Más allá del silencio de los fusiles – Preliminary Reflections on the ‘Continuum’ of Violence in Colombia Post-2016

Abstract

In its oscillation between the constative and the performative, the slogan ‘la paz es ahora’ –which circulated widely in the run-up to the November 2016 peace accord signed between the Colombian government and FARC-EP – demands vigilance with regard to the continuity of violence at a transitional moment. It does so in the ‘inter-messianic’ (Meister, 2011) invocation of peace as something that has already arrived and that has yet to reveal its face. At the same time, the identification of violence in so many areas of everyday life in Colombia requires that we attend to the ‘continuum of violence’ (Bourgois, 2001) as it transverses and unsettles distinctions between peace and war, and between violence’s political, structural, symbolic and everyday manifestations. Engagement with this continuum through a selection of its concrete constellations is followed by a reflection on the risks and realities of violence’s continuation in post-acuerdo Colombia, and seeks to put flesh on the bones of Humberto de la Calle’s dictum, ‘La paz no es sólo el silencio de los fusiles’.