The current context of the implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas created expectations in several victims of the arbitrary detentions concerning the possibility of being recognized as victims and knowing the truth. The victims see the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the Truth Commission, created by the accords, as an opportunity concerning their rights to truth, justice, and reparations.
Some of the victims filed lawsuits of reparación directa (direct reparation) to achieve economic reparation from the state. However, it has not been the case of all women and men who had the option of filing lawsuits of direct reparation. Only those who were detained and released due to lack of evidence or who were acquittal after a trial had the option to sue the state. 16 out of the 27 campesinos who had this option filed lawsuits of reparación directa against the state. Other campesinos who could have sued the state did not do that because of fear or lack of information about the deadlines for filing lawsuits against /the state.
The lawsuits often request the recognition of the responsibility of the Nación-Fiscalía
plaintiff. These lawsuits often take years and even more than a decade in some cases to be resolved. Several of these lawsuits have been won while many others are still ongoing, as one lawyer who handles these cases in the region told me.
Although in the judges’ decisions regarding the lawsuits of direct reparation, the individuals who were affected by the detentions are recognized as victims due to the damage caused and family members also received economic compensation, this recognition is limited. What is recognized here is only the unfair deprivation of freedom of the individual who was detained and the responsibility of the state, specifically the Fiscalía, due to the lack of enough evidence to issue a preventive detention and present charges. However, in this chapter, I have shown that mass detentions involved much more than the unfair or arbitrary deprivation of freedom of some inhabitants in the region. As mentioned earlier, the detentions not only involved several other human rights violations and forms of violence, but, as I have suggested, also operated as a mechanism of state terror to control populations in the context of counterinsurgency state practices. This caused damage and great suffering to the campesinos who were detained and incarcerated, their families, and on the communities.
In the lawsuits of direct reparation against the state, the unfair deprivation of freedom is considered a failure or error of the judicial system. In this context, what is rendered invisible is not necessarily the occurrence of the detentions but all the violence behind the mass detentions that was carried out in rural communities, the victims and relatives and how this state practice operated as a mechanism of state terror.
In the mountain zone, state institutions have not publicly recognized the violence carried out in campesino communities regarding the mass detentions, the victims, the injustice involved,
and the damage caused to campesinos and their communities. There have not been public acts asking for forgiveness.
In the case of the campesinos and other inhabitants who were unfairly convicted, the situation is even more complicated since they are not seen as victims by some officials. In the eyes of the state, they were milicianos or collaborators of guerrillas, even though many of them also appear in the Unique Register of Victims due to other forms of victimization.
Gabriel, a campesino leader from the mountain zone who claimed to have been unfairly convicted of rebellion and was sentenced to six years in prison, told me that he presented a petition to the Land Restitution Unit to be included as a land restitution claimant, but it was denied. I saw the written response of the state official, which said: “… Although X (real name of the person) is included in the Colombian registry of victims, given that he was convicted of rebellion, he cannot be considered as victim according to the Law of victims and Land Restitution: members of illegal groups will not be considered as victims […]” This case is an example of how the detentions and unfair convictions continue to affect campesinos even today and shape relationships and interactions between victims and state institutions and officials in the current context.
Some of the expectations of the victims are to know the truth behind the arbitrary detentions, to have the good names of themselves and their communities restored, public recognition by the state institutions of the injustice committed against these campesinos and communities, and their recognition as victims of the state. Alejandro is a campesino leader from Montes de María. He was detained in the second half of the first decade of the 2000s with other rural inhabitants from the area. He was convicted of rebellion and sentenced to six years in jail. I asked him about his expectations in terms of justice concerning his case and the cases of other women and men arbitrarily detained and incarcerated in the region. He replied:
I hope that the truth will be known one day and that we will have the right to have our good names restored. We never did anything wrong to anyone, but we are stigmatized because of the sentence. I want justice… I was never found with guns, or a document or any evidence. If I had known that they were going to convict us unfairly, I could have said, yes, I collaborated with the guerrillas and I would have received a sentence of 30 months and gone home… However, I was always cleaning my name as a campesino, as a social leader. I never thought that one could be convicted, look at how justice is in this country, the law of the strongest…
We did not know many things, and we did not have the economic resources; we did not have 10 or 20 millions of pesos to give to the prosecutors or a judge. All this affected us. By that time, everything was corrupt. It is not a secret that the judicial branch in the department was corrupt (campesino leader from Colosó, 2018).
