Colombia is a premier example of civil war and violence in Latin America. The last two hundred years have been punctuated by civil wars and organized violence of the most varied kinds at national and regional levels. The most familiar clashes have been civil wars pitting Liberais against Conservatives, insurrections and guerrilla conflicts, death squad campaigns mounted by regional and local vigilantes, and, of course,
violence among narcotraficantes and between drug barons and the state. In all these conflicts, private power, private armies, and private codes of honor have taken the place of public institutions too weak, too divided, or simply too suborned to control conflict or create universally acceptable arenas of negotiation. Private power has set the agenda of public dispute.
María Victoria Uribe Alarcón works with these concepts in a study of warfare in the emerald zone that makes a rich and valuable contribution to the historiography of Colombian violence. Violence has been endemic in this area since the colonial period, but it gained intensity and a distinctly regional flavor with the emergence of emerald mining. Four converging factors account for this particular character: the weakness of state power; the nature of local social networks; belief systems that exalt loyalty and legitimate vengeance; and the nature of emeralds as a resource. The region’s experience of wars and armed encounters runs through the 1980s, “during which the region was always prone to the emergence of armed groups that converted war into an instrument for defining territories and usufruct of the mines” (p. 22).
The mines attracted a floating population with the possibility of rapid wealth, the frontierlike flavor of danger, and the absence of restraint. Local and regional networks, linked to competing mining interests, provided an effective means for the diffusion of continuing violence. Vendettas were common. Uribe shows how the culture of the emerald zone privileged rapid accumulation and ostentatious display of resources and legitimated violence in response to any injury. As a rule, “the Christian notion of sin is accommodated to a pragmatic logic in which the end justifies the means” (p. 55). Loyalty and honor are particularly esteemed; any breach gives grounds for exacting vengeance.
The need to annihilate the enemy to avenge bloodshed obeys a particular form of self-image, which fosters the belief that all who surround one have the same instinctive goals as one’s own. From that emerges the law of the talon: that all evil acts can be nullified through similar actions inflicted on the first author or authors, (p. 123)
The combined impact of these factors is reinforced by the specific character of emeralds and of the trade in them; the gems are highly portable and exceptionally valuable, and the trade itself is quick, private, and cash only (p. 93).
The author provides an illuminating discussion of how the scope and scale of violence changed as distinct influences converged during the 1980s. The combination of emeralderos, FARC guerrillas, the army, and right-wing vigilantes organized by ACDEGAM (Asociación de Ganaderos del Magdalena Medio) and MAS (Muerte a los Secuestradores) took the fighting and the death toll to new heights. The most recent war in the emerald zone, which claimed over three thousand lives, was settled in 1990 by a formal pact witnessed by the local bishop. Heaw losses on all sides made peace, or at least a truce, seem worthwhile. But the implementation of peace terms foundered on the primacy given to honor and revenge in local culture and on the logic of vendetta violence facilitated by interlocking social networks. Bosses might well make peace, but rank-and-file soldiers did not always give up the war.
On the outside, the common soldier complies with the order given; but inside, the enemy remains unchanged, even though his boss may now embrace someone who a short time ago was fighting him to the death. This factor transforms war between antagonistic groups into an underground war between members of the same group. (pp. 126-27)
There is more to tell about this brief but rich and fascinating volume. The history of specific mines and towns, town-mine conflicts, and shifting alliances is told with a wealth of detail. Fine maps enrich the exposition, and a small group of photographs is appended, along with a useful glossary. Limpiar la tierra is of interest not only to specialists in Colombia but also to anyone concerned with the dynamics of violence.
