The primary source at the center of this chapter’s analysis is produced by a Colombian evangelical pioneer and focuses on the expulsion of his family and the evangelical church in the village of La Tulia, Valle, Colombia, in 1949. The autobiographical account, written some years after the event, recounts memories of the experience and its interpretation considering what it meant for him to be an evangelical Christian in Colombia in the mid-twentieth century. The expulsion occurred against the backdrop of a struggle between liberals and conservatives that involved the Catholic Church and the evangelicals, resulting in an unraveling of the social fabric of the communities where the evangelical presence was very important. Pedro Aguirre, author of the text, was the founder of the town of La Tulia, Valle, and a social and liberal leader who, after having supported the construction of the Catholic temple, abandoned Catholicism for Protestantism. The analysis aims to identify the elements at play in the construction of evangelical memories, which will facilitate not only the use of the source itself but also a deeper understanding of the context in which it was produced.

José María Samper (1828-1888) was born in the provincial town of Honda, Colombia. A prolific author, he combined his writing activities with politics, journalism, and teaching. In his earlier career, Samper became prominent within a young generation of radical liberals who advocated universal and direct suffrage, the separation of church and state, and the abolition of the standing army. In 1855, In what was perhaps one of the first usages of the expression “Latin American,” Samper proposed the formation of a federation of Spanish American republics to defend their emerging “democracies” and their interests from the ambitions of the European monarchies, the Brazilian Empire, and US expansionism (Reflexiones sobre la federación colombiana, 1855). “Colombia” was the name Samper gave to his proposed union. Later in his life, however, Samper tempered the radicalism of his youth and moved closer to the Conservative Party. Yet in the convention that adopted the 1886 centralist, “conservative” constitution, Samper’s interventions revealed that he continued defending key liberal principles. Samper’s selected passages in our volume come from his earlier liberal phase.

An anonymous and rarely cited text, Fe política de un colombiano was consulted by the editors at the John Carter Brown Library, whose catalogue attributes it to Eloy Valenzuela (1756–1834), a Catholic priest from Santander, Colombia. However, it is highly unlikely that Valenzuela, who was close to Simón Bolívar at the time of publication, penned a pamphlet which appeared to be criticizing (though not in explicit terms) the Convención de Ocaña, convened by Bolívar to replace the existing 1821 Constitution. The main message of the Fe política was against the concentration of power in the executive, then perceived to be Bolívar’s purpose in convening the Ocaña Convention. On April 1, 1826, the Gaceta de Colombia registered its publication stating that “the author … was born in one of the departments of the antigua Venezuela.” Its author might have been Javier Francisco Yanes (1776–1846), particularly as in his Manual político del venezolano, Yanes used the Fe política without attribution, in a book that is seemingly generous in acknowledging the work of others. But if the Gaceta de Colombia was right, this would rule out Yanes’ authorship as he was not born in Venezuela but in Cuba.

Miguel Antonio Caro (1843–1909) was notable among the most systematic conservative thinkers in Spanish America. He was born in Bogota in a socially prestigious and politically influential family. Caro rose to prominence for his scholarly work on grammar, his translations of Virgil, and, above all, for his defense of the Catholic Church and his critical stand against the radical governments that ruled the country after 1861. He was appointed to his first public post in 1880, as director of the National Library, by the then president, Rafael Núñez, a liberal who broke with the radicals to lead the Regeneración Movement in Colombia. Caro became the closest ally of Núñez, and one of the main architects of the 1886 Constitution. Caro succeeded Núñez after his death (1894) in the presidency of the country. His vast intellectual production, however, preceded his rise to power, including a critical study of Bentham’s utilitarianism. In 1871, he founded El Tradicionista, a newspaper whose pages advocated the protection of the Catholic Church by the Colombian state, and where his series of articles against religious tolerance, the basis of Caro’s piece in our volume, were first published.

