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Language and Politics: On the Colombian “Establishment”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Eduardo Posada-Carbó*
Affiliation:
St Antony's College, Oxford
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Abstract

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During the last decade, the term Establishment has gained currency among Colombian opinion makers—be they newspaper columnists, politicians, or even academics. After surveying the ambiguities of the concept in the United Kingdom and the United States—the countries where it was first popularized in the 1950s and 1960s—this paper focuses on the usages of the expression in the Colombian public debate. Based on a variety of sources—including op-eds and newspaper reports, interviews with leading public figures, and other political and academic documents—I show how generalized the term has become. I examine how the prevailing language gives the “Establishment” a central role in shaping political developments in the past decades. It blames the Establishment for the country's most fundamental problems while conferring on this same Establishment the power to solve them. However, any attempt to identify what is meant by the Establishment soon reveals an extremely confusing picture. In the final part of the paper, I highlight some of the implications of the general usage of such a vague and contradictory concept for the quality of democratic debate, the legitimacy of the political system, and the possible solution of the armed conflict in Colombia.

Resumo

Resumo

Durante la década pasada, la palabra “Establecimiento” parece haber ganado terreno en el debate público colombiano. Basado en una variedad de fuentes - incluyendo columnas de opinión e informes de prensa, entrevistas publicadas con destacadas figuras, memorias y otros documentos políticos y académicos, este artículo muestra cómo se ha generalizado el uso del término, examina las distintas formas en que se lo define, y cuestiona su validez conceptual. Los usos confusos y hasta contradictorios de la expresión, como lo demuestra ampliamente el artículo, simplifican y hasta distorsionan la naturaleza del poder en Colombia. Aunque mi atención está centrada en los usos equívocos de la palabra “Establecimiento”, también discuto su impacto en las percepciones colombianas sobre la democracia, y sus implicaciones para la legitimidad del sistema político, la búsqueda de la paz, y la calidad del análisis político y el debate democrático.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 111 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

This paper was written thanks to a Visiting Fellowship at the Helen Kellogg Institute of the University of Notre Dame in September 2004.1 am grateful to the Institute's director, Scott Mainwaring, for the invitation and to the faculty fellows and members of staff for their support. A preliminary version of this paper was presented in a seminar at the Institute, where I received useful comments, and later appeared in the Kellogg Institute's working paper series (320, October 2005). J. Samuel Valenzuela and Malcolm Deas were extremely generous in revising the manuscript and in making valuable observations, although of course the responsibility for the paper is solely mine. Some of the ideas for this essay were originally developed in articles I wrote for El Tiempo and the Fundación Ideas para la Paz (FIP). Thanks to the support of the FIP I was able to conduct the initial research for this paper. I am grateful to Mauricio Rubio, Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, Arturo Sarabia, and Michael Shifter for their useful comments and suggestions. I also wish to thank the editor of the Latin American Research Review and the three anonymous reviewers, whose comments were helpful in giving this paper its final shape.

References

1. Interview with Rafael Reyes, El Tiempo, April 2, 2000.

2. More often than not the term is expressed in Spanish—Establecimiento, sometimes in quotation marks. Occasionally it is expressed in English. For purposes of standardization in this paper, I will be referring to the Establishment.

3. The Establishment is not in the same category of the“political keywords” studied by Hart et al., but this is a suggestive work on the subject of political language, though I follow a different approach from theirs. See Roderick P. Hart, Sharon E. Jarris, William P. Jennings, and Deborah Smith-Howell, Political Keywords: Using Language that Uses Us (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 246.

4. See Eduardo Posada Carbó, “La crisis política como crisis intelectual,” in Consuelo Ahumada, Antonio Caballero, Carlos Castillo, Ernesto Guhl, Alfredo Molano, and Eduardo Posada Carbó, ¿Qué está pasando en Colombia? Anatomía de un país en crisis (Bogotá, El Ancora Editores, 2000); ¿Guerra civil? El lenguaje del conflicto en Colombia (Bogotá: Alfaomega, 2001); and “Ilegitimidad” del estado en Colombia. Sobre los abusos de un concepto (Bogotá: Alfaomega, 2003).

