The most up-to-date book on Colombia: from the mid-19th century to today's guerrilla narco-traffickers and paramilitaries.
Colombia is the least understood of Latin American countries. Its human tragedy, which features terrifying levels of kidnapping, homicide and extortion, is generally ignored or exploited. In this urgent new work Forrest Hylton, who has extensive first-hand experience of living and working in Colombia, explores its history of 150 years of political conflict, characterized by radical-popular mobilization and reactionary repression.
Evil Hour in Colombia shows how patterns of political conflict, from the mid-nineteenth century to today's guerilla narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, explain the wear currently destroying Colombian lives, property, communities and territory. In doing so, it traces how Colombia's "coffee capitalism" gave way to the cattle and cocaine republic of the 1980s, and how land, wealth and power have been steadily accumulated by the light-skinned top of the social pyramid through a brutal combination of terror, expropriation and economic depression.
Author(s): Forrest Hylton
Publisher: Verso
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: xviii+174
City: London and New York
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Prologue (by Gonzalo Sánchez)
Introduction: Remembering Colombia
I. Setting
II. Aim
III. Themes
1. Radical-Popular Republicanism, 1848-80
I. From the Top Down
II. From the Bottom Up
III. Tropical Thermidor
2. From Reaction to Rebellion, 1880-1930
I. Coffee Capitalism and Clientelism
II. Antioquian Ascendancy
III. A New World?
3. The Liberal Pause, 1930-46
I. Incipient Populism
II. Two Steps Back
III. Toward la Violencia
4. La Violencia, 1946-57
I. The Bogotazo as Failed Revolution
II. La Resistencia and La Reconquista
III. Cold War Dictatorship
5. The National Front: Political Lockout, 1957-82
I. Counterinsurgency
II. Insurgency
III. Counter-reform, Repression, Resurrection
6. Negotiating the Dirty War, 1982-90
I. Narco-politics and Paramilitarism
II. “Political Opening”
III. Closure
7. Fragmented Peace, Parcellized Sovereignty, 1990-98
I. Neoliberalismo a la Colombiana
II. Insurgent Advance
III. Counter-Advance
8. Involution, 1998-2002
I. Electoral Pacts, Elusive Peace
II. Plan Colombia
III. Family Ties
9. The Edge of the Precipice, 2002-5
I. A New Feudalism
II. “Judicial Bulletproofing”
III. Scorched Earth in the Cattle Republic
10. War as Peace, 2005-6
I. Unifying Theory and Practice
II. “The Changing Same”: Urabá
III. “Return to the Source”: Cauca
Conclusion: Amnesia by Decree
Notes
Introduction: Remembering Colombia
1. Radical-Popular Republicanism, 1848-80
2. From Reaction to Rebellion, 1880-1930
3. The Liberal Pause, 1930-46
4. La Violencia, 1946-57
5. The National Front: Political Lockout, 1957-82
6. Negotiating the Dirty War, 1982-90
7. Fragmented Peace, Parcellized Sovereignty, 1990-98
8. Involution, 1998-2002
9. The Edge of the Precipice, 2002-5
10. War as Peace, 2005-6
Conclusion: Amnesia by Decree
Index