Florentino González (1805–1875) was one of the “founders” of classical liberalism in nineteenth-century Colombia. His early life was marked by the experience of independence since his family was forced to move from their home by the loyalists when he was still a child. He completed his studies in jurisprudence in Bogota in 1825. As Gran Colombia tore apart, González participated in the plot to assassinate Bolívar in 1828, and subsequently suffered prison and exile. He was back in Bogota shortly after Bolívar’s death and became actively involved in politics and journalism for the next two decades, when he held a succession of important posts, including elected member of Congress and State Secretary of Finance. In 1840, he published Elementos de ciencia administrativa, a two-volume treatise about public administration, a subject he then taught at the university in Bogota. He authored a significant number of essays, some of them in the newspapers he edited. Appointed to a diplomatic mission that took him to Lima and Santiago de Chile, he resigned it in 1861 and remained in exile until the end of his life, first in Chile and later in Argentina.

Businesses have a long-standing record of involvement in severe human rights violations, a trend that continues today and is likely to persist, and that is often aggravated during periods of conflict. However, corporate actors have mostly been excluded from transitional justice mechanisms, and corporate accountability remains an elusive element of transitional justice. In this context of impunity, scholars have called for the inclusion of economic actors in transitional justice processes and for stronger links between the transitional justice and business and human rights (BHR) fields. Focusing on Colombia, this chapter explores the mobilisation of victims’ organisations during and after the Peace Agreements, highlighting their pivotal role in shaping transitional justice and BHR debates and contesting corporate impunity. It underscores the need for context-sensitive, legally binding accountability mechanisms, and argues that addressing corporate complicity in conflict is not only essential for achieving justice but also a demand rooted in victims’ lived experiences, offering valuable insights for the intersection of transitional justice and BHR.

While the international legal issues related to the search for disappeared persons have received considerable attention, limited research has been conducted on how participation in the search impacts victims’ lives. In particular, we argue that the importance of victim recognition needs to be inserted into these discussions, and our understanding improved about what types of institutional and social responses are needed to ensure effective and victim-oriented search processes. Our chapter utilises the concept of ‘recognition relationships’ with reference to two cases: Colombia and El Salvador. Our discussion illuminates the ways in which a focus on recognition relationships captures the dynamics of power, mobilisation, and participation which are central to any successful and just search process.

In Colombia, the category of ‘victim’ constitutes a significant legal and political identity, granting access to truth, justice, and reparation measures. Yet transitional justice processes often reinforce hegemonic narratives of ‘ideal victimhood’, reproducing gendered, racial, and political-military stereotypes that marginalise those who deviate from these norms. Focusing on conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), this chapter examines how social movements, particularly women’s and LGBTQI+ groups, contest dominant imaginaries of the ‘ideal SGBV victim’ as a passive, cisgender, heterosexual civilian woman. These groups advocate for inclusive approaches within Colombia’s Truth Commission and Special Jurisdiction for Peace. The chapter contrasts their efforts with the case of Corporación Rosa Blanca, former FARC women combatants who strategically embrace the ‘ideal victim’ narrative to secure legitimacy. This group contrasts with more progressive victims’ groups and illustrates how they navigate between complex identities and traditional victimhood narratives in Colombia’s transitional justice.

This chapter examines how narratives of corruption are mobilized by two very different political actors in Latin America: marginalized rural farmers and free-market think tank elites. We show that, for each group, corruption is both a central element of political discourse and a tool for shaping state–society relations and advancing particular interests. Their narratives serve to define the boundaries of corruption, interpret the state, and drive and justify political action within changing historical contexts – for Colombian farmers, a state that has become newly consequential to their lives; and for right-wing think tank elites, a left turn in regional politics. The comparison demonstrates that while each group uses similar narratives, their different social positions and networks shape the actions they take in response: Farmers rely on clientelist networks to access the few state resources left to them by elite corruption, while elites engage in a hegemonic struggle against leftist populism. Paradoxically, even while sharing a strikingly similar understanding of corruption, each group condemns the practices of the other as corrupt. This analysis underscores the ubiquity of corruption as a strategic and moralizing tool in Latin American politics.

