This book is a Must Read if you want to fully understand the Colombian internal conflict. You'll find other books that are trying to explain the conflict (e.g. Robin Kirk, Julie Mazzei), but this one is more up to date and gives you more insight in the domestic conflict's cause. On the other hand this book is not about the FARC-EP, ELN or WOD, only about the Paramilitary Groups and the state's involvement. The author demonstrates that Colombia's unequal land distribution (about the most unequal in the world) is in fact the main cause of the conflict. The paramilitary groups were originally founded by landlords and drug-lords. Eventually the drug-lords became landlords too when they laundered their drug monies. Even today the land-grab continues legally. Indigenous peoples are still denied their constitutional landownership today and small peasants are still forcibly displaced and/or denied their common law land-titles.
Colombia counts over 4.9 million Internally Displaced Persons according to CODHES. Paramilitaries are largely responsible for this. This book shows you that the Paramilitary Groups have become a deathly cancer. The Paramilitary Groups do not only kill, torture, extort, steal, narco-traffic and much more, but they're also heavily supported by the state. Paramilitary Groups is a too friendly name, since they seem to be a state-approved and heavily armed violent mafia. The cancer has spread almost into every state institution, including the congress. If you know that the former president of Colombia - Alvaro Uribe - authorized licenses to drug traffickers when he was director of the department of Civil Aviation, that Uribe was placed on a list of narco-terrorists by the Pentagon, that he (and his father) was a collaborator of the Medellin Cartel and a friend of Pablo Escobar, that his estate was identified by human rights bodies as an epicenter of paramilitary violence, that in 2002 47 legal proceedings were filed against him because of irregularities during his governorship of Antioquia and if you know that his presidential campaign was funded by paramilitary groups and that Uribe's 2002 and 2006 election victories were based on fraud, violence and fear, than it is not difficult to understand that in the 8 years of Uribe's presidency the interests of the paramilitary groups and its ties to the state became much stronger, despite the deceptively called "Justice and Peace" law and program that turned out to be a fraudulent impunity program with very little demobilization.
The book makes you realize that the present state of Colombia needs drug monies and the internal FARC-EP/ELN enemy to continue the present paramilitary status quo and unequal land distribution. That will make a solution of the conflict very difficult. Juan Manuel Santos is not going to do it.
The author worked several years on her book and did a meticulous research. Over 450 references are listed that confirm the author's statements and a respectable bibliography is included. The author conducted several interviews herself. However, some more tables, graphs and maps would have made the book even more attractive.
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