The Law, Forced Internal Displacement
and the Construction of the State
John Larry Rojas Castillo*
This article focuses on the phenomenon of forced displacement and its relation-ship to the law and the problem of the social and political recognition of Black communities in Colombia. There is a brief discussion of the events that generate forced displacement of the communities of Riosucio (Chocó) and a demonstration of how this process seems to involve a struggle between different normative forms defended by the armed groups who are fighting for territorial domination. Forced displacement reveals a strategy of w ar mediated by norms and, ultimately, reveals the crisis of citizenship in the Colombian state. In this context of uprootedness, in which the displaced become “pariahs in their o wn land,” these people for med a settlement in Paravandó (Antioquia), out of which they organized the Saint Francis of Assisi Peace Communities . Through r ules and legal for ms based on their cus-toms and traditions, these communities struggle to reconstruct their lives and to be socially and politically recognized by the state. Hence, from the perspective of the armed groups engaged in a process of strategic colonization, the law can be used to bring about displacement, while from the perspective of the Peace Communi-ties, the law is revealed as an instrument in people’s struggle for their lives and land.
This article is an attempt to approach the problem of forced displacement in Colombia from a Philosophy of Law perspective. It attempts to understand how law is molded in the midst of the phenomenon of displacement, meaning how it is produced, interpreted and applied. Hence, it is an effort to carry out a study that is closely related to the socio-cultural context in which law emerges and is enforced. The philosophical aspect of the text is defined by the search for understanding, as it attempts to penetrate the specific case of displacement to bring to light and expose the deeper meaning of the struggle among the different types of law which are interwoven within it. This effort moves beyond description, as it seeks to reveal the sociopolitical meaning of the negation of rights implied by displacement as a manifestation of the crisis of citizenship in the Colombian state— thereby showing how the law intervenes in the dynamics of war.
To this end, I first present a simple reconstruction of the concrete case of displacement which gave rise to the Paravandó settlement. Secondly, I demonstrate how different normative systems— including communal, institutional, and those defended by the armed actors—are juxtaposed in com-munity life, thus revealing that displacement is one of the strategies of political and military en-gagement. Furthermore, I will expose how valid normative “productions” occur in the Peace Communities and how processes of negotiation and recognition of the communities are shaped [in conjunction] with the state and the armed actors. This establishes a theoretical reflection which allows for a general perspective of the complex cartography of the dispute over the concepts of law and the role of law with regard to displacement.
Finally, forced displacement is here recognized as a negotiation of the rights of citizens in which victims possess only their naked humanity, without the mask of citizenship which continually elevates them [to a higher status] (Agamben 2000: 81-93). Hence, displacement toys with the politi-cal life of humanity, as the main right violated in displacement is the right to be actively linked to other human beings in a communal relationship. Thus, respect for and protection of human rights cannot be secured merely by nominal membership to a nationality, but only when citizens and social groups are effectively recognized by the state. From a philosophical point of view, we might dis-cover that it is only in the construction of a pluralist state that the different social and ethnic actors find effective recognition and are guaranteed concrete respect for their rights as citizens. Through-out this study I demonstrate how the Peace Communities utilize their “legal systems” and “internal regulations” to struggle to regain their lands and respect for their autonomy and, in this manner, for political recognition of their cultural and communal life. The Peace Communities are not anony-mous conglomerates; they are organized groups of people—particularly Blacks— who differ from the predominant culture and who, while sharing a common experience of tragedy, fight for recogni-tion. We can thereby conclude that the law is a key element both in the struggle that generates displacement, and in the processes of peaceful communal organization that confront it.
THE CASE OF THE PEACE COMMUNITIES BORN OUT
OF THE PAVARANDÓ SETTLEMENT, 1997-1998
In the reconstruction of this case we attempt to refer to the events which generated the forced displacement from the Riosucio zone between the second semester of 1996 and the first months of 1997, which precipitated the settlement of Paravandó and, subsequently, the Peace Communities. We will present a simple reconstruction of events, enriched with the narration of the protagonists of the process, which provides us with an initial general context which will allow us to comprehend the dynamics of the problem.
Initial General Context: Riosucio
Riosucio has special significance for the Urabá region of the Chocó and in the Atrato river basin given its biodiversity and the richness of its natural resources, as well as its commercial, geo-strate-gic and military importance. It is a zone of incomparable wealth, given the uniqueness of its biodiversity and its water reserves and natural resources, which remain largely unexploited (al-though woodcutting and shrimp industries are now being developed). Furthermore, the intermedi-ate and lower zones of the Atrato River are incredibly fertile and perfect for cattle raising or agri-culture.
From the commercial perspective, the Urabá region possesses great importance as a natural bridge between Central and South America and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, leading to impor-tant proposals to develop key mega-projects in the area. Moreover, this zone also has tremendous military significance as a jungle region which allows for ground communication between Central America and the [Colombian] interior, which in turn facilitates the flow of arms, the mobilization of kidnappings, and the shipment of drugs.1 As a consequence, this area has great geo-strategic and military importance on both the national and international levels, which prompts the insurgent and para-state groups to attempt to dominate it.
The Territorial Conflict Between the Guerrillas and P aramilitary in Riosucio, The Process of Displacement and the Formation of the Settlement.
In this general context, the first months of 1996 gave way to an intense armed struggle among the guerrillas, the military, and paramilitary forces2 for control of the rural zones of Riosucio. In this way, during the course of the year the paramilitary groups began to have an ever-increasing pres-ence in the areas surrounding the municipal center of Riosucio which, since the 1960s, had been under the control of the FARC guerrilla and had lived under that group’s “law.” This process of territorial dispute had begun around 1985 when Fidel Castaño’s groups3 took control of Santa María La Antigua; regardless, they had not engaged in significant confrontations with the guerrillas until 1995, when both paramilitary and guerrilla groups sustained intense combat in the area.
Hence, throughout 1996 paramilitary groups committed massacres, murders, extrajudicial executions and disappearances as they sought to ensure military dominance. This assault led to the permanent intimidation of the population and to multiple images of terror, which in turn led to the massive displacement of peasants to the municipal centers of Riosucio, Turbo, Quibdó and Córdoba during the second half of the year. In December of that year the paramilitary achieved full domi-nance over the urban area of Riosucio. Bombings by the Army and the National Police accompanied the arrival of the paramilitary, who—using the slogan, “we are the Self-Defense Forces, we’re come to clean up the town”—took hostages, assassinated members of the JUCO (Communist Youth) and community leaders, and set up a blockade to keep food and gasoline from the residents of the rural areas of the village, arguing that many of those staples would end up in the hands of the FARC and that their strategy was thus to “starve the guerrillas to death.”
