II. Deterioration of Public Goods

1. Legitimacy

The social disembeddedness of the political parties was especially accentuated during the period of the National Front (1959-1978) whereby the traditional parties - consevadores and liberales - shared a temporary distribution of political power (3). Since the agreement eliminated electoral competition between the two parties - each one being certain of his turn - partisan passions almost disappeared and political participation was reduced to its bureaucratic and clientelist expressions (4). (Leal Buitrago, 1984: 134). Clientelism has been a legendary practice in the political history of Colombia (5) bound to the elitist character of the political system (6). Its current manifestation is rooted in the old feudal relationships imposed from colonial times, some of which are still valid in certain rural areas of the country.

According to Francisco Gutiérrez, by deinstitutionalizing the political parties and excluding other political forces, the Frente Nacional transferred the weight of political competition to the interior of the same parties. In these circumstances, there was created "a sort of bias in favor of the inferior layer of the partisan apparatus," permitting the lay political actors to negotiate better agreements with different clientelist managers (Gutiérrez, 1996: 35-52).

The creation, in the second half of the present century, of a modern bureaucracy - at least in some spheres of the State (7) - produced an adaptation of this practice which has been called "corporate clientelism" (8). This new version is based on the capacity of the State to distribute resources (9) - for instance through parliamentary aids - especially in small towns, under the mediation of the caciques, who are bound to the members of the national Congress. Some State entities and some political leaders with their local movements, play an important role in this new clientelism to the detriment of both of the political parties’ organization. Consequently, the regional leaders displaced their national bosses, and political activity was degraded in a series of practices of negotiation and compromise more and more specific, ephemeral and dependent on the satisfaction of small groups of voters (10).

The desembeddedness of political activity and the peak of clientelism has been accentuated, also, by violence. The absence - or the inefficiency- of the State and the presence of armed groups, created a situation of permanent distrust between social actors. Collective practices decreased to their minimum expression; each person implemented his own strategy. In this circumstance, the political leader act in the middle of the danger derived, among other sources, from his need to compromise with the armed groups (11). Fear of violence worked to diminish public participation of the leader and increased face-to-face control of agreements (Gambetta 1996) and clientelist practices (12). Only those who have been educated in the old clientelist practices get the skills and the lack of scruples they need to negotiate with everybody in this hazardous political game (13).

In Colombia, social conflict is not well translated into the political arena. The social and the political maintain a notable divorce. The lack of isomorphism between the space of production, the space of community and the space of citizenship (Santos, 1996,...) gives rise to a remote relationship between political conflict and social interests. In Bourdieu’s terminology, the political field has an unusual autonomy vis-à-vis the economic field (14). Social interest has to be reformulated in political terms, by the political party, in order to obtain visibility in the institutional sphere; conflicts are mediated by the dynamic of the political game; outside the space of citizenship the social interests get lost, silence. These circumstances explain, in part, the fact that the increases of political conflicts do not entails a risk of rupture of the regime (Touraine, 1988:308). The centrality of the politic-uprooted, the politic-pure - according to Daniel Pécaut’s expression - has two main effects: 1) it reflects the great volatility of political language: the original sense of social interests remains forgotten in the intricate tangle of discursive divergences, 2) it yields a type of politics which might be characterized by its lack of hegemony.

The fact that the political parties and, in general, the political discourse, is not a vehicle - it has never been (15) - of expression of class interests, does not necessarily lead to the idea that class dominance doesn't exist and that there is a mere traditional dominance (Max Weber 1978:215) through political clientels. An analysis of the way clientelism operates shows, however, its narrow linking with class dominance imposed from above. The acceptance of material favors on the part of local clients, who usually are very poor, leads to the obstruction of horizontal alliances or class-alliances. In their strategic reading, the client prefers the material benefits that have been offered instead of a social confrontation that only promises more marginality and very often many risks in terms of personal safety. The so-called political machinery of the party not only attenuates the social claims for welfare, but also gains certain legitimacy through the distribution of material resources (16).

Colombia has one of the highest homicide rates in the world for a country that is not involved in an open war (Pécaut, 1997: 3) (17). During the last two decades the homicide rate multiplied by four. (Rubio, 1997:8). In 1995 the rate of homicides for 100,000 inhabitants was 72 (18) and the total penal infractions grew to 172,952 (19). According to the Comision Colombiana de Juristas between 1970 and 1998 432.349 people were killed in violent circumstances (20); only 9% of this number is due to political violence. The kidnapping rate is the highest in the world (21). Political violence is also at high levels by world standars: 156 union workers were killed in Colombia, a figure that represents 46% of such killings world-wide (22).