5. Some of the most important classical studies on elites do not refer to the Establishment, as they were published before the term became fashionable. See, for example, C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, first published in 1956). For a good summary of the various approaches towards elites, see Geraint Parry, Political Elites (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1969), who does include a brief section to discuss the term “Establishment.” See also Tom Bottomore, Elites and Society (New York: Routledge, 1993, first published in 1964), and Peter Bachrach, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: A Critique (Lanham, New York: University Press of America, 1980), chapter 5.

6. I borrow the expression from Richard A. Posner, Public Intellectuals. A Study of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). My use of the term “intellectual” is more inclusive than Posner's, who is mostly concerned with academic intellectuals. I have in mind opinion makers, or a variety of people who regularly write op-eds for the press, including academics. Though the range of sources used here is wide, a significant portion are from leading national newspapers. I have mostly consulted their online editions, though occasionally my material comes from their print editions. For reference purposes, I have given the name of the newspaper as it appears in the print edition, except when the article has only been published online. When citing op-eds I will give the name of the columnist, followed by the newspaper title and date.

7. Mauricio Rubio, Crimen e impunidad. Precisiones sobre la violencia (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores and Universidad de los Andes, 1999); Fernando Estrada, Las metáforas de una guerra perpetua. Estudios sobre pragmática del discurso en el conflicto armado colombiano (Medellín: Universidad Eafit, 2004); and Malcolm Deas, “La paz: Entre los principios y la práctica,” in Francisco Leal, ed., Los laberintos de la guerra. Utopías e incertidumbres sobre la paz (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo and Universidad de los Andes, 1999), 171–192.

8. Murray Edelman, The Politics of Misinformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 80. See also Michael Oakeshott, The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 9–13, and 132–33.

9. Giovanni Sartori, “Guidelines for Concept Analysis,” in Sartori, ed., Social Science Concepts. A Systematic Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984), 26.

10. Alan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, eds., The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (London: Fontana Press, 2000), 283–84.

11. See chapters by Hugh Tomas, Heny Fairlie, and Christopher Hollis, in Thomas, ed., The Establishment. A Symposium (London: A Blond, 1959); Richard Rovere, “Notes on the Establishment in America,” The American Scholar, vol. 30 (1961), reprinted in Richard Rovere, The American Establishment and Other Reports, Opinions and Speculations (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1963); Samuel Huntington, “Power, Expertise and the Military Profession,” Daedalus (Autumn, 1963), 785–807; Leonard Silk and Mark Silk, The American Establishment (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 6–7; Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 115.

12. Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 164.

13. Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment. From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); Silk and Silk, The American Establishment, 18–20. Anthony Sampson, however, has also suggested that the old “Establishment” in England was formed by “liberal-minded people” in Sampson, Who Runs this Place? The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st Century (London: John Murray, 2005), 98, 354, and 357.

14. Parry, Political Elites, 86.

15. Jean Blondel, Voters, Parties and Leaders: The Social Fabric of British Politics (Middlesex: Penguin, 1965), 234. For the notion of the power elite, see Mills, The Power Elite. For a valuable collection of essays critically examining Mill's work, see G. William Domhoff and Hoyt B. Ballard, eds., C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969). For the distinction between power elite and ruling class, see in particular the chapters by Paul M. Sweesy and Daniel Bell.

16. Blondel, Voters, Parties and Leaders, 235, 237, 243–45, and 249. In a classical Argentine study, José Luis de Imaz similarly argued that, because of the lack of cohesiveness of those with power in Argentina, it was not appropriate to refer to them as an “elite”: in Imaz, Los que mandan, fifth edition (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1996), 236.