Some victims think that the lawsuits of direct reparation somehow compensate economically the damage caused, while for others, no money could repair that damage. However, the expectations of most victims of the detentions interviewed are not limited to economic reparations, but also involve the symbolic dimension as well as other issues concerning truth and justice.
Near the completion of my fieldwork, I organized a meeting in the rural area of Ovejas. Seventeen campesinos participated, among them nine victims of the arbitrary detentions. I also organized a similar meeting in Chalán with approximately 14 victims of the detentions from that municipality. Among other issues, in the meetings we talked about victims’ expectations regarding truth and reparations concerning the arbitrary detentions and other related issues in the context of the peace accords. Antonio, a campesino leader, who participated in the meeting of Ovejas and whose brothers were detained as well as other members from his community, told us:
I think that we need to consider that the leader who was detained and incarcerated, due to his social work, has had the opportunity of talking with his family, with his wife, with his neighbors and explain to them the reasons why he was incarcerated. But this campesino who never thought in his life to be in jail, who did not even participate in the campesinos’ struggle for the land… this campesino has not had the opportunity even to know why they were in jail. Then, this is an aspect that we need to work on, the social leaders. This invisibilization of the mass detentions, the negative impact on the communities, the stigma…
We need to focus on restoring the good name of communities. Everything has been done here at the individual level and the processes have been given to lawyers who have taken advantage of them [campesinos who were detained]. They have been robbed because there have not been collective processes…
We search in the records and find that the press and media in the region showed them [the campesinos] as terrorists, their pictures are there. Then what they have to claim to the Truth Commission is to have their good names restored… it is a truth that we have economic problems, but the money they receive, a compensation will leave them in the same ruin. No money is enough to pay for the damage caused to them. What is more important, and we need to work on that, is the good name of the campesinos who were detained, a public act, that the authorities recognize that they made a mistake and say that these people [the detainees] were not what they said, also the media. This is an act of reparation, the symbolic. It is more important than receiving money, but this is what the state does not want to recognize… It hurts them more to tell the truth than to give money to people. (Meeting with victims of arbitrary detentions and other campesinos, Ovejas, July 2018). Antonio refers to two important aspects related to the mass detentions and expectations of victims in the current context of the implementation of the peace agreement. First, he alludes to the invisibility of the mass detentions and their victims. Individuals who were detained and incarcerated often mention that they are non-recognized and forgotten victims. As mentioned above, women and men who were convicted are not even recognized as victims.
Furthermore, Antonio emphasizes the relevance of the symbolic reparation, including the restoration of the good names of individuals and communities, and the relevance of a public act where the authorities recognize the injustice against these communities, including those unfairly convicted. In the context of the lawsuits, the reparation has been mainly economic when it has taken place. When I asked one lawyer, who has handled many of these cases in the region, whether there has been any symbolic reparation in the sentences resolving these lawsuits, he told me: “I have one case in Chalán, where the Fiscalía asked for public forgiveness, but it appeared in the newspaper in a tiny note. The Fiscalía invited the family [to attend a meeting] to ask them for forgiveness. I attended the act as a representative of the family because they did not want to go.
They were still afraid. However, the act was only a formality” (Interview with lawyer, Remberto Benítez, Sincelejo, 2018).
Claims by victims of arbitrary detentions are not only economic but also symbolic since this is seen as an essential step in the process of social repair as well as overcoming the stigmatization that is still present in some ways.
There is also a deep sense of injustice among victims of mass detentions regarding the judges and courts’ decisions, as shown in Hector and Ricardo’s narratives. Most of the victims of the detentions I interviewed and other campesinos mentioned that many innocent people were in jail and that others were convicted despite being innocent. This sense of unfairness is present in their imaginaries about the state, and it also shapes how these victims have experienced encounters with state institutions and officials even today. Lawyers who handled the cases and members of human rights organizations pointed out several of the irregularities regarding the judicial files and the trials. I already mentioned some of them regarding the Mariscal Operation. According to one lawyer interviewed, who defended many campesinos and other inhabitants, “there was a lack of equity by prosecutors and judges in assessing evidence in some cases. Also, the results of trials were different depending on the fiscalías, judges, and the lawyer defending the person (Interview with lawyer, Sincelejo, 2018).
