Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado: landmines and rebel expertise in Colombian warfare

Abstract

In Colombia, almost all antipersonnel mines are improvised. Crafted with ordinary materials, improvised mines are inexpensive and cannot be easily sensed by metal detectors. Their Spanish technical name is Artefacto Explosivo Improvisado. In this article, I purposefully maintain the name to emphasize the material, technical, and political nuances I observed during my eighteenmonths of fieldwork with landmine survivors, demining experts, and guerrilla soldiers in rural Colombia. Here, artefacto explosivo improvisado is not only an empirical object, a deadly explosive device, it is also a conceptual tool through which I reflect on the "thing" to which it refers (i.e. the improvised landmines), as well as on the historical and material practices that make it possible and that are made possible by it (i.e. the asymmetrical war in Colombia and what I later frame as "rebel expertise"). Through this concept I analyze the fragile, ephemeral, and recalcitrant nature of the improvised landmines, highlighting the material, economic, and temporal peculiarities of war contamination in Colombia. I also use the words artefacto explosivo improvisado to consider the guerrillas' material culture and the bodily practices and technical knowledge of explosivistasthose who design, assemble, and install improvised landmines. Highlighting their ingenuity and creativity, I frame their know-how as "rebel expertise." That is, an embodied, local, and irregular knowledge that confronts the technocratic, standardized, and external expertise of humanitarian demining. Throughout the article, I confront the inseparability of improvised landmines and the technical and military actions that brought them into existence.Artefato Explosivo Improvisado: minas antipessoal e perícia rebelde na guerra colombiana RESUMO Na Colômbia, quase todas as minas antipessoal são improvisadas. Feitas de materiais comuns, as minas improvisadas são de produção económica e os detetores de metais não conseguem percebê-las facilmente. Na língua espanhola, as minas são conhecidas pelo nome técnico de "Artefato Explosivo Improvisado" (ou AEI). Neste escrito mantenho o nome em

Explosiveness: Territories of war and technoscientific practices in Colombia

“…Dormant, this threat is lived as a pervasive atmosphere of imminent danger (Masco, 2014), a constant possibility of pain and harm for bodies and landscapes. The economy of fear and uncertainty that explosives literally seed in the ground and is also experienced bodily turns into a principle that governs both military and ordinary action, demanding social alertness to the potentiality of explosiveness (Henig, 2019; Kim, 2016; Pardo Pedraza, 2020a; 2020b). Hence, explosiveness has the capacity to recompose rural life and to envelop this and other forms of life in its aftermath.…”

“Nature” and territories as victims: Decolonizing Colombia's transitional justice process

“…JEP bureaucrats examine human rights reports, news releases, published data sets, and information provided by state entities, NGOs, academics, and, largely, the testimonies of human victim organizations. Following this method, the criminal patterns of socio‐environmental destruction and territorial harm that might be investigated in the context of Colombia's armed conflict include: (1) illicit use and impacts caused by land mines and explosive remnants of war (Pardo Pedraza 2020); (2) impacts of illegal and criminal mining (Leal Esper 2019); (3) effects of aerial fumigation with glyphosate during the US‐Colombia war on drugs (Lyons 2018); and (4) attacks made against oil infrastructure, contamination caused by spills, and illegal syphoning (Burbano Montenegro, Burbano Padilla, and Mosquera Correa 2019).…”

Ethical disconcertment and the politics of troublemaking

“…Locals also admit, however, that this information was not always accurate. Armed groups often offer partial and sometimes misleading information, being aware of the immense military power of uncertainty and rumors in war (Pardo Pedraza, 2020a, p. 478).…”