However, violence isn’t a new phenomenon in Colombia. From its independence in 1810, the country experienced countless civil wars - most of them undertaken on behalf of God or on behalf of the autonomy of a region - which bled the nation, stopped the development and sowed fear and hate among the peasants (Deas, 1986; Sanchez, 1985; Tirado Mejia, 1976). In the twentieth century things haven’t gone better. After a relative truce between 1910 and 1945, ideological fundamentalism appeared again, this time under the forms, on the one hand, of traditional conservatism - agrarian and Catholic - and, on the other hand, of anticlerical and urban liberalism. The fervor of these ideological passions left more than 300,000 dead in the civil war known as La Violencia (1948-1953). (23)

During the sixties, the country had not yet been pacified, when three guerrilla movements rose up against the State: the National Liberation Army (ELN) ideologically linked with the Cuban revolution; the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), characterized by a sort of agrarian communism, and the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL), made up of peasants. Since 1984, the guerrilla movement has had an unexpected growth, mainly in those inhabited regions where economically important resources exist: either the cultivation of coca, or the extraction of petroleum (Rangel, 1998, Pizarro, 1992). According to some scholars, in Colombia about 10,000 to 12,000 guerrilleros operate, most of them belonging to the FARC (7,000) and to the ELN (2,000) (24). The fact that one guerrillero in combat costs approximately 400 dollars monthly helps to understand not only the importance of the economic dimension of the guerrillas and of their criminal operations: taxing drug traffic, kidnapping and extortion (25) but also the general economic impact of the war (26).

Guerrillas, paramilitaries, and militias operate - and obtain their power- in border-line situations between the absence of a legitimate power and the need for security and peace, a borderline where power and justice are ephemeral and subjected to the sways of war, explaining the fact that in zones of armed conflict, one armed group may displace its opponent without the resistance of the peasants located in that zone.

Most recently, Colombia was affected by the emergence of narcotraffic. During the last two decades, its influence has been determinant for a variety of aspects of contemporary political life in the country: in the growth and invigoration of the guerrilla movement through the collection of taxes (Rangel, 1989:125), in the creation and operation of paramilitary groups in zones of guerrilla influence, in the configuration of an extreme right group (27), headed to kill popular leaders, in the growth of corruption at all institutional and social levels, in the devaluation of the rule of law and, especially in the worthlessness of the judiciary system (Thoumi, 1995; 1997). Rubio (1977) has shown how narcotraffic has made criminal activities in general more profitable and low-risk and consequently how a perverse social capital has been created that stimulates rent-seeking activities and criminal behavior (28). With narcotraffick, in Colombia death has been robbed from its materiality.

These facts reveal an unprecedented State crisis. The hegemonic weakness of the government is aggravated by the institutional threat coming from armed groups. The worsening of the imperium accentuates a crisis of legitimacy which, for many years, was managed with efficacy by the national elites. Today, the eventual overcoming of the crisis has a higher price: pacification of the country seems to be impossible without a new distribution of power between the forces in conflict (Correa, 1999, Rangel, 1982).

The phenomenon of narcotraffic has played an essential role in the institutional fragmentation that characterizes the current Colombian crisis (Thoumi, 1995; Kline, 1996). It has come to deteriorate a situation of violence, illegitimacy and poverty which was hitherto delicate. Narcotraffic is a system of internationalized accumulation with a commercial and violent character (29). These features explain why it is a potential ally of whatever armed grouping, legal or illegal, of any source of economic accumulation and of any social national or international group. They also explain its determinantal influence in the process of de-ideologization, banalization and diffusion of violence within the Colombian society (30). Drug traffic not only weakens the State through its devastating effect on the rule of law, but also, indirectly, by unleashing the United States’ intervention in national politics.

