Researchers interested in Colombia are challenged by the extraordinary complexity of social phenomena and by the difficulties of drawing up a fair balance between the specifics of such phenomena and the commonalities with other countries located -as Colombia is- in the semiperiphery of the world system. The social contract in Colombia has had a weak existence. In Hobbesian terms, the pactus subiectionis - the subjection of the citizens to the central power - has never been efficacious (Hobbes; 1958: 132). This weakness includes not only the inability of the State to impose its own power in the economic field - that which Hobbes called the dominium - but also the inability of the State to practice coercion against deviant behavior - or imperium, in the terminology used by Hobbes.

I argue that in Colombia, during this period - and during other violent periods of it history as well - the dichotomy anarchy/state seems more useful than the dichotomy oppression/emancipation (1). This paper focus on the social contract from the perspective of social pacification - the achievement of the imperium- understood as a contractual pre-condition. This is not to say that it neglect the importance of social domination or that we consider that the Colombian State has merits for being outside of the long history of oppression and inequity which characterizes Latin American countries, but rather that between 1984 and 1999 the crisis of the social contract in Colombia has had a very complex set of variables, among which those related with peace and the very existence of the State stand out (2).

Notes
(1) Social studies in Colombia are frequently affected by the idea of terror - the same which tormented Hobbes by the middle of the XVII century - derived from the concurrence of rights, or if preferred, by the absence of limits between rights, which characterizes the state of nature (see Rubio (1996, 1997); Jimeno (1998); Camacho (1997), Camacho (1999). The weakness of State power and the emergence of armed groups, that take place today in Colombia, create a situation of natural equalization between individuals which, combined with the authoritarian behavior of the State, produce a terrifying scenario. In these circumstances, as Hobbes says, the worst comes from the fact that "nothing could be unjust" (Hobbes 1958: 98; Parsons 1964:90; Trubek 1972:341).
(2) This argument appear to be delicate if we bear in mind that militaries used it it order to justify the so-called, National Security Doctrine during the 1970s.