Visibility and Victimhood in Colombia

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

Abstract

This paper argues that the politics of violence and security in contemporary Colombia has been shaped by a pair of catastrophic events that coincided during one week in November 1985—the siege of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá by the M-19 guerrilla group and a mudslide activated by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano that killed nearly 30,000 inhabitants of the town of Armero. How the victims of the two events were counted and commemorated, and how the occurrences themselves were constituted in their aftermath as “events,” continue to serve as key referents for the politics of life and death today. The category of “victimhood” in the present is informed by the way violence and loss of life were differentially understood and represented in each case. These momentous occurrences also exert sustained influence over the kinds of events that are able to produce politically legible and ethically valuable victims. In a place where security remains the overarching political rationality, and the imperative to protect life from threat informs the work of government across a range of domains, political subjectivity and citizenship are predicated on being recognized as an actual or potential victim. The coinciding tragedies of November 1985 remain central to the cultural and political work of visibilizing victimhood in contemporary Colombia, and thus to the contours of the political at large.

Author

• Austin G Zeiderman, London School of Economics and Political Science