Para-State
Subtitle: An Ethnography of Colombia's Death Squads
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 264
ISBN-13: 9780520288522
Subjects: Militia movements; Colombia, politics and government
Description: "Since its independence in the nineteenth century, the South American state of Colombia has been shaped by decades of bloody political violence. In this book, Aldo Civico draws on interviews with paramilitary death squads and drug lords to provide a cultural interpretation of the country's history of violence and state control. Between 2003 and 2008, Civico gained unprecedented access to some of Colombia's most notorious leaders of the death squads. He also conducted interviews with the victims of paramilitary's violence, drug kingpins, and vocal public supporters of the paramilitary groups. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this riveting work demonstrates how the paramilitaries have in essence become the war machine deployed by the Colombian state to control and maintain its territory and political legitimacy"--Provided by publisher.