This conversation draws on an online discussion ‘Casa Adentro (Inside the House): Anti-Racist Art Practices’ (21 May 2021) held with the Afro-Colombian dance company Sankofa Danzafro and the Afro-Colombian art collective Colectivo Aguaturbia. The participants explore the concerns and creative processes that reflect on the durability of racialised social orders and the way racism is manifest in various areas of the lives of Afro-descendant men and women in Colombia. The artists reflect on these issues on the basis of their anti-racist artistic practices.

This chapter explores the theoretical themes of the book: art, politics and anti-racism; emotion and affect in art and politics; Latin American racial formations. It outlines the research project on which the book is based: Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA).

A conversation curated from an online event, Decolonising the Arts in Latin America: Anti-Racist Irruptions in the Art World. Artists from different parts of Latin America talk about their work from a decolonial and anti-racist perspective. Participants include Miriam Álvarez, director of the Mapuche theatre company El Katango; Alejandra Ejido, director of the Afro-Argentine company Teatro en Sepia; Ashanti Dinah Orozco, Afro-Colombian poet and Afro-feminist activist; Rafael Palacios, founder and director of the Afro-contemporary dance company Sankofa Danzafro; and Arissana Pataxó and Denilson Baniwa, Brazilian Indigenous visual artists.

The chapter analyses how racialised differences have been represented in artistic practice in Colombia, and the relationship between negatively racialised artists and the art world. The first two sections cover from the colonial period to the first half of the twentieth century and address the representation and participation of Black and Indigenous people, using examples from visual arts, literature, music and dance. White and mixed-race artists tended to represent racialised subalterns in primitivist and paternalist ways, although some displayed socialist sympathies in depictions of social inequality, without racism coming into clear view. By the 1930s and 40s, Black artists were critiquing social inequalities and explicitly identifying racism. We then analyse the increasing politicisation of Black art practice, which was linked to international currents such as Négritude and Black Power. Also important was the Black social movement in the country, which began in the 1960s and gathered strength with Colombia’s 1991 constitutional multiculturalist reform. The fourth section explores the work of the Colombian artists – mostly but not exclusively Black – who collaborated with us in CARLA to show how their diverse art practices have addressed racism in increasingly direct ways.

The chapter addresses the different ways in which Sankofa Danzafro’s Afro-contemporary dance company in Colombia constructs anti-racist narratives. From the perspective of dance as a practice of irruption and an embodied practice, we focus on the role of affective traction in its varied manifestations, which work to assemble collective bodies and discourses. Acting as a site of political enunciation and as a way of resistance-in-motion, dance generates affective atmospheres that make visible and challenge the persistence of structural racism. Among the anti-racist strategies channeled through Sankofa’s Afro-contemporary dance are i) challenging stereotypes about Afro-descendant people by focusing on the message of the dance rather than only its performance; ii) delving into the past, seeking out embodied knowledge and Afro self-referentiality as resources; and iii) developing an Afro-contemporary aesthetic project informed by Afro-Colombian traditional dance and music as well as contemporary styles and rhythms. In particular, the chapter explores Detrás del sur, a recent Sankofa dance work, to see how these anti-racist strategies have informed the creative processes behind the work.

This section present some final reflections from three artists and groups of artists who offer some thoughts on art and anti-racism and on their experiences with the CARLA project. There are contributions from Arissana Pataxó, an Indigenous Brazilian artist; Miriam Álvarez, Lorena Cañuqueo and Alejandra Egido, Mapuche and Afro-Cuban actors and directors behind the Argentine theatre companies Grupo de Teatro ‘El Katango’ and Teatro en Sepia; and Wilson Borja, an Afro-Colombian graphic artist.