Between guns and reasons: ex- combatants and domination in the urban post-conflict in Moravia, Medellin - Colombia

Abstract

This paper is a result of a research that explores the social relations of paramilitar ex- combatants in places where they developed their social re-insertion processes. The methodology used the collection of testimonies and observation throughout five years of ethnographic work and interviews done to key informants in Moravia, Medellin

– Colombia. This paper aims first to elucidate the conditions of production and re- production of domination relations previous to the re-insertion process; second to understand the social perception of paramilitary power in neighborhoods posterior to their re-insertion process; and, third to identify the reasons that allow acceptance or rejection to this type of social domination. In order to do this, the established social relations between paramilitary ex-combatants and non-combatants are analyzed taking into account the post-conflict scenario. fte results show that ex-combatants    are simultaneously identified as violent subjects and warrants of the functioning of different parts of local life; that is, as non-formal agents of social control that create a non-formal and sense of order that co-exists in a non-conflictive form with the legal order. One of the main conclusions indicate that local counterinsurgency social control implemented by the paramilitary groups in have been exercised throughout time, even after the re-insertion process, because it is based on the population’s fear and the socially known discourses.