RiK WP 4 2012 e Castillejo

Working Paper
4.2012E
The Domestication of Testimony:
Truth, Endemic
Silence, and the
Articulations
of a Violent Past
Alejandro
CastillejoCullar
Recht im Kontext Working Paper Series

Working Paper 4.2012 E
The Domestication of Testimony: Truth, Endemic Silence, and the Articulations of a Violent Past
ALEJANDRO CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Editors: DIETER GRIMM
(Rector emeritus, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Professor of Law emeritus, Humboldt-Universitt zu
Berlin)
ALEXANDRA KEMMERER
(Academic Coordinator Recht im Kontext, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin)
CHRISTOPH MLLERS
(Permanent Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Professor of Law, Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin)
Editorial work: SOPHIA PICK
Biography
Alejandro Castillejo-Cullar holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies (European University for Peace Studies, Austria), and an MA and a PhD in Anthropology
from the New School for Social Research, New York. His doctoral dissertation was
awarded in 2006 the Stanley Diamond Memorial Award in the Social Sciences, the
most prestigious recognition the New School bestows on a doctoral student. In 2010,
Castillejo-Cullar was also awarded the Alejandro Angel Escobar National Social Science Prize. He was Research Fellow at both Columbia University, New York, and at
the Center for Study of Ethno-political Conflict, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Between 2001 and 2004, Castillejo-Cullar served as Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the Direct Action Center for Peace and
Memory, both in South Africa. He has also been British Academy Fellow as well as
Visiting Professor and Guest Scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), London, Zayed University, Dubai, and the Council for the Development of
Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Dakar, Senegal. In 2002, Castillejo-Cullar
was consultant to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission on behalf of the
Danish government and in 2010 he was part of the Colombian National Commission
of Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR), Historical Memory Group. He has also
been awarded several grants and fellowships from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Fulbright Commission, Soros Foundation, Mellon Foundation, among other university
fellowships in the US and Europe. Castillejo-Cullar is co-founder of Encounters: An
International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society, Dubai, the Africa and Latin
America Academic Exchange Initiative, the Committee for the Study of Violence, and
the Critical Studies Program on Political Transitions. He is interested in the anthropologies of violence and collective memory, anthropologies of the law and political transitions, as well as in medicine, technology, literature and anthropology. Castillejo-Cullar
is currently Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Los Andes, Colombia.
E-mail: [acastill@uniandes.edu.co.]
Recht im Kontext Working Paper 4.2012 E
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Abstract
This paper explores the role that the articulation of a violent past, through different mechanisms, has in creating or reinforcing not only diverse forms of historical
silence but also different ways of engaging the prospect of an imagined new society. In
this sense, the paper mainly deals with these questions in a series of transitional scenarios (South Africa, Colombia, and to a lesser extent Peru) in which testimonies of war
were part of larger truth-seeking process. Despite their differences (historically and
sociologically), there is an element that, it seems to me, they all share, a pattern that
connects them. In trying to grasp the multiple dimensions of violence, the collective
languages instituted by State sponsored laws failed to render intelligible the structural
dimensions of violence that are at the root of conflict itself. I call this blind spot structural or endemic silence: a violence that is rendered invisible, in spite of its immediacy,
at the very moment of its enunciation in language. Identifying these tensions in concrete contexts is essential for grasping how individual people and broader communities
interconnect with larger historical processes in order to recreate a future.
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Table of Contents
I
Introduction: The Story that Connects All Others 5
II
First Vignette: The Theatrics of History and Voice 16
III
The Law and the Illegibility of the Past 23
IV
The Politics of Banishment 32
Second Vignette: Towards a Global Victim 45
VI
A Final Question 49
VII
References 51
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Introduction:
The Story that Connects All Others
The problem in Colombia is that the state has no way
to repair this womans life, there is no mechanism to repair this persons life.
Personal Conversation, May 2011.
3. If national and local governments are genuinely interested in contributing by providing fair and constructive reparation, they must begin to recognize that the injury caused to the first peoples (pueblos originarios) has
occurred over a long period and that it is not enough
simply to count the number of recent victims, or to
quantify the cash payments that have been offered in
compensation for the material damage caused.
The Ten Commandments of Indigenous Peoples,
minutes of the Mesa Nacional de Pueblos y Autoridades
Indgenas, Acta del Sol Naciente, Colombia, November
1-5, 2011.
I would like to begin this paper with the story of Julia, which I was told by a
close friend of her family during a series of interviews and conversations I conducted
in 2011 as part of a larger research project on the anthropologies of violence, law, and
collective memory. 1 My intention in this text is to unravel, as I piece together a num-
The verb to domesticate, has a double Latin etymology. Not only does it conjure up the idea of bringing under control (or converting animals to domestic use) by overpowering them, but also to accustom to home life, to adapt to an environment. The term evokes the possibility of rendering familiar, of
bringing home into the private family sphere that which is perceived as otherness. Power, control, and
homeliness inhabit this term (domus, house (Latin), doma (Greek)). To domesticate is to render familiar.
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009, William Collins Sons & Co.
Ltd. 1979, 1986, HarperCollins (Highlights are mine). One of the underlying arguments in this text is
that, broadly speaking, the testimony of the victims of violence is brought by way of different mechanisms into the familiar world, but also into domesticity. In other words, unspeakable (experiences)
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
ber of different testimonies and social scenarios, the semantic density of the words used
by my interviewee, an indigenous leader. 2 I am interested in the ways violence is mediated through language, and more precisely, through what is often called the testimony of violence. The conversation in question echoes other voices and other encounters I have had in recent years with people of very diverse origins but who have
shared with their audiences (and eventually with me) their experiences of terror and
abuse that have occurred in the context of transitional scenarios. 3 Julias story illustrates
the idea of what I shall call endemic or structural silence.
Thus, an excerpt from my fieldwork notes reads as follows:
Julia is a married woman. She initially had two children, Paula, and Len who
is fifteen years old. He suffers from leukemia. Several years ago (when she was 27)
Julia and her daughter (then only five years old) were raped by paramilitaries somewhere in the south of Colombia. Of this rape, a child was born. Clara is now 9 years
old. As could be expected, Julia feels all kinds of ambiguities with regards to this little
one, who reminds her of the abuse her body suffered. At one point, out of desperation,
Julia thought of aborting her. For Julia, with Claras birth, life and death existentially
coexist together. The baby was, in more than one sense, an unwanted human being.
and this is the paradox I would like to stress are rendered intelligible by the workings of (institutional) language as power. One way to bring them into, and confine them to, the realm of domesticity is to
install an epistemological silence around certain forms of violence that play out in particular ways in
specific historical experiences.
2
This text is the product of my engagement with many different activist-intellectuals, victims organizations, and support groups. In South Africa, I would like to thank my two friends Yazir Henri and Heidi
Grunebaum, as some of the ethical and political complexities of my work derived initially from our debates while I was conducting fieldwork there a few years ago. I would also like to thank the former members of the Direct Action Center for Peace and Memory: Tabo Mxolisi, Buyani Mamani, Liso, and the late
Nkululeku Boyssen. In Colombia, I am grateful to my friends and colleagues Sandro Jimenez and Juan
Pablo Aranguren, who have always shared with me a certain skepticism about the idea (or the promise) of
an imagined new nation. I would also like to thank Claudia Girn of the Fundacin Cepeda and my colleagues from the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Victimas de
Crmenes de Estado (MOVICE), the Association of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared (la Asociacin
de Familiares de DetenidosDesaparecidos, ASFADDES), the National Victims Working Group on the
Victims Law and Displaced Peoples Organizations around the country. Finally, the doctoral students I
have had as an advisor in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, and Colombia have always been an encouragement
to speak and to spread dissent across borders.
Note that I am not referring to political transitions but to transitional scenarios in order to include contexts
where there may be transitional justice measures in place (such as Colombia) but without transitions of
any kind.
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
On the other hand, her son had an incurable disease. In a different manner, in his body,
life and death also coexisted. Julia finally ran away because the rapist threatened her
after she took the case to the police (at that moment she did not know she was pregnant): a fatal mistake. Julia then abandoned her husband and was forced to move to the
dusty southern outskirts of Bogots endless favelas 4 that surround the hilly landscape.
She lives in a tiny, hidden space and feeds her children by selling cigarettes on an urban
bus at 10 cents apiece (dollar price). Eventually, her husband found her and discovered
she had borne a child, Clara. In time, he embraced the little one as one of his own.
Julia lives today in abject, chronic poverty and historically conditioned hunger. During
a subsequent conversation, my interviewer concluded laconically, The problem in
Colombia, paradoxically, is that the state has no way to repair this womans life, there
is no mechanism to repair this persons life. 5 The last time I asked about Julia, a
neighbor told me her sick youngster was into drugs and gangs. It seems she decided
to return to the South, she said, but, it looks like she hasnt been able to, she conceded. 6
Julias history and narrative is, indeed, made up of a series of profoundly tragic
events in which the language of pain available in a particular cultural and social context was capable of grasping certain forms of violence and injury, while others like
a sense of historical suffering and injustice were literally unintelligible, particularly
for the technocratic apparatus of the State. Her experience is an example of the sexualized power exerted over an indigenous woman by men carrying guns, an example of
her body taken quite literally as a territory of war, and of the persons subjectivity as a
battle trophy in the context of armed conflict. However, her situation is more
broadly the product of a larger cultural history, a wider temporality that exceeds current debates and technocratic approaches to memory, reparations, and justice. Hers is
4
I use the term favelas, in Portuguese, for lack of a better word. In Bogot the common term is localidad
(literally, locality), part of the socio-geographic and administrative division of the city. The city houses almost 11 million people distributed in twenty localities where 15% of the total population of the city lives
in absolute destitution and almost 60% below the poverty line. This population is distributed over more
than 1,900 smaller neighborhoods (Official Source: http://www.bogota.gov.co).
The assertion is paradoxical in the sense that there are laws and bureaucracies whose responsibility, for
better or for worse (and there is of course a debate around their limitations), is to deal with the process
not only of recognizing the rights of victims of violence but also to set out official initiatives to repair the
damage caused by armed conflict. The vexing issue regarding this phrase really has to do with its historical
density and depth.
Field notes were collected in April 2011. I thank Natalia Camacho for her confidence and her timely
corrections. I quote with Julias permission. Unless stated, all names are changed to maintain the physical
integrity of the speakers. A larger consideration on the topic of testimony will be published in Castillejo
(2012, forthcoming).
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
the history of exclusion and historical inequality of indigenous communities. Her

body is a repository of this palimpsest. Inequality is the product of economic exploitation and the expropriation of difference. Julia inhabits a form of victimization that,
however immediate and concrete, falls beyond the legal epistemologies that inform
and even determine the debates in Colombia on the nature of violence itself. 7 Her
experience speaks more to forms of violence that are not perceived as such, and therefore cannot be repaired either because they are situated (by the current political
establishment) in a far-off, neutralized past or because they are subtlety dressed with
the robes of national unity and reconciliation that force a society to look to the
future, to turn the page, to leave the past behind. However, bodies and subjectivities emaciated by the daily cravings of a permanent and systemic lack remind us of an
ever-present past.
In short, her history is that of an indigenous woman living in a situation of
chronic misery, embodying chronic silence. In part, the tragedy was not only sexual
abuse (with all the destruction this conveys), but also the structural conditions that
allow the abuse to happen in the first place (Farmer, 2010). The kinds of violence she
embodies are so multifarious, localized in a set of multiple spaces (geographical, bodily,
imaginary, existential) and temporalities (simultaneously past and present) that in Colombia the State, employing the current discourse on violence and healing (with its
motto Truth, Justice, and Reparations), does not know how to repair her. 8 How is
chronic hunger repaired? In other words, how could the violence that structures the
everyday almost to the point that it is rendered invisible be repaired? Furthermore, is it possible to conceive of a violence that simultaneously structures and destructures the realm of daily existence? Might it be possible to speak of harm as an
accumulative phenomenon (even over centuries), a kind of existential palimpsest in
which layers of collective suffering entwine?
Halewood, Peter. 1995. White Man Cant Jump: Critical Epistemologies, Embodiment, and the Praxis of
Legal Scholarship, Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 7(1): 1-36.
I use the term to repair (verb), as translated literally from the Spanish word reparar, which has a slightly mechanical connotation: to repair a car or a broken object. The other important term is dao (injury, harm, damage in their multi-layered existential, legal, and psychological registers). In Colombia
much of the social debate around violence deals with repairing (or reconstructing) the damage done to
the social fabric (tejido social) by armed conflict or by violence. This injury can be individual or collective, although the collective nature of injury (strongly evoked by the term tejido social) is more evasive
and difficult to grasp. Unlike other social contexts, the intellectual traditions behind this terminology are
more closely related to certain concepts drawn from the psychosocial study of pain and damage than to
psychiatric and medicalized understandings of it. See an introduction to larger debates on trauma and
humanitarian intervention in (Fassin 2009, 2010; Beristain, 2004)
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Taking Julias history as its starting point, this text explores the role that the articulation of a violent past through narration and testimony plays in creating not only
new forms of historical silence but also different ways of engaging memory and constructing the prospect of an imagined new society. 9 Its engagement with these questions
is pursued mainly through a series of ethnographic scenarios (South Africa, Colombia,
and to a lesser extent Peru) in which the diverse and complex implementation of the
law takes place, by creating and institutionalizing certain kinds of spaces. To what extent are these everyday spaces the sites physical, imaginary, or intersubjective
where conceptions of the past, of victimhood, and of social suffering are negotiated or
contested? What kind of historical artifacts do testimonies and their inherent silences
constitute? Identifying these tensions in concrete contexts of enunciation is essential,
not only to understand the possibilities of a sustainable peace, but also to grasp how
individuals and broader communities interconnect in the present with larger historical
processes and personal experience, in the recreation of the future.
In parts of Latin America, as well as in other national settings, a sustained interest in understanding the ways societies experience different forms of violence has been
at the forefront of a number of academic debates over the last decade. One of the topics in such discussions has been the question how these societies have faced their own
past and come to terms with its consequences and effects. In this regard, the bulk of
scholarly research on political transitions and transitional scenarios that has explored
the connections between violence and memory in its structural as well as its existential
registers is dispersed across a variety of interdisciplinary fields of knowledge: studies of
trauma, the Holocaust studies, and genocide and transitional justice studies, among
others (Misztal, 2001). These research areas have been concerned with, among other
topics of interest and with various degrees of specificity, evaluating different mechanisms of historical reconstruction as technologies of transition: truth and other kinds of
research commissions and historical memory groups in which issues of human dignity, forgiveness, and reconciliation are hotly contested in concrete political processes. At the center of these endeavors are questions about the nature of witnessing, of
its historical densities, and of the social resources that a society has at hand to grapple
with the past.
Central to the question of a violent past is the problem of how societies devise mechanisms that render
intelligible historical experiences that otherwise might seem unintelligible. Of course, there are experiences that escape intelligibility and the linearity of narrative and historic time. In this text I situate myself
in the liminal space between the two. The idea of articulation refers to a series of conceptual and political operations by which the past is authorized, localized within particular spatial and temporal coordinates con-signed, codified, and recognized as such. This process of articulation is analogous to the exercise of producing a map. (Bateson, 1978; Lakoff and Johnson, 2003)
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
One of these resources is Truth Commissions, which constitute, among other

