Between the Roll of Paper and the Role of Paper: Governmental Documentation as a Mechanism for Complying Incompliantly

Abstract

In 2009, through Court Order 004, the Colombian Constitutional Court declared that thirty‐four separate groups of Indigenous peoples were at risk of extermination due to armed conflict, and it ordered the government to protect them. In 2013, the court then ordered the government to prove its compliance with Order 004. The government did so through a complex documentation process. The production of documents in Colombia not only records compliance but also constitutes compliance even if the actions are limited. In this article, I examine the role of documentation in mediating legal protection in a violent context. How does a governmental report obscure a persisting threat that is mostly ignored? Using participant observation at the Colombian Interior Ministry on the government's response, I illustrate how this documentation converts ordinary governmental actions into restitution of rights and manufactures compliance via the display—and concealment—of numbers through a focus on aesthetics. This generates the effect of sufficient state response while obfuscating the failure to achieve any intended changes: a phenomenon that I term complying incompliantly. Transforming negligence into a proper response through a paper trail outsmarts auditing and maintains the state's legitimacy by normalizing the government's shortcomings. This article contributes to the analysis of the relationship among law, documentation, and transparency. [Colombia, Indigenous peoples, human rights, documentation, compliance]

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