17. Sampson, Who Runs this Place?, 98, 357, and Brinkley, Liberalism and its Discontents.

18. Alfonso López Michelsen, Los elegidos (México: Editorial Guaranía, 1953), 99, 167, 219.

19. Rafael Núñez, Colombia's most prominent statesman during the second half of the nineteenth century, used the term oligarchy, referring not to any economic elite but to those who controlled party politics. According to López Michelsen, that was also the meaning given to the term by Gaitán. See Eduardo Posada Carbó, “Elections and Civil Wars: The Presidential Campaign of 1875,” Journal of Latin American Studies (Oct. 1994): 621–49 and Alfonso López Michelsen, Esbozos y atisbos (Bogotá: Plaza and Janés, 1984). “Oligarchy refers, above all, to the political class,” notes Daniel Pécaut, in his Guerra contra la sociedad (Bogotá: Planeta, 2001), 64–65. On Gaitán and the word oligarchy, see also Herbert Braun, Mataron a Gaitán. Vida pública y violencia urbana en Colombia (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, 1987), 72–3.

20. Alberto Lleras Camargo used the term in his articles for Vision, September 9, 1972, and July 15, 1977, both reprinted in Alberto Lleras Camargo, Obras selectas. El intelectual (Bogotá: Biblioteca de la Presidencia de la República, 1987), vol V, 158–60, and 365. See also Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, “¿Por qué sobrevive la democracia colombiana?” Estrategia Económica y Financiera (April 1979) 42, and in his prologue to Mario Latorre, Política y elecciones (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 1980); Estanislao Zuleta, “La violencia política en Colombia,” Violencia, democracia y derechos humanos (Medellín: Hombre Nuevo Editores, 2003), 128, 180, 186, 188; William Ramírez, “Violencia y democracia en Colombia,” Análisis Político (January-April, 1988); and chapters by Jaime Castro and Rocío Vélez, in ¿Paz? ¡Paz! Testimonios y reflexiones sobre un proceso, ed. Alvaro Leyva (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1987), 60, 72, and 88. For an early U.S. academic book that used the term for other Latin American countries, see Daniel Goldrich, Sons of the Establishment: Elite Youth in Panama and Costa Rica (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1966).

21. Crónica de dos décadas de política colombiana, 1968–1988 (Bogotá: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1988), 27; and his most recent book, Guerra contra la sociedad (Bogotá: Planeta, 2001), 30–33.

22. See Francisco Gutiérrez Sanín, ed., Degradación o cambio. Evolución del sistema político colombiano (Bogotá: Norma, 2001).

23. “¿Se ha abierto el sistema político colombiano? Una evaluación de los procesos de cambio (1970–1998),” América Latina Hoy, 27 (2001), 211; Miguel García, “La política bogotana, un espacio en composición, 1982–2001,” in Degradación o cambio, 217. In the 1960s, James Payne noted the “remarkably high” turnover in the Colombian Congress, much higher than in the United States. Turnover in Congress continues to be high, but I do not know of any study that looks in detail at this phenomenon. See Payne, Patterns of Conflict in Colombia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 239; see also the chapter by Elizabeth Ungar and Germán Ruiz in Elecciones y democracia en Colombia, 1997–1998, ed. Ana María Bejarano and Andrés Dávila (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 1998), 200.

26. Juan Lozano, El Tiempo, March 4, 2002 (first quote); Antonio Caballero, Semana, July 12, 1999 and March 17, 2002 (second and third quote), and Eduardo Escobar, El Tiempo, June 12, 2001 (Last quote). See also Juan Carlos Iragorri, Patadas de ahorcado. Caballero se desahoga. Una conversación con Juan Carlos Iragorri (Bogotá: Planeta, 2002), 84; Daniel Samper and Armando Benedetti, El Tiempo, October 29, 2003 and March 19, 2002; Fabio López, “Problemas y retos de los procesos de reinserción: Reflexiones generales apoyadas en el estudio del caso del EPL,” in Ricardo Peñaranda and Javier Guerrero, eds., De las armas a la política (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo and IEPRI, Universidad Nacional, 1999), 154.