things, mechanisms charged with defining, gathering, and producing an institutionally
legitimated knowledge about a violent past (Boraine and Levy, 1995; Minow, 1998;
Nuttal and Coetzee, 1998; Villa-Vicencio, 2000). In a sense, these technologies of transition are not substantially different from other kinds of investigatory commissions in
which the strategic application of a series of highly specialized classification, mapping,
and management mechanisms are required (Posel and Simpson, 2002; Richards, 1993,
Stocking, 1988; Marais, 2001; Battle, 1997; De Gruchy, 2002; Meredith and Rosenberg,
1999). Frequently, this past is crystallized in a series of specific products, such as final
reports (where findings are presented to the public) or in institutional archives and
documents that not only contain details of the commissions actual day-to-day processes, but also transcripts of testimonies gathered during the general enquiry. 10 If the
political circumstances surrounding the production and development of these products
allow, the final result is a general history of the causes and effects of violence during a
given period of time. Society as a whole returns, whenever there is a need, to this institutionalized history, to the periods it defines, and the events and protagonists it
deems significant, in order to understand the processes that have given birth to the
present. This is where the importance and moral status of the commissions reside, because the terms of reference used to construct this historical narrative, the way historical causality is elaborated and approached, and the manner in which different forms of
social agency and violence are defined determine the way the past will be read by future generations and not only by historians and researchers, but also by the general
population. Indeed, Truth Commissions (or transitional scenarios in which historical
reconstructions play a role) are social structures for the administration of the past. According to this perspective, archives are an effect of this administration, as they consolidate, codify, or con-sign a great amount of information into a single corpus (Derrida,
1995).
10
In speaking of the archive I am not only referring to a physical place or repository, in which part of the
power of the state resides; nor to the archivist who administers the ritualized access to the archive and to
whom its care is legally entrusted. In short, I am not referring to the physical space where documents
are stored: documents that are frequently written and that are the naturalized sources of information on
the past that lay awaiting the exegesis of the specialist. The structure of archives, with their constituent
parts and collections and their potential diversity, responds to a will to consign and to organize. There is an
epistemology that determines the very collection of documents. There are different institutions that together constitute the official archives charged with classifying and on whose work the administrative and
technocratic rationality of the state rests. This will to classify turns the archive into an artifact, a political
product that is simultaneously both factual and artificial, its arti-factuality. (Derrida, 1995; Hamilton,
2002)
10
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Given that one of their objectives is to produce this knowledge, couched principally in the language of human rights abuses, Truth Commissions such as the one in
South Africa seek to produce data and generalizations. The sources used to produce
such reports are, as might be expected, extremely varied, ranging from judicial investigations produced by teams of forensic and other specialists to testimonies collected
using a range of mechanisms including public hearings and special data collection protocols (Bur, 2002; Wilson, 2004). The diversity of sources employed by a commission is
always consigned to or congregated around an interpretative matrix, pre-established by
the overall theoretical and institutional framework that governs the investigation (Castillejo, 2007b; Ross, 2003). Not only, then, does the willingness of the commissions to
give a voice to survivors increase their legitimacy by demonstrating their openness to
work through the experiences of other human beings, but also this legitimation is
possible because they are operating within the established interpretative framework.
An exploration of the way words or testimonies inhabit these frameworks requires an examination of how the process of historical reconfiguration produces and
reinforces a series of war-related silences that emerge, paradoxically, at the very moment of their enunciation in language (Castillejo, 1997). In this sense, survivor and
victim testimonies may provide a legitimating device to investigative commissions
while along with a whole network of mimetic exercises where pain may be performed they in turn legitimize survivors by providing them with a range of sites,
languages, and audiences (Bozzoli, 1998; Lalu and Harris, 1996). During the testimony,
the semantic density of what is narrated is subject to the discursive pressures and the
theoretical limitations that define the nature of the word and what it is intended to
convey (Meyer, 1999). In this paper I attempt to understand the pressures and multiple
uses and abuses by which the truth of the other (the violence imposed on her body) is
trapped by epistemic violence.
Along these lines, in this text I do not deal with what is frequently uttered or
testified in the context of transitional scenarios (such as public hearings), but rather
concentrate on the kinds of absence unspoken and uncanny that elude the currently hegemonic tropes of trauma and human rights(Feldman, 2004; Trezise, 2001;
Dolar, 2006). Silence is, in its own right, an articulation of the experience of violence,
and as such, it requires from the listener a particular form of calibration, sensibility, and
engagement. In trying to achieve this, the paper highlights a series of social interactions
that emerge as part of, or as a prelude to, the implementation of laws that are at stake
in transitional scenarios, particularly in South Africa and Colombia, and to a lesser extent in Peru. Broadly speaking, it is based on the idea that the implementation of these
laws creates very concrete realms of the everyday that frame and define the spoken
11
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
and the unspoken. 11 In general, this quotidianity oscillates between highly ritualized and
technical series of procedures implemented by institutional bureaucracies and
more informal social spaces where historical narratives are produced, legitimized, and
circulated through different channels and technologies of reproduction. The analysis of
these transitional benefits from a perspective that pays attention to everyday life as a
historical and cultural artifact not only highlights the existential fracturing of the lifeworld in the advent of violence, and its afterlife, but also critically engages the global
discourses of reconciliation and forgiveness implemented in different contexts.
Indeed, what a society names or identifies as a violent past does not necessarily remain constant throughout its history and may not be shared by all of its members.
It is actualized, and of course there is a politics to naming. Whether this past is located in the realm of memory and subjectivity (as with the testimonies of victims) or
in the realm of history and objectivity (for example, statistics on missing people),
the question whether such a dichotomy is to be maintained is a much-contested frontier. When did the violence begin, at what moment in time, or at what point in
space (national or international) are questions that not only cut across the cultural
lines of which anthropologists of social time have long been well aware but are also, as
will be argued in the following sections, the magma of the social debates that occur in
transitional scenarios. This is indeed rather obvious. What is not so obvious is that the
contents of this violence are directly related to the ways that the languages of pain (a
system of referents that speaks about suffering as a social phenomenon) are part of
11
In spite of the range of conceptions that exist concerning the idea of the everyday, I am particularly interested, indirectly, in a reading of the law that pays attention to the production of this everyday life (see
Lefebvre, 1991; de Certeau, 1984). This change of scale has highlighted the fact that these laws create a
range of encounters in which negotiations over the meanings of the past and the future are intertwined in
complex ways with culturally and socially informed ideas of victimhood, dignity, truth, justice, guilt, injustice, and historical causality. Court proceedings, public hearings, and forensic investigations, among other
possibilities, are some of the sites where meanings are mediated, elaborated, and contested. By everyday I
am not referring to what happens on a daily basis and becomes repetitive, normal, or self-evident, invisible
and unnoticed, trivial and irrelevant familiarity. This is perhaps the colloquial meaning of the term. The
scope of the everyday is defined, although with great fluidity, by the universe (and the social space it entails) of face-to-face encounters. These encounters are not aleatory the result of chance but structured by patterns of social interaction among people socialized as members of a community. I am thinking, of course, of communities of pain, as Veena Das has succinctly called collectives that come together to
share a sense of common suffering (Das, 2007). They are structured encounters that adhere, to a certain
extent, to a limited repertoire of possibilities and that define, in mutually constituent interaction, individual as well as collective itineraries. Hearings and proceedings are good examples. It is in this universe, so to
speak, that meanings of being human are produced and reproduced. The world of the everyday, wrote
Alfred Schutz, is not my private world () but, since the beginning, is a shared world () experimented
and interpreted with the other (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973; 1992: 280; Highmore, 2002).
12
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
larger discursive contexts (Schiffrin, 1995). Debates about current conflicts also revolve
around assigning a name to violence committed by different groups in a particular
historical period (Amadiume and An-Naim, 2000; Trouillot, 1995; Werbner, 1998) 12.
To discuss these topics, this paper connects three different transitional scenarios.
Despite their historical and sociological differences there is an element that, it seems to
me, they all share: a pattern that connects them. In trying to grasp the multiple dimensions of violence through different mechanisms, the collective languages instituted
by State-sponsored laws fail to render intelligible the structural dimensions of violence
that are at the root of conflict itself (Castillejo, 2006). I call this blind spot structural or
endemic silence: a violence that is rendered invisible, so to speak, at the very moment
of its enunciation in language. 13 It implies a particular discursive framework in which
12
In Colombia, for instance, there has been a debate not only as to the actual date (1964, 1985, or a different
year) when violence began (the archontic nature of the archive-in-the-making) but also concerning
the term that should be used to describe it. This timeline, or temporal frontier, conceals certain forms of
continuities as well as dislodging causal relations, locating experience in the past. The work of intellectuals, who are situated in this juncture, is a sort of theoretical and historical activism (for lack of a better
term, less loaded with the oversimplifications it often evokes) that reveals the continuities of power in the
heart of its (alleged) fractures. Similarly, a relevant and very pervasive example of the importance of naming as a practice of classifying, of mapping, may be found in the way the newspapers of the Middle
East report the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially in the Islamic countries. Reports emanating from the
Gaza Strip or Jerusalem and appearing in newspapers from Abu Dhabi to Damascus refer to Jerusalem as
Occupied Jerusalem or to the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and Palestine which have been under
Israeli military control for several decades as the Occupied Territories. The difference is starkly apparent in relation to the events that gave origin to the state of Israel, whose official creation involved the
dismantlement and displacement in 1948 of existing Palestinian settlements in the towns of Lydda and
Ramla at the hands of Israeli soldiers commanded by Yitzhak Rabin, in a process that has been described
by survivors as ethnic cleansing. In this narrative of collective suffering, the birth of the nation state is paralleled by the disappearance of another. In the Arab world these events are known as the Nakba (Reflections on the Nakba Gulf News, Dubai, April 26, 2008, page 4).
13
This relates to second-order concepts, concepts that can recursively be applied to themselves, such as
second-order blindness: not seeing that we dont see. I will take this notion, as I think it serves not only as
an analogy for what I want to point out but also helps me to reflect on a series of questions that have determined the development of my argument. At a certain distance from the eye, objects are reflected onto a
part of the retina in which there is a complete lack of visual receptors, the sensors (or cells) that translate
differences between types of information (light, intensity, texture, etc.) through neuronal networks into
the final edited image. As there are no sensors, a portion of this particular information is lost and will
not be part of the field of vision. Despite this emptiness (itself a particular kind of information), the field
of vision does not suffer from any fragmentation or discontinuity. For the purpose of my argument, the
interesting problem arises when the observer does not realize that he is not seeing. It usually requires a
change of context, a directed de-familiarization, in order to perceive otherwise. Absence disappears from
the visual field momentarily, while the eye (an embodied technology of perception) recalibrates itself in
accordance with the distance. Depending on the conditions, one can speak of the normalization of blind
13
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
testimonies and words are inscribed and domesticated. As explained earlier, it is

