Introduction

This chapter will offer a longitudinal historical perspective of the evolution of patterns of political violence and victimization in Colombia, with the aim of contextualizing the historical processes that shaped the testimonies and proposals presented by the victims’ delegations that visited Havana in 2014. An understanding of the experiences of survivors framed within the wider historical trajectory of the armed conflict is of fundamental significance if we are to understand how the conflict has persisted and why victims made the demands they did in Havana. The chapter begins by discussing the patterns of violence that shaped Colombia's post-independence period and turbulent mid-20th century. The analysis will then turn to the country's internal armed conflict, outlining the causes of the conflict, the principal state and nonstate actors who have participated therein and the nature of the violence that they have perpetrated.

A violent post-independence

States and societies do not tend to follow a linear or sequential logic in the aftermath of civil war, violent conflict and mass atrocity (Cheng et al 2018). Poor-quality peace, post-accord violence and conflict relapse regularly occur in the aftermath of initially successful peace negotiations (Brett 2021a). In certain cases, as we shall see for Colombia, conflict, violence and peace coexist, are ‘mutually constitutive’ or ‘entwined’, their logics driven by ‘complex conflict systems’ (Miller 2020: 262) and ongoing direct and indirect violence, predominantly affecting the most vulnerable groups (de Coning 2016). It would thus be misleading to identify a dichotomy between war and peace, and particularly so in the case of Colombia (Karl 2017). Rather, countries remain peaceless, habitually experiencing what can be characterized as a conflict-peace continuity nexus (Brett 2021a), in particular with respect to the enduring scars that the causes and consequences of political violence sculpt upon the social and political landscapes of societies emerging from genocide, internal armed conflict, authoritarianism and civil war. These scars frequently impose a legacy that obfuscates the past, present and future, while reinforcing the historical status quo. Under such circumstances, the past is lived in and shapes the present, moulding intergroup relations and often forging profound justifications for the continuation of atrocious violence (Bar-Tal 2013; Brett 2021a).