Binston Birchill’s Reviews > Blood and Fire: La Violencia in Antioquia, Colombia, 1946-1953 > Status Update

“Indeed, the precedent for the current right-wing paramilitary phenomenon in Antiquia… may be traced back to the endorsement of the contrachusma and the legal arguments made by Antiqueño governors to justify the arming of independently organized civilian groups during la Violencia.”

Violence in the southwest… trajectory seems to have differed so markedly from the way violence evolved elsewhere in Antiquia during the same period.The most commonly accepted version of la Violencia,in other words,was the regional exception, not the rule.Yet, even in the southwest where violence appears to have reproduced an uncomplicated version of la Violencia - a conflict waged exclusively around partisan issues

Some Conservatives asked regional govt not to send national policemen

“Other Conservatives opted to arm bands of Conservative civilians to fulfill the government’s responsibility.”

“others withdrew their support from the government and their party and colluded with members of the opposition in order to defend their personal interests.”

local authorities deflected aggression away from the stark economic and social inequalities typical of an economy that revolved around cattle ranching and large sugar estates dominated by hacienda owners. Partisan competition and repressive state policies produced a Hobbesian world in western Antioquia in which the opportunity for profit… gradually emerged as the only viable objective

Violence, initially waged in defense of particular party interests or to protect the lives of party members against the actions of the opposi-tion, evolved into a free-for-all in western Antioquia. Duty and partisan loyalty gave way to the pursuit of personal accumulation among armed members of both parties and even the government's own forces.

“The main perpetrators of violence were uniformly described as the very forces charged with controlling public order in the region and protecting its inhabitants' lives.”

Eastern Antioquia violence largely shaped by economic rather than partisan competition

p.132 The determinants of local violence in eastern Antiquia were hence far more complex than any innate, unavoidable differences between monolithic groups of Liberals and Conservatives..

In many areas there were no innate conflicts, these were created and fed by the state's own agents who capitalized on a few disgruntled, local adherents or otherwise imported them from nearby areas to fan and exploit the flames….

case of la Violencia in Antiquia is at all representative of Colombian violence as a whole, then what is significant about this study is the discovery of how selective and concentrated supposedly generalized violence has been, and to what degree factors such as ethnicity and race,cultural differences,class, and geography have shaped the evolution, trajectory, direction, and incidence of violence in Colombia over time