifice. During my time in Bogotá, I got the chance to hang out with and interview people who had lost an eye during the social upheaval in 2019-21. As more than 100 people had suffered this experience, within a period of a little over two years, they had united in a national organization called MOCAO, doing many different activities, including rehabilitation of survivors of this type of violence, advocacy with government agencies, fundraising for eye prostheses, and other forms of activism. In conversations with members of MOCAO and people working with other victims of violence from the social upheaval, the notion of “the internal enemy” returned. Marta, who had worked with people who had been incarcerated, said that the way the young people who participated in the demonstrations had been treated resembled the way the state had responded to the guerrilla combatants. “The problem is,” she said, “that the state does not differentiate,” she substantiated by explaining that the protesters:

[…] are just young people who have exercised their democratic rights, who are treated as if they were insurgents because they criticize the government. The government wanted to make it seem like they were all from the left and all from the guerillas. But even FARC said, “We wish that we could mobilize this amount of people, but we can’t.” These were simply people protesting laws that would condemn them to poverty. But again, because of this perception that it was the insurgent left that took to the streets, the police treated them as such.

Even taking vandalism and violent acts by some protesters into account, the protests in no way compared to violent insurgency, and it is hard not to see the response by the police as excessively violent as it included beatings, sexual assault, arbitrary detention, and even homicide. I focus on one very particular form of violent repression: the infliction of ocular trauma – losing all or part of the eye – something which happens as a result of injuries caused by rubber bullets or teargas canisters fired by ESMAD officers towards the face, often at close range, or by blows to the face with blunt objects.⁴⁷Mendoza Zamudio, C., Alfonzo Acosta, G., Porras Herrera, L., Parroquiano Galeano, M. F., Castro Galeano, M. J., Rodriguez Caicedo, N., … Mendez Niebles, S. (2021). Shoots on Sight: Eye Trauma in the Context of the National Strike. London, UK: Amnesty International Ltd Peter Benenson House. I do so for two reasons; the first is low-practical and path-dependent in the sense that this was the group I got access to. The second reason is that the eye holds interesting significance in the context of resistance and repression. This significance is beautifully represented in the quote I have initiated this subsection with. Two people are central to this exploration: Dylan and Sebastián, two survivors of ocular trauma and members of MOCAO.

I met the two young men on a rainy Wednesday in Bogotá. Dylan was wearing his cap askew, which covered the majority of the left side of his face. Once sitting in front of him, the shade of the cap did not hide the fact that his eyes were no longer leveled and that the left eye did not follow the movements of the right. Neither did it hide the scars that went from his eye to his cheek. As we talked, he never established eye contact but focused on the table or his phone as he answered my questions about his experience. He described knowing the potential consequences of joining:

Well, one goes out [to the protest] ready for whatever might happen … yes, but, oh, that day, what a rage; I think that day I was not actually ready … because when it happened to me, I regretted going. But well, that’s the fight of the people.

Dylan had lost his eye after an ESMAD officer had fired a tear gas canister at his face after he had been recording the things going on at a protest taking place in Bosa in the southern part of Bogotá. After he had been hit and had fallen to the ground, ESMAD officers approached him. They kicked him in the face until volunteers from human rights organizations arrived, pulled him away, and brought him to a hospital. About his life, after he had lost the eye, he said the following:

After that, my life changed a lot, piece by piece, from heaven to earth. […] Both personally, at work, and emotionally. Because seeing myself like that, because I no longer look the same as before, was a hard blow, a horrible impact. […] I was going into a depression; everyone remembers that with what happened with their eyes.

Dylan described how he was spiraling downwards after the incident. He became addicted to alcohol, lost his job, lost his partner, and eventually was denied contact with his son. Although he was improving, he still described how his life after losing his eye was characterized by isolation and anger. Sebastián, who had lost his eye about a year before Dylan at a protest at the Universidad Nacional, also described entering a period of depression and denial, where he would not accept having lost half of his sight and thought that he could not continue his activist work, as he could not speak in front of people. It took him over a year to look people in the eye again, and he, too, felt isolated and alone. He had62 taught himself to “not look too much to the sides with his eyes,” as this is how people would notice that the prosthesis did not follow; instead, he would move his head or upper body instead.

