Constructions of the Violent State: The case of Extrajudicial Executions of civilians by state military forces in Antioquia, Colombia

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to expose the relationships between State and Violence in the cases of extrajudicial executions that occurred massively during Álvaro Uribe’s Presidential tenure, showing how Democratic Security policy represents the framework of such legitimization. In this sense, it puts at stake the classical definitions of the State concerning the monopoly of the use of force by posing the following question at the center of the debate: Is it only the legal use of force that the State controls? It will be based on a case study of extrajudicial executions which occurred in the Eastern Antioquia region of Colombia and then it will analyze the discourses of various state agents about the cases, to show the patterns of creation of a combat scenario for the illegal killings and to analyse the official responses as denial discourses regarding the cases nationwide. Data have been collected from newspapers, magazines, reports from State agencies, NGOs and from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions. The above patterns of State responses and the cases themselves show how legality is constructed and legitimized in violent ways in regarding extrajudicial executions cases in Colombia: by silencing the context, dealing with bodies and how they are recovered and counted, denying the facts, and denying the victims.