The guerrilla responded to this paramilitary takeover with an attack by its 57th
and 34th Fronts on January 9, 1997, in which five residents were killed, seven were wounded, and the population was massively displaced. Moreover, “as they retreated, the subversives passed through the hamlet of Nueva Luz and Los Manguitos, where they decapitated seven peasants after accusing them of collaborating with the paramilitary” (El Tiempo, 5 March 1997, p. 9).
During the last days of January and the first 20 days of February, the pressure on the popula-tion grew steadily worse, given the imposed limitapopula-tion on food and the continual confrontapopula-tions between the guerrillas, the paramilitary, and the Army.
During the early morning hours of February 24, 1997, an intense bombardment was launched on the township of Bocas de Taparal and later throughout the Salaquí river canyon. The bombings, which continued throughout the day, provoked the displacement of residents who had lived in the region for more than 30 years, mostly Black communities made up by women and children without clothes or shoes, who, in the words of the displaced, left their property and possessions behind in “the hot bonfires.” In the process of displacement which followed these confrontations, many people had to go into jungle areas in which they got lost. Some pregnant women had to give birth under these conditions and some children fell ill. In one month, between 2000 and 3000 peasants searched for the highway leading to the ocean, in the upper Turbo—a goal which only a few achieved—, while others were forced by the Army to stop in Paravandó, a township of Mutatá.4
2 In the districts (corregimientos) of Alto Riosucio, Bajirá, Boca de Curvaradó, Cacarica, Chintadó, Domingodó, Jiguamiandó, La Gr ande, La Honda, La Larga, La Raya, La Teresita, La Travesía, Peye, Salaquí, Truandó, Tumaradocito, Turriquitadó, Vigía de Cur varadó and Villanue va. Also around the police stations of Isla, Sautatá and Tamboral.
3 Paramilitary groups with ties to drug trafficking (proofreader’s note).
experi-The authorities of Riosucio maintain that most of the farmers and woodsmen arrived as hos-tages of the guerrilla, and that that was why they tried to separate the women and children from the group (...). For General Rito Alejo del Río, Commander of the 17th Brigade, the trek to Mutatá was an opportunity to sneak up on the FARC in order to capture the route to the sea for the third time (El Tiempo, 1 April 1997).
Accused by the Army of collaborating with the guerrilla, the displaced settled into Paravandó during the last days of March and the first days of April 1997. They had to pledge that they had no plans of taking over the road to the sea, but that they did have hopes of urgent medical attention and the possibility of establishing direct contact with the national government in the hopes of ob-taining guarantees to return to their lands. They also explained that their exodus from the region was due to the paramilitary’s threats and accusations of being guerrilla collaborators, and to the guerrilla warnings insisting that if they did in fact leave, they would be obeying a paramilitary order and would not be allowed to return.5
In this way, the intense, warlike confrontation for territorial hegemony placed profound and continual pressure on the communities, to the point of forced displacement; hence, it is important to move beyond simply identifying the immediate author of such orders. Rather, it is necessary to point out how the struggle for territory and the intense bombings lead to the victimization of the Black peasant communities. Throughout 1997 new paramilitary attacks caused new processes of displacement, which brought the number of displaced settlers to around 5000.
Community Organization in the Settlement
During the first few days of the settlement, people found themselves forced to sleep out in the open air on sheets of plastic in cattle fields. Later, due to the efforts of several NGOs,6
the Ministry of the Interior—through the Office of Human Rights and in conjunction with the Diocese of Apartadó— built zinc shelters which were then occupied by each of the 49 different communities that arrived at the settlement.
In the face of their problems and needs as refugees in precarious humanitarian and security conditions, and using as a foundation the organization that had existed prior to the displacement, each community organized itself into Community Counsels with a legal representative and a board of directors. At the same time they created different committees—made up of representatives se-lected from each community—to find solutions to their problems or to obtain resources from the NGOs or the government itself. It is worth emphasizing the importance of these Community Coun-sels, which were instituted by virtue of Decree 1745 of 1995, which is in turn regulated by Law 70 of 1993. In some of the communities, these Counsels were organized before displacement with the goal of reclaiming collective rights to their traditional lands. Once they received title to the land through the INCORA (Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform), they established maximal admin-istrative authority over the land in accordance with the Constitution, as well as over the effective legal norms and the unique legal systems of each community (Decree 1745, 1995). This communal pro-cess is worth highlighting, since the 1991 Constitution and Law 70 of 1993 had recognized not only the Black communities’ communal land rights, but also their rights to their own culture and cus-toms. With this law the Black communities achieved a measure of autonomy to administer and organize their territory through their own legal systems.
ence of peaceful community resistance. Given the fact that these communities not only share cultural and ethnic ties, but also have suffered the pain of displacement and cultivated a project of community organization, it is important to study their experience in order to attain a better understanding of the struggle of Black communities to be recognized as political and social actors. See COMUNIDADES DE LA CUENCA DEL CACARICA (2002).
5 See El Tiempo April 1, 1997 and El Mundo April 2, 1997; El Tiempo March 7, 1997. 6 Among the organizations that provided vital support to the comm unities were CINEP, Justicia y
Because the zone of Riosucio has traditionally been inhabited not only by the Black communi-ties, but also by the chilapos (mestizos) and paisas (white immigrants from Antioquia or Córdoba), from the very beginning, the difficult experience of the settlement led all the displaced persons to consider communal life as a way of organizing their subsistence processes and their struggle for political and social recognition.
Precisely because they shared the traumatic experience of being forced to break their ties with the land on which they had forged their livelihoods over long periods of time, the members of the different ethnic groups understood the importance of, and the need for, solid community organiza-tion. In the words of one of the settlement’s inhabitants:
(...) [T]he violence caught us alone, by ourselves; each one of us was out there on our farm. We lived peacefully and quietly but it caught us and destroyed us. And the reason is that we didn’t have a community to support us. Then we all became aware of the importance of a community that supports you, and that’s what we started talking about in Paravandó (CINEP 2000).
In this way, the role of the aforementioned committees was to organize communal life in the settlement through rules which regulated the most common practices in the community, such as washing clothes or bathing in the river or going out to search for firewood or food. All of the members of the settlement were familiar with the rules and had to follow them strictly, since they themselves had developed them. Moreover, the settlement was surrounded by the Army to guaran-tee the community’s safety. Thus, the rules also stated that no resident of the refuge could leave without permission, and especially not alone or at night.7 These normative systems also stipulated that no inhabitant could be armed or have business or conversations with outsiders or armed groups, or sell them food or drink. They also established penalties and punishments consisting of commu-nity service for those who violated the rules (Saint Francis of Assisi Peace Communities 1997).
It is important to highlight how the processes of displacement, the foundation of the settle-ment, community formation and even the initiation of the process to return to community lands, are marked by the terror caused by the continual pressure of the armed groups, which constantly intimidated and harassed the settlement by assassinating or disappearing its members, offering money to residents who abandoned their communities, and intimidating the leaders. Community life was always threatened by possible attacks, either by the guerrilla or the paramilitary. Paradoxi-cally, these methods of pressure led to the continued consolidation of even stronger ties of solidar-ity, loyalty, and “faith” in the social project underway. In the actions that denied the rights of the community, the residents found the catalyst which strengthened their unity, solidarity and frater-nity.