Never before, not even during the Cold War when the Latin American governments feared the advance of the communist guerrillas, has the intervention of the United States been so open, so direct and so determinant as it has been during the last decade and, specifically, during the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) who was accused of having known of the acceptance of money from the mafia during his presidential campaign. The legislative program throughout this period was defined and imposed by the United States through its embassy in Bogota. According to Gabriel Tokatlian (1997: 201) the centrality reached by the drug topic in Colombia has produced an unstable internationalization of the country. In such conditions, he proposes the acceptance of a flimsy sovereignty and the necessity of an international intervention in order to solve the problem. Between 1994 and 1998 the American government openly judged Colombian criminal policy - which in the current situation is the main policy - and conditioned the improvement of the relationship between both governments - and the possibility of certification (31) - on the legislative adoption of its own opinion. Extradition, increment of sentences, incorporation of new penal crimes, laundry of money, spraying of illicit crops, etc., have been decided according to U.S. drug policy (32).

Drug traffic is a typical globalized localism (Santos: ) in political, legal and economic matters. The current prohibitionist policy has its origins in the United States, starting from 1909 in the Shangai Conference (Del Olmo; 1986), and is a reflection of the dominant and conservative mainstream leading the North American State (Szasz; 1970). Colombia is directly affected by this sort of globalized morality, not only because of its imposition from Washington, but also because the international character of the phenomenon is only kept in mind in order to justify foreign intervention, rather than to solve the problem. Colombia faces the nuisances unleashed by a prohibitionist policy - corruption, repression, violence, terrorism, economic crisis - without obtaining any benefits (33), or even having the possibility of questioning such a policy. Regarding narcotraffic, the international community, commanded by the USA, globalizes the problem but, at the same time, localizes its eventual solution (34). On the one hand, Colombia is used as an experimental territory for new global policies of crime control (Global Crime Control) (J. Feest, 1998). On the other hand, it is the solitary and distant place where corruption and violence reign: too close to the hegemonic center to have drug mafias and too far away to have social and political problems derived from those mafias. In these conditions, the Colombian government is not only compelled to undertake a war in which it will certainly fail (35) due to its lack of social and political ability, but it is also obliged to drive the war through penal (36) and military repression. The result is the addition of criminal and social failure to the usual therapeutic failure.

This globalized morality (37) certainly favors the protection of American economic interests due to the enlargement of US intervention inherent in this kind of globalization. However, this fact doesn't explain everything (38). The dominant American conservatism, vis-à-vis health and drug problems, is also important in explaining the messianic representation ruling over the United States’ foreign policy. In order to explain the centrality of drugs in the American policy, Francis Gentleman - cited by Uprimny (1997) - argues, with realism and good humor, that the US policy in this matter consist of a conjunction of "a third of moral humanitarianism, a third of racist xenophobia, and a third of geopolitical interests".

Despite its economic growth during most of the last three decades, Colombian society maintains astonishing disparities in terms of revenues, health and quality of life, especially among regions and among social classes. According to the National Department of Planning, the Gini coefficient has fluctuated between 0.42 and 0.48 during the last decade and has been rising in the last few years (39). Fedesarrollo - a private and independent institution - confirms these data: in 1966 the richest quintile of the population received 54% of the labor revenues, while the poorest quintile only received 6%. The two richest quintiles of the population yield 72.9% of the labor revenues (40). This inequality is even more serious in relation to non-labor revenues. The work of Fedesarrollo shows that while in 1996 the poorest quintile received 2.7% of these revenues, the richest quintile obtained 60%. For this type of revenue, the Gini coefficient has passed from 0.52 in 1990 to 0.62 in 1996 (41).

The constitutional change that occurred in 1991 has not affected this situation of inequity. The first government of the new regime (Cesar Gaviria 1990-94) opened the economy to the international market and damaged the welfare State. The second government (Ernesto Samper 1994-98) counteracted the rigors of economic liberalism, and appeared as the ruler of a "social jump". Nevertheless, it continued to make cuts in the social budget, cuts even more drastic than those made at the beginning of the economic opening (42). Between 1986 and 1996 the Colombian economy has varied significantly: the agricultural sector, which at the beginning of the period represented 21.5 of the GNP, descended at the end of the period to its lowest historical level (19.2%). Manufactures fell from representing 21.2% of the GNP, to the level that they had during the fifties, which was 17.9%. Conversely, trade and financial services, had represented 19.1% at the beginning of the period and 27.5 % at the end. These data show a change in the orientation of the Colombian economy toward the financial sector, speculation and the so-called "casino economy".