27. William Ramírez, “Violencia, guerra civil, contrato social,” in Colombia, cambio de siglo: Balances y perspectives, ed. Juan Carlos Rodríguez Raga (Bogotá: Planeta, 2000), 36. On the rise of Nadaísmo—an intellectual movement that came to light in 1958—in reaction to the “nauseating smell of the Establishment,” see Juan Carlos Vélez, ed., Gonzalo Arango. Pensamiento vivo (Medellín: Fundación Gonzalo Arango, 2000).

28. Rudolf Hommes, El Tiempo, January 9, 1999 (first quote), and Roberto Pombo, Cambio, May 10, 1999 (second quote). See also, Armando Benedetti Jimeno, El Tiempo, March 6, 2000, Antonio Caballero, Semana, July 12, 1999; and interview with Alfonso Gómez Méndez, former attorney general, El Tiempo, August 12, 1998.

24. See his prologue in Mario Latorre, Política y elecciones (Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes, 1980), 33. Alberto Lleras Camargo talked about a threatened Establishment in 1981: Obras selectas, vol. V, 266–67.

25. Sergio Otálora and Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, January 28, 2000, and March 3, 2002; Roberto Pombo, Cambio, May 10, 1999; Otty Patiño, Rudolf Hommes, and Oscar Collazos, El Tiempo, May 30 and October 14, 1999, and April 29, 2000.

34. Semana, June 4, 1996. In earlier documents, leaders of the FARC seemed to have a preference for other terms, such as the oligarchy or the system. See Jacobo Arenas, Cese al fuego. Una historia política de las FARC (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1985), 12, 100, 114, 135; and the interview with Manuel Marulanda in Carlos Arango, FARC: Veinte años de marquetalia a la Uribe (Bogotá: Ediciones Aurora, 1984), 85–134. Oligarchy was also the word preferred by other guerrilla groups, such as the M-19. See Jaime Bateman Cayón, Oiga hermano (Bogotá: Ediciones Macondo, 1984), 33, 35, 40, 45, 85, 110, 115. Former members of the M-19, seem also to prefer now the word Establishment. See Antonio Navarro Wolf's chapter in Haciendo paz: Reflexiones y perspectivas del proceso de paz en Colombia, ed. Fernando Cepeda (Bogotá: El Ancora Editores, 2001), 74, and other works by Otty Patiño, and Vera Grabe.

35. El Tiempo, February 29, 1998.

36. FARC: El país que proponemos construir (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 2001), 40, 51, 55. See also Federico Sarmiento, “La post-crisis del proceso de paz: El papel de la sociedad civil y la comunidad internacional,” January 2002 (mimeo); and Anncol's news report, February 21, 2002; “No creemos en las encuestas: Raúl Reyes,” El Espectador, February 17, 2002.

37. El Tiempo, October 27, 1999 (first quote); and El País (Madrid), March 2, 2000 (second quote).

38. See Mauricio Vargas, Tristes tigres: Revelador perfil de tres mandatarios que no pudieron cambiar a Colombia (Bogota: Planeta, 2001), 141; and León Valencia, Adiós a la política, bienvenida la guerra: Secretos de un malogrado proceso de paz (Bogotá: Intermedio Editores, 2002), 84, 90.

39. ElTtiempo.com, January 8, 2002.

40. El Heraldo, August 10, 2002.

41. Pastrana himself used the term in his memoirs, La palabra bajo fuego (Bogotá: Planeta, 2005), 29, 47, 328, 332. It was also used by the memoirs of the process by one of the government's negotiators, Luis Guillermo Giraldo, Del proceso y de la paz (Manizales: Edigráficas, 2001), 16.

42. Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, June 13, 1999; Hernando Gómez, Semana, November 30, 2000; Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, “Acerca de la dimensión internacional de la guerra y de la paz en Colombia: Conjeturas sobre un futuro incierto,” in Leal, Los laberintos de la guerra, 259; Cecilia Orozco's interview with Enrique Santos Calderón, in Cecilia Orozco ¿Y ahora qué? El futuro de la guerra y la paz en Colombia (Bogotá, 2002), 86.