The first thing I want to note in Dylan and Sebastián’s accounts is related to the places they were attacked: Bosa and the Universidad Nacional. Bosa is one of the “popular neighborhoods” in Bogotá, where the working poor live – safer than Ciudad Bolivar but known as a place where you should be extra careful. Investigations done after the social upheavals revealed that the majority of police brutality that took place occurred in areas like Bosa and Usme.⁴⁸The United Nations Office at Geneva (UN). (2023). In dialogue with Colombia, an expert of the Committee Against Torture welcomes the prohibition of amnesty for public officials accountable for past abuses, asks about reports of officials’ use of lethal force in response to social protests and about Priso. Retrieved from https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meetingsummary/2023/04/dialogue-colombia-expert-committee-against-torture-welcomes, serving once again as an example of the violence of Colombian segregation. The other space, Universidad Nacional, is one of the few public universities in the country and is known to have a strong socialist and activist culture. The Universidad Nacional is a frequent space of protest in Bogotá and a common space of violent confrontation between protesters and the police⁴⁹El Espectador. (2024b). Enfrentamientos entre Policías y estudiantes, en inmediaciones de la U.nacional. Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/bogota/enfrentamientos-entre-policiasy-estudiantes-en-inmediaciones-de-la-u-nacional/#google_vignette, once again exemplifying the fear of specific ideas, as manifestations in this perceived “socialist space” are more prone to experience violent police repression.

The other thing I want to comment on is the change that both men experienced in terms of depression and isolation – their loss of self. Essentially, what they describe mirrors the intended outcome of repression in incarceration. Scarry argues that the breaking down of the body confines the world, as it becomes the size of the space in which their body allows them to move.⁵⁰Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 33. The challenge they both faced in retaining eye contact after their injury I argue, is indeed a clear example of their world becoming smaller. This is connected to the function of the eye and the act of seeing, which is also why ocular trauma is specifically interesting. Seeing is a primary medium of social life. Communal relations are typically established and sustained through looks, as the vision reveals truths about the person who looks, such as authority or weakness, and becomes a reflection of the circumstance of the body. But not just the physical body; to see is also to have a “point a view,” to perceive of the world in a certain way, and hence it is closely related to other experiences such as imagination or ideas.

Similarly, eye trauma influences the way the survivors become aware of what other people see when they look at them. With the change to their face, they no longer see themselves and try to avoid others from seeing them, too. Destruction of the vision is thus, apart from its obvious connections to the world-destroying effect of pain, also a targeted way of confining the world and destroying the self, as it continues to isolate and limit opportunities of formación even long after the pain has passed. It “[…] seeks to sever all relationships grounding personhood, to enforce complete political acquiescence,”⁵¹Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 138. to prevent the activists from “keeping an eye” on their pueblo and rise against the violence committed against it. In other words, ocular trauma can be seen as yet another example of control that the state uses against forces that challenge its power.

When I have previously used the term ocular violence as a metaphor to describe specific practices of oppression, it is because the intentions behind them are related to the physical act of ocular violence – to blind in an attempt to mold subjectivities. The act of physical ocular violence and the general conditions during the protests contain a metaphoric aspect as well. As mentioned, the way the lesion is inflicted is typically by non-lethal weapons, making it possible for it to look like an accident. Likewise, the government numbers of cases of police violence in the protests do not correspond with NGO numbers⁵²Ministerio de Defensa (MinDefensa), BALANCE GENERAL: PARO NACIONAL 2021 1–5 (2021). Bogotá, Cundinamarca: MinDefensa; Temblores ONG. (2021). Comunicados • Temblores Ong. Retrieved from
https://www.temblores.org/comunicados, which distorts the image of reality. Through conversations with Sebastián and other members of MOCAO, it became clear that the practice of shooting on sight was indeed considered systematical, something which has also been sustained in an amnesty-funded report.⁵³Mendoza Zamudio, C., Alfonzo Acosta, G., Porras Herrera, L., Parroquiano Galeano, M. F., Castro Galeano, M. J., Rodriguez Caicedo, N., … Mendez Niebles, S. (2021). Shoots on Sight: Eye Trauma in the Context of the National Strike. London, UK: Amnesty International Ltd Peter BenensonHouse. A focus point of the activists was the fact that the issue was not exclusive to Colombia, but something that happened all around the world, and especially, they argued, in countries where the US has strong influence such as in Latin America, namely Ecuador, Chile and Mexico, and the Middle East, particularly Palestine.⁵⁴Smink, V. (2019). Por qué tantos manifestantes Alrededor del Mundo Están Sufriendo lesiones en los ojos. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-50511744; Bailey, P., & Hajjaj, T. (2019). Eyes “common target” of Israeli snipers at Gaza’s March. Retrieved from https://www.newarab.com/analysis/eyes-common-target-israeli-snipers-gazas-march; BBC News. (2024). Protestas en Chile: LA “epidemia” de lesiones oculares que ponen en entredicho Al Gobierno de Piñera. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-50354968

