Colombia combines two characteristics: stability of institutional macro-forms and a long tradition of diffuse armed conflicts, longlasting and bitter, which have generated experiences, beliefs, practices, and capacities shared by large sectors of the population. This modality of political constitution has permitted the development of a considerable tradition of pact-making that oscilates between conflicting explosions of violence and peace agreements which end up in the death or injury of the protagonists of the agreement, in its rupture (thus starting a new cycle of confrontation), or in the anti-democratic concentration of power in the hands of one or a few of the protagonists of the pact.

This chapter reviews two of these experiences which, however, present significant differences: that of the popular militias in Medellín, and that of the groups of emerald miners in the western part of Boyacá. Through these narratives, we seek to investigate the nature of both the social dynamics and the State which lie behind the pendular movement of violence and peace, and their consequences for the conceptions of justice and citizenship, as well as for the logic of emancipation.