43. Antonio Caballero, Semana, October 22, 2001; and D'Artagnan [Roberto Posada García Peña], El Tiempo, July 25, 2001.

44. Daniel Samper, El Tiempo, January 16, 2002, and Gabriel Silva, El Tiempo, January 15, 2002. See also Javier Fernández, “Después de la prórroga,” Prospectiva económica y financiera, January 21, 2002.

45. The quote criticizing Pastrana comes from “Castillo de naipes,” Semana, January 13, 2002. For the opinion of a former minister, see Armando Benedetti, El Tiempo, January 28, 2002. The letter of the intellectuals was published in El Tiempo.com, January 12, 2002.

46. See the lead editorials in El Tiempo on February 22, 2002 (first quote); January 4, 2002 (second quote); February 5, 2002 (third and fourth quote). See further lead editorials in El Tiempo on January 5, 8, 11, and 17, 2002, and on February 25, 2002.

47. Rudolf Hommes, El Tiempo, February 22, 2002, and Ramiro Bejarano, El Espectador, February 24, 2002. See also Juan Lozano, El Tiempo, February 25, 2002; Felipe Zuleta, El Espectador, February 24, 2002.

48. Luis Alberto Restrepo, “The Crisis of the Current Political Regime and its Possible Outcomes,” in Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, ed. Charles Bergquist, Ricardo Peñaranda, and Gonzalo Sánchez (Wilmington: SR Books, 1992); leading editorial articles in El Tiempo, April 2 and 29, 2002; Bruce Bagley and Gabrial Silva, “De cómo se ha formado la nación colombiana: Una lectura política,” Estudios Sociales 4 (March 1989), 10, 14, 32, and 33; Gary Hoskin, Rodolfo Masías, and Miguel García, “La decisión de voto en las elecciones presidenciales de 2002,” in Colombia 2002: Elecciones, comportamiento electoral y democracia, edited by Hoskin et al. (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2003), 57.

49. Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, January 16, 2000, and April 22, 2001. A close advisor to President Alvaro Uribe has also referred to “progressive” members of the Establishment: José Obdulio Gaviria, Sofismas del terrorismo en Colombia (Bogotá: Planeta, 2005), 176. See also Roberto Pombo, Cambio, November 15, 1999; María Isabel Rueda, Semana, June 21, 2002; Jesús Antonio Bejarano, “¿Avanza Colombia hacia la paz?” in 1999: Un año de turbulencia. Ensayos económicos de la Contraloría, ed. Carlos Ossa (Bogotá: Contraloría General, 2000), 355; lead editorial in El Espectador, May 27, 1999; Alejandro Reyes, El Tiempo, September 22, 1999.

50. Antonio Caballero's speech at his acceptance of the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simón Bolívar, published in Semana.com, n.d. (article in possession of author).

51. Otty Patiño, El Tiempo, May 31, 2002. See also Oscar Collazos, El poder para quién. Serpa, Sanín, Uribe, Garzón y Betancourt responden (Bogotá: Aguilar, 2001), 16; Ingrid Betancourt, La rabia en el corazón (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 2001), 302, and Eduardo Sáenz Rovner's review of Betancourt's book in Análisis Político 43 (May-August 2001), 127.

52. Hernando Gómez, Semana, April 29, 2001.

53. Jaime Castro, La cuestión territorial (Bogotá: Editorial Oveja Negra, 2002), 177; Vera Grabe, Razones de vida (Bogotá: Planeta, 2000), 226. For a wider definition, see “Darse o no la pela es la cuestión,” El Tiempo, February 5, 2002.

54. Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, December 12, 1999. See also Ramiro Bejarano, El Espectador, June 11, 1999 and Alejandro Santos, Semana, July 12, 1999. Similar comments are made about President Betancur's government and his inability to unify the Establishment around his peace proposals. See Alfredo Rangel, Guerra insurgente: Conflictos en Malasia, Perú, Filipinas, El Salvador y Colombia (Bogotá: Intermedio Editores, 2001), 363; Cecilia Orozco's interview with Nicanor Restrepo, Orozco, ¿Y ahora qué?, 116; Hernando Gómez, El lío de Colombia. ¿Por qué no logramos salir de la crisis ? (Bogotá: TM Editories, 2000), 89; Vera Grabe, Razones de vida, 226; Antonio Navarro Wolf and Juan Carlos Iragorri, Mi guerra es la paz: Navarro se confiesa con Juan Carlos Iragorri (Bogotá: Planeta, 2004), 66; Edgar Téllez, Oscar Montes, and Jorge Lesmes, Diario íntimo de un fracaso: Historia no contada del proceso de paz con las FARC (Bogotá: Planeta, 2002), 233.

55. Armando Benedetti, El Tiempo, June 12, 2000; Luis Cañón and Sergio Otálora, El Espectador, December 12 and November 19, 1999.

56. Semana, November 2, 2003; Collazos, “Más sobre terceras vías,” op. cit.

57. El Espectador, November 1, 2000; El Tiempo, May 27, 2002; Semana, November 2, 2003; León Valencia, El Tiempo, March 31, 2000.

58. El Tiempo, June 1, 2002. See also his “Discurso de Horacio Serpa en la Convención Bancaria,” Cartagena, June 2001, unpublished mimeo; 2002. The quote regarding Serpa as member of the Establishment comes from Ingrid Betancourt interviewed in Collazos, El poder para quién, 55. See also Carlos Murcia, El Heraldo, June 2, and Semana, January 26, 1998.

59. Mauricio Vargas, Cambio, June 10, 2002.

60. “Julio Mario Santodomingo, por él mismo,” El Tiempo: Lecturas Dominicales, September 7, 2003.

61. On these other various definitions, see Javier Guerrero, “La sobrepolitización del narcotráfico en Colombia en los años ochenta y sus interferencias en los procesos de paz,” in De las armas a la política, 225; and Restrepo, “The Crisis of the Current Political Regime,” 289; Alfonso López Michelsen, Palabras pendientes: Conversaciones con Enrique Santos Calderón (Bogotá: Planeta, 2001); Ana María Bejarano and Eduardo Pizarro, “From ‘Restricted’ to ‘Besieged’: The Changing Nature of the Limits to Democracy in Colombia,” mimeo, n.d., 22; and Ramírez, “Violencia, guerra civil, contrato social,” 62.

62. Consider the various descriptions of Noemí Sanín, current Ambassador in Spain, in Luis Eduardo Garzón interviewed by Cambio, April 10, 2000; Ingrid Betancourt interviewed in Collazos, El poder para quién, 55; and “Sí, creo que voy a ser presidente,” interview in El Tiempo, 30 May 1999. For other similar contradictory descriptions of leading politicians and entrepreneurs: Grabe, Razones de vida, 330; letter from Alvaro Gómez to the secretary of the Movimiento de Salvación Nacional, in Lecturas Dominicales, El Tiempo, September 29, 1996; Valencia, Adiós a la política, 29; Téllez et al., Diario íntimo, 250; Ricardo Correa Robledo, “Empresarios, conflicto armado y procesos de paz en Colombia,” in Luis Alberto Restrepo, ed., Síntesis 2002–2003. Colombia (Bogotá, 2004), 36; and “Empresarios, la paz es el mejor negocio,” El Heraldo, November 1, 1999.

63. Santiago Montenegro, Sociedad abierta, geografía y desarrollo (Bogota: Norma, 2006), particularly chapters 5–6.

64. Crónica de dos décadas, 15.

65. “Cincuenta años de Cambio en Colombia,” in De Sol a Sol, 50 años de trabajo en Colombia, ed. Aída Martínez Carreño, Jorge Orlando Melo, and Ricardo Santamaría (Bogotá: Royal and Sunalliance Seguros, 2004).