Austin argues that “any local setting of suffering must be followed through to its transnational fields”⁵⁵Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 10. to be fully understood. What my informants were doing was this – trying to map out the transnational networks of the violence perpetrated against them. The diffusion of violence techniques to Latin America through US military training has been extensively documented in the literature, supporting the notion of the US as a “universal distributor” of torture across the globe, a perception of the US which my informants frequently voiced. However, the image might be more complicated than this. The intention behind particular objects might be distorted or perverted when placed in new contexts⁵⁶Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 14., such as water and infrastructure in prisons and non-lethal weapons in protests, when used to cause permanent damage. Knowledge of violence migrates, but as it does, it changes shape, form, and purpose as it enters new ecosystems. In that sense, violence is transnational and is undoubtedly affected by international dynamics of power, such as neo-imperialist relationships, but as violence circulates, it cannot be attributed to a single “original source.”⁵⁷Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 8. This was evident in the conversations with the activists, who had not exactly determined whether the practice was “imported” from the US, Israel or perhaps Spain. Ultimately, this ambiguity shows that violence in Colombia cannot be seen in isolation from international networks of violence – that the ecosystem is affected by outside influence. The following section will explore creative, embodied counter-reactions to the attempted violent repression.

7. A Note of Hope

I have taken you through the four spaces of what I have termed an ecosystem of political violence. Links, connections, and echoes across should be clear, but how can they be seen as an ecosystem? To conclude, I will explain the politics of how the spaces and concepts I have dealt with come together. First, I will connect the threads illustrating how this system creates self-perpetuating dynamics of violence. Then, I will focus on the practical implications of this understanding by suggesting concrete interventions that might help bring an end to violence. Finally, this will allow me to end on a note of hope as I illustrate how love and community might grow out of violence and oppression through creativity, leading to non-violent modes of resistance and reimagining of the world.

Let me initiate by briefly summarizing the points forwarded in this study. Up to this point, we have gone on a journey. One that has illustrated how different bodies emerge through spaces in various ways. We started by experiencing structural oppression and metaphorical ocular violence in the city, which, through material structures, segregate bodies into different categories of being “wanted.” We went to the mountains, where physical remoteness allows individuals resisting oppression to separate themselves from the world and create a new, liberating one. One which challenges the oppression of normal society but also, through practices of discipline, installs violence as an option of the body. Then we went to the prisons, a microcosm of the state’s attempt at curtailing these movements of violent resistance. We saw how excessive modes of violence illustrate an effort to fight the ideas behind the rebellion by molding the bodies and subjectivities of rebels in an assertion of the power of the state. This attempt was not always successful, as embodied modes of resisting destruction were employed. From there, we found ourselves back in the city, namely at protests, where materialities that symbolize the oppressive structure of society are targeted. Once again, the state responded to rebellious ideas through attempted destruction and molding of the person, this time through physical ocular violence. But as we saw, the bodies resisted destruction in non-violent, creative ways that attempted to recreate the shattered worlds anew.