through this domestication that the word of the other its immaterial alterity is, in
a way, brought to the familiar.
The first section is an ethnographic vignette based on my participation as a
formal observer of the events organized (by communities of victims) around the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission in Peru, particularly the hearing regarding the phenomenon of displacement that occurred in the country during the counterinsurgency
war against Sendero Luminoso. In this section I try to illustrate the spectral nature of the
truth as I delve into the social textures of belonging and testimony. The subtlety that
weaves this section (as well as the entire paper) together is a permanently posed question about the nature of voice and the ethics of listening. 14
Sections two and three take a look at both the National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995 in South Africa and the Ley de Justicia y Paz (Justice and Peace Law)
of 2005 in Colombia in order to highlight the ways that these laws instituted official
forms of structural forgetfulness (Feldman, 2004; Bonner and Nieftagodien, 1998), as
a result of the conceptual architecture and the systems of classification they were based
on. In both cases, depending on the intrinsic definition of the term violence, a series
of narrative possibilities arose. In the first case, the text addresses the idea of expropriation and displacement (the very pillars of Apartheids separate development theory)
that were left out of the general historical narrative. In the other, it is the revisionist
redefinition of the terms of reference, which scholars and lay people in Colombia had
spots as forms of second-order blindness, that is, blindness about being blind. Now, this analogy may give a
clue to reflect on the social nature of invisibility. A question that comes to mind is whether one can speak
of social blind spots:
14
I deal more specifically with the ethics of listening and the geopolitical dimension of social science research in Castillejo (2005a: 154, 2005b, 2005c). Much of my fieldwork among communities of survivors
poses the question about the ethical-political dilemmas of conducting anthropological research on
memory and violence. In the specific context of victim support groups in South Africa (and in Colombia), one of the most problematic issues relates to the interactions between trauma experts (even if
wholehearted and well intentioned) and victims. In the view of many survivors, the violence of academia,
an issue to which there was a particular sensitivity in South Africa in the years following the Truth Commission process, was re-inscribed in their lives through the specific intervention of social scientists (as opposed, for example, to so-called activists). One of the effects of these interventions (and the hierarchies
they impose on the field through the very staging of methodologies), is a widespread reaction against
experts, whose work, the production and dissemination of knowledge about trauma on the basis of
other peoples experiences, survivors (in South Africa) often perceived as being part of a broader economy of
extraction (in the same way as bodies, strategic metals, and natural resources are extracted), where their
voices became commodities in a transnational network of academic prestige: involving not only the financial and symbolic advantages that the international circuit of conferences carries with it, but also the
desire to make the acrobatic leap into the next consultancy job that many academics harbor.
14
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debated over a long period. The term violence, and therefore the testimonies of
violence, were inscribed into broader transnational discourses of terrorism and the
war on terror. Their political, historical, and social connotations were caught up in a
mixture of presidential decree, a polarized political milieu during president Uribes two
terms in office (2002-2010), a deeply politicized and servile mass media, and a reframing of internal security prerogatives. A new ontology an abstracted, trans-historical
conception of the victim came into existence.
The final section, which brings the previous arguments together, is also an ethnographic vignette of the International Conference on the Victims of Terrorism held
in Bogot in February 2005 (the second in a series of seven meetings in all), prior to
the approval by the Colombian Congress of the Justice and Peace Law. The voices of
the victims, a signifier in circulation since then, were once again reified and inserted
into a collective, politically biased, historical explanation. Voice became voided of its
radical content, becoming part of a new official agenda.
In presenting these vignettes, my intention is to illustrate the vicissitudes of
words and of silence by referring to examples drawn from different scenarios in which
a violent past is reproduced and named. This represents an initial attempt to find a language that is adequate to be used as the basis of a series of deeper questions about the
relationship between historical truth, testimony, archives, and the legitimization of a
given political order.
This exercise, which has no pretensions to be exhaustive, should be seen as a
stop along the way or an opportunity to rethink many of the categories that are habitually used to understand and conceptualize ideas such as political change, damage,
victim, social fabric, and reparation.
15
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II
First Vignette: The Theatrics of History

and Voice
15
In December 2002 I had the opportunity to participate in activities organized

by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 16 A thematic public hearing
had been organized one of a series of complex scenarios of exchange in which victims of gross violations of human rights recounted their stories of tragedy and suffering before a sympathetic audience. The overall objective of the hearings, established by
the Commission, was to () inform public opinion of the human rights violations
that had disproportionately [affected] certain sectors of society (Final Report, Vol. 2:
156 ff.). As in the case of the South African Truth Commission, the hearings in Peru
were conceived as a space that would offer dignity, recognition, and healing for
the people who spoke and, ideally, for the community of listeners too (Asmal, Asmal
and Roberts, 1997). The hearing was held on 12 December 2002 and dealt with Political Violence and Displaced Communities, a topic I had investigated extensively in
Colombia the previous year.
My attendance at a number of official events was mediated by long interviews
with employees of the Commission in Lima, where the hearing took place, including
officials such as the Director General, the Director of Hearings, those responsible for
the Communications Team, as well as mid-level employees and several figures from
political and academic life. I was surprised by several aspects of the visit. First, in contrast to what had occurred in South Africa, in Peru the Commission did not have a
high media profile, or at least, it did not dominate the news agenda (Castillejo, 200b).
There was a palpable silence from all the private media outlets in the weeks preceding
the hearing; the only exception was the state-controlled TV channel, which broadcast
the hearing live once it had begun. This was due, fundamentally, to the fact that the
15
Some of the ideas and arguments concerning the main topic in the following sections were initially and
partially discussed in conferences I have been invited to by various institutions in recent years. One of
them is the thesis that the future (as a social possibility, imagined by concrete communities) is not in
front of us, but rather inhabits the languages about memory and the past that are articulated through
categories and concepts in a particular historical present. In a way, the future is located behind us.
16
Thanks to an invitation from the Danish Foreign Ministry and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation
in South Africa, where I was visiting researcher between 2001 and 2003, I had the opportunity to act as
an international observer and consultant to the process developed in Peru towards the end of 2002. The
motivating idea was to look into both forced displacement and the ritual of public hearings with the aim
of providing information on their nature and development. Material for this section comes from my field
notes and the Final Report (Castillejo, 2003; See also http://www.cverdad.org.pe)
16
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Commission was investigating human rights violations that had occurred between
1980 and 2000 under different presidents, some of whom retained political ambitions
and continued to exert influence in post-conflict Peru. This lack of media attention
had an impact on the general perception of the Commissions work (Laplante and
Fenicie, 2010). The umbilical connections of these candidates with the media created a
generalized veil of indifference. Beyond the groups represented at the hearing, there
were puzzling levels of ignorance or indifference concerning the Commissions work.
Before highlighting some elements that are important to the thrust of the argument, it is important briefly to summarize the contents of the hearing I attended. 17
This provides a context for subsequent arguments. The morning session was divided
into three parts or blocks. The first consisted of an emotive video on the subject, preceded by an inaugural speech by the President of the Commission. The witnesses were
welcomed and Peruvian society as a whole was exhorted to think about its past and
recognize the pain of the other. The second block dealt with the causes and antecedents of
internal displacement and included testimonies from three witnesses, each of whom
was allotted 25 minutes to speak of the violations they had been subjected to in the
valleys of El Monzn and the Alto Huallaga in the Department of San Martn and the
communities of Ostocollo, Tancayllo, Izcahuanca, and Huayrapampa (Department of
Apurimac). Their testimonies were punctuated by presentations by representatives of
the International Committee of the Red Cross and the National Round Table of Displaced [People] and Communities in Reconstruction (the Mesa Nacional de
Desplazados y Comunidades en Reconstruccin del Per). The final block brought
together testimonies from other regions and interventions from employees and members of the Support Program for the Re-population and Development of Emergency
Zones (Programa de Apoyo al Repoblamiento y Desarrollo de Zonas en Emergencia), the National Coordination of Displaced [People] and Communities in Reconstruction (Coordinadora Nacional de Desplazados y Comunidades en Reconstruccin del Per).
I do not intend to provide an exegesis of the testimonies presented that morning beyond affirming, as is perhaps obvious, that they presented experiences of war
waged by different armed groups, in particular Sendero Luminoso and the Peruvian
17
The commission organized different types of public scenarios: Thematic Public Hearings, Case Hearings,
and Public Assemblies. Thematic hearings dealt with Self-Defense Committees, Anti-terrorist Legislation
and the Obstruction of Due Process, Political Violence and Crimes against Women, Political Violence and
the University Community, Political Violence and the School Community, Political Violence and Forced
Displacement, and Violence in the Andes Plateau. Additionally, seven public assemblies were co-organized
with local communities: Chumbivilcas (5 June 2002), Cusco (7 June 2002), Cajatambo (29 June 2002),
Pucallpa (9 June 2002), Tarapoto (16 June 2002), Hunuco (7 August 2002), and Chungui (15 and 16 October 2002). There were also a number of Case Hearings.
17
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Armed Forces, whose articulation in language was framed by the Commissions need
to illustrate specific cases and distinct forms of violence, particularly around mistreatment of the body. They did indeed describe gross violations of human rights, the circumstances, and the perpetrators, the feelings of witnesses, narratives of displacement, details of the fracturing of families, and so on (Castillejo, 2000). The testimonies
were presented in various indigenous languages (including Spanish), providing evidence, as the Commission would note later in its report, of the way the violence had
affected Perus indigenous communities disproportionately.
According to the report,
An analysis of the testimonies that have been submitted shows that 75% of
those killed in the internal armed conflict spoke Quechua or another indigenous language as their mother tongue. This detail provides an eloquent contrast
with the fact that, according to the 1993 census, this population group constitute[d] only 16% of the population of Peru (Final Report,Vol. 7: 316).
In other words, given the geographies of the war, the indigenous population,
which is concentrated in the poorest parts of the country, provided the overwhelming
majority of those killed. The Commission evaluated the scale of political violence and
gave an account of the factors (historical and institutional) that precipitated internal armed conflict and forced political elites to abdicate democratic principles to the
power of legal and illegal armed groups. The final report is very clear in dating the
commencement of the armed conflict (based on a very specific definition of violence) to
1980, when the Peruvian Communist PartySendero Luminoso first decided to
initiate a popular war against the State (Final Report,Volume VIII, chapter One). 18
It is evident that in order for the Commission to reach the conclusions it did
the testimonies were necessarily heard, classified, and catalogued in specific ways. And,
inspired by what was said that day, the nature of this mapping is the central point I wish
to deal with in this section. The general concern, suggested by the structure of the
initial session of the hearing, gravitated around the degree to which society at large is
able to hear the complex connections and the historical demands implicit in the act of
remembering and of providing testimony about a violent past. These historical demands surpassed the temporal lines demarcated by the Commissions mandate. To what
18
As is well known, the eight-volume Final Report was divided into a series of general themes: actors (of
the internal conflict), scenarios, patterns of violations, typologies of crimes and violations, specific cases, effects of violence, recommendations, and final annexes.
18
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
degree did the new reconstruction of the past undertaken by the Commission incorporate or re-inscribe these hierarchies of pain?
One of the main consequences of political violence during the period covered
by the Commission was the almost unbearable situation suffered by the indigenous
and peasant communities. Since the conflict between the state and the guerrillas had
its epicenter in the mountains, the hearing was able, to a degree and at least temporarily, to bridge the apparently insurmountable physical, emotional, and cognitive chasm
between the geographical and existential locus of war and other sectors of society. The
report was clear in suggesting this abyss. In other words, this cognitive distance (reinforced by the media and by the structure of society itself), which translates into the
idea that the war is a distant problem for most people, reproduced a dichotomy between an organized center (where life was conducted normally) and a violent
periphery (Bauman, 1993: 145). As has been documented in Colombia, it was precisely the liminality embodied by displaced persons (the majority of witnesses that day)
that made it possible to glimpse the different registers of meaning that constituted
their spoken testimonies (Castillejo, 2006c).
The day before the hearing, the Commission, along with a small number of organizations of displaced people, organized a cultural event in Limas Civic Center. It
was intended to educate and inform the general public about the problem of displacement in Peru and of the need to deal with its social impact, since it was a topic
that had remained entirely invisible throughout the history of the conflict. In essence,
the event provided an opportunity for representing and staging, in Ervin Goffmans
sense, distinct cultural identities, expressed artistically in the form of dance, street theater, and music; it was a presentation of culture in the most traditional sense of the
word. The program also included a series of eloquent speeches by representatives of the
communities. The majority of the speakers, who were peasants and indigenous people
from the Andean region (the Sierra), emphasized the many difficulties they had faced as
a result of the ways they had been expelled from their territories. 19 Despite the differences between the various personal and collective experiences of displacement, overwhelmingly felt as a moment of rupture with ancestral lands and a fracturing of social
relations, the event served as a political statement that could be subtlety intelligible in
at least two registers: on the one hand, the presentations provided public evidence of
the existence of a category of people displaced Peruvians that had emerged as a
19
According to the Commission, the typology of displacement may be summarized as follows: communities
of peasants, indigenous people, and comuneros that had inserted themselves definitively within a new social environment; returnees that is, people involved in a reinsertion process who are returning to
their place of origin, and those undergoing a process of relocation but who are not living in their places
of origin (Comisin de la Verdad y la Reconciliacin, 2003: 642).
19
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
consequence of the war. On the other, they made political and historical statements
that referred to previous forms of exclusion, in that they spoke of war and violence
using registers that differed from those defined by the human rights discourse.
The main request of the displaced communities was that they should be accepted and their situation recognized, not only by institutions and by the government,
through the promulgation of laws that might benefit them in their daily lives, but also
existentially: by a society that in general appeared indifferent to their suffering. This
need for recognition as a legitimate other within the confines of a given social space
was usually articulated through itineraries of meaning in which larger historical processes interconnected with personal ones. 20 In the words of one community leader
interviewed: () please, dont forget that we exist, that we also are human beings and
that we deserve a place to live: place, identity, and humanity entwine. 21 This statement
incorporates in an elusive manner the entire social cartography and political economy
of their experience. It is a retrospective articulation that highlights the semantic density
of the words and a history of oppression and exclusion that crystallizes in a narrative.
Forced displacement, a consequence of threats to the integrity of life, entails a fracturing of peoples lives: existential, psychological, cultural, and geographical deterritorializations. For the receiving communities, the arriving displaced person embodies the stigma of people coming from violence-ridden places, a world inhabited by
uncanny creatures, by the traumatized, the insane, and violence-prone men. This need
of the displaced to reaffirm that they belong to the moral community of humanity, is
expressed in the phrase we are also human beings, a mechanism by which the experience is re-narrated and vested with diverse meanings (Castillejo, 2006a; Steiner,
2005).
During the event, presentations showing the customs and identities of Perus indigenous peoples were staged, while the statements of leaders spoke precisely to
the fact that they went unrecognized. For those who took a few minutes to observe,
this was perceived as an act of testimony that confusingly amalgamated different categories of human beings and the historical processes through which the categories had
been socially constructed, including Indians, comuneros, and cholos, victims and mesti-
20
Castillejo, A. 2006. Peripatetic Memorialization: Memory, Postwar and the prospect of Peace Education
and Healing in Contemporary South Africa. In: Identitt in den Kulturwissenschaften. Perspektiven und
Fallstudien zu Identitts- und Alteritatsdiskursen. Sonia Altnoder, Martin Luthe und Marcel Vejmelka
(eds.). Trier: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, pp. 257-276.
21
Miller, Nancy and Jason Tougaw. 2002. Extremities: Trauma, Testimony and Community. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
20
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
zos. 22 The phenomenon of displacement often evokes confusion, ambivalence, and

