Authoritarian Rebel Governance and Failed Socialization in Tolima, Colombia

• In Event: New