In short, what is truly at the core of this is a violent tension between the state’s attempt at molding subjectivities through control of the body and the body seeking to transcend oppression and become in its own right—a tension between the body as produced and productive.⁵⁸Wilcox, L. B. (2015). Bodies, subjects, and violence in international relations. Bodies of Violence, 45. Bodies have emerged across all spaces, showing different reactions and producing different effects and modes of change within themselves and in the world they are part of. This has occurred as the bodies interact with space and society. Take, for example, the ex-combatants: a body that was not violent becomes so after political formation, making them aware of oppression and physical training in the mountains. The body can then be destroyed when it is exposed to violence in prison, and it can reemerge as a nonviolent body through creative processes and alternative resistance in the post-peace treaty context of the city.

In the context of oppression, Nordstrom states that:

Should one wish to destroy, to control or to subjugate a people, what more powerful “target” could be found than that of personhood and reality? To destroy the world, encapsulated in the nexus of place and person […], is to destroy the self.⁵⁹Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 136.

Nordstrom is describing the processes of oppression that I have illustrated—the attempt to control through the destruction of the self. Nordstrom continues arguing that “no matter how brute the force applied to subjugate a people, local level behaviors arise to subvert the hold violence exerts on a population.”⁶⁰Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 143. In other words, oppression will always be met with resistance. This circular process has been evident across the spaces, as they illustrated how violent processes of oppression lead to (potentially violent) resistance, which leads to more extensive modes of oppression, which in turn prompts even more extensive and perhaps more violent resistance, etc. Violence, in this sense, becomes the condition of its own reproduction⁶¹Feldman, A. (1991). Spatial Formaitons of Violence. In Formations of violence: The narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland. essay, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20., and this process could, in theory, continue perpetually. A crucial point in this understanding is that the more violence perpetrated, the more violence becomes an option.

When I had lunch with the sisters Violeta, Mariana, and Beatriz in the far south of Bogotá, I experienced the continuing possibility of violence, even in unexpected “peaceful” situations where this cycle might seem to have been broken. During lunch, the sisters told me how the community of farmers surrounding them did not like that they were there and frequently cut their water in an attempt to force them to leave and how the stigmatization they faced made it hard for them to establish an everyday life because they could not get a job, Fercho later told me how this fact meant that many excombatants had rejoined other guerrillas as they couldn’t establish a normal life for themselves. They also told me that they received constant death threats from police officers, paramilitaries, and family members of victims of the FARC and that Violeta and Beatriz had taken up work as bodyguards for excombatants because of this. When everyone was leaving the farm in the late afternoon, I saw this implication in practice. I was getting into a car with tinted windows with a handful of ex-combatants; Beatriz was wearing a pink crochet bag across her torso with a patterned strap—a type of bag produced and sold by the Wayuu indigenous community. She was looking for something in the bag, taking various nick-nacks out, lipstick, sunglasses, and a few rubber bands, holding all of it in a stuffed hand. “Ahh, here it is,” she said as she pulled out a gun. She matter-of-factly checked if it was loaded before putting it back in its cover and getting into the car.

What this story illustrates is that even for those who have willingly left violence behind, it continues to be a possibility for them to perpetrate it. First, some might feel that this is their only option for sustaining a living, and second, if it is a likely possibility that violence will be perpetrated against them. The outlook of breaking the cycle of violence seems even more complicated once you factor in that these processes cannot be seen as a “closed” ecosystem but are, in fact, a part of international networks and are strongly influenced by outside interests of power. This complication must be considered when trying to break the cycle.

That violence fosters violence is not a unique or groundbreaking point, and although this study has illustrated the intricate and complicated mechanisms through which this self-perpetuating process occurs, it is not its main contribution. Consequently, in identifying the main contribution, I will turn to the concept of hope, something the stories I have already told warrant me doing. I suggest that bodies should be understood as both/and⁶²Law, J., Afdal, G., Asdal, K., Lin, W., Moser, I., & Singleton, V. (2014). Modes of syncretism. Common Knowledge, 20(1), 174., as embodied dynamics that I have presented in the analysis are largely contradictory. The bodies are traumatized and controlled while healing and resisting. They are oppressed and destroyed while remade and liberated. They are confined while mobile. And sometimes, as I have shown, the bodies that have suffered the most also create the most change and can be the key to breaking the cycle as much as they are part of sustaining it. Nordstrom argues that because the world makes the self, and the self makes the world, “terror warfare” is doomed to fail.⁶³Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 137.