ambiguity. As I mentioned earlier, recipient communities stigmatized them as an unknown mass of people that personified danger, backwardness, and ignorance.
However, rather than seemingly overlapping categories, the notion of displacement presented during the public event bridged different stories of dispossession that
remain present in Peruvian society. These representations spoke of the complex process
of urban insertion and community relocation, as the displaced made efforts to reconstruct their lives. This search for a space (literally and figuratively) was at the heart of
their social demands. The demands that emerged from the declarations made during
the hearing and in the public event served also to articulate a voice that combined
with astonishing clarity the present and the past, current anxieties, and expectations
of the future. In a country where Quechua (an indigenous language) is also an official
language despite the fact that Spanish is the language of government and bureaucracy the phrase we exist, spoken in Quechua and repeated in Spanish, expressed
the reality of dislocated populations and their situation. It carries a historical significance that is altogether deeper, rooted in a longer temporality. As part of its mandate,
the Commission sought to study the violence committed between 1980 and 2000.
However, this originary violence goes beyond the period in question since other violence
and other displacements have been part of the past and have, therefore, defined the present.
It was precisely in the subtle, multi-layered details of these testimonies that the
need for recognition acquired a more complex voice and, I would suggest, a different
timescale. We exist referred also to a very distant past, before 1980, but those who
made the claim used the language of truth, justice, and reconciliation, while speaking at the
same time about the present. The voice, then, became harder to understand, but evident nevertheless. Its meaning went beyond a simple affirmation, beyond narration,
and beyond the declaration and the limitations of legal categories that in one way or
another confined them within a specific context of enunciation. It was the convergence of
22
For instance, such dichotomies as the existence of hierarchies within hierarchies among the indigenous
populations of the Highlands and the Jungles are still normalized. That is, the differences between the
Quechua and the Aymara, in the case of the inhabitants of the enormous mountainous heartlands of the
Incas (especially in todays Cuzco and Huancavelica regions), and the indigenous populations grouped in
smaller settlements in the Amazonian rainforest particularly in Loreto, Junn, and Amazonas make up
of some 55 ethnolinguistic groups. This classification is clearly derived from the ecological niche inhabited
by these populations. Jungle Indians do not have the cultural cachet inherited from the Incas and their
descendants in the Highlands, whose ruins bear eloquent testimony to former glories. The Jungle, on the
other hand, evokes another, radically different, world. The social significance of the jungle is that of pure,
crude, super-adapted nature and of indomitable force.
21
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
these personal and collective currents, rooted in multiple timescales, mutually reinforcing, entrenched in multiple timeframes in the colonial past and in recent wars
and in the fact that America is a continent of displaced people and Indians that elucidated the historical density of the word. The demands for space are also demands for
ancestral territories and collective ownership. Violence and dispossession are woven
together in history. But this potential historical density is undermined by the everyday
normalization of exclusion and of invisibility. One observer, echoing a group of State
employees who attended the hearing, asserted that those Indians [were] complaining
again. If they feel so isolated from their mountains and jungles its because theyre
hung up on their traditional customs. The response of this person illustrates, more
than just a blind spot, a further irony: not only were the indigenous people and poor
peasants to blame for their predicament, but their misery and grief were justified.
Listening to experiences of war and violence is inherently complex, a problem
that scholars of genocide are well aware of. As a result, it is difficult to capture, to grasp,
the semantic and historical density of testimonies. Many of the interviews I conducted
as an invited observer resonated with these general topics. The interviews were an opportunity to speak out, to transcend the limitations of official discourse that indirectly
set the limits of speech. Yet the Commission did open an important space for experiences of terror to circulate. The question of listening, however, is not so much in giving
voice to the (abused, traumatized, or insane) other still a neo-colonial trope as in
recalibrating ones own capacity to listen with historical depth and, to an extent, to
archive anew, in the sense I outlined before. Additionally, listening is determined by the
context in which the enunciation occurs, as it imposes certain limits on the process
and on the way the voice, and the person embodying it, may be used. Within a context
of transitional scenarios, where a commission investigates gross violations of human
rights, the discourse of truth and reconciliation also creates an epistemological
space that makes it very difficult to grasp damages or injuries that are beyond the
limits imposed by the implicit definitions of violence.
The violence that is enunciated and defined within the confines of the hearing
is different, though co-substantial, with what is said outside, in another public space:
between the two are several chasms, various forms of unintelligibility, and a number of
translations. The experience of the individual is translated into another language in
which its density is diluted in the present. Let me now turn to South Africa, in order
to view this argument from a different point of view.
22
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III
The Law and the Illegibility of the Past
In the preface to the National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995 (hereafter,
the Act, or the Commission) that gave birth to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the centrality of the search for factual clarification was clearly established from the outset. One of the goals of the Commission, and I quote extensively,
[I]s to provide for the investigation and the establishment of as complete a
picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human
rights committed during the period of March 1 1960 to the cut-off date contemplated in the constitution [May 1994], within or outside the Republic, emanating from the conflicts of the past, and the fate and whereabouts of the victims of such violations () [I]t is deemed necessary to establish the truth in relation to past events as well as the motives for and the circumstances in which
gross violations of human rights have occurred (National Unity and Reconciliation Act of 1995: pg 1. Emphasis added) 23.
The Commission established a series of mechanisms to provide such a complete picture of the apartheid past: first, a research and corroboration process, triggered by victims and deponents testimonies and carried out by the Research Unit,
assisted in localizing and mapping certain incidents within the general coordinates of
human rights violations defined by the TRCs mandate. This mandate not only identifies specific acts as violations (which defined the meanings of violence), but, in
doing so, also constrained and defined the nature of the TRCs endeavor, disconnecting it from lines of causality that might have explained, for instance, the historical interrelations between apartheid and its recourse to other forms of less visible violence
and previous forms of segregation.
23
This section was originally part of a larger research project on the politics of memory in South Africa.
Intensive ethnographic fieldwork was carried out with survivors of apartheid in Cape Town, between
2001 and 2004 and during the African summer of 2005-2006, initially as a visiting Fellow at the Institute
for Justice and Reconciliation and then as a Fellow at the Direct Action Center for Peace and Memory.
Over the years, the development of the Africa and Latin America Academic Exchange Initiative enabled
me to continue my dialogue with colleagues at the Direct Action Center. Funding for this research was
made possible by the Fulbright Commission (U.S.A.), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research (U.S.A.), the Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict (U.S.A.), and the Institute for
the Development of Science and Technology (Colombia).
23
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Second, much detail came from perpetrators who applied for amnesty; sworn
affidavits, hearings, and in-camera interviews were used to collect information. The
interconnection between these two mechanisms produced the commissions findings, or knowledge, distilled out of a social process of inquiry. However, in the context of rendering this factual picture to the broader society, in the case of specific incidents during the apartheid years, the amnesty process played a far more central role in
its production. This process created specialized knowledge about the past, producing a cartography of certain notions of violence and dislocation and presenting them
in particular ways.
These mechanisms, which coexisted during the Commissions lifespan, weighed
differently during different stages of its process. The victim-centered testimonial process central to the first stages of the TRC gave way to the more legalistic, forensic concept of truth developed by the Amnesty Committee. If during the process of
knowledge production about the past the testimonies helped to give visibility to
certain uses of apartheid violence, triggering a process of truth recovery, in the end
the testimonial process had no epistemological weight in the Final Report. Yet, if at
one point testimonies were more concerned with narrative, dignity, and voice, as many
authors have stressed, they were also, even if tangentially, part of the general process of
knowledge production in which specific information was extracted, organized, and
interpreted. Both of these mechanisms, which rely on two conceptions of what constitutes a source, laid the foundation for the prospect of the restoration of truth and
the production of knowledge about the past.
The Act speaks, in this regard, about the idea of factual or forensic truth within
the temporal confines of the mandate period (1 March 1960 to 10 May 1994) and
concentrates its effort on establishing a comprehensive account of certain kinds of
acts, typified as gross violations of human rights. These violations are also defined by
the Act and are confined basically to (a) killing, abduction, torture, or severe illtreatment of any person, on the one hand, and (b) any attempt, conspiracy, incitement, instigation, command, or procurement to commit an act referred in paragraph
(a) and a series of subcategories that emanate from these general terms that were developed by the Commissions information and classification system, on the other hand.
For instance, killings might be sub-classified according to the specific procedure
beating, electric shocks, and so on. For these actions to be classified as gross violations
of human rights, they had to be performed in the context of the conflicts of the past
(that is, the mandate period) and be associated with a political objective.
As I have stressed, the Commission basically counted on two mechanisms to
carry out its mission. On the one hand, it collected evidence on the basis of a standardized process of statement taking from deponents. Subsequently, the investigative
24
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
unit would corroborate the information gathered in this way. This process consisted
basically of filling out a protocol that would describe and capture specific kinds
of information on gross violations of human rights: dates, the nature of the violation,
the names of the victims, a brief summary of the incident, and place. These testimonies
were produced during the statement-taking process when people came forward to call
the Commissions attention to the killing, abduction, or torture of a relative and were
mainly the responsibility of the Human Rights Violation Committee. Although these
testimonies were also concerned with what was known as narrative truth, I also
consider them to have been part of a broader goal of the Commission that sought to
unveil factual truth regarding the conflicts of the past.
The protocol itself underwent a process of transformation (and technical refinement in accordance with certain pragmatic necessities) during different moments
of the Commissions life. 24 Initially, in early 1996, statement-takers, trained specially for
the job, were responsible for gathering general narratives or testimonies from the victims themselves, surviving relatives, or other deponents in connection with past events.
These were long, personal, and detailed renderings of the context that surrounded
particular incidents. As with any testimony and at the time there were few practical
constraints regarding its form and content these were often complex textures that
wove time and space in a not necessarily linear fashion, hovering around minutiae not
specifically connected, in the legal sense, to the violation of human rights. At that moment, the Commission was certainly interested in encouraging this cathartic exercise,
replicated in the ritualistic space of public hearings. 25 Testimonies would divert the
focus, so to speak, from the actual incident to other dimensions of experience. Public
hearings may give an example of the kinds of testimonies that were presented. Certainly, one of the problems associated with statement-taking was the fact that the definition of an act was so narrow that it could not take into consideration the web of
effects that constitute the life-world of the extended family.
If the idea of statement-takers was to gather very precise information regarding
human rights violations, the time needed to gather the information, as well as the role
of the statement-takers in processing the information, made it a difficult and timeconsuming job. 26 Statements could take anything between two to three hours to be
24
Wilson, Richard. 2004. The Politics of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p 33.
25
Bozzoli, Belinda. Public Ritual and Private Transition: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
Alexandra Township 1996, African Studies 57(1998): 167-195.
26
Buur, Laars. Monumental Historical Memory: Managing Truth in the Everyday Work of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Commissioning the Past, Edited by Deborah Posel and
Greame Simpson (Johannesburg: Witswaterrand University Press, 2002).
25
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completed and could be 30 to 40 pages long. Given this pace and the narrative nature
of the information gathered, by September 1996 the Commission had not heard from
the number of deponents expected at the beginning of its work. Much of the shortfall
was blamed on the statement-takers themselves. As an investigator commented, statements were coming in with no date of violations, no names of the victims or witnesses, and meanderings in the story. We should have trained lawyers taking statements. They
were of very poor quality (Wilson, 2004: 25, Emphasis added).
If the process during the first year of the Commissions work was victimcentered, allocating a great deal of resources and time to listening to their stories, by