With this change workers have been the most harmed. Unemployment reached 13% in 1997. Labor statute #50 of 1990 is a good example of what has been described as post-contractualization: permitting the indefinite existence of fixed-term contracts, facilitating the possibility of lay-offs, eliminating retroactivity of certain social benefits, suppressing judicial action of reinstatement, and putting an end to labor contract stability. Temporary recruiting increased from 11.6% in 1977 to nearly 20% in 1997. Libardo Sarmiento summarizes this situation in the following way: the economically active population is a third of the total population (around 13 million). 13% of this total are unemployed. The remaining percentages are distributed between 54% who work in the informal sector (more or less 6 million people) and 46% who work in the formal sector. According to Sarmiento, the number of poor that are located below the poverty line increased slightly between 1991 and 1995 (from 51.9% to 52.4%). However, this change is significant in the rural zones, where it went up from 65% to 72% between 1991 and 1995 (Ibidem). On the other hand, between 1990 and 1995, minimum-wage lost purchasing power by more than 8% (Ibidem). Finally, as for the distribution of revenue, the Gini coefficient corresponding to 1995 was located at 0.53, the same as in 1970. At the moment the distribution of revenue is at the same level as it was 25 years ago and the percentage of the population with insufficient revenue is still above 50% (Ibidem).

In the core countries national identity was achieved through the conversion of the hegemonic group’s culture into a national culture. The State played a central role in this process, using the judicial and the educational systems for this purpose. In Colombia, by contrast, a national identity of European character was promoted by the national bourgeoisie, which was never able to prevail completely. During the Colonial era, the national identity was diluted by other identities: regional, racial, linguistic, professional, etc. After independence, the idea of citizenship was employed by Bolivar and Santander in order to build a collective identity, starting with the State and disregarding social, ethnic and cultural differences. According to J.O. Melo (1992), this political element - imposed over the ethnic element - is at the base of the Colombian nationality; the nation derived from the colonial administrative division then extended to new institutions of the State (43). Daniel Pecaut also points out the merely political character of this element of unity. In his opinion, " the two political parties, Liberal and Conservative (...), have defined the forms of identification and of collective ownership (...); they have established a symbolic division without - or almost without - a link with social relations (Pecaut, 1998: 16).

The imposition of the political on the social never was consolidated. Centralism, imposed by the constitution of 1886, so hard in the letter, was only partially achieved. The weakness of the national bourgeoisie and the social disembeddedness of the idea of citizenship brought about the delegation of the educational system - in which the cultural and national identity is forged - to the Church and the family (44), whose traditional values mostly opposed an ideology of civic citizenship.

During the last three decades the secularization of the Colombian society has progressed at an incredible speed (45). The media, operating in the context of great labor mobility, has been replacing the Catholic Church in terms of moral education, engendering a kind of low intensity national unity - according to the expression of Melo - very bound to capitalist consumerism, but at the same time endowed with a great stability probably due to the absence of linguistic problems. The cultural system - as it happens with the political system (Touraine, 1988:308) - becomes a matter of consumption, rather than a matter of identity.

Nevertheless, the haste with which this process of secularization took place has left remnants that are observed, for example, in the religious character of some violent practices. Concerning the armed conflict, the religious element is especially clear in the behavior of the ELN, but is also present in the rural branch of the FARC. More dramatic still is the mythical-religious value-reference of sicarios in the poor communes of Medellín (46). In Colombia, says Daniel Pecaut, "the only collective representation is mythical. It is that of an original violence which doesn't stop repeating. It’s continuously trapped in a religious horizon, that of the fall and the sin". The facts of violence - he explains - are perceived as facts of nature, like catastrophes and "other curses of God that determine the course of things (Daniel Pecaut 1998: 28).

In the middle of the armed conflict the claim for cultural diversity becomes easily balkanized. This phenomenon happens frequently in the war zones, which are territories of great cultural diversity. In these areas, the indigenous peoples’ claim for cultural diversity, for example, loses its cultural character - loses its scale - and turns into an additional element of the war. Therefore, political participation and cultural expression are confined to the community space. However, the enormous cultural diversity of the country has not triggered armed conflicts in Colombia. The prevalence of the Spanish language, cultural hybridity and the unity of territory are taken for granted (47). They shape a national identity not substantially different from that of other Latin American peoples: a low intensity nationality due to the priority of merely symbolic elements over social and economic interests.

