Narratives from the margins of the state: resisting the politics of exceptionality in the Comuna 13
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl/0000-0000-0000-0972Keywords:
Emergency criminal Law, State of Exception, Enforced Disappearances, Transitional JusticeAbstract
This article questions the implementation of the “state of exception” in marginal urban areas of Colombia. In so doing, it takes as a case study the military operations carried out in 2002, in Comuna 13, an urban district of Medellín. More than a decade after these military operations, communities whose lives were significantly affected by the operations have denounced the commission of an important number of human rights violations in the Comuna. These human rights violations, which include inter-urban displacements and Enforced Disappearances (ED) occurred after the so-called securitisation of the neighbourhood and challenge the notion of security that underpins “state of exception” policies. The overall aim of the article is to highlight the importance of the narratives of resistance that contest the implementation of state of exception policies. These narratives urge us to think beyond the “friend or foe” logic that has justified military interventions of past decades in urban areas of the Global South.
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