the second year the process had already shifted dramatically. Hardly any findings could
be drawn from the material extracted from this kind of testimonial process, though
that had been one of the Commissions original goals. Strong criticisms came from
various quarters, mostly investigators, data analysts, and lawyers, as to the useless nature of this kind of information, in the legal sense. According to this view, the Commission could not fulfill its mandate because it was unable to make any serious, legitimate, impartial findings based on a process that, first, involved a lot of emotion and
produced a text that seemed to allow too many inconsistencies and contradictions and,
second, could not yield any relevant and significant facts that would aid in identifying perpetrators and holding them accountable for their acts. The change in the protocol not only reflected a particular technical transformation and refinement of information-gathering tools, based on bureaucratic rationalism, but was also an expression
of deeper cleavages within the Commission itself as to the notion of truth and the
sources of knowledge.
As I have remarked earlier, during the first year of the TRC, protocols were
geared towards gathering full voluntary testimonies from victims and witnesses. The
information would then be registered, photocopied, and archived. Subsequently, the
testimony rendered by the victims relatives, witnesses, or the victims themselves would
be broken down into different categories and subcategories or subtypes of violations,
namely killing (by varied means), torture (also by varied means), abduction, and
severe ill-treatment (TRC Final Report (Volume 5), 1998: 15-23). This information
would then be entered into a general database, using the Information Management
System, which allowed regional offices to exchange and compare sensitive or relevant
information via computer networks.
The presentation of the statement to the Commissions staff was a first step in
the unveiling of truth and clarifying the circumstances that might have led to gross
violations of human rights. It was also a first step in the production of specialized
knowledge about the past. After this initial step, the Commission, through its investigative unit, would start a process of corroboration and investigation based on the powers
26
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
conferred by the Act: powers to subpoena potential witnesses and to seize documents
held in any archive or location, whether private or public. The information captured
by local TRC offices could be translated into local and regional findings, statistics of
gross human rights violations, particular patterns of abuse, and so on (Wilson, 2004: 33;
Buur, 2002: 66). Comparison between regional offices would inevitably lead to national generalizations regarding the phenomenon in question during the mandate period
covered by the Commission. The final report, the final complete picture, was produced out of these forms of fact collection and translation.
The shifting form of the protocol between mid-1996 and late 1997, designed
to serve the needs of lawyers and analysts, had its consequences. It became a questionnaire with very specific entries that could easily be handled by the data analysts. The
testimony was to be reduced to its simplest form: a brief summarized version of the
incident. In the words of a data processor in Johannesburg, When we started, it was
narrative. We let people tell their story. By the end of 1997, it was a short questionnaire
to direct the interview instead of letting people talk about themselves. The questionnaire distorted the whole story altogether; it destroyed the meaning. The protocol
became an instrument of reduction, a particular technology that grasped historical
causation, interrelatedness, and complexity by fragmenting a narrative texture into
smaller clusters of significant or relevant information. By doing this, acts were decontextualized and de-historicized and treated as discrete, universal categories. Acts
of gross violations of human rights, the smallest unit of analysis, came into existence
only as they were inscribed into the classification system. Data collection was further
narrowed by the analysis of summaries on the basis of a rigid, controlled vocabulary
(Castillejo, 2005: 1; Wilson, 2004: 45; Buur, 2002: 66).
In summary, the emotional character disappeared altogether, and the problem
of the persons articulation of experience in language became irrelevant. The initial
cathartic character of this testimonial experience became an exercise in data extraction, decontextualized and stripped of personal, meaningful detail. The whole process
changed from a three-hour interview to one of just half an hour. As the process became more impersonal it grew less cathartic. The more impersonal and directed it was,
the more useful and legitimate as a source of knowledge it became. Factual truth
grew out of an aseptic process that would cleanse a constellation of historical, personal,
and existential factors of its subjective burden. In a country like South Africa, this
particular practice re-inscribed silence at the very moment the experience was articulated.
In the final analysis, this process implied a series of translations: from the first
testimony, which was framed by the informational necessity of the statement-taking
process, into the findings, from experience into knowledge. The Final Report
27
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
reflected this banishment, as the information was certainly reduced to basic factual
information. During the process of knowledge production, experiences were displaced
by the Commissions need to establish facts. These testimonies were, however, a fundamental source of its grounding, even if only partially, at the start of the process. In
the long run, though, data analysts did not recognize the testimonies as data. In this
regard, as far as this knowledge is concerned, testimonies had a rather liminal status,
simultaneously considered central as well as peripheral, present and yet absent: the face
of the victim blurred in the very scenario of her enunciation.
In this regard, one way to understand the consequences of this process of translation is to look at the issue of forced displacement in South Africa. Between the 1950s
and 1970s, as part of the project of social engineering conceived by the theoreticians
of total segregation, the Nationalist government removed a great percentage of the
black population into segregated areas, by way of a massive program of forced displacement. The so-called Bantustans, homelands, and, today, townships are territorial
marks of this process. The consequences are still felt today in the dusty neighborhoods
and localities that were assigned to literally relocate Africans. In total, we are talking
about millions of people whose lives were irreversibly fractured and fragmented. These
experiences were not taken into account in the statistical count of violations, nor did
its victims become official.
How to explain, then, that the Commission recognized only 22,000 victims of
the violence of apartheid? The discussions about reparations, in particular among survivors organizations in South Africa, had two complementary registers. On the one
hand, in the context of those who, in an official way, had the right to them because
they were classified as victims, reparations have been material and symbolic. There is
not much to say about the first of these classifications, only that the government distributed money out of State coffers to each victim or beneficiary. On the other
hand, monuments and memorials were built and a series of rituals performed from
symbolic burials to naming the streets after the dead that allowed families and
communities to elaborate their grief, restoring a sense of humanity, dignifying life, and
honoring those who had died during the liberation process.
Of course, this was possible for those who were classified as victims by the
Commission. What about those who had no right to receive reparation? We are talking
about more than two million people who were forcibly relocated and distributed because of their skin color. As I have mentioned, this population does not enter into official statistics. This fact had two important effects. First of all, it forced the government
to undertake collective reparation processes that essentially meant improving the
general infrastructure in the townships. For example, potable water and electricity were
provided. By 2006 the portion of households using electricity has risen to 81.4%, and
28
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
71.3 per cent of households had piped water (Johnson, 2009: 583). For some time,
this was read as part of the global process of repairing society and healing the
wounds of apartheid, injuries that only time could heal. However, South Africas economic dynamics over the past decade have produced a new junior black elite in a vast
sea of still overwhelming poverty. 27 This idea of collective reparations did not dismantle the economic power relations that even today define many peoples lives and
perhaps it was not meant to. 28 Even though it is true that the notion of race instituted
by apartheid has lost its legal space, it remains part of daily life. Terms such as historical redress, black economic empowerment, and poverty reduction formed a part
of national economic policy during the Mbeki presidency and were presented as having a collective healing component. However, the transition and a particular conception of violence left this wealth and power almost intact 29.
A concept of violence that focused purely on physical mistreatment obscured
the systemic dimensions of structural violence those produced by forced expropriation and meant that the Commission was unable to recognize that endemic displacement was a consequence of apartheid. It was of course mentioned as part of the
historical context, but was never the object of investigation. Had it been otherwise,
those subjected to displacement would have been classified as victims. For the
Commission, displaced people were not victims as officially defined. The effect of this,
as well as producing a moral hierarchy among victims and of privilege among those
27
Few authors have ventured into the political economy of these processes. See: Heins Marais 2001. South
Africa Limits to Change: the Political Economy of Transition. London: Zed Books; 2011. South Africa
Pushed to the Limit: the Political Economy of Change. London: Zed Books. Part of the failure to address
critical issues of poverty and inequality is related both to the unfinished structural transformations of the
colonial and apartheid past and to the consequences of strategic and policy decisions made over the last
15 years during the expansion of global financial capitalism. See also R.W. Johnson. 2009. South Africas
Brave New World: the Beloved Country since the end of Apartheid. London: Penguin Books. The question that remains is whether the promises of transformation were set up to fail, because the structural inequalities which are at the very origin of internal conflict are not part of larger discourses on political
transitions.
28
In a recent Guardian Weekly article (Tutus dreams for Cape Town fade as an undeclared Apartheid grips
the city, 14.10.11, International News, Page 9). David Smith writes about a recent hunger strike carried
out by Xola Skosana, a pastor of the Way of Life Church in Khayelitsha, in protest against the treatment
of the poor. He speaks of the dire conditions and the unresolved and ever-postponed issues inherited
from the past (and reinforced in the present) in which millions still live nowadays.
29
Patric Bond. 2000. The Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa. London: Pluto
Press; Also, 2010. South African splinters: From elite transition to small-a alliances. In: Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. Access at http://links.org.au/node/1929; See also John Saul. 2010.
Southern Africa: The liberation struggle continues. In: Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal,
access at http://links.org.au/node/1682.
29
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
living in poverty, was to remove the complex conflicts associated with the question of
historical expropriation in South Africa from public debate. In other words, given the
restricted definition of violence it employed, the Commission left the fundamentals of
apartheid intact. For many South African citizens, repairing society implied, precisely,
undoing the consequences of the appropriation itself. It is from this mass of historically
dispossessed human beings that the Landless Movement and all the initiatives aimed at
the violent restitution of land emerged a few years ago: masses of poor people who
want to re-appropriate what belongs to them, even if by violence. 30 Mahmood
Mamdani summarizes the situation immediately following the TRC process in the
following way:
The injustice is not the Apartheids injustice: forced displacements, flow laws,
broken families. On the contrary, the definition of injustice has been limited to
the abuses within the legal frame of the Apartheid: detention, torture and murder. The Apartheid victims are now strongly defined like those victimized militants in their battle against the Apartheid, and not those whose lives were mutilated in the regulation net that was the Apartheid. We arrive to a world in
which repair is for militants, those who suffered jail or exile, but not those who
suffered hard labor or whose homes were destroyed. 31
The Commission emerged from a political compromise. It symbolically sealed
a series of political changes that, in the context of total segregation, were radical. But it
also permitted economic power to be consolidated and made it impossible to advance
a discussion that might have led to more profound changes in society. These economic
and political changes must, of course, be seen in the light of the prevailing world situation. It sought to investigate some of the legacies of violence while failing effectively
to recognize others. To exclude displacement from the discussions about reparations
(which are in the end, after all, individual) led to the exclusion of one of the most palpable expressions of how the past lives on in the present. It is a present that is increasingly questioned by grass roots organizations, as the rhetoric of an imagined new nation
of reconciliation, forgiveness and truth-telling as main templates shows deep
30
Steinberg, Jonny. 2003. Midlands. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.
31
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2002. A Diminished Truth In: After the TRC: Further Reflections on Truth and
Reconciliation in South Africa, edited by Wilmot James and Linda Van Der Vijver. Cape Town and Athens
(Ohio): David Phillips and Ohio University Press; Reconciliation without Justice. South African Review 10, No. 6 (1997): 22-25.
30
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
cleavages 32. This has led to new forms of violence. Forms of collective reparation
could potentially constitute the cornerstone of fundamental discussions concerning
the origins of the war and the responsibilities borne by different sections of society.
But such a focus would go beyond the realms of dissent acceptable in what is supposedly a post-conflict or post-violence society.
32
See
for
example
Abahlali
baseMjondolo, The
South
African
shack-dwellers'
movement
http://www.abahlali.org and the Poor Peoples Alliance.
31
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
IV
The Politics of Banishment
33
The violence we [as an indigenous community] speak