The worsening of public goods possesses different visibilities (Foucault 1975: 222, Deleuze 1986:56; Baudrillard, 1983): some processes of deterioration are more notorious than others. Violence and insecurity are by far the most visible. Poverty, lack of identity and illegitimacy are overshadowed by violent events. The explosion of a firecracker in the center of Bogotá, with a pair of victims bleeding in the middle of the street, causes more social alarm - is more easily seen - than the hundreds of victims of child abuse every day. From another side, the institutional devices also contain different visibilities: promulgating a constitution is a more notorious fact than making an agrarian reform; the decertification imposed by the United States causes more political damage than the increase of unemployment or the growth of administrative corruption. The hegemonic weakness of the State determines an institutional dependence of the most protuberant visibilities - small scale - in detriment to the most basic necessities -great scale.

Insecurity has been the most important social and institutional concern during the last fifteen years in Colombia. The relationship among public goods has been modified. First of all, within the social sphere, violence and armed conflict have introduced a hierarchical differentiation in satisfaction of needs connected with security and public order. Security is by far the public good most invoked and requested by all, even by the excluded. Secondly, in the institutional space, the lack of imperium and weakness of hegemony are supposed to be solved with the increase of military power. The State tries to derive its legitimacy from its achievements attained in the war against crime and against subversion (48).

Armed groups also depend more and more on their capacity to deliver security to the population and therefore less and less on their ideology or on their political proposals. Something similar happens with economic welfare and cultural identity. Only in some bounded counter-hegemonic spheres - indigenous, movements, left political groups, etc. - are these goods perceived of as essential and even subordinate to security. On the other hand, cultural identity, although having had better luck than social welfare in the new context of the constitution of 1991, has also suffered the impact of violence and insecurity.

Insecurity is felt in multiple ways by Colombians. Maybe all could be summarized as a constant sensation of institutional abandonment, which is directly linked to the idea of lack of justice. The increasing breach between social conflicts, demanding a judicial intervention and the supply of justice has been well documented (49). This gap doesn’t always manifest in the same way: the most renowned criminal cases - which characterize the so-called dramatic justice (50) - have had special attention in the judicial system but only have had a limited impact against corruption and narcotraffic. From another side, the growth of exceptional criminal justice has entailed the underestimation of ordinary conflicts. The result is a twofold dissociation between justice and conflict. On the one hand, at least in general terms, the emphasis on exceptional justice has not decreased the violence linked with armed groups. This inefficacy has entailed a sort of routinization of the exceptional: since success against mafias and other armed groups has not been reached, exceptional justice has been focused on ordinary cases (51) . On the other hand, ordinary non-criminal justice has been the object of multiple reforms destined to improve efficiency (Santos 1997 ). The few achievements attached to these reforms, having emphasis on the supply of justice - instead of the offer - have determined, here also, a dissociation between the existent conflicts and the decisions of justice (52).