I think that part of the work of the peace communities, this work of community participation, comes from the notion that we peasants acquire a collective responsibility. We think we need a project [based on] communal living. And that, the way things are, individuals and the community in general need to have that really clear in order to defend [themselves] and move ahead. So, if you have a community with rules, with representatives and different work com-mittees—a community that is organized in some way—, then you can talk about any aggres-sor or at least you can say what their agenda is, what their program is, and what their inter-ests are (CINEP 2000).8
7 These measures, along with the permanent pressure the settlement was subjected to by the armed actors over a period of months, practically turned the settlement into a jail for the inhab-itants. On the other hand, this extreme situation allowed them to develop a strong sense of community.
For the residents, the settlement was not just a space in which to maintain their physical subsistence, but rather a place where they could begin the vital process of reconstruction to fight for their rights, which was marked by experiences which taught them to respect their differences and to see themselves as a united group. Hence, the deep wounds of war began to be healed through encounter with other people and the construction of a project of communal living.
When you have to be displaced, it rips you out of your homeland. A displaced person doesn’t even know who he is. But maybe you find out that you live with your family, that you have a community and people who you can struggle with and work with. When people trust— not even believe so much as trust—, when people put their faith in others who come to help out, who are working out an entire process, then they rediscover that they exist (CINEP 2000).
In this sense the deep nostalgia for the land and the pain caused by the loss of daily life began to propel the reconstruction through a communal process that started to shape the settlement. In conclusion, the processes of communal living which arose from the painful experience of displace-ment, overcrowding and “near imprisonment” in the settlement of Paravandó made its residents aware of the importance of community organization as a way of rebuilding the processes of indi-vidual and communal lives, as well as [its utility] as a way for demanding their rights. Based on the cultural and social practices that existed before displacement, they established rules which—as nor-mative systems—reflected the autonomy of the communities to self-regulate their communal life and adopt neutral practices to face the armed actors.
The Peace Communities of Saint Francis of Assisi
We can understand the meaning of the peace communities in the context of communal life, com-bined with processes of normative organization. These processes were born as a strategy of the communities of the Pavarandó settlement to be able to return to their lands and to obtain respect for their lives and property from the armed actors, as well as to prevent further displacements. How can territorial control and mechanisms for civil protection be established without arms? That is the complicated question posed by these communities, keeping in mind their fragility in the midst of the surrounding war. At the same time, their profound political force is rooted in this search for solutions.
The path chosen by the 53 communities –49 initially and 4 that arrived in 1997–, as laid out in their declaration of October 19, 1997, was to isolate themselves from the armed conflict. Their members made a public commitment not to carry arms, not to give out information, not to give any strategic advantage to any group, not to receive any member of an armed group onto their land, and to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict (Saint Francis of Assisi Peace Communities 1997).
In this way, by assuming a position which actively denies their participation in the conflict, they were able to identify their interests as [members of] civil society: to be able to occupy their lands, to have autonomous control over their internal organization, to develop their culture and customs with the hope of having their sovereign decisions respected by all the armed actors in the conflict. Hence, the peace communities’ strategy is to find protection not through arms, but through their neutrality, by actively denying the war tactics used by the surrounding armed actors.
This proposal was not an attempt to violate the Constitution or its laws, nor to oppose the state; it was rather a methodology emerging from communal living to reclaim an autonomous terri-torial space in which it would be possible to exercise fundamental constitutional rights.9 That is why, prior to the proclamation, the communities convened an in-depth process of formation in which all of their members were instructed on the meaning and implications of the declaration.
Furthermore, the communities informed the different armed actors of their intentions, and each of those groups agreed, in one way or another, to respect the decision. Later the communities, which were each in agreement with the internally defined processes—some through collecting the signa-tures of each of their members, some through representatives—decided to undertake the commit-ment of becoming Peace Communities (Hernández 2000).
After the declaration, a board was set up to negotiate with the state in order to define the conditions of return [to the land and their abandoned homes]. This first board was supposed to postpone discussion of the other points surrounding the formation of the settlement.10 In this pro-cess the communities prepared a proposal of a socio-political package encompassing all of the as-pects involved in their return, such as title to their lands in fulfillment of Law 70 of 1993, the organization of the different groups, the selection of the exact zones where they would begin and the characteristics of the settlements.
After a process of careful reflection, the communities decided not to return directly to their parcels of land, but to instead move to seven different sites on their territory with the goal of advancing little by little and covering as much ground as possible until they could relocate onto their original property. In December 1997 the negotiation process began between the Peace Commu-nities and a commission made up of the Church, CINEP [Center for Research and Popular Educa-tion], the Presidential Counselor for the Displaced, the Ministry of the Interior, INCORA and others who were accompanying the process. During this same period before the accords were signed, the communities began their process of return, which would continue until September 1998. The com-munities’ return to their lands was marked by intense guerrilla and paramilitary attacks, both on the settlement and on the communities that had returned.11
In conclusion, the declaration of the Peace Communities allowed them to establish social prac-tices which restored the lifestyles of the displaced and to fight for their rights. As a result, the communities designed a normative system and, through their public declaration, established an active political position which affirmed their neutrality with regard to the political-military agendas of the various armed groups. Those groups, in turn, committed to respecting the decisions of the communities, although to this day they continue to harass them and pressure them to disband. With regard to the state, its political status allowed it to negotiate the return. For the first time these historically excluded communities gained social visibility.
THE CLASH BETWEEN LEGAL SYSTEMS AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE STATE WITH REGARD TO THE PEACE COMMUNITIES
In a theoretical reflection that allows us to understand how law is shaped in the midst of a politico-military struggle for land, it should become clear how, in this case study, there is a juxtaposition of, and a confrontation between, normative systems emanating from the state and systems guided by the concept of “self-defense”—either guerrilla or paramilitary—, thereby devolving into a clash between different forces. Displacement and the creation of the Peace Communities are part of a context of regional conflict marked by law, in which the law itself is also an instrument of war. I will show how displacement becomes one more strategy in politico-military confrontation and how the Peace Communities organized valid normative “productions,” as well as how they shaped the pro-cesses of negotiation and political recognition of the communities in the face of the armed actors.
I will show that one cannot propose a defined and stable concept of law. Rather, I reveal a cartography or framework in which several concepts of law overlap in a clash which is symptomatic
10 Subdivided into three other boards: Security, Return, and Title to Land. Drawing upon Law 70, the board drew up 16 points of organization.
of the political confrontation over sovereignty which is at stake in the region. In the confrontation of legal forms which embody the interests defended by the different armed groups, the community efforts toward the vindication of their social and political rights—through an active and sovereign attitude against the war—become vital.