about is more than five hundred years old. What we have
now is just the state buying dead bodies - Indigenous
Leader 34
The legislation known as the Ley de Justicia y Paz (Justice and Peace Law) entered into force in 2005. According to the first article of the law, its central objective is
To facilitate peace processes and the individual or collective reincorporation
of members of illegal armed groups into civilian life and to guarantee the rights of
the victims to Truth, Justice and Reparation
33
This section is also part of a larger project on the ethnographies of transitional scenarios, particularly the
application of Law 975 of 2005. The research has involved attending different kinds of hearings, accompanying teams of investigators from the National Prosecuting Authoritys Office, and broader dialogue with
victims organization. Writing the Uncanny: a Cultural Politics of Terror, Effacement, and Truth in Colombia follows the ways a society, in a particular historical time, traces the fragments of its disappeared or missing
relatives using different social mechanisms. The text is not so much concerned with the processes where
remains do appear (often the professional purview of psychologists and forensic experts), but the social
spaces, the interactions, the images and cultural logics in general in which death, the body, and the
recognition of the other fall outside the legal and psychological discourses in vogue at the time. The
text explores the idea of anthropology and sociology as endeavors that deal with the unseen, the phantasmatic and unspoken, and the ghostly presence that inhabits the everyday lives of victims and families. Ethnographic and archival materials have been collected since 2009.
34
The context of the statement was a discussion, organized by the Committee for the Study of Violence,
Subjectivity and Culture held at the Universidad de los Andes, with other indigenous leaders who, by late
2009, were concerned with the administrative process in Colombia by which the State, by way of Decree
1290 of 2008, would pay an individual administrative reparation or a financial indemnification to
beneficiaries who after voluntary application and following a cursory corroboration process
were recognized as victims of illegally organized armed groups, in the sense of groups organized outside the law [grupos armadas organizados al margen de la ley]. This process was not meant to imply the
recognition of responsibility by the State for the wrongdoings being processed: according to the law, payment and other reparation measures are made based on the principle of solidarity rather than in admission
of responsibility. The structure of the law did not allow further investigations into crimes allegedly committed by state employees. It was perceived by its critics as an impunity law that sought to buy victims
off by paying indemnities.
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The article continues, making explicit the reach and limitations of its mandate
as follow:
Illegal armed group refers to a guerrilla or paramilitary group, or a significant
and integral part of such a group [such as] blocs, fronts or other mechanisms
used by [them] (...) This law regulates matters concerning the investigation, trial, punishment and legal benefits of people linked to these illegal armed groups
either as authors of, or participants in, illegal acts committed during, and because of, their participation in these groups and who have decided to demobilize and to contribute unequivocally to national reconciliation.
Law 975 of 2005 or the Justice and Peace Law, as it has come to be known in
Colombia has been the legal framework charged with facilitating the demobilization
of members of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, also known, simply, as paramilitaries. 35 The government presented the draft law to Congress as an initiative that would
contribute to peace in Colombia inasmuch as it would enable the dismantling of these
armies, at least in theory, in exchange for legal benefits offered the demobilized. 36 At
35
The nature of this process was seriously contested by NGOs and other national and international human
rights organizations, because paramilitary groups, formerly comprising several thousand men located strategically around the country, were accused of gross human rights abuses. The Law was perceived to be
overtly friendly to perpetrators. The paramilitary groups were organized during the late 1970s and 1980s
by powerful landowners as private armies to counter the influence of the FARC and other guerrilla
groups in strategic regions around the country. At this initial stage, they operated in the countryside as
death squads, usually in collusion with the Colombian military and police, in order to gain control of these territories. In their origin, some of them presented themselves as anti-subversive, self-defense, and
peasant organizations. Although they describe themselves today, after demobilization, as a politicalmilitary organization that took the place of the state where it was absent, paramilitaries were also variously linked, especially in the 1980s, with powerful drug cartels. For instance, with the formation of one
notorious group MAS (an acronym of Muerte a Secuestradores, or Death to Kidnappers) the country experienced one of its bloodiest periods. This led to an increase in selective assassinations, indiscriminate massacres, and mass displacements, carried out as military strategies. A case in point was, for instance, the extermination of more than three thousand members of the Unin Patritica, a left-oriented political party that
grew out of peace talks between a former government and the FARC in 1985. Under the auspices of one
of its most powerful commanders, several self-defense groups came together and formed the Auto-defensas
Unidas de Colombia (United Self Defense Groups of Colombia AUC) in 1997. Following its creation,
the country experienced another wave of paramilitarism until its demobilization between 2003 and 2006.
Further details can be found in http://www.verdadabierta.com.
36
In 2007 the paramilitary demobilization took an unexpected turn, as demobilized combatants began to
provide their initial testimonies to the authorities with the result that traditional politicians (especially
33
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
the same time, it would pacify the critics of the President of the Republic (Alvaro
Uribe, 2002-2010) who associated him with the creation of some of these groups,
during previous periods of his political life. 37 At the time the Law was being debated in
2004, it was argued that if the president were simultaneously to advance a policy of
negotiation (submission to justice, as it could be more accurately described) and prosecution, he could dispel doubts about his direct or indirect links with these groups. 38 In
those associated with the coalitions that supported President Uribe Vlez, such as Cambio Radical, the
Partido de la U, Convergencia Ciudadana, Alas Equipo Colombia, Colombia Democrtica and Colombia
Viva, along with members of the Conservative and Liberal parties) were tarred with the brush of collaboration. Members of paramilitary groups could obtain legal benefits (reduced sentences) in exchange,
first, for returning property they had acquired during the period in which they participated in the criminal activities of these groups and second, if they admitted to their criminal acts. By 2008, not only was the
reality of official statistics concerning the demobilization process becoming increasingly questioned (a result of the continuity between paramilitaries and new or emerging criminal bands operating in different regions) but also the legitimacy of the countrys political establishment. Eventually, a cousin and close
associate of the President, was investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice, and a significant percentage
of members of Congress had actually been imprisoned for their role financing these groups. In addition,
multiple investigations had been opened into army officers for a range of associations with notorious massacres committed in recent years. Comisin Nacional de Reparacin y Reconciliacin, 2007. Disidentes,
Rearmados y Emergentes Bandas Criminales o Tercera Generacin Paramilitar? Informe 1, Bogot; En
Pie de Guerra, Revista Semana, April 19, 2008. Additionally, concerning the links of members of the army
with massacres, see Mapiripn: El secreto de los Militares, Revista Semana, February 6 2005 and Colectivo
de Abogados. 2007. Folios de Mapiripn: Para que la vida nos de Licencia. Bogot: Colectivo de Abogados.
37
From the point of view of grass roots organizations and groups of survivors and victims of state crimes,
the Justice and Peace process serves to legitimize impunity and facilitate the eventual participation of
former paramilitary leaders in politics. It remains a fact that, in Colombia, alliances forged between the
paramilitaries and local politicians resulted in the election of almost 30% of the members of Congress.
Despite the difficulties implied by this situation, it was not unusual; in anti-insurgent struggles during the
era of the Cold War and National Security Doctrine, private armies financed by local elites and international interests, sometimes ended up as in Angola and Mozambique incorporated into the political
system following negotiation and transitional processes. The political economy of these processes remains
to be studied in greater depth. See Alberto Yepes. 2008. Conflictos Globales y Poder Mafioso en Colombia, a paper prepared for the Seminario Poltico del Techo Comn, [Political Seminar for a Common Agenda], Comit Permanente por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, Bogot, Colombia.
38
There have been in general two types of critiques made of the Justice and Peace Law. One is historical and
concerns its origins. The other is procedural. In the first case, commentators have highlighted at least four
critical elements: the process developed out of the assumption of a real separation between the State and
paramilitaries, transforming them into a third force, politically independent within the conflict, when in fact
they were structurally interrelated. Second, it is part of a transitional arrangement that emerges out of the
negotiations between the government and the paramilitaries. This process lacked any transparency. The
Law came as an unexpected offshoot of international and national pressures to deal with victims rights
and justice. Third, since the organization is a complex network of relations and not a homogeneous block,
the Law allowed narcos (drug smugglers) to apply to be included under its terms as if they were paramili-
34
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
this regard, one of the effects of the Justice and Peace process has been to hint, in concrete cases, at the evident links and the complicity that existed between paramilitaries
and local politicians and authorities, illustrating the interconnections between the Colombian state (often called the institutional order) and illegality. What is rather
surprising, however, is that the political order was not fractured despite the scrutiny it
was openly subjected to by the pro-establishment media and by human rights
groups. 39 Often, in this context, the theory of the rotten apple in the barrel of democracy has been deployed to explain the moral bankruptcy of a political class and a
nation that supported (and appears still to support), either actively or by omission, a
permanent state of threat against political dissent as a necessary evil in the antisubversive war. In this context, if the policy towards paramilitarism was that of negotiation, towards guerrilla groups it involved, in contrast, an all-out- body-count policy
of military confrontation, with the backing of massive financial aid from the U.S.
through what was known as Plan Colombia. 40 During the year when the Law was
taries (one of the conditions of the Law is that its beneficiaries should not be connected to the drug industry). The law cleansed narcos of their illegal deeds. Finally, by using certain specific concepts, it established a reign of institutional denial. In terms of the procedures, the Justice and Peace Law process has
been perceived as overly complaisant with perpetrators in the sense that their formal testimonies are the
main thread of the narrative. Victims are in the background. Since it adheres to the procedure of criminal
investigations (and currently the number of participants runs into the hundreds), the process is slow, with
just two sentences having been passed during the six years the law has been in force until 2013). There
has been little in the way of national reconciliation. Worse, in 2008, 26 paramilitary commanders were extradited to the U.S. on charges of drug trafficking, a decision that closed all possibilities of unveiling the
truth on its highest levels. However, the National Prosecuting Authority has managed to collect, albeit in a
disorderly manner, a massive archive of illegal deeds committed by these military structures, Michael
Reed, Justicia Transicional en Fuego: Cinco reflexiones Marginales sobre el Caso Colombiano, MS.
39
In 2010, Juan Manuel Santos (Uribes former Defense Minister) was elected president of the Republic.
During the year he has been in power, immense corruption cases against Uribes former ministers and
functionaries in charge of national programs have been uncovered: from the use of the intelligence services to persecute and bully opposition groups, through disinformation campaigns and illegal use of State
funds to pursue partisan politics to an informal policy of laissez faire that led to thousands of extrajudicial
executions. Even Uribes re-election in 2006 is tainted by a sense of internal political corruption. Yet,
Uribe was extremely popular with large sections of Colombian society.
40
One of the effects of this philosophy of the body count was a sharp increase in extrajudicial assassinations
of alleged guerrillas who died during combat with the army. This unofficial practice selected and killed
men (often homeless, drug users, or simply youths who had nothing to do with the conflict) who were
then presented as guerrillas. The murders would be legalized by way of an official bureaucratic certification process that would recognize the body as killed in combat. This discovery of theaters of terror
has been given the name false positives. A sense of military success (based on claims of the numbers of
demobilized paramilitaries and dead guerrillas) would not only boost official statistics (an important currency in politics and necessary for international funders of the war) but also the popularity of President
35
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
promulgated, the country lived an extremely polarized atmosphere in which the battle
between good and evil, between patriots and FARC narco-terrorists, and the
price that society had to pay to defeat the enemy (going easy on paramilitarism, among
other things) was at its height. In the context of the conflicts that emerged in Colombia in that period, the refusal of the State to accept the existence of an internal armed
conflict (in the context of broader debates about the causes of violence) and the implicit official re-definition of the countrys historical narrative is evident. The Justice
and Peace Law was one of the mechanisms used by the government to ensure a revisionist interpretation of history. But, before substantiating this statement, a brief detour
is required.
As I have mentioned earlier, the Law was the legal mechanism that following the signing of a series of agreements, particularly the Santa Fe de Ralito Accord of
15 July 2003 allowed for the dismantlement of paramilitary groups and for their
former members to submit to a criminal process (that included benign sentencing) in
exchange for telling the truth about what they had done. 41 Once a list of demobilized members of paramilitaries had been forward by the National Government (by
way of the office of the High Commissioner for Demobilization) to the National
Prosecuting Authorities, a preliminary investigation process was initiated in order to
verify that the individual in question fulfilled a range of minimum criteria: not having
committed crimes against humanity, not having any involvement with drug trafficking,
ceasing all criminal activities, and making a commitment to the truth-seeking process.
As this was a transitional arrangement, applicants were expected to disclose information in other to avoid further prosecution by a court of law. According to official
statistics, of the 31,000 demobilized, 4,000 were included in the program. The rest
occupied a legal limbo that was resolved by the promulgation of a Law legalizing the
situation of the remaining ex-combatants. 42 As part of the agreement with the govUribe, who at the time was considering the possibility of a second term as President. An army officer I interviewed at that time referred to these accusations in the following way: We [in the army] do not kill
guerrillas. We legalize them. According to this view, the only way to incorporate enemies in the existing
legal order is by excluding them spatially and bodily. In this case, the body of the enemy is reterritorialized in a process of appropriation. Paradoxically, there is a sense in which the presence of the enemy is defined by its disappearance. The words of army officers show the kind of exceptional case such
as that in which Colombia has been embroiled in recent years in which violence is conceived as the
restoration of order. The relationships between the body, legality, and death are, without doubt, the material basis of authoritarianism.
41
The text of the accords signed with the government can be found at http://www.c-r.org/ourwork/accord/colombia/spanish/acuerdo-santafederalito.php.
42
These aspects of the process, which seem to be straightforward, were in fact rather problematic: the numbers of demobilized combatants exceeded by several times the previously calculated numbers of fighters.
36
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
ernment, these ex-combatants voluntarily narrated as much as they wanted or felt