66. Interview with the entrepreneur Nicanor Restrepo by Patricia Lara, “La guerra se agota,” Lecturas Dominicales, El Tiempo, October 31, 1999; Francisco Manrique, El Espectador, September 1, 2001; Héctor Rincón, Cambio, February 24, 2002; Jotamario Arbeláez, El Tiempo, October 29, 2003; interview with Senator Carlos Gaviria, “Debemos ensayar la democracia,” Cambio, March 17, 2002; Juan Carlos Rodríguez Raga, El Espectador, August 9, 1999.

67. Rafael Pardo, El Espectador, May 12, 1999; “Exposición de motivos al proyecto de ley de acuerdo humanitario,” in Hechos de paz (Bogotá: Imprenta Nacional, 1999), vol. X, 44–45.

68. See Christopher Flood, Political Myth (New York: Routledge, 2002).

69. Rodney Barker, Legitimating Identities. The Self-representation of Rulers and Subjects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 68.

70. The Rhetoric of Reaction. Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 78–79, and 168.

71. Some of the references to the term cited in this paper come from academic texts, as can bee seen in previous footnotes. And some of the columnists cited are also academics. For additional occasional uses of the word by academics, see also Gonzalo Sánchez, Guerras, memoria e historia (Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia, 2003), and the chapter by M. Rubio in Jaime Arocha et al. Mauricio Rubio, “Rebeldes y criminales,” in Jaime Arocha, Fernando Cubides, and Myriam Jimeno, eds., Las violencias: Inclusión creciente (Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, 1998), 124, and by academics in newspaper articles, Pedro Medellín, El Tiempo, June 6, 2006, and Javier Sanín, Credencial, June 6, 2006.

72. “Guidelines for Concept Analysis,” 15.

73. Pécaut, Guerra contra la sociedad, 135–39; see also Estrada, Las metáforas de una guerra, 76.

74. War of Words. Language, Politics and 9/11 (New York: Routledge, 2002), 2–15.

75. Rubio, Crimen e impunidad, 225–26.

76. Deas, “La paz,” and Melo, ¿Los procesos de negociación: una estrategia contra la paz? (unpublished manuscript, Medellín, 2001).

77. See interview with Uribe in “Desayunos de Votebien.com,” eltiempo.com, n.d., José Obdulio Gaviria, a close advisor of President Uribe, uses the expression several times in his recent book, Sofismas del terrorismo, 153, 176, and 219. The term is also used by the government's Alto Comisionado Para la Paz, Luis Alberto Restrepo, in his book Más allá del terror (Bogotá: Aguilar, 2002), 94.

78. See Ana Carrigan, The New York Times, March 10, 2002, and her book The Palace of Justice. A Colombian Tragedy (New York: Four Walls and Eight Windows, 1993), 17, 52, 188 and 261; “A symbol—but of what?” The Economist, March 20, 2004; Miguel Angel Bastenier (from the Spanish daily El País), in Cambio, January 27, 2002. For the use of the expression by the Italian diplomat Francesco Vincenti, see La Revista, El Espectador, June 3, 2001; by a German historian, see Tomas Fischer, “La constante guerra civil en Colombia,” in Sociedades en guerra civil: Conflictos violentos de Europa y América Latina, ed. Waldmann and F. Reinares (Barcelona: Paidós, 1995), 274; by a U.S. researcher, Forrest Hylton, “An Evil Hour: Uribe's Colombia in Historical Perspective,” New Left Review 23 (Sept./Dec. 2003), 85; by British academics Alan Angell, Pamela Lowden, and Rosemary Thorp, Decentralizing Development. The Political Economy of Institutional Change in Colombia and Chile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 22.

79. Roberto Pombo, Cambio, n.d. (from author's notes on article; publication date unavailable but estimated to be between January 1999 and January 2002).

80. J. Goldfarb, Civility and Subversion. The Intellectual in Democratic Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3.

81. See, for example, Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (London: Columbia University Press, 1999), chap. 5; and Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (London: Frank Cass, 2002), chap. 9.

82. Deas, “Una isla rodeada de consejos.”