Notes
(3) During the period of the Frente Nacional (1959-1968) - after the civil war called La violencia - and according to the constitution, both Liberal and Conservative parties took turns in power every 4 years. Elections were free but only candidates from one party could participate. Additionally, the party in power had the obligation - also constitutional - of giving bureaucratic proportional participation (50%) to the other party.
(4)The constitutional reform of 1968 authorized the reelection of representatives in Congress and provided them with economic resources - known as auxilios parlamentarios (parliamentary aids) - which were used for the payment of clientelist-favors at the local level. These resources, added to the power of bureaucratic nomination attributed to the party of government, strengthened clientelist practices
(5) There is a wide bibliography on the importance of clientelism in Latin America. The pioneer text in this matter belongs to Mintz, S W. and Wolf E. R and (1950: 341-68). For a more recent view, see Robert H. Dix (1987), R Albert Berry, Ronald G. Hellman and Mauricio Solaun (eds.) (1980), Steffen Schmidt (1980). For a Colombian bibliography, see Francisco Leal Buitrago (1984, 1990), Rodrigo Losada (1984), Eduardo Uribe Diaz (1986),Rodrigo Uprimny (1989), Malcom Deas (1973) and Daniel Pecaut (1978).
(6) According to Touraine (1988: 136) the hyper-development of the political sphere in Latin America leads to the fact that political leaders are more important than political organizations as well as to a sort of lack of differentiation between the political system and the State. In Colombia, for instance, once the presidential period is finished, the former President remains with much political power. Those who say that in Colombia politicians look forward to being ex-presidents above all else, don’t exaggerate. Ex-presidents and their families have played an important role in the configuration of political elites throughout the Colombian history. They are landlords or have important participation in the media (in newspaper like, El Tiempo, El Espectador, La Republica; in weekly magazines like Nueva Frontera and Semana, in radio networks like Caracol; in television news like TV Hoy, 24 Hours, etc.); for this matter see Herran, María Teresa (1991) and Osterling, 1989: 167. Some presidential families got another of its members to be president - Alfonso Lopez (1974-78); Andres Pastrana 1998 - other families have participated as presidential candidates - Carlos Lleras de la Fuente, Alvaro Gómez Hurtado, Maria Eugenia Rojas - or as important politicians. The political aristocracy so configured is provided every four years with the "clientelist machinery".
(7) For instance, El Banco de la Republica, Planeacion Nacional, and somewhat Las Fuerzas Armadas.
(8) The survival of clientelism even in modern environments is today accepted. Nevertheless, the real dimension of this phenomenon among intermediate societies that has reached a certain modernization is somehow the object of debate. Two positions could be differentiated: from one side those who see in the clientelist practices a functional element for political development and on the other side those who think that clientelism introduces fragmentation and chaos in the political system. For an illustration of this debate see Marts (1997: 306). On the importance of clientelism in modern societies see Luis Roniger (1994).
(9) According to Touraine A. (1987: 14), the partial externality of the economic power in Latin America entails the fact that the political system acts as a distributor of resources - money, influence, protection, etc. - rather than as the manager of production.
(10) "Post-clientelism", Francisco Gutiérrez argues, "used blackmail up to down and below to up, as the main element of political representation; therefore, it effectively blocked the articulation of collective interests and the participation in the formation of public goods" Gutierrez, Francisco (1996).
(11) The armed-clientelism - says Francisco Leal - is one of the more disturbing and less analyzed realities of the Colombian democracy (cited by Gutierrez 199 : 47).
(12) Even in relation to guerrillas; they reproduce the relationship patron/client in its territories. From peasants, the guerrilla obtains political favors - for example, votes for a certain mayor, abstention, etc. - or logistical favors - information or harbor - all of this in exchange for protection
(13) Few people - Francisco Gutierrez says - could be involved in such participationism: so expensive, so dangerous and with so few outcomes. In consequence, the growing legal offer of participation finds very few followers (Gutierrez, Op. Cit, p. 48); on the inefficiency of the new participatory democracy mechanisms, see, Munera, (1999); Garcia-Villegas, Mauricio (1997).
(14) In Bourdieu scheme of power, the political field is structured upon the economic field whereas the intellectual and artistic fields have a relative autonomy vis-à-vis the economic field. We argue that this understanding isn’t useful to explain the role of the political field in Latin American countries due to the great degree of autonomy politics acquires here. This kind of parallelism between the intellectual field and the political field has been studied by Deas, Malcom (1983).
(15) According to Fernando Guillén (1986), the current function of political parties consists of maintaining solidarity and loyalty from lay people, likely during the Hacienda, the Patron achieved this purpose with his subjects; Fernando Guillen (1986).
(16) Corruption, on the other hand, is also a form of clientelism based on a "market of illegal reciprocations"; in this respect, see Heidenhmeir, Arnold (1970); for an explanation of the relationship between clientelism and corruption, see Hutchcroft, Paul (1997: 223-243); for the Colombian case, see Guillén, Gonzalo (1995), Cepeda, Fernando (1994); this is not a new phenomenon: see for example, Grahn, Lance (1995) and McFarlane (1996).