4.6 Conclusions
In this chapter, I examine arbitrary and mass detentions of campesinos as a violent state practice that took place in the mountain zone of Montes de María, producing long term effects on rural communities and the victims. While these detentions were presented by members of the
military and other state agents as positive results in their attempt to disarticulate the networks of
milicianos and weaken the guerrillas in the region, they targeted many campesinos and inhabitants
who were not milicianos or guerrillas, but simply lived in the areas in which these groups exerted control.
Some of the characteristics of the arbitrary detentions suggest that they were not an isolated or marginal state practice but rather became a counterinsurgency mechanism in the fight against the guerrillas in the region to control populations, mainly through the use of fear. Victims and other members of communities experienced the detentions as arbitrary, violent, and as a form of state terror.
The detentions involved physical and other forms of violence and a disproportionate display of power and force by state agents. Simultaneously, the detentions involved several human rights violations and violence by state agents from different institutions. The violence connected to the detentions was not limited to the detention itself or the spread of terror in rural communities. It also ran through the seemingly more ordinary workings of the state involving prosecutors, judges, prisons, courts, and everyday encounters with the police. It shows the continuum between more spectacular forms of political violence carried out in campesino communities and seemingly ordinary workings of the state in a context of state counterinsurgency practices. The magnitude of the violence carried out in campesino communities as a result of the detentions, the related state processes that came after them, and even the victims have remained invisible.
I show that arbitrary detentions have had a long-term impact not only on campesinos and their communities but also on their relationships with the state. I examined the overall impact of the detentions on victims and their communities, emphasizing fear and terror, distrust among members of communities, the deepening of the breakdown of the social fabric and stigmatization
of rural communities, and especially the victims of detentions. Some of these consequences have even lingered until today, despite the efforts of campesinos regarding social repair to undo some of the effects of violence (Theidon 2013).
As part of these long-term effects, mass detentions and incarceration have continued shaping relationships with the state. This is evidenced by narratives about the hoja de vida being dirtied, stained and damaged; experiences of temporary detentions, surveillance, and harassment after being acquitted in a trial or completion of sentences; emotions such as resentment or distrust; and claims for truth and reparations. These related experiences regarding the detentions and incarceration are still part of everyday life and not only something from the past, particularly in the case of the direct victims.
My analysis suggests that current relationships and experiences of the state in contexts where state violence has been carried out against communities are shaped by the specific lasting effects of this violence on individuals and those communities, current related state processes, and emotions and state affect concerning these experiences. Thus, previous experiences and encounters with the state cannot be overlooked, but rather it is crucial to analyze the specific ways in which they still continue to shape people’s everyday lives and state experiences in the ‘post-conflict’ transition.
I explore emotions and state affect (Krupa and Nugent 2015) regarding the experiences and encounters between campesino victims and the state in the context of the arbitrary detentions, incarceration and their aftermath. I analyze these aspects at different levels. I examine emotions among victims as they are shaped by contact with memories and oral accounts of past encounters with the state and its agents concerning the detentions. By drawing on Ahmed (2004), I approach
these memories and oral accounts as objects which shape current emotions at the individual and collective level.
However, emotions and state affect concerning the detentions are shaped not only by memories of the past, but the lasting consequences of the detentions and other related experiences and encounters with state processes and agents that have taken place after the detentions themselves. The narrative about having the hoja de vida dirtied, stained, damaged is not just a memory but a lasting effect for victims of the detentions which still produces emotions such as humiliation, sadness, and anger.
Past experiences of the detentions and incarceration and related current experiences also shape state affect and the emotional engagement with the state among the victims and other members of communities. I draw on the notion of state affect (Krupa and Nugent 2015) to analyze the forms of affective attachment and emotional engagement associated with the state. In line with Navaro-Yashin (2007; 2012), I also show that state documents related to the detentions produce affect among the victims. These experiences of the detentions and incarceration have also shaped how some of their victims interact with state agents and institutions today and their emotional engagement with the state. Emotions such a resentment, anger, or distrust regarding the state are relevant to understand these interactions, even though these relationships and affective attachments have also changed over time.
5.0 Shaping Relationships with the State, Land Restitution and Continuities of Violence in