National Consolidation Zones

The document that has defined ‘zonas de consolidación’ and that declares the state of exception can be considered as a previous experiment of the official proposal of The democratic security policy. It can help in visualising some aspects of this issue regarding to how the spatial restriction to population works in the formulation of this policy:

The process of territorial unity (consolidation) started with two zones of consolidation and rehabilitation in the municipalities of Arauca and Bolivar.

Nevertheless, a sentence from the Constitutional Court did not accept the project of State of Interior Commotion; the plans for recovering the two zones will continue (Ministerio de Defensa Nacional, 2003, p. 44)

The project of Zonas de Consolidación was one of the first governmental proposals that shows how the production of other spaces was not only a consequence of the armed conflict, but also of a political design to intervene in territories (Decreto 2002 de 2002, 2002). The article 11, 12 and 13 of the zone’s of consolidation and rehabilitation law proposal worked respectively with the definition, delimitation and control of the rural territories. In the definition of Article 1, zones of rehabilitation and consolidation are geographical areas affected by the action of criminal groups.

The aim of guaranteeing institutional stability, re-establishing constitutional order, the integrity of the national territory and protecting civilian populations makes

necessary the application of exceptional measures in these zones. These zones, according to Article 2, will be delimited by the president of the republic to maintain and restore public order all over the national territory. Finally, Article 3 points out that one military commander-in-chief will be assigned to the zone by the president and all the elements of the public force in this zone will be under the operational control of this commander.

A very polemic paragraph shows how with the argument of protecting fundamental human rights, the presence of private armed forces is going to be justified.

Given the extent of the country and, in some places, the lack of official goods or services to enable the protection of fundamental rights, the guarantee of the right to life and health of the people, it is necessary to provide, secondarily, technicians and professionals for particular services as well as the use of property belonging to them. (Decreto 2002 de 2002, 2002)

The first presidential project of national consolidation zones was finally rejected by the Constitutional Court (Sentencia C-1024/02, 2002). Despite the rejection, the text project proposed by the government shows how the mechanism of democratic security worked with the clear will of producing direct intervention in rural territories. In this sense, the circulation restrictions, displacement, and the expropriation of land are revealed not only as a consequence of the illegal armed actors, but also as a consequence of a spatial regime of state control that ultimately affected rural zones and their civilian population.

As a balance of this territorial consolidation Vásquez has affirmed that it has created different spaces:

The result is that the recovery of the territory has had heterogeneous effects in diverse regions of the country: what is celebration and security for the integrated regions and their respective elites is fear and insecurity for the peasants and colonisers of the regions of historical guerrilla presence.

(Vásquez, 2010, p. 9)

Map 9 corresponds to the critical analysis of geographies of war (Vásquez, 2010, p. 9) and diff erentiates historical battlefields (grey) and ne w battlefields (blue). Map 10, from Presidencia de la República (CCAI, 2010, p. 9) showsthe zones targeted for the c onsolidation plan (stronger governmental ter ritorial control).

9 Geography of war. Vásquez, 2010, p. 9

10 Map Consolidation Zones. Acción Social.

Three of the blue z ones in the lef t map, a t the eastern of the country that ar e strategic new fronts of paramilitary groups and guerrillas are not contemplated in the national consolidation map (on the rig ht). Even thoug h the y are r egion in

which the civilian population has suffered from massacres and forced displacements.

The maps allow understand the relationships between policy design and territory, but is in the testimonies of documentary films in which these relationships became a lived space, in the sense that they activate a zone of connection between citizens (rural and urban) as part of the entire society. As the claim for the conception of

“another history of violence” sustains, (Oslender, 2008), the combination between macro-stories and figures of the armed conflict and micro-stories in the form of testimonies, gave particular density to the problems that are occurring in concrete spaces. It eventually allows the urban spectator to ‘put oneself in another’s place’.

This re-location is only possible through the documentary filmmaker’s gaze. In this sense the armed conflict cannot be neglected, because it would be even more present in the midst of the official invisibilities.

In conclusion, the elements of spatial control during the democratic security policy in Colombia have not been sufficiently studied, and this work maintains that the film documentary representation of the conflict’s consequences in these zones can be a useful tool to comprehend particularities of the internal war dynamic during this period. Generally, as we will see in the next chapter, these representations of rural spaces as zones of calmness, as idyllic territories, tend to disappear and, due to armed conflict, they are being abandoned, becoming ghost towns, mysterious and isolated places. It is a topic that seems to be related only to representation of heterotopias of the armed conflict, but what seems to be true is that this representation influences the communication about the armed conflict and these ideas are connected with the fabrication of ‘geographies of terror’ (Oslender, 2008). Heterotopias of the armed conflict, as this work hope to show, work inside a net of technologies of war.

CHAPTER 3

I believe that real human happiness will be possible only after future man will be able to foster in himself the capability to switch to the life experience of another person, when the dominant in the face of the other is fostered in each of us" A.A. Ukhtomsky