Strategic Colonization and the War in the Construction of the State
In the Urabá region, and specifically in the Riosucio zone, the traditional presence of Black and indigenous communities with a distinct cultural identity has allowed for the consolidation of land holdings. Nonetheless, as has already been discussed, after the 1960s, the FARC carried out pro-cesses of colonization in which poor peasants began to occupy land with the intention of working under better conditions in the most lucrative agricultural sectors in the region, such as the banana plantations. Along with the peasant colonization came the ideological activity of the Communist Party.
During this time the FARC adopted a “self-defense” role within the communities, meaning they acted as private, armed defenders of the community in order to protect their social rights against the arrival of large, industrial banana companies into the region. Meanwhile, the EPL [People’s Liberation Army, a smaller guerrilla group] used the same tactic in the northern part of the region to spur peasant invasions of large tracts of land.12
This process, which according to María Teresa Uribe (2001) could be described as “strategic colonization,”13 sought peasant control of the land, developed agricultural production and orga-nized social practices under the leadership and “territorial defense” of an armed group, thereby allowing the guerrilla to form social bases by defending the rights of poor peasants in their de-mands for land and by stimulating the very development of the communities.14
In this sense, the population, organization and control of the region were of major importance to the FARC, as they relied on a tactic of territorial domination which guaranteed the strategic collaboration of the communities and, at the same time, sustained the legitimacy of their political struggle.
Politico-Military Power and Normative Systems
The guerrilla’s normative systems, based on the concept of “self-defense,” played an important role in the development of this politico-military project of colonization and territorial control, since the effective and efficient regulation of daily life by private or insurgent groups stood in contrast to the inefficiency and distance of the official legal order.
The guerrillas have politico-military control in the zone. But they want the communities to organize themselves, too. And since they were the authority, they demanded that the com-munities work on things like cleaning the rivers, learning how to live together, and that sort of thing. Their idea is that the community should be organized to achieve its objective, what-ever that may be. The problem was the people who didn’t want to work in the community, or
12 Hence, as María Teresa Ur ibe (2001) points out, the concept of “self-defense” cannot be asso-ciated exclusively with the current right-wing armed groups. It is rather an idea that attempts to justify regional military activity based on the defense of the interests of the region´s inhabitants in order to achieve not only logistical support, but also legitimacy and social recognition. See URIBE (2001).
13 See Uribe (2001).
especially the people who made mistakes, like stealing, for example, and they would be caught and judged (...). But, what happened was that they became like the law; they were basically the law out here in the rural areas. Like they said: “we’re the people’s army” (CINEP 2000).
As occurred in other parts of the country where FARC guerrillas have exercised their power for many years and where the peasants acknowledge their authority, the armed group designed norms to consolidate the legitimacy of their political agenda (Molano 2001).
At this point it is important to refer to the research of Alfredo Molano on guerrilla justice to see what contributions he offers for understanding such forms of law, in order to determine whether there are any contrasts between that form of law and the image of law revealed in the displacement case.
Molano points out that the guerrilla, after achieving military dominance in the area, orga-nized legal systems which were respectful of the communities, such that they allowed the commu-nities to study their own conflicts and establish sanctions based on their belief systems. Once the community established a process and defined a sanction, the guerrilla monitored its enforcement (Molano 2001).
Such forms of law are based on a concept of “customary justice” (justicia consuetudinaria), meaning that they are founded on the traditions and values of peasant life. According to Molano’s study, these legal forms are able to guarantee social stability in the regions under guerrilla hege-mony and are a community achievement that supercedes the arbitrary judgments made by the guerrilla commanders during their attempts to consolidate their sovereignty. This was partially realized in the case studied here, since the guerrillas had influence in the organization of commu-nity life of the Black and mestizo communities dating back to the 1960’s; in this respect the commu-nities didn’t just learn from the guerrilla how to live together, they also saw in their norms the tools to solve daily conflicts.
It is imperative to stress that the organization and configuration of the systems of guerrilla law followed a military agenda which sought control over land through the formation of social bases. That is why the anti-state groups went to great lengths to ensure that their forms of justice were not arbitrary or capricious, as that could lead to social rejection which might in turn endanger their fundamental objectives.
Such forms of law have strategic colonization as their objective in that they entail the submis-sion of the peasants to the norms and, ultimately, their adherence to the political ideologies associ-ated with [the guerrilla’s] national agenda. The peace established by guerrilla justice presupposes and establishes social homogeneity, as it is based on an idea of the law as rigid and stable over time, and in which norms should be accepted without hesitation by those living under them. As a result, community decisions are not autonomous, as they are only respected provided that the guerrilla is first recognized as the authority.15
Once regional military power is consolidated and the social bases which legitimate this power are established, it is understandable that normative systems might appear which distance them-selves from the initial arbitrary and contingent actions. Hence, once the guerrilla’s military hege-mony over an area is called into question, the social organization becomes shaky and the relation-ship between the guerrilla and the population reverts to practices of territorial combat. The guerrilla’s legal forms become contingent, given that the social order defined by the normative system presup-poses the hegemony of a single armed power and, therefore, the submission of the community will to a single group—all of which is called into question once the paramilitary invade a region.
With regard to this case study, in the scenario of the struggle for land between the National Army and the guerrilla and paramilitary groups in the late 1990s, the legal processes which imposed
punishment were at the same time compensatory and instructive, in that they neither sought a clear justice, nor demanded the respect of the communities.16 Thus, recognition of the guerrilla norms and fulfillment of their demands do not ensure full recognition of individual rights, such as free-dom of opinion, so that people could be forced into silence. In effect, it is not a normative system that respects the rights of its subjects; rather, it is an imposed system which manipulates its subjects through fear.
Hence, in this context we can understand how the guerrilla’s active processes of community development served a clearly strategic purpose—both politically and militarily—and did not, in any clear or defined sense, involve the development of autonomous social and communal institu-tions.
In this context, the state or para-state strategy involves political and military confrontation, of which displacement is one of the most important tactics. Displacing a population is part of the war waged not only against armed groups, but against the social bases which (allegedly) sustain their presence in the region. As a consequence, the processes of displacement, as a strategy of war, are not caused by any specific armed actor, but rather by all of the groups involved in the struggle. In this case the attacks by the Army and the paramilitary were accompanied by processes of intimida-tion, threats, and efforts to fill the population with terror in order to induce displacement, making way for resettlement of the region by groups who were supported by the victorious armed actors. To the extent that war is played out through different, opposing norms that directly violate the communities’ way of life, the conflict also represents a struggle between the different normative forms fighting for social recognition. For example, if a community is displaced by a paramilitary “order” which contradicts a guerrilla norm, this is interpreted by the guerrilla as a “betrayal” which merits the “sanction” of exile.17 The war for territory turns the civilian communities into tactical resources in the confrontation—sometimes as human shields, sometimes even as “instruments of war”–, thus the norms which regulate their behavior become instruments of displacement.18
As a symbolic and tactical form of territorial displacement, normativity also explains displacement. War is not, therefore, reduced to armed confrontation, but rather adopts forms of intimidation based not necessarily on bloodshed, but also on norms.
