Between the fragility of peace and the persistence of war: The case of the Bajo Atrato subregion, Chocó, Colombia

Abstract

The real possibility of signing and effectively implementing a peace pact with the different organizations and armed factions that were and are present in the Bajo Atrato subregion (Chocó, COL) has created high expectations throughout the last decades in Colombia, with the hope of reducing the violence associated with the armed confrontation and the illicit activities of these groups in this area of ??the country. However, it seems that the war is imposed. Concomitant with the pacification attempts of different governments, state abandonment, dispossession and extreme poverty persist, ideal fuels for the reactivation or summary of the armed conflict. Thus, this article seeks to offer an overview of different decades of the armed conflict in Bajo Atrato, a subregion marked by its heterogeneous population -among Afro, black, indigenous and mestizo- and location, which, by the way, provides between other things unprecedented great economic and strategic military opportunities. Based on the conjuncture analysis approach, which recognizes a strategic and relational horizon of political-military action that includes the identification of facts, actors, scenarios, correlation of forces and structure-conjuncture relationship from the bibliographic review of institutions experts and investigators, as well as reports from the Public Ministry represented in the Ombudsman's Office.