Applied to the dynamics that I argue, this is also why self and world are never truly destroyed and why people employ creative strategies for recreating worlds anew. In this sense, positive creation and nonviolence can grow out of violence. As I explained above, this study has shown how the interaction between body, society, and space creates change. This capacity for change and effect within the body also reveals its capacity to not always respond to violence with violence—to move away from it. But why are some able to move away from violence while others are not? What is important in answering this question is understanding that it is not the body creating change on its own but that it does so in interaction with society and space. This is precisely what the focus on space and the metaphor of the ecosystem has illustrated.

What, then, are the practical implications of this argument? A primary implication is that if spatial/material/societal conditions are changed, violent embodied effects might change as well, and once one link of the perpetuating cycle of violence is broken, this might cause ripple effects. Take, for instance, the Transmilenio. What if the state, instead of spending resources protecting the Transmilenio against the people, protected the people against the Transmilenio—if the fences were removed, and the ticketing was based on trust rather than force? If guards were there to prevent gender-based violence rather than people bumming the ride. Might the people not feel a stronger respect and trust towards their state, feeling less inclined to exercise violence or vandalism against it?

Another example. The mountains created an embodied community of formación, which, to the people who went there, was a liberating experience. Suppose education and free formation were truly an option. In that case, if differences in opinions and ideas and critical reflection were not feared but cultivated, communities of political rebellion might flourish in non-violent ways within society rather than in spatial separation from it. This would necessitate the destigmatization of certain ideas that could only come about by active efforts to let go of the fear tied to them. Generally, destigmatizing moves could foster the reintegration of people who might otherwise be on the precipice of becoming or rebecoming violent.

Let me also include a suggestion inspired by the prisons. Imagine if the punitive system was built on principles of co-design. If those who might end up there, or who have already been there, were part of designing how prison structures look, rather than foreign states protecting their own interests through the export of repression. This could create a punitive system that allows for the people within to become themselves rather than for them to be destroyed and their bodies colonized.

I have thus provided three non-exhaustive suggestions of how certain practical political moves in relation to space and society could potentially break the self-perpetuating ecosystem of violence. I want to stress that these suggestions do not imply that I see violence as something that can be broken entirely in a linear progression of history towards a sort of “liberal freedom” if only the right policies are employed. Instead, I suggest that some things can be done to create change in specific spaces and at certain times and that this might affect the more extensive self-perpetuating system of violence in positive ways as well. It is essential to note in this context that liberation is neither a gift nor a selfachievement⁶⁴Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 5. but a mutual process between oppressor and oppressed of changing the social structure of society. It is not easy, but it is possible. It is also crucial to understand that much of the oppression described should not be seen as the result of the state actively conspiring against its population, employing increasingly cruel modes of violence. But rather as a structure that has slowly escalated and been uncritically ingrained in the fabric of society and politics. With active reflection and creativity from both oppressed and oppressors, this might be changed, and “trust in people and faith in the possibility of creating a world that will be easier to love” might become an option.⁶⁵Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 19.