Hence, even though it is possible to find normative systems under the hegemony of the guer-rilla which ensure peace, it is also possible to find an image of norms of war that emerges from the dynamic of combat over territory in which the different warring groups—no longer just the guer-rilla—generate displacement. This type of aggressive norm appears precisely when the military hegemony of the dominant group is at risk.
The condition of the forcibly displaced in Colombia does not place them outside of the grasp of the law (...) their luminal situation is due to the fact that, due to the dispute over sover-eignty, they live under several [legal] orders capable of sanction and punishment, but with limited capacity for protection and no effective recognition of rights. Hence the complication of punitive, authoritative and patronizing norms ends up replacing the certainties provided by law due to the permanent incertitude of arbitrariness and randomness. Security is traded in for permanent risk as territory changes hands. The environment of mistrust is accentu-ated; activities in the public sphere are restricted to the opaque world of the private and the
16 On this point, Molano explains that: “Beyond execution, there are compensatory punishments that are imposed both on the guerrillas and the civilians. For example, a guerrillero found sleep-ing on his or her watch must carry logs or dig trenches as punishment for the danger to which he or she subjected the community. There are also punishments that are intended to set an example. In the case of infractions committed by community members, for example, a thief may be forced to build the community school” (Molano 2001). Our study shows that these concepts of guerrilla law become problematic in the process of displacement, as displacement implies that the dominant armed group in the region has lost its hegemony.
domestic. All of this shapes a climate of collective fear sufficiently overwhelming to induce exodus and the diasporas of the population (Uribe 2001, Vol. 0: 67).
Hence, displacement is shaped by the confrontation between different political-military agen-das that express their conflict through norms. Law, in the case of forced displacement, is a strategy of war, the main point of which is not the defense of the life and autonomy of the communities or respect for their rights, but rather to instill terror.
Sovereignty in the Balance and the War for the Construction of the State
With regard to the meaningful presence of the state and the legitimacy of its institutions and pow-ers, it can be deduced from everything said thus far that the formation of state structures in the region is marked by an intense politico-military conflict and by strategies of territorial domination and the negation of due recognition for the communities.
In this process it may be said that the presence of the state throughout the 20th century has been “formal or administrative or military, and rather than instituting legal systems for social rela-tions and political control, it has enacted counter-powers or para-powers outside of the institutions of the state apparatus” (Uribe 2001). Thus, even though formal institutional structures have long ex-isted in the region—the mayor’s office, the police station, etc.—, these institutions have not been able to generate practices over time that allow the local residents to exercise their rights as citi-zens.19 The residents, therefore, do not view the state as the guarantor of their rights, but rather as a bureaucratic structure far removed from their daily community life and therefore ineffective in the legal regulation of their conflicts.
The people of Urabá do not see in the legal system the notion of balance for the resolution of their conflicts. On the contrary, mistrust and indifference are notorious and contribute to the increasing levels of impunity (CINEP 1995).
It is precisely this incapacity on the part of the state’s legal system—and the vacuum left by this incapacity—that prevents the state from regulating the concrete social lives of the inhabitants. [This absence of the state] also allows for the incubation of the armed actors, who justify their activities by claiming to defend the isolated communities. Moreover, the state, rather than being the guarantor of the population’s rights in the region, is one more actor in the war.20
Its tactics have consisted not just in taking part in the military confrontation, but also in unsuccessfully seeking territorial dominance in the region, which has also included, in the words of María Teresa Uribe:
[T]he de-institutionalization of the monopoly of force [through] a “selective absence of the state.” [This can be seen] in the legislation relating to criminal penalties for the violation of human rights and when the state gives a “green light to delinquency” in joint military-para-military operations—either simultaneous or successive—such as the case of the Army bomb-ings that preceded the arrival of armed paramilitary forces. All of this de-institutionaliza-tion of the monopoly of force by the state reverts directly to the condide-institutionaliza-tions of its political legitimacy (Uribe 2000, 2001).
The phenomenon of the de-institutionalization of armed force in which the state supports paramilitary groups is not an attempt to reinforce its military power or sovereignty, since in the areas under their conquest the para-state groups impose a normativity with the same “self-defense” characteristics examined above. One of the most common practices of the paramilitary groups is to put themselves above the civil authorities by imposing their “law,” which violates the stability and legitimacy of the state in the region.
18 The reference to “instruments of war” implies the use of civilians—in some cases minors—to carry bombs to be detonated against members of the armed forces.
19 An example of this is the large number of grown adults without national identification cards (cédulas de ciudadanía), many of them women. See ACNUR (2001).
On the other hand, the economic and social inclusion of the region in the nation has been mediated by the development of private companies, especially in the banana industry; a process in which the state has opted for the interests of the industrialists and not for the communities’ inter-ests.
The Black, peasant and indigenous communities in these zones have been fully and “effec-tively” recognized or included into the nation as such. The ancestral traditions, customs and mores of the inhabitants have been left aside in the midst of the process of strategic colonization, along with the political and military processes that have paved the way for such a process.
Apart from the processes of territorial war which we have already described—with the many problems this entails for community recognition and the definitive recognition of the institutions of the state—, we could say that the armed confrontation that we are experiencing—of which Urabá is but one regional manifestation—reveals the open dispute for state sovereignty in the regions. It is, therefore, a political-military struggle in which the sovereignty of the state is permanently “in the balance.” In this process, different agendas for national construction, including that of the guerrilla, the paramilitary and the state itself, are intertwined in a war which uses the regions as its stage and forced displacement as one of its cruelest strategies.21
The confrontation for territorial dominance involves a complete juxtaposition of norms, in which state sovereignty permanently totters, in which there is a war over different conceptions of “nation” and in which the state structure—far from fulfilling its legitimizing function as guarantor of fundamental rights—ends up participating in the very strategies of war which violate those rights.22
Moreover, through its military plan, the state calls into question its regulatory function by de-institutionalizing the monopoly of force through its relationship with paramilitary groups. As a consequence, the state is unable to unite and define the social order in a given territorial sphere.
Legislation and Recognition of the Political Agenda of the Peace Communities
The common factor in the “laws” of the actors in the conflict is the lack of acknowledgment of individuals’ subjective rights and the denial of the communities’ full autonomy in the attempt to establish a homogeneous and disciplined society. Yet, starting from this core aspect, I would like to demonstrate that the Peace Communities display a political agenda whose richness is based on the non-violent affirmation of their condition as citizens, which constitutes the basis of their struggle for recognition. In the face of the juxtaposition of armed normative structures seeking to establish a “national agenda,” the Peace Communities organize themselves as a space for human action that seeks the concrete construction of a state which recognizes and represents the ethnic and cultural diversity of all Colombians. It is, therefore, a form of political organization that attempts to turn constitutional principles into concrete realities (1991 Political Constitution of Colombia).
