Book Review: The para-state. An ethnography of Colombia’s death squads

• Author: Bárbara Barraza Uribe
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567717733784
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Civico, A. (2016).

The para-state. An ethnography of Colombia’s death squads. Oakland: University of California Press. 236 pp.

$28.90 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-520-28852-2.

Reviewed by: Ba

´rbara Barraza Uribe, University of Chi le, Santiago, Chil e

DOI: 10.1177/1057567717733784

Aldo Civico’s The Para-State. An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads is a comprehensive and

thorough analysis of the paramilitary groups in Colombia as a “war machine acquired by the state to

produce violence and extend its sovereignty over spaces seen as external, wild, and unruly” (p. 23).

As the title suggests, the paramilitaries are portrayed as a device used by the state to extend its social

and political control, using illegitimate and violent means.

The analysis presented in the book is based upon the researcher’s field experience in Colombia

and previously in Italy and an exhaustive review of pertinent literature, through which Deleuze and

Guattari are used in order to support the author’s hypothesis. The findings present in this work are an

important asset to understand the power logics that underlie the actions of paramilitaries between

1980s and the demobilization process. Due to the fact that the author is analyzing the paramilitaries

as an extension of the state, it is valuable to understand the role that the latter had in this context. This

is, in my opinion, its main contribution to the field.

In terms of the methodology and data collection, Civico says, “this book is based on data I

collected over multiple travels to Colombia between June 2003 and August 2008” (p. 12). Moreover,

the human experiences presented in the book through the ethnographic research are crucial for the

exploration of the main hypothesis.

The interviews conducted by the author with demobilized paramilitaries, former drug kingpins,

politicians, bureaucrats, and cocaine-related workers provide the reader with the insight necessary to

illustrate how politics affect people’s lives on a daily basis.

In the case of demobilized paramilitaries, their reasons for joining the paramilitaries clearly

illustrate how the state’s political and economic decisions (or the lack thereof) affect people’s

lives. That is, the state’s disregard for the sustenance and security of its population somehow

pushes people toward violence and illegal actions as means for survival, since these often entail

the earning of higher amounts of money than regular, legal jobs. As Jorge Andre´s, a demobilized

paramilitary, stated:

But I knew that once you got there you could not turn back, plus I needed the job because I didn’t have a

place to sleep or anything to eat. ( ...) So, the only option I had in life was to go there where they

accepted me as I am, just with the clothes I wore and nothing else, without a cent. ( ...). (p. 62)

On the other hand, the experiences narrated by what I would call the “powerful” (El Doctor,

Doble Cero) are fundamental to understand how, when faced against the possibility of losing their

privileges, money and power are a dangerous alliance, specially when the state is willing to have

others to do its “dirty work.” The self-defense forces were developed to assist wealthy landowners

protect their property from the Eje

´rcito de Liberacio

´n Nacional and Fuerzas Armadas Revolucio-

narias de Colombia guerrillas, in the face of a state that could not control the violence from these

guerrillas. Hence, ideologically standing against the leftist predicament of the latter, the former used

similar violent means to maintain the statu quo and the social order. Moreover, they portrayed

themselves as organizations that provided a public service, since they “cleansed” (<<limpieza>>)

the Colombian society from undesirable elements: guerrilla members, workers unions’ leaders, drug

addicts, gay people, and thieves. So, in their view, these actions gave them a moral value for the

society, which they portrayed as legitimate.

92 International Criminal Justice Review 29(1)