(17) See, Deas, M. and Gaitan-Daza F. (1995: 268). Nevertheless, it is necessary to point out that El Salvador, during the last years and as a consequence of the peace process has violence indexes that reach and even overpass the Colombian indexes. See also Paz Publica - Carta # 1 Universidad de Los Andes July 1997...International Crime Statistics, 1995 [?]
(18) This number is very high compared with other countries where violence is a concern. For instance in Brasil the rate of homicides for 100,000 inhabitants is 25, in Panama is 23, in Peru is 12, in Sri Lanka is also 12 and in USA is 12 as well.
(19) See, Interpol, International Crime Statistics, 1995; Latin American Regional Reports (Apr. 13, 1995); Freedom in the World: the Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Rights 195, 1994-95, U.S Department of the State, Country Reports Human Rights Practices for 1994, Colombia 351, 1995... Amnesty International, Colombia: Political Violence, Myth and Reality, 1994 .
(20) 25,200 people were killed in 1998, 24,306 in 1997 and 27,428 in 1996 (Comision Colombiana de Juristas)
(21) According to the Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (Tercer Informe 1999:27) almost half of the total amount of annual kidnappings in the world happen in Colombia.
(22) According to the International Union Confederation (web page updated April 1999)
(23) The symbolic -almost sacred - character of the war at this time can be perceived in the fact that the identification of the opponents through the colors - blue and red - became an essential and almost independent element of the civil war. A regional perspective of this war is given in, James D. Henderson (1985).
(24) See, Ramirez (1990) and Pizarro (1996: 55-88); see also Camacho (1999).
(25) According to Rangel (1998: 31) the guerrillas spend about 650.000 dollars every day.
(26) According to data from the Comisión de Racionalización del Gasto Público - published in El Tiempo January 6th of 1999 - the cost of the war in 1997 rose 3,700 million dollars. For that year the GNP was 94,000 million dollars. Because of the war, the Colombian economy stops growing every year by 3 points of its GNP. In the last years the resources for defense has been multiplied by 5. The growth of the public expenses between 1992 and 1998 was 15%: it passed from 2.0% (GNP) to 3.5% (GNP). The number of soldiers [pie de fuerza] has been doubled from 85,000 soldiers to 160.000. This report mentions data from the National Department of Planning according to which, the losses generated by violence between 1990-1994 are calculated as 12.4 billion pesos (about 8,000 million dollars). However, this data does fit with a similar research from the CEDE (1998) (University of Los Andes) - also published in El Tiempo (July 20, 1998) - according to which the cost of the war in 1977 was 8,000 million dollars.
(27) The formation and expansion of paramilitaries has explanation in three parallel phenomena: 1) growth of guerrillas since the 1980s; 2) failure of the army vis-à-vis guerrillas; and 3) participation of narco-land-owners in zones of guerrilla influence. The first paramilitary group was founded in 1980 under the name of MAS: Muerte a Secuestradores (Death to kidnappers). There is little information about the paramilitary expansion. However, it is considered that there are about 4,500 men in arms (Camacho 1999... ). In war zones, a clear empathy exists between paramilitaries and army officers. In February 1983 the National Attorney General presented a report in which he accused 59 active-duty members of the police and military who belonged to MAS, including the commander of the Army’s Bombona Batallion (Human Rights Watch1: 998).
(28) According to Rubio (1997) the empirical literature validating a social capital approach to delinquency cannot be applied in Colombia. The low return on investment for some segments of the population and the high profit in criminal activities make education a bad deal. Rubio suggests that, in Colombia, criminal activity is mostly the result of a rational choice. " The simultaneous existence of a persistent and growing informal and illegal underground economy" He argues, "as well as the rise of powerful criminal organizations, has brought to light an institutional environment that favors opportunist and criminal behavior" (p. 808).
(29) There is a big debate over the dimension and influence of illegal capitals in Colombia. See for instance, Steiner, R., (1997), Ocampo and Steiner (eds.) (1994); Thoumi (1995); Rocha Garcia (1997)
(30) See Alejandro Reyes (1997); for instance, according to Reyes during the last fifteen years narcotraffickrs have carried out a sort of counter agrarian reform: they have purchased lands in 37 % of Colombian municipalities, specially those with the best quality of land.
(31) The annually announced ‘certification’ of the country made up by the Department of the State in Washington has an enormous incidence in the political and economic activity in Colombia. During the first months of every year, before the announcement of the result, the whole country seems to depend on this admonition. During the Government of Samper the country didn't receive a full certification. On August 10 of 1998 El Tiempo published information according to which the USA embassy in Colombia had conditioned certification on the accomplishment of a list of 7 items, all of them related to drugs, but also all depending on the political, the administrative or the judicial process. They were: adoption of an "integral politics against illegal drugs"; "budget increment headed to fight drug traffic"; "invigoration of penal investigation"; "enforcement of extradition"; "adoption of a strong crime legislation and penitentiary reforms".