The 1991 Constitution: Political Recognition of the Black Communities
At this point I would like to present the fundamental constitutional and legal principles that serve as the basis for the Peace Communities, in order to clarify the meaning of their proposal for the construction of a pluralist state based on ethnic diversity in the face of the military agendas of the nation-state. I will show that one cannot separate the formation and meaning of the Peace Commu-nities from the process of building a social movement of Black commuCommu-nities as social and political actors, as recognized by the 1991 Constitution.
The participatory way in which the 1991 Constitution was written allowed many marginalized sectors and groups—such as the Black and indigenous communities—to be recognized as political and social actors. This process realized the longings of these groups—and of the state—to develop
21 See URIBE (2000, 2001).
a democratic modernization, meaning the construction of political and social spaces based on “the need [to guarantee] the fundamental rights of citizens, spelling out the social, economic, cultural, environmental and political aspects of such rights” (Agudelo 2001).
As a result of this effort, the National Constitution expresses in its principles that Colombia is “a social state of law, organized as a united and decentralized republic which is democratic, partici-patory and pluralist and which provides autonomy to its various territories.” Article 7 adds that “the state recognizes and protects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Colombian nation,” as is its obligation, as affirmed in Article 8, “to protect the natural and cultural riches of the nation.”23
Additionally, Article 70 of the Constitution affirms that “culture in its diverse manifestations is the basis of nationality. The state recognizes the equality and dignity of all those living in the country. The state will promote the research, study, development and diffusion of the cultural val-ues of the nation.”
Based on the above, the Black communities, whose organization is the origin of the Peace Communities (Hernández 2000), have utilized the constitutional process to defend their own cul-tural and ethnic identity, which also implies the need for full state recognition, protection and culti-vation of their values, traditions and customs. Following in the footsteps of the indigenous groups, the Black groups have achieved constitutional recognition as “communities”24
with specific cultural characteristics that differentiate them from the rest of society. This cultural identity is manifest in the oral tradition used to express history, traditions, magical-religious beliefs and the specific forms of social relations within these communities (Agudelo 2001). Hence, we can see that the political constitution and the legal system which it establishes are motivated by a pluralist political spirit which respects and promotes the different cultural entities and forms in existence within Colombian territory.
Thus, there is no presumption or promotion of a single cultural identity which creates a homoge-neous social life.
Ethnicity and Property: The Political-Legal Origins of the Peace Communities
The demands of the communities are made manifest in their political struggle for ownership of their land and for their ethnic and cultural identity. Defense of the land, as a geographic space in which the Black communities have developed their lives over time, becomes a claim with a basis in transitional Article 55 of the 1991 Constitution and serves as the legal basis for the struggles of the Peace Communities. For the first time, the Black Communities of the Pacific are made visible as a social movement; hence we discover that the ethnic and cultural demands become a fundamental element in this case study, in that they determine the shape of this new social and political actor.
For the first time the Black population of Colombia (of the rural Pacific) was the subject of specific rights and recognition. In general, the factor that motivated the launch of this great movement along the rivers of the Pacific was, for the populations there, related to the possi-bility of accruing concrete benefits (land ownership) and linked to a process of identity affir-mation; that is, to the act of recognizing themselves and being positively recognized by the wider society which had always considered them inferior. The self-recognition of their “cul-tural identity” became a prerequisite to obtaining territorial rights, as laid out by the Chocó (ACIA) and indigenous models (Agudelo 2001: 3-31).
Hence, in transitional Article 55, the constitution ordered the state to enact “a law which recognizes the Black communities that have occupied uncultivated lands in the rural zones along the river banks of the Pacific Basin, and to grant them the right to collective ownership over the areas stipulated by the law itself in accordance with their traditional production practices.” The political
23 See Political Constitution of Colombia.
charter also established that the law define mechanisms for the defense of cultural identity and the rights of the communities in order to encourage their economic and political development.
In compliance with this constitutional mandate, Law 70 of 1993 recognizes the rights of the Black communities to communal ownership of the uncultivated lands that they have traditionally occupied, in accordance with their traditional practices of production.25
This concept is an attempt to defend the communities’ traditional customs and labor practices in the face of the many private, industrial techniques which place their land ownership at risk. The communities’ work on the land shapes their identity, their way of building their houses and of living their lives; thus the defense of these production practices is the struggle for cultural life itself.
This norm also establishes the different public policies designed to protect the cultural iden-tity of the communities as an ethnic group, as well as their social recognition in the national context. In this sense, the law stipulates that, as a pluralist nation, Colombia create effective recognition of the Afro-Colombian culture as a valued part of society, avoiding segregation, racism and social discrimination (Law 70, 1993).
On the other hand, the law stipulates that collective ownership of the land is ruled by the principles of ecological care of the area’s resources. Hence, the state must ensure that the different projects of environmental and forest-based exploitation are guided by these principles and must see that—in the process of developing traditional forms of production—the Black communities have priority in the adjudication of contracts or the distribution of permits for exploitation in the area. In this perspective, the state is obliged to encourage the economic and social development of these communities by attempting to guarantee conditions of equal opportunity with the rest of society.26 The crucial idea established by this law is that each community should be legally recognized and represented within the “Community Council,” which is the highest internal authority and is responsible for the administrative organization of the community—that is, the internal adjudication of land to individuals or families—in accordance with the social and ecological function of owner-ship. Moreover, the Council defines an internal regulatory code that assures the protection of cul-tural identity, the environment, and social organization.27 Decree 1745 of 1995 establishes the orga-nization of the Community Councils in greater detail and the necessary procedures for granting land titles.28
This last norm means that the community, as a legal entity, defines its internal rules based on the constitution, legal norms, and its own system of law.29 In this sense, the decree recog-nizes the legal validity of the community norms and regulations. The Colombian normative system grants legitimacy to the forms of law based on the communities’ culture, history and customs; thereby validating a central element of community life. Precisely because of that fact, as soon as the Peace Communities establish Community Councils, the norms and regulations that organize their social life in the face of armed groups obtain legal validity.
The decree in question establishes that the legitimacy of the decisions of the Community Councils is based on the will of the majority of its members, either by consensus or, when that is not
25 See Political Constitution of Colombia (1991), Law 70 (1993). 26 See Political Constitution of Colombia (1991), Law 70 (1993).
