Suffering and political agency: an inquiry into the condition of victimhood in Bojayá, Colombia

Abstract

Victims Colombian armed conflict Social trauma Social suffering Victims have acquired an unprecedented social and political legitimacy in the contemporary world. In light of this phenomenon and the debates it has generated in the social and human sciences, in this article we analyze how victimhood is constructed in Bojayá, a municipality on the Colombian Pacific coast, where more than eighty people were massacred in 2002 during a combat between the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo) and the AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia). Supported by interviews and field data, we argue that the social trauma of the massacre and suffering are the cause of political agency of the victims and the means for becoming political subjects. Based on conceptual categories coming from Lacanian psychoanalysis, we conclude that the nomination of victim in Bojayá is fundamental for its inhabitants-previously invisible-so that they can be recognized by the Other of the nation and the international scene.

Imaginar el futuro en medio del conflicto en el Magdalena Medio, Colombia

“…En las dos últimas décadas los ejercicios institucionales y sociales sobre la memoria y las memorias de la violencia y el conflicto en Colombia se hicieron comunes, aunque los trabajos en torno al tema se remontan hasta los años setenta en las luchas del movimiento de los derechos humanos (Tamayo, 2019;Sánchez, 2020). Como parte de este protagonismo, el sintagma memoria histórica ganó en legitimidad normativa en Colombia en medio de un conjunto de políticas de evidencia (Ruiz et ál., 2020), enfocadas en el esclarecimiento de las violencias y las afectaciones comunitarias (Riaño y Uribe, 2016;Schuster, 2017;Castro y Erazo, 2019).…”