NOTES

• 1
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 50.
• 2
  Rincón, D. (2018). Storstrom, La Prisión Danesa que parece UN hotel de lujo. Retrieved from: https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/europa/prision-de-storstrom-en-dinamarca-que-no-parece-una-carcel-170522
• 3
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, p. 50.
• 4
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p. 142-3.
• 5
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p.154.
• 6
  See, e.g. Perez, D. (2023). It is time for radical co-design. Flourish by Design, 113.
• 7
  See World Population Review. (2024). Wealth Inequality by Country 2024. Retrieved from
  https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/wealth-inequality-by-country and World Population Review. (2024). Poverty Rate by Country. Retrieved from https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country.
• 8
  See Cerón, J. (2019). Colados aumentan el número de víctimas de transmilenio. Retrieved from
  https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/los-colados-entre-las-victimas-de-accidentes-entrasnmilenio-
  321632.
• 9
  ONU Mujeres. (2018). Ciudades Seguras y espacios públicos seguros: Informe de resultados globales.
  Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/es/digital-library/publications/2017/10/safe-citiesand-
  safe-public-spaces-global-results-report.
• 10
  Marica is a term which, in its direct translation, is a derogatory word for a queer person. Today in Colombia, it isused positively to stress a point or call attention. It could be translated loosely to “buddy” or “dude”.
• 11
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press., p. 119.
• 12
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, p. 118.
• 13
  Austin, J. L. (2020). The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil. Security Dialogue, 51(6), 537–556; Van Den Bos, K. (2018). Why people radicalize. Oxford Scholarship Online.
• 14
  Tompkins, P. J. (2014). Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare: Colombia 1964-2009: viii.
• 15
  BBC News. (2016). Who are the FARC? Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latinamerica-36605769
• 16
  El Monte translates directly to “the mountain” but should in this context be understood conceptually as a reference to the mountains as the location of the camps – or in fact many different camps in many different mountains around all of Colombia.
• 17
  Austin, J. L. (2020). The departed militant: A portrait of joy, violence and political evil. Security Dialogue, 51(6): 544.
• 18
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 58.
• 19
  El Espectador. (2022a). En colombia 3 de cada 10 personas en edad escolar no están estudiando, ¿Por
  qué? Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/educacion/en-colombia-3-de-cada-10-personas-en-edad-escolar-no-estan-estudiando-por-que-noticias-hoy/
• 20
  Semana, R. (2024). Internado Construido por farc en el Yarí Pasará a manos del estado y gobernación de meta; Busto de Gentil duarte fue retirado. Retrieved from https://www.semana.com/politica/articulo/internado-construido-por-farc-en-el-yari-pasara-amanos-del-estado-y-gobernacion-de-meta-busto-de-gentil-duarte-fue-retirado/202443/
• 21
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 57.
• 22
  Originally: “Nos quieren brutos”. “They”, meaning “the ones in power” and “us” meaning “the poor.”
• 23
  Author’s translation of “Me quiero bañar en una piscina llena de sangre subversiva.”
• 24
  Comisión de la Verdad. (2022). Cifras de la Comisión de la Verdad Presentadas Junto con el informe final. Retrieved from https://web.comisiondelaverdad.co/actualidad/noticias/principales-cifrascomision-de-la-verdad-informe-final
• 25
  Original quote: “se pierde la persona”, which could alternatively translate to “the person gets lost”. Could meangetting lost as much as losing something.
• 26
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 4.
• 27
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 36.
• 28
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 34.
• 29
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27-28.
• 30
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 23, 29.
• 31
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27.
• 32
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 18.
• 33
  Murphy, M. (2022). Gustavo Petro: Colombia elects ex-rebel as first left-wing president. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-61860887
• 34
  Cascio, A. (2022). Un año de la movilización que cambió todo en Colombia. Retrieved from https://www.elsaltodiario.com/america-latina/fotogaleria-ano-paro-nacional-movilizacioncambio-todo-colombia
• 35
  The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR). (2021). El Paro Nacional 2021: Lecciones Aprendidas para el Ejercicio del derecho de reunión pacífica en
  Colombia, diciembre 2021 – Colombia. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/report/colombia/el-paro-nacional-2021-lecciones-aprendidas-para-elejercicio-del-derecho-de-reuni-n