27 It is relevant to see how this law recognizes the Black communities’ right to a system of educa-tion whose goals and curricula harmonize with their own culture, history and religion. It also requires the state to sanction discrimination and racism against members of the community and implement the principles of social equality. Additionally, it requires the state to advocate for the inclusion of a department of Afro-Colombian studies into the national education system, with the goal of exposing students to “the unique practices of the Black communities and their con-tributions to Colombian culture (...).” See Articles 6 and 7 of Law 70 (1993).
possible, by majority. This means that even though the communities have a recognized right to self-determination through their internal regulations, their normative system must harmonize with the general legal system; that is, with the democratic social state of law.30
In this sense, the legal norms arising from the 1991 Constitution propose the recognition and protection of these communities, as well as respect for their cultural life in all its worth, dignity and integrity and, therefore, their right to autonomous self-determination. This also includes the pro-tection and promotion of their productive systems, in accordance with their ancestral relationship to the environment and their lands.
Hence, it is clear that we cannot consider Colombia to be a homogeneous nation. Far from being uniform, the Colombian political landscape is defined by differences and the multiplicity of cultures. Thus, attempting to impose a national political agenda that disregards such diversity sows the seeds for forms of violence whose intent is to make the different forms of social movements invisible. The Peace Communities are a legitimate social and political project, and the norms that regulate their internal life are based on the constitution and on law. The movement is based on a pluralist conception of the nation and it thereby incarnates an alternative towards the effective construction of a state that recognizes cultural diversity.
TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF FORCED DISPLACEMENT
AND THE STRUGGLES OF THE PEACE COMMUNITIES
At this point I would like to reflect on the phenomenon of displacement to unravel its socio-political meaning; that is, the way in which it reveals the crisis of the state as a political community which exists so that citizens may have “rights.”
It is only when an effective community exists to afford social and political recognition to social groups that citizens have the possibility of having a place in the world that allows them to express their opinions, defend their property, fully develop their cultural identity and make their own life choices. One could therefore say that displaced persons do not possess full citizenship due to the deficiencies and deviations in the construction of the state. Displaced persons have been put in a position in which it is not effective to belong to a political community and in which their citizenship is merely formal; they are not part of a community in which their opinions can be ex-pressed and heard and their actions can be meaningful.
With this in mind, I would like to show how the concrete case of the Peace Communities proposes a form of community struggle for social and political recognition that seeks the construc-tion of a state which recognizes the communities’ potential to defend their property, their culture and their traditions; and that by defending their rights as citizens, the Peace Communities are a valid path toward the construction of a pluralist state.
This reflective process is guided by the thought of Hannah Arendt who, in several of her works, offers categories, concepts, and methodological suggestions that shed light on this path toward understanding.31 First, I will sketch out a basic idea of the concept of “understanding,” such that it will be possible to identify the importance of this category in the essay. Then, I will return to the case study to attempt to understand its meaning and the condition of the displaced as citizens
30 This becomes clear in the discussion of how collective ownership of land should be adminis-tered and utilized based on the principles of its social and ecological use, in accordance with the Constitutional norm. See Decree 1745 (1995); Law 70 (1993); Political Constitution (1991), Art. 58.
who have lost the right to have rights, so as to allow us to discern the full meaning of the Peace Communities’ proposal.
Understanding Forced Displacement
Imagination (...) is merely another name for (...) the clearest of visions, the breadth of spirit/ and Reason in its most exalted form.
Hannah Arendt
As pointed out at the beginning, this article is an attempt to be philosophical. Thus, “under-standing”32 is a category with particular relevance in the development of this work, as it deals with the perspective from which it is possible to approach a concrete problem in order to discover its meaning.33
Hence, at this point I will be explicit about the theoretical position I have used to ap-proach the problem.
When Hannah Arendt attempts to understand the emergence of totalitarian movements in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, she discovers that the accepted political and moral cat-egories and concepts have been pulverized by this phenomenon, meaning that she cannot in some naive way refer to the old wisdom of the past as a way of understanding the problem. Faced with the impossibility of making a univocal connection between the traditional categories of thought and contemporary political phenomena, such as the situation of minorities and stateless people (apátridas), the philosopher demonstrates that her efforts at understanding spring from human action as the originating principle. Action is the start of something new; the excellent manifestation of human freedom (Arendt 1998: 43).
Freedom, as manifested in actions, creates the political world, creates [social] relations and thereby defines their meaning: through his actions, man shapes the meaning that defines his world. On this point, Arendt remembers what Saint Augustine said on the origin of history: “man was created so that there might be a beginning; before which nothing existed.”34
Although it is extremely difficult to understand the phenomena of the contemporary world using traditional concepts and categories—as they are not equipped to address these new phenom-ena—, understanding is revealed as “the other face of action.” It is a cognitive activity that comes into being as the counterpart of action and is capable of confronting and assuming that which has painfully occurred in the social and political life, with the goal of achieving some form of reconcili-ation with it (Arendt 1998: 30-44). Thus, this exercise alone immediately implies a process of self-understanding. With respect to forced displacement, the question of its meaning is, at the same time, the question of the meaning of political life in Colombia, and of the daily world in which such a terrible situation is possible.
However, understanding the meaning of political actions is not limited to the search for causal explanations, in the model of the empirical sciences; nor does it consist in explaining facts by using logical theoretical models whose validity is independent of the political world (Arendt 1998: 40). Hence, this theoretical effort at understanding is not reducible to a discrimination of which facts offer us correct information, nor does it propose to opt for a scientific law that defines a univocal or definitive vision of the problem of displacement.
32 A broad discussion has developed within contemporary philosophy around the problem of “un-derstanding” (See Heidegger, Martin 1993; Gadamer, Hans- Georg 1975). Despite the impor-tance that I place on this category, I will not present an exhaustive overview of that discussion here, nor examine its conditions in-depth, since the limits and objectives of this study do not allow for such an examination. Nonetheless, I have opted to “describe” Hannah Arendt´s inter-pretation of the phenomenon, as her work is especially enlightening f or this study.
For Arendt, understanding is a complex process that starts with a preliminary understanding
which is uncritical, common-sensical, and serves as an Arachnid’s thread to guide the philosopher in her or his work, define the path of his or her discoveries, and attribute meaning to them. Prelimi-nary understanding comes before deeper knowledge and cannot be demonstrated, but only be unwrapped and made explicit. After this initial intuition, the scholar’s activity consists in distilling the immediate considerations and revealing the meaning already present in them; that is why Arendt affirms that understanding is “a strange circular task” which seeks to articulate and confirm primi-tive understanding (Arendt 1998: 44).
Along these lines, our work parts ways with the common sense assumption that a subject possesses rights based on her or his existence in a common, concrete world in which the different members have their own space. For the ordinary man, subjects are not intellectual entities or natu-ral resources, but rather individuals with a face, a history, a right to property and to develop their ways of life and seek their well-being in a country shared by all. In this work, I have reconstructed different empirical facts and assumed that only in a political community are subjects free; that it is only in such an environment that men will act in recognition of laws and state authorities—granted that such authorities in turn protect the rights of their members.
