Victims and their Properties: Land Restitution and Victimhood in Colombia

• In Event: The Subject of Wrongs: The Politics of Victimhood in Latin America, Part 2

Abstract

This paper discusses the multiple – and often overlapping – claims to land and property that have emerged in Colombia in the wake of recent shifts in the definition of victimhood. Although victimhood has long been an important form of political subjectivity in Colombia, the passing of Law 1448 (the “Victims’ Law”) in 2011 marked a number of important shifts in its legal definition and mobilization. Victimhood ceased to be connected to wrongdoing by specific actors; victims became victims simply by virtue of having incurred harm as a result of the internal armed conflict. This move to distance victims’ rights from specific wrongs is also manifested in the inclusion in the Victims’ Law of the right to land restitution for Colombia’s displaced population. While claims to land restitution can be made by those claiming dispossession by specific actors, they can also be made by people claiming to have abandoned land due to generalized violence.

Through an examination of claims to land in the region of Urabá and the city of Medellín, this paper considers ways in which the restitution process has both opened up and silenced claims to victimhood, as well as the ambiguous and diverse roles that different actors have played in the conflict. The paper traces the categories of land ownership and possession mobilized by actors involved in the restitution process – such as state officials, displaced claimants, businessmen, and victims’ organizations – and how these categories work to both justify and limit the possibilities of victimhood in Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict.

Author

• Meghan L Morris, University of Chicago