• 36
  “Pinta” translates to “Paint!” in the imperative form.
• 37
  “Cerdo” translates to “pig”.
• 38
  Amnesty International. (2023). Colombia’s riot police left more than 100 people with eye trauma during national strike. Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/11/colombia-esmad-eye-trauma/
• 39
  Translation: “The oppressive state is a male rapist/violator”
• 40
  Quintero, S. C. (2024). Vandalismo en transmilenio ha dejado pérdidas por miles de millones de pesos a Los Bogotanos: Esta es la cifra que se reveló en el concejo. Retrieved from https://www.infobae.com/colombia/2024/06/18/el-vandalismo-a-transmilenio-ha-dejadoperdidas-de-17000-millones-de-pesos-a-los-bogotanos/
• 41
  Pulido, A. M. P. (2021). ¿VA de Regreso a casa?: Estas Son Las Zonas afectadas por el paro. Retrieved from https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/bogota-zonas-y-estaciones-de-transmilenio-afectadaspor-paro-nacional-585717
• 42
  El Espectador. (2022b). Así Habrían ocurrido las torturas y detenciones Ilegales en Portales de Transmilenio. Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/bogota/asi-habrian-ocurrido-lastorturas-y-detenciones-ilegales-en-portales-de-transmilenio/#google_vignette
• 43
  CityTV. (2023). Transmilenio: ¿Quiénes utilizan más el sistema y Cuánto Gastan en el Mismo? Retrieved from https://citytv.eltiempo.com/programas/citynoticias-del-mediodia/transmilenioquienes-utilizan-mas-el-sistema-y-cuanto-gastan-en-el-mismo_64125
• 44
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27-28.
• 45
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 27.
• 46
  Alternative translation: I kept an eye on you, my people, dreaming that change would become a reality.
• 47
  Mendoza Zamudio, C., Alfonzo Acosta, G., Porras Herrera, L., Parroquiano Galeano, M. F., Castro Galeano, M. J., Rodriguez Caicedo, N., … Mendez Niebles, S. (2021). Shoots on Sight: Eye Trauma in the Context of the National Strike. London, UK: Amnesty International Ltd Peter Benenson House.
• 48
  The United Nations Office at Geneva (UN). (2023). In dialogue with Colombia, an expert of the Committee Against Torture welcomes the prohibition of amnesty for public officials accountable for past abuses, asks about reports of officials’ use of lethal force in response to social protests and about Priso. Retrieved from https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meetingsummary/2023/04/dialogue-colombia-expert-committee-against-torture-welcomes
• 49
  El Espectador. (2024b). Enfrentamientos entre Policías y estudiantes, en inmediaciones de la U.nacional. Retrieved from https://www.elespectador.com/bogota/enfrentamientos-entre-policiasy-estudiantes-en-inmediaciones-de-la-u-nacional/#google_vignette
• 50
  Scarry, E. (1985). The body in pain. New York: Oxford University Press, 33.
• 51
  Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 138.
• 52
  Ministerio de Defensa (MinDefensa), BALANCE GENERAL: PARO NACIONAL 2021 1–5 (2021). Bogotá, Cundinamarca: MinDefensa; Temblores ONG. (2021). Comunicados • Temblores Ong. Retrieved from
  https://www.temblores.org/comunicados
• 53
  Mendoza Zamudio, C., Alfonzo Acosta, G., Porras Herrera, L., Parroquiano Galeano, M. F., Castro Galeano, M. J., Rodriguez Caicedo, N., … Mendez Niebles, S. (2021). Shoots on Sight: Eye Trauma in the Context of the National Strike. London, UK: Amnesty International Ltd Peter BenensonHouse.
• 54
  Smink, V. (2019). Por qué tantos manifestantes Alrededor del Mundo Están Sufriendo lesiones en los ojos. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-50511744; Bailey, P., & Hajjaj, T. (2019). Eyes “common target” of Israeli snipers at Gaza’s March. Retrieved from https://www.newarab.com/analysis/eyes-common-target-israeli-snipers-gazas-march; BBC News. (2024). Protestas en Chile: LA “epidemia” de lesiones oculares que ponen en entredicho Al Gobierno de Piñera. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-50354968
• 55
  Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 10.
• 56
  Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 14.
• 57
  Austin, J. L. (2016). Torture and the material-semiotic networks of violence across borders. International Political Sociology, 10(1): 8.
• 58
  Wilcox, L. B. (2015). Bodies, subjects, and violence in international relations. Bodies of Violence, 45.
• 59
  Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 136.
• 60
  Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 143.
• 61
  Feldman, A. (1991). Spatial Formaitons of Violence. In Formations of violence: The narrative of the body and political terror in Northern Ireland. essay, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20.
• 62
  Law, J., Afdal, G., Asdal, K., Lin, W., Moser, I., & Singleton, V. (2014). Modes of syncretism. Common Knowledge, 20(1), 174.
• 63
  Nordstrom, C. (1997). Creativity and Chaos: War on the Front Lines. Contemporary Studies of Violence and Culture, 137.
• 64
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 5.
• 65
  Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 19.