However, this work shows that different national agendas are in conflict in Colombia, and that there is a dispute between different groups over the imposition of their “law” and the social recognition of their political vision. It also reveals how the struggle over norms impedes the effec-tive protection of the rights of citizens and generates displacement. Thus, the meaning of this phe-nomenon [of displacement] is linked to the crisis of citizenship and of the state.
On the other hand, Hannah Arendt shows us that understanding is not passive, but rather a task that is always creating itself alongside the actions that shape life. It is a cognitive activity that proposes and re-elaborates its problems in the light of new actions and which, therefore, only stops with death. Understanding is an imaginative exercise whose skill lies in always reconfiguring facts in a new way and pursuing different clues, trying to capture one small glimmer of the truth, of the dense, hidden human meaning (Arendt 1998: 45). As a result, this work starts with empirical facts which appear as pieces of a puzzle which we would like to decipher; not in order to have a defini-tive answer, or to instruct the victims, but rather to have an image that does justice to the condition of the displaced and the community that expels them from their homes, segregates them and dis-criminates against them.
Hence, understanding displacement does not offer definitive solutions. Just as in everyday life finding meaning is not a precondition for solving difficulties, nor are solutions a necessary precondition for understanding. [Understanding] is rather an activity that amounts to the self-recognition of the task of citizens and therefore extends throughout the life of the community; understanding is a task that unfolds throughout the history of a people. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the reflective endeavor is unimportant, as it constantly reminds us of the reasons for the struggle against the causes of displacement. One cannot demand that an understanding of this phenomenon yield answers or solutions, yet the task emerges as the other side of the struggle against this terrible problem. One cannot demand solutions from the philosopher, nor ask him or her to walk ahead on the path in order to serve as a guide from the finish line. As a result, the usefulness of understanding lies in the fact that it allows one to deeply penetrate the problem and bring to light the matter of who we are and what we are struggling for.
In this sense, the activity of understanding is necessary. Despite the fact that it can never directly inspire the struggle or provide it the objectives it lacks, it can only give meaning and provide new resources to the human heart and spirit, [resources which] perhaps only mani-fest themselves once the battle is won (Arendt 1998: 32).
With these theoretical elements and suggestions, I will attempt to understand the meaning of forced displacement and the struggle of the Peace Communities as an attempt at the construction of the state.
Forced Displacement and the Paradox of Human Rights
It is appropriate to ask what elements allow us to discover the social and political actions within the experience of the Peace Communities that are directed at the construction of the state. To this end, it is vital to break with the opinion that forced displacement is a multiple violation of human rights. Even though this common idea perceives the problem in a general sense, it is by nature vague and does not reveal the concrete content of such rights.
When Hannah Arendt reflects on the situation of post-World War II Europe in Chapter 9 of
The Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt 1987), she examines the condition of minorities and stateless people to show how they reveal the decadence of the Nation-State, the crisis of which stems from the fate of the human rights regime.
For the author, the Declaration of the Rights of Man constitutes one of the most important moments in history, as it meant that the source of law was no longer based on the commandments of God or on historically defined customs, but rather to be found in Man himself. From this per-spective, such rights appear as formal, abstract principles based on the assumed existence of human beings as such, rather than being dependent on men belonging to a certain political community (Arendt 1987: 368). With regard to origin, these rights are not deducible to any other principle; while the legal order upholds these rights, it is assumed that no specific laws are necessary to protect them.
Confusion over the nature of rights nonetheless surfaced over the assumption that, if the Rights of Man served as the basis of law, then they must also be part of the rights of people orga-nized into a state and, consequently, it was assumed that only a fully emancipated and sovereign people could effectively guarantee such rights. In political practice, this produced the identification between the Rights of Man and the Rights of the Citizen, such that the protection of the former was left in the hands of the state in relation to its own citizens.
The arbitrary link between these two types of rights only became evident after the First World War with the appearance of groups of pariahs who fled their country of origin because their ethnic characteristics made them targets for extermination. Such people therefore were no longer associated with any nationality, meaning that they now had nothing more than their basic human condition and, as a result, no government would commit to guaranteeing their rights.
The Rights of Man had, after all, been defined as “inalienable” because it was assumed that they were independent of all governments. Yet it turned out that, when human beings were left without their own governments and had to resort to their minimum rights, there was no authority left to protect them and no institution with any desire to guarantee them (Arendt 1987: 370; Agamben 2000: 81).
To the extent that we can consider internal forced displacement as a perversion of the cat-egory of citizenship, we can understand that the dilemmas and contradictions implied in this phe-nomenon are not only humanitarian in nature, but also fundamentally political. What is at stake with forced displacement is the very political condition of citizens and therefore the efforts at resisting such a terrible social event can be understood as a struggle for political recognition and the social inclusion of the displaced communities.
In the concrete case of the Peace Communities, their justifications are aimed at the construc-tion of an organized community structure based on the sovereign will of their members, in which the structure also serves as a medium for the protection of human rights. The arguments employed to this end are an expression of the struggle for socio-political recognition of their culture and traditions.
The Condition of the Displaced Person
As noted above, internal displacement is generated in an experience of profound terror. This is not limited to the fear of losing one’s life, but is also usually fed by methods of persuasion such as torture and public execution in front of family members and friends, threats and selective assassina-tions—which in some cases take on their own symbolic forms.
Uncertainty and fear propel the flight from one’s land, thus the future of the individual and family life is put at risk. Like “a patriots” (apátridas), the displaced have lost their homes, that is, the social framework into which they were born and built their lives. When they abandon their prop-erty, customs, habitual forms of relationships and the social ties that had allowed them to define themselves, the displaced lose their place in the world.
In contrast to those who die in conflict, the displaced are living victims who in their flight bring with them the pain of having their place in the world snatched away from them. They carry into their displacement all of the painful weight of what is lost, that is, of the violent deaths of their family or friends, of the loss of their home and their land. It is precisely this condition that reveals that their citizenship is not effective, and that the general laws that organized their everyday world no longer apply.
The condition of the displaced, as is true of the condition of people in other persecuted cat-egories, reveals their nakedness, their purely human nature–nuda vida. Hence, the internally dis-placed person, according to Agamben, shows man without the mask of citizenship that constantly conceals him (Arendt 1987: 370; Agamben 2000: 84). Nonetheless, in contrast to “a patriots,” this type of persecuted person has state citizenship. It is precisely because of that that the displaced person is a manifestation of the political crisis that makes his or her position possible: her citizenship does not assure the real recognition of her rights, meaning that it is a “formal” citizenship that is not based on concrete and effective recognition. Through their tragedy, the displaced show the precarious-ness of the national political construction. In spite of their supposed condition as full legal citizens, they have not only been expelled from their homes without recourse to the protection of the state, but they also have no opportunity after the fact to establish a new home in their own country. As a result, they are de facto “a patriots.” To paraphrase Arendt, the displaced become the dregs of their own society.