compelled to of the illegal activities they had been engaged in to a special jurisdiction
of Peace and Justice Judges. The process, much less confrontational than expected, fell
under the responsibility of the National Prosecuting Authoritys Justice and Peace
Unit, where it was handled by one of the 59 Justice and Peace Prosecutors (Fiscales de
Justicia y Paz) in charge of a process marked by low levels of investigatory rigor
designed to corroborate the version presented by the individual paramilitary. 43 For
the application of the Justice and Peace Law, not only was it necessary for a series of
procedures to be devised by a broad range of State institutions, regulation and a general organization of different aspects of the process were also required. During the first
two years, more than 200 protocols seeking to standardize the process were designed.
Testimony is given over several sessions, in secluded, in-camera, non-public
hearings called audiencias de versin libre. 44 Only victims and their legal representatives,
along with other officials, are allowed to attend. The hearing is a collective disclosure
of illegal acts and is provided by a blocs commander and his subalterns. In general,
those who testify have the freedom (hence the term libre) to structure their own
declaration or version of events, usually in conjunction with all members of the group.
From this process a plethora of details emerges that are converted into criminal categories (from robbery to murder), which constitute the foundation of a formalized,
special, public indictment hearing. Upon receiving this information from the National
Prosecuting Authority, all relevant materials to substantiate charges are handed to Justice and Peace judges during a third hearing (control de garantas) led by prosecutors,
each with his own investigative team. Judges review the relevant documents and files,
and if the collection of information and the indictment process has not affected due
process and the constitutional rights of any involved, a final decision is made. Often,
either directly or during any of the hearings, former commanders receive requests
from victims regarding the whereabouts of loved ones: parents looking for their children, wives asking the reason for their husbands murder, children looking for their
The protocols covering demobilization were not clear and lacked control. Paramilitaries inflated the final
numbers (in order to express their military strength and prospective political muscle); the number of arms
did not tally with the numbers of individuals who actually presented themselves for demobilization. As
the process advanced, the government was reluctant to accept any more applications. Drug traffickers
passed as paramilitaries and peasants played the role of soldiers in return for payment. Further information
can be found at the High Commission for Reintegration http://www.reintegracion.gov.co.
43
General and specific information regarding cases, schedules of hearings and other procedures can be found
at the National Prosecuting Authoritys website http://fgn.fiscalia.gov.co.
44
The translation used by the National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation is free deposition
hearings. I maintain the Spanish term in the text. For further reading, the official page of the Commission
can be consulted at http://www.cnrr.org.co/new09in/.
37
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
fathers, and so on. Sometimes these requests are made during a hearing, but family
members also face their killers directly in the jails where the paramilitaries are confined. In the majority of cases, in the absence of any specific confession by any of the
blocs members, the commander of the group, as the highest authority in the chain of
command, takes the responsibility regardless of whether the body is found or not. In
many cases, they claim not to remember. The final stage is a reparations hearing (or
incident, as it is called by lawyers) where the judges publicly read the final sentence. In
general, these sentences include a reduction of jail terms (between 5 and 8 years, regardless of the actual number of crimes committed), the transfer to the State coffers of
property or money acquired during their participation in the group (paid into a reparation fund), the allocation of a lump indemnification sum to victims (calculated
according to a scale of compensation), and any public apology or initiative that might
help in the restoration of the victims dignity. Presently, after seven years of prosecutions, only two cases have been settled in this way.
Let us now return to the previous line of argument. During President Uribes
first administration (2002-2006), there was a subtle, yet evident change a prophylactic move towards a politically aseptic discourse in the meanings attached to violence and the uses it was put to, particularly among government circles and the mass
media; the shift from the idea that was most influential in academic and official circles
before Uribe took over of armed conflict (as an explanation) to a series of concepts such
as armed groups organized outside of the law (illegal armed groups) reflects the struggle
between two versions of the past that underlay different approaches to government
policy. 45 The second is a version of history decreed from above, an act of social admin45
At the time of the debate there was a simultaneous shift in state security circles in Colombia. Guerrilla
groups were relabeled and re-framed as narco-terrorists rather than as political-military organizations. In
any case, the deepening of the conflict drove society at large into a very complex path of violence and
corruption, and of course proof of this process was evident within the ranks of guerrilla groups too. Soldiers who had been retained (as prisoners) by the guerillas not only provided evidence of this, but were
also used by the State propaganda machine in its battle for the hearts and the minds of the population. It
was argued that, if the FARC ever had a political project, they had abandoned it along the way, when they
became drug traffickers and started using terrorism against society. The debate on the political and belligerent status of the guerrilla groups swiftly saw them re-classified as criminal organizations (illegal armed
groups). Official discourse always used the term narco-terrorists, which was emptied of political content.
As this happened, the money from the U.S. governments Colombia Plan was channeled into counterinsurgency (though no longer to combat insurgency but narco-terrorism) and into upgrading Colombias Armed Forces. The distinction between the police and the army, between military collaboration
and indirect intervention, and between civilians and the military became even more blurred. Uribes security policy (Democratic Security) was based on this shift. State military and intelligence apparatuses
were completely re-engineered and a battery of constitutional changes and new laws made. Ironically, at
the same time, the paramilitaries presented themselves as a political organization in the sense that they
38
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istration of the past (almost in its managerial sense) that not only redefines the nature
of the confrontation itself with the use of a new set of technical-cum-political terms,
but also precisely because of this transforms the historical causality that explains
the present, while displacing specific responsibilities and hiding the identity of the
beneficiaries of a decades-long war. This was a seismic fracture in public discourse, a
hegemonic transformation of the relationship between historical time and violence
itself. This re-conceptualization of the past, inscribed in the Law, which has to be read
in the light of a broader juridical transformation in the conformation of the enemy,
entails a form of historical revisionism. This was a shift that was already implicit in the
Justice and Peace Law, which contained new definitions of the past.
In the Justice and Peace Law, two contradictory concepts of the past coexist.
The first emerges from the law itself, whose conceptual framework (the theoretical
architecture that frames paramilitary renditions, for example) established a number of
procedures that facilitated the reincorporation (back into civil life) of members of
armed groups organized outside the law. This was to imply a massive bureaucratic, administrative, and procedural effort. The second, which, paradoxically, also has its indirect
origins in the Law, is produced as a result of the activities of the National Commission
for Reparation and Reconciliation, in particular the work of the Historical Memory
Group. 46 In other words, what originally could be envisaged as a coherent process of
historical reconstruction between a criminal investigation that yields factual infor-
claimed they had assumed the states responsibility of protecting life and property. During the initial stages
of the hearing process, when paramilitary commanders began disclosing their relationships to politicians
(as retaliation against the government who betrayed them by sending combatants to jail, as one former
leader put it during an interview I conducted), Uribe extradited its leaders, closing down any possibility of
unveiling the connections to the political elite. The establishment and the media managed to divert their
accusations by casting public doubt on the testimony of notorious killers and assassins.
46
Article 50 of the Law establishes an eight-year mandate for the National Commission for Reparation and
Reconciliation. Among its responsibilities were: to guarantee the participation of victims within the process of judicial clarification established by the Law (52.1); to present a public report on the reasons for
the emergence and evolution of illegal armed groups (52.2); to conduct () a verification of the reincorporation process as well as the role of local authorities in order to guarantee a full demobilization of armed
groups organized outside of the law (52.3); to conduct periodic evaluations of reparation programs established by this law (52.4); to present an interim report to the Senate within two years of the establishment
of the Commission (52.5); to recommend criteria for reparations (52.6); to coordinate regional activities;
and to organize activities seeking national reconciliation (52.7 and 52.8). In short, the Commission is not
a Truth Commission but an administrative unit in charge of developing and implementing reparation policies. Its historical memory component is performed by one of its five institutional areas: Reparation and
Assistance to Victims; Reconciliation; Disarmament Demobilization and Reintegration; Historical
Memory Group; and Gender and Specific Populations. Further information can be found at
http://www.cnrr.org.co/new09/areas/index.html?rubrique4.
39
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
mation regarding the circumstances that led members of these groups to commit illegal acts on the one hand, and the piecing together of these fragments in at least one
general narrative on the other became impossible. Although the Justice and Peace
Law created a Commission with a mandate to write a public report on the reasons
for the emergence and evolution of illegal armed groups, there is a disjuncture at the
heart of the institutional initiative (Section 52, subsection 2). In fact, the Historical
Memory Group has never been provided with the information collected by the National Prosecuting Authorities. 47 In South Africa, in contrast, factual information
even if limited to only a few cases from among the overall number contributed
directly to the content of the Final Report and the kind of historical narrative implicit
to it. There was a clear conceptual compatibility between different scenarios and processes: amnesty hearings and amnesty decisions, Human Rights Hearings, and the Final
Report.
In Colombia, there has been a fundamental divergence, a chasm between the
texts of the Law which associate violence with the actions of illegal groups and
the institutions established under its mandate to conduct criminal prosecutions and the
view of the Historical Memory Group and other sections of society. 48 My intention in
this section is not so much to discuss the work of an institutional initiative, a social
form of administrating memory such as the Historical Memory Group, but to highlight the implications of reframing more than 50 years of war by an entirely different
discourse. 49 What are the implications of this institutional fracture? What kind of articulation of the past does the Justice and Peace Law establish?
47
When I interviewed public prosecutors in 2010-2011 in connection with their understanding of the
question of memory and the law, one of them blatantly asserted that they [the Justice and Peace and Unit
of the National Prosecuting Authority] were the ones [as opposed to the Historical Memory Group] who
in reality unveiled the real historical memory of this country, finding new evidence. Here no one knows
what they really do.
48
Although the Historical Memory Group is an integral part of the National Commission for Reconciliation, it operated with relative independence. The Commission followed the official line and discourse by
embracing the formal rhetoric of the government, presenting the paramilitary demobilization as an iconic
case of transitional justice in the midst of conflict. The Historical Memory Group distanced itself from
the rhetoric that referred to illegal armed groups and centered its intervention on the consequences and implications of the internal armed conflict by selecting certain cases as emblematic. In any case, the group
was principally run by researchers and investigators who belonged to a sustained tradition that shared an
interest in this very idea.
49
As recently as June 10, 2011, following several months of political debate, the Colombian Congress approved the Victims Law (Law 1448). The Law, which will come into force in January 2012, establishes
measures aimed at assisting and providing reparations to victims of the internal armed conflict. It includes a program for the restitution of land. The Law reinstates the concept of the internal armed con-
40
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
As I have hinted at previously, the Law recognizes and legitimizes certain kinds
of victims, certain kinds of inscriptions, intrinsically defining the possibilities of elaborating a historical narrative. In a sense, the Justice and Peace Law acts as a transliterating
mechanism in which experiences of violence to the body and to subjectivity, to the
phenomenological social space as a whole, are translated into a different language. It
transmits what I would call a theory of injury (and by extension a theory of reparation)
that speaks to the nature of the violence (literal, structural, or symbolic) that caused
suffering. The pain of the other is passed through the lens of the legal language of the
Justice and Peace Law, rendering it only ambiguously intelligible and legible. But legibility and transliteration obscure as much as they illuminate the ways communities and
individuals experience violence. In this regard, the Law defines the scenarios of enunciation in which the pain of the other is registered, or captured. This capturing gesture,
through protocols and technologies, sets the stage for the circulation of this pain. The
definitions embedded in the text inform and structure the possibility for historical
understanding to be achieved.
For instance, there are essentially two points at which the victims may receive
official recognition. As I mentioned at the beginning of this section, the first occurs
either during the versin libre, when the paramilitary first accepts responsibility for the
crimes he has committed (established by his own account) or provides witness testimony of other persons crimes (this mutual incrimination in fact broke the veil of silence that covered at least a good part of the process at the beginning). Second, if such
information is not forthcoming, the victim may approach the National Prosecuting
Authority (if the case relates to a current case against specific commanders) or the National Commission of Reparations and make a statement. Information will always be
registered in the Victims National Registry and assigned a file number. In this second
case, the paramilitary must admit involvement. At the end, if this is not clarified (as has
been the case many times), he may take the political responsibility because he was in
command in the area during the time of the criminal act. As in South Africa, any kind
of reparations (restitution of property, in cases of clearly demarcated theft through displacement), economic indemnity, psycho-social rehabilitation, and moral or symbolic compensation) will be paid once the case has been included in the National
Registry of Victims. 50 The kind of injury suffered by a person or group of persons
flict, yet it retains the terminology of the Justice and Peace Law (organized armed groups outside the
law and the fact that the political character of terrorist groups is not recognized (Article 3).
50
These are, according to the Law, measures taken to provide reparation to qualifying victims. In response to
the slow progress of the process, the government decided to pass Law 1290 of 2008, which establishes a
mechanism to provide administrative reparations allowing financial compensation to be paid to individuals who have been classified as victims of the illegal armed groups. The problem with this option is that
41
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
(not necessarily a collective) will define their nature as victims, the contents of their
experience and testimony, the framing of their voices and words, and their insertion
into a larger moral community: not everyone threatened or killed will constitute a
victim of illegal groups, in its technical sense. Let me continue to analyze this gesture
of historicizing the production of history and narrative thus:
The law defines victims in the following way:
for the purposes of the present law a victim is understood to be a person [including members of the police and armed forces] who, individually or collectively has suffered direct damage such as temporary or permanent injury that
results in some kind of physical, psychological and/or sensory (visual and/or
auditory) damage, emotional suffering, financial loss or undermining of fundamental rights. The damage must be the consequence of illegal actions committed by an
organized illegal armed group. (authors emphasis)
And continues,
Victims shall also be taken to include spouses, permanent common law partners, first degree relatives of the person who has been killed or disappeared, and
their spouses, (...) the condition of victim is acquired independently of whether
the author of the punishable act is identified, arrested, tried or sentenced and
without consideration of any family relationship between the author and the
victim (Ley de Justicia y Paz, article 5). 51
if a victim accepts compensation no further criminal or any other kind of investigation is possible. Truth
and accountability are two real victims of the law. Up to now, 55,000 victims have applied and are awaiting a final decision. See Accin Social, Departamento Administrativo para la Prosperidad Social, Colombia
http://www.accionsocial.gov.co/contenido/contenido.aspx?conID=4978&catID=127.
51
The decision to use the term victim in article 5 of the Justice and Peace Law followed a series of debates within the committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives (both of which had government majorities). In extraordinary sessions, the committees were responsible for debating the original
government proposal introduced by the then Senator (and cousin of the President) Mario Uribe, who was
arrested in 2008 for his involvement in the creation of paramilitary groups. Subsequently, members of the
committees, along with a series of specially invited participants, made general comments on the proposal
in a written opinion, before proceeding to vote on it article by article. The debates occurred between 8
and 15 March 2005 a very tight schedule given the importance of the subject. In one of the drafts of
the law, the proposed criteria of causality included cases in which the damage was a consequence of the
violation of current laws committed as a result of the internal armed conflict. This wording clearly echoed
existing legislation such as Law 782 of 2002, which authorized the government to promote peace processes without prior cessation of hostilities (and which also recognized the existence of the phenomenon
42
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
Several points emerge from the legislation. The first, of course, is the depoliticization of the Colombian conflict. There is no mention of this in the Law. The
government embedded its own hegemonic interpretation of national history. For instance, as many observers have pointed out, the law denies the possibility that members
of the government or the armed forces might have contributed to the violence. Such a
possibility might have led to a more thorough investigation of the official record (archives) concerning the relationship between the army and paramilitarism. This displaces the locus of responsibility, literally scratching out historical continuities and causalities between political actors and economic interest groups. In other words, it has produced an unprecedented simplification of Colombias history. The result is another sort
of effacement, to be added to the real disappearance of people: the disappearance of all
crimes committed and organized by members of the state. 52
Additionally, there are critical events (for individuals as well as for entire communities) that do not exist for the Law. Forced displacement, for example, lies at the
root of the war. Expropriation is an integral part of the confrontation. Yet, during the
proceedings of the Justice and Peace process, it has proven to be almost impossible to
prove a direct link between specific experiences of displacement as an effect of an order. In fact, the manner in which terror has operated in Colombia (that is, through
indirect anonymous threats, random assassinations, and a permanent state of restlessness) obliterates the very possibility of holding anyone directly responsible for cases of
displacement. Members of paramilitary groups often respond to accusations of this
kind by denying that any direct order was given to force people out of their homes. At
the very best, commanders would take responsibility (as the highest echelon in a chain
of command) for what happened or simply explain it away as one of the so-called
unintended consequences of war. It was a phantasmatic shadow behind the scene.
The prospect of reparation for more than three million displaced was, to put it mildly,
uncertain. Who, in the end, specifically, is responsible for the displacement of these
millions of uprooted people? Of course, at the time, to reintroduce the question of
displacement and of Colombias political realities into the agenda would necessarily
have produced a radically different image of Colombias historical process. It would
potentially have demonstrated the existence of powerful blocs, linked with national
and international interests, and shown the extent to which land and property have
of internal displacement). As has been seen, this wording disappeared from the final version quoted above
(see the Diario Oficial, No.s 200, 355, 356, 357 and the corresponding minutes numbers 1, 3, 4, and 7 published in the same source).
52
A case in point is the total extermination of the Unin Patritica political party as part of a planned
army-paramilitary collaboration.
43
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
been at the center of the consolidation of monopolies and of land grabs over the past
two decades and more. When forced displacement is seen as a systemic phenomenon, a
node in a network of causalities, the doors are opened to a discussion of true historical
importance. The systematic forms of legal and illegal expropriation of indigenous people and Afro-Colombians could be viewed in a different light. The movement towards
a longue dure, of course, entails a whole set of new and complex questions. The
structure of the law, the methods of collecting information, and the ways violence is
defined will determine the conditions by which the word will be either present or
absent and will establish, too, the nature of testimony as political artifact.
In the day-to-day proceedings of the hearings even though everybody mentions the armed, political conflict, either as an excuse to justify murder (in the case of
perpetrators) or as part of the protocol used by public prosecutors to present information the investigative process is interested fundamentally in explaining the conditions under which the illegal armed groups were formed: when they were organized,
by whom, the structure of command at different times, how their activities were financed, and who their victims were. Because of the Laws conceptual architecture,
there is no interest in connecting historical elements to make a coherent narrative. The
State in general and its members in the armed forces and the police are obliterated
from the investigation, as they are not illegal groups. In this regard, the State is, by definition, not a perpetrator of violence, but an administrator of law and order. If specific
members of the State are mentioned during the versin libre or the investigation, they
are usually presented as an exception to the rule. The use of the term illegal armed
group banishes not only the very idea of internal political conflict (revolving around
the beneficiaries of expropriation of land and the seizure of wealth), but also channels
the collection of information away from incriminating members of the State and the
systemic nature of various counter-insurgency policies over recent decades. It also
hides a more structural relationship between paramilitaries and State officials.
The information that is gathered (and consolidated around the circumstances
of when, how, and where illegal actions took place) as well as the parameters for
the collection of information (the epistemology of recollection) that will eventually
make the official archive is based on a theoretical architecture that although able to
pinpoint specific events and victims, rendering them beneficiaries of reparation
programs creates a very particular historical narrative. The pain and testimony of the
victim are circumscribed, framed by these discursive parameters. This constitutes part
of the history of illegal groups, a category that not only takes out of the equation
broader State responsibility, but also precludes, in advance, any systematic enquiry into
official archives. The State is not on trial.
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Finally, a fundamental point: taking this to its extreme, two decades of forced
displacement will be read as a consequence of conflicts between factions of different
illegal groups, obscuring the fact that the phenomenon itself was not only a military
strategy pursued over two decades, but also part of a more complex project to expropriate land and wealth in a largely mafia-driven economy, 53 perpetuating a systemic
concentration of land. During interviews I conducted with paramilitary commanders
in early 2011, they recognized the fact that their operations (read: displacement and
assassination of alleged guerrillas and their collaborators) even if erratic, helped to
cleanse their region of negative, violent elements as well as opening up space for
multinational corporations and petroleum companies and for large landowners to return to their activities. In fact, they view themselves as agents of progress and job creation and as boosters of investment confidence. Due to the mandate limiting the investigation of the National Prosecuting Authority to the origin of illegal groups, prosecutors were unwilling or uninterested in following a line of research that connected
wealth, politics, and conflict. Structural violence was out of the picture.
Second Vignette: Towards a Global