(32) The American embassy justifies this intervention with the argument that drug traffic is an international matter that is part of its national interest.
(33) The supposed beneficent effects of drug traffic on the economical stability in Colombia raise controversy. Given their existence the question is to what extent can they be justified in relation with the harmful effects on the same economic system; see Uprimny (1990)
(34) So, the United States imposes a change of scale in the treatment of this problem that explains, partly at least, the inefficiency of the prohibitionist policy (Santos: )
(35) There are of course temporary achievements: the most important "capos" of the Cali Cartel and Medellin Carter are either in prison or death; but still the business is as strong as always.
(36) These circumstances lead to the inefficacy of criminal laws and confine State policy to the increase of penalties and the creation of new crimes, more and more repressive and harmful in relation to the rule of law. According to Diego Perez 618 detentions made by the jurisdiction of public order in the first semester of 1992, 584 cases were about people involved in civic and politic demonstrations. In this respect, Nemoga 1987, Uprimny 1999). But, inefficiency and institutional schizophrenia are not the only consequence of this policy: the uneven implementation of penal norms against peasants, small dealers and "mules" on the one hand, and the illegal use of repression for purposes linked to the war against the guerrillas on the other hand are two well known additional evils.
(37) This type of globalization is different - although maybe complementary- from that linked to the internationalization of the market dramatically affecting the periphery of the world system (Castells, 1996: 115; Escobar, 1995: 22; Santos, 1995). Colombia, like the other countries of the subcontinent, has been incorporated into this phenomenon with a doubled force since the eighties, when the national economy acquired its current speculative and financial character (Sarmiento; 1997: 20).
(38) Certainly, there is a great debate here. The Colombian left, for example, has always seen this policy exclusively as the extension of imperialism.
(39) The Gini coefficient would be 0 if all the individuals received exactly the same amount of money, and it would be 1 if an individual receives all.
(40) Fedesarrollo (1997:41). . According to the World Bank, in Colombia the richest 10 % receive the 46.9% of the national income while the poorest 10% receive only 1% of national income. (Informe sobre desarrollo mundial 1998-1999 : 198)
(41) Comision Colombiana de Juristas (1998) Mimeo
(42) In 1995 four cuttings came out in the Plan de desarrollo (Developing plan) that add up to 950,000 million pesos (about 600 million dollars); see, Sarmiento Anzola, Libardo (1996).
(43) According to Melo, this was a general phenomenon in Latin America; in no case was it possible to maintain united entities that during the Colony were not united. For that reason, intents for establishing national entities starting from the union between several administrative colonial entities always failed (Melo, 1992: 90).
(44) Gutierrez of Pineda, Virginia (1968).
(45) Demographic growth passed from 3% in 1970 to 1.8% in 1990; urban population passed from 40% in 1960 to 70% in 1990; the labor force in agriculture passed from 45% in 1965 to 25% in 1990; the expenses in education passed from 1.7 of the [PNB] in 1960 to 2.8 in 1990 (Desarrollo Humano 1990). According to Melo (Melo, 1990: 222), the central phenomenon of the national life during these years was the "extremely quick transformation of the mentalities and the structures of social life".
(46) See, Jaramillo Ana Maria ...
(47) Notwithstanding, in Colombia -as it is the case in the rest of Latin American countries - a sort of mixture between racial and class dominance has to be stressed.
(48) Frequently, the State dramatizes the conditions of the war and the imminence of chaos in order to be perceived as the only acceptable power.
(49) See, Analisis sociojuridico de la Justicia en Colombia, especially the first part; see also Uprimny and Garcia-Villegas (1999) . The relation between social conflicts and judicialization may be visualized as a pyramide, usually called The "Dispute Pyramide" which represents in its base the social conflicts or "grievances" (Felstiner, Abel and Sarat, 1980- 81) - perceived of as such - and, at the top, the disputes solved by judicial decisions; See Galanter, 1983, Santos, (19... ) for a more recent transformation of the pyramide in core countries see Edelman, L and Suchman, M, (1999).
(50) See, Analisis Sociojuridico de la Justicia en Colombia (1997).
(51) Ibidem
(52) Judicial reforms designed to lighten the load of the judicial system have been implemented with an essentially administrative understanding of the problem. According to this perspective, excellence is supposed to be the increase of answers the system provides to society. Because of such an emphasis on the offer, the system has stopped worrying about social demand of justice and has underestimated the need for symmetry between internal operation in the judicial system and social necessities. The emphasis on the outcomes prompts the primacy of data over the quality of solutions and, therefore, leads to a concentration of effort in the easy cases. Those cases in which the State has only a procedural role overtake those in which investigation, motivation and adjudication is needed. In these circumstances, it also changes the scale between conflicts and solutions or between adjudicative justice and bureaucratic - almost notarial - justice. The tutela action has been useful in order to attenuate this breach between demand and supply of justice. However, its achievements are very restricted in the general panorama of protection of rights.