Violence in Colombia, 1990-2000: Waging War and Negotiating Peace (Latin American Silhouettes) (Paperback)

by Charles Bergquist (Editor), Ricardo Penaranda (Editor), Gonzalo Sanchez G. (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Violence In Colombia provides students with a deeper understanding of the crisis facing Colombia today. The book focuses on the 1990s, a decade that witnessed a strengthening of the oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency in the Americas and the emergence of a powerful paramilitary right. The decade also saw a dramatic rise in homicide, kidnapping, and human rights violations that made Colombia by far the most violent nation in the hemisphere.

But the 1990s was also about negotiating peace. The decade began with negotiations between the government and some of the guerrilla groups that led to their demobilization and to the important reforms codified in the Constitution of 1991. It ended with another serious attempt at negotiating peace, a historic agreement between the government and the largest and most powerful of the guerrilla groups to put a range of social and economic reforms on the negotiating table.

For many, the crisis in Colombia is understood in terms of the drug trade. To be sure, the drug trade is implicated in every aspect of the crisis. And despite (or because of?) escalating efforts by the Colombian and U.S. governments to curb the trade, Colombia's role as the leading supplier of cocaine, and increasingly of heroin, to the U.S. market continues to expand. But the drug trade, by itself, cannot explain the crisis. If it could, why have other Latin American drug-producing and trafficking nations not experienced a fate like Colombia's?

To answer this question, the book presents some of the best recent work by Colombian scholars on the crisis facing the nation. Violence in Colombia also includes a large section devoted to primary documents, which enables students to get a feel for the views of the protagonists in the conflict and judge for themselves the meaning of what they say. Examples include the negotiating positions of the government, the guerrillas, and the paramilitary right; testimony by kidnap victims and human rights lawyers; and assessments by U.S. officials and Colombian commentators of the war on drugs. Introductions to each of the essays and documents place this material, most of it made available to English readers for the first time, in broad analytical and historical context.

This is an excellent text for Latin American history courses and courses on political violence.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Scholarly Resources Books (March 28, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0842028706
• ISBN-13: 978-0842028707
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,107,286 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellently researched studies, June 15, 2001

By	Chris M. White (Eureka, CA United States) - See all my reviews

A good foundation of Colombian history would help the reader, for what is told within is extremeley insightful, and necessary for gaining a profound understanding of Colombia's unfortunate situation. The compilation of authors in this anthology brings together the economic, political, historical and sociological factors that have, and continue to, contribute to Colombia's demise. They show how it finds itself in regards to the rest of the world, as well as within its own borders.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, fair analysis of the contemporary conflict, December 8, 2004

By	Mark (USA) - See all my reviews

In anticipation of moving to Colombia, I have spent a great deal of time researching the country's current sociopolitical situation and trying to sort through the abundance of books that exist on the subject. The in-depth and critical analyses presented in this collection of articles, authored primarily by known Colombian scholars living and working in Colombia, offer truly invaluable insider perspectives on a variety of subjects. It's a necessary and refreshing read for those who have been exposed mainly to North American interpretations of the situation.

I have not found a better book on the subject. Period. If you are seriously interested in and care about what's going on in Colombia today, this book is a must-read.

Its predecessor, "Violence in Colombia - The Contemporaray Crisis in a Historical Perspective," is nearly as good and well worth looking into also.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Honest Examination of a Violent Culture, June 17, 2002

By	Bert Ruiz "Author" (Pleasantville, NY USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book offers a collection of viewpoints. Each gives detailed explanations of the violence in Colombia. Moreover, it goes into great lenths to explain the dynamics of the civil war in Colombia. The scholars that contribute to this book are outstanding. However, I found Gonzalo Sánchez to be the most engaging.