Victim
On 23 and 24 April 2005, with the support of Madrids San Pablo University,
Bogots Sergio Arboleda University organized the Segundo Congreso Internacional sobre
Vctimas del Terrorismo (Second International Congress on the Victims of Terrorism). 54
The first had been held in Madrid, at San Pablo University, and culminated in the pro-
See in particular the case of the military commanders of the Autodefensas del Meta y el Vichada in south-
53
ern Colombia, whom I interviewed with the permission of the National Prosecuting Authority during a
forensic investigation it carried out in August and October 2010. I was invited to a very restricted scenario
of work as paramilitaries reconstructed in situ the last two to three years of operations in the area between
2000 and 2003. Ethnographic field research also included, under conditions of anonymity, formal and informal conversations and interviews with commanders of the Armed Forces stationed in the region,
counter-guerrilla and intelligence specialists, and psychiatric profilers.
54
The event was sponsored by the Fundacin Vctimas Visibles (Visible Victims Foundation), Madrid-Spain
http://fundacionvictimasvisibles.org.
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CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
duction of the Madrid Declaration against terrorism. 55 The massive congress was
attended by almost two thousand people and was addressed by dozens of speakers. It
was supported by the countrys dominant media conglomerates, ensuring radio, television, and press coverage, and by the Colombian Conservative Party, the government,
and private sector companies. The advertising banner, hung ostentatiously outside the
Red Saloon of Bogots prestigious Tequendama Hotel, offered an intimidating welcome to the visitor. Furthermore, the Committee of Honor was made up of figures
from Spanish and Colombian political life and the Church: the Colombian President
lvaro Uribe, former presidents of Spain and of Colombia Jos Mara Aznar and Alfonso Lpez Michelsen, the Archbishop of Bogota, and the Presidents of the San Pablo
and Sergio Arboleda Universities. This considerable political and media profile afforded
the Conference significant visibility and importance. There was a state-of-the-art
sound system, simultaneous interpretation for international invitees, and a giant screen
showing scenes of death and exploding car bombs in many places around the world,
while the speakers made their presentations.
The two days the conference lasted were certainly intense; not only were there
a large number of testimonies, but the stage was shared by a multitude of soldiers and
civilians with no legs or arms, in wheelchairs, using crutches, or lame. There was no
doubt left that any war leaves its marks on the body. The Congress was, as its name
suggested, dedicated to the victims of terrorism, to listening to them, and jointly creating a community of pain and a language that would enable them to speak of their
experiences. It took place, furthermore, at a moment when the paramilitary demobilization was gaining legitimacy in the country, especially in official circles. The Justice
and Peace Law was approved by the Colombian Congress that year. Bearing in mind
that the Congress on the Victims of Terrorism was opened by the Vice President speaking of his own experiences of being kidnapped and that President Uribe gave the closing address, it was abundantly clear that the event lent support to a controversial and
much questioned official policy.
The first day was principally dedicated to international victims who were respectfully presented and afforded ample time to speak. Colombian victims were
cramped into the final two hours of each days very long sessions. On the first day, five
55
A publication was subsequently produced: Giraldo, Diana (ed.). 2006. Congreso Internacional de Vctimas
del Terrorismo. Bogot: Universidad Sergio Arboleda-Banco Santander. The introduction reads: The main
objective is for common people as well as the national and international authorities to be able to understand that every victim of terrorism represents a particular drama, not simply another number contributing
to the tragic statistics of violence in our country. In this book, they [the victims] are given space so that
their stories may become a useful tool for reflection () and solutions proposed that might lead to action
().
46
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
witnesses spoke of the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States, accompanied
by two experts from the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism,
two speakers from Northern Ireland (from the University of Ulster), the father of two
survivors of a school seized in Russia by Chechen terrorists, and two relatives of
victims of a bomb blast in Jakarta. Colombia came at the end, with survivors form
Bojay (2002), Machuca (1998), the Club el Nogal (2003), Urrao (2003), and the Alto
Naya (2000). 56 In these cases, in contrast to the testimonies provided by the foreigners,
none of the local speakers were so ceremoniously identified. The following day, with
the exception of the children of people disappeared during the dictatorships of the
Southern Cone, the event focused principally on the Madrid bombs of 11 March
2004.
The actual lived experience of suffering was part of the moral universe established by the Congress. The legitimacy of the paramilitary demobilization, severely
questioned by activists, was strengthened as the guerrilla groups were identified by
and large as the real evil enemy common to all cases. 57 Indeed, as guerrilla groups were
held responsible for massive violence, voices of forgiveness and understanding were
heard from those who, despite the means used, considered paramilitarism to be the first
line of defense against the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of ColombiaPeoples Army) and the ELN (National Liberation Army) guerrillas. Victims of the
hundreds of well-known massacres committed by the paramilitaries between the 1980s
and the early 2000s, the literal extermination of more than 3,000 members of a leftleaning political group, and even a general reference to Colombias woes over recent
decades, were given scant and ambiguous presence, if any at all. In any case, no reference to the State as potentially responsible for violence was on the table for consideration. Paramilitarism as state terrorism did not exist. The connections between the
paramilitaries and State functionaries (politicians, army and police officers, etc.) were,
instead, explained away as the actions of scattered, misguided, or corrupt individuals. 58
56
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yUXRJ78cXE.
57
One of the objectives of this scenario was to create a direct association between (guerrilla) violence and
victimhood in Colombia. During the Uribe years, the victims of civilian and military kidnappings by
guerrillas became the main leverage against the FARC. Official discourse ensured massive national support against this practice. The guerrilla groups tried to use these political retentions as part of larger,
failed, attempts at exchanging prisoners of war with the State. The Colombian government has never
recognized imprisoned guerrillas to be prisoners of war as a result of the internal conflict. Victims of Violence became an ambiguous term, part of a general discursive reframing of Colombias war, denoting victims of the guerrillas rather than the entire universe of victimization in the country.
58
This kind of obliteration responded to the fact that by the time this display of suffering was organized,
the collusion between paramilitaries, local politicians, and the armed forces (in which the accusations of
47
CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
A second interesting element is that, to a large degree, international presentations were dominated by a Washington-Madrid connection, focusing on what exPresident Aznar of Spain labeled Islamic terrorism: 59 New York (2001), Madrid
(2004), Jakarta (2003); the London bombings would come three months later, in July
2005. Within this context, Colombia appeared, with its long list of seemingly absurd
and apparently senseless violence, as irremediably and naturally tied to the war on terror. 60 Additionally, an invited U.S. expert maintained the importance of these connections (for the purpose of military and strategic collaboration and collective grieving)
and explained to the large and empathetic audience that all terrorists, regardless of
the Presidents involvement made almost daily headlines, was an open secret within the circles of human
rights activists and academics. But in an environment of heated polarization (at the end of Uribes first
term), the President accused activists and academics in televised speeches of being the intellectual arm of
the guerrillas. The public dimension of these accusations entailed a serious personal danger. The history of
selective assassinations was in itself a good example of the extent to which so-called dark forces were
willing to go. It was during Uribes second term, (2006 to 2010) that details of collusion between politicians and paramilitaries emerged with force, leading to a series of investigations by the Supreme Court. By
the year 2009, at least 35% of Congress members were shown to be associated, directly or indirectly, with
these groups. http://www.verdadabierta.com/. Recently, official publications of the armed forces have
worryingly highlighted the fact that there is a profoundly embedded mentality among the ranks that considers activists and academics to be intellectual arms of guerrilla groups. Human rights organizations constitute another front of the conflict which they describe as a Judicial and Juridical War that the Army
should prepare itself to face. Human rights education is perceived as strategic within the war effort as it
has operational importance. Human rights activism is part of an invisible war that narco-terrorism
wages against the law abiding forces of order - las fuerzas del orden (Puentes, Luis Fernando, Gral. 2011
(Junio). Los Derechos Humanos como Arma de Guerra y Lucrativo Negocio. Revista Fuerzas Armadas
(Colombia) 218: 50-61.
59
A question that the organization of this Congress posed, retrospectively and in historical terms, concerns
the geopolitical connections between the proliferation of a transnational enemy (the terrorist) and the
larger discourse on the War on Terror and its many theaters of operation. An initiative of this kind has to be
read from a perspective that takes into consideration these international factors. How did the discourse on
terrorism mutate following September 2001 and what is the global ascendancy of this new reconfiguration?
60
In Colombia, the argument that violence is a senseless and absurd enterprise carried out by madmen
hides the fact that, in the case of paramilitarism, death and expropriation by force have been part of a larger redistribution of wealth and capital in the country through the re-appropriation of land. Cocaine money has given this process momentum. By their own admission, paramilitaries regained control (replacing
the state) and did the dirty work the army was not able to do. Regions marked by bitter confrontation
with the guerrilla groups are of geo-industrial and mineral importance: gold, oil, large-scale agroindustries, African palm and, of course, drug production. Indeed, some of these territories are now central
to the governments economic policy. If this is the case, violence implies a larger structural component
that establishes causal relationships beyond the scope of bodily mistreatment. This leads to the argument
that in this particular national scenario there are many who benefit from the violence.
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CASTILLEJO-CULLAR
where they came from, the language they spoke, the causes they espoused, or the
reasons they used to justify their actions, were the same: insane and moral degenerates
who had to be put down by force. Whether there is an international debate on the
definitions of terrorism in the current state of international affairs, or whether violence
is localized in the body and the mind of the insane, is not the point here. What should
be highlighted are the implications of his presentation to a national audience embedded in a highly politicized atmosphere. Historical or contextual explanations of the
violence were, according to his point of view, mere excuses in a larger war between
the forces of good and evil. The subtext was rather evident: just as the evil of terrorism
was a transnational problem, in the sense that the concept applied to very different
contexts and circumstances, so was the experience of victimhood. This leads logically
to an interesting element: each testimony was utterly voided of any historical context.
Regardless of whether testimonies narrated suffering inflicted by ETA, the IRA in
Northern Ireland, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the FARC in Colombia, or Al-Qaeda
in Europe and the U.S, all were related, albeit confusingly and vaguely, to a similar
experience that of terrorism. To listen to the voices of victims (certainly a moral
and political prerogative in a context of mass violence) has also become a global motto
and a signifier whose content and uses, in some cases, are elusive at best. A condition
for such circulation is the idea of a global victim who bears witness to terrorism. 61
Suffering is presented as if it were a sudden catastrophe.
VI
A Final Question
In this text I have shown that the architecture of remembering in three different transitional arrangements creates a series of empty spaces, or historical voids. It
does not allow or facilitate further investigation into the structural dimensions of con-
61
In the case of Colombia, violence was not only localized in the body and in the mind of a transnational
enemy, but also secluded by a temporal framework: most of the testimonies alluded to above relate to recent
acts perpetrated by guerrilla groups; there was no reference to the period before 1998 nor after 2003. The
line between the past and the present was drawn in the late 1990s, just after scattered paramilitary groups
(with their own agendas and connections) were reorganized under the more presentable name of Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. This temporal framing obliterated previous victimizations, especially those that
were associated with State terrorism.
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flict, at least when the appropriation of wealth and expropriation are intertwined with
the present. The voices of the victims (which I understand as social indexations of the
recognition of other peoples suffering) are inscribed into larger agendas. They are
brought into the realm of the familiar by circumscribing them, through different
mechanisms and instances. I call this gesture domestication, and the structural absences they disavow endemic. When concrete forms of violence are left out of the
archive, in its traditional sense, or fall beyond the contours defined by transitional scenarios (spaces where conceptions of victimhood, of history, and of memory are negotiated), the question regarding the sustainability of peace following internal conflicts
emerges. To what extent, as the indigenous leader quoted at the beginning of this essay
hinted, are they likely to be the reasons for future confrontation, the seeds of future
violence?
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VII
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Working Paper

Recht im Kontext Working Paper Series

Editorial work: SOPHIA PICK

Recht im Kontext Working Paper 4.2012 E

Recht im Kontext Working Paper 4.2012 E

Introduction: The Story that Connects All Others 5

First Vignette: The Theatrics of History and Voice 16

The Law and the Illegibility of the Past 23

The Politics of Banishment 32

Second Vignette: Towards a Global Victim 45

Recht im Kontext Working Paper 4.2012 E

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the history of exclusion and historical inequality of indigenous communities. Her

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One of these resources is Truth Commissions, which constitute, among other

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testimonies and words are inscribed and domesticated. As explained earlier, it is

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First Vignette: The Theatrics of History

In December 2002 I had the opportunity to participate in activities organized

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zos. 22 The phenomenon of displacement often evokes confusion, ambivalence, and

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The Law and the Illegibility of the Past

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Steinberg, Jonny. 2003. Midlands. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.

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http://www.abahlali.org and the Poor Peoples Alliance.

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The Politics of Banishment

The violence we [as an indigenous community] speak

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ernment, these ex-combatants voluntarily narrated as much as they wanted or felt

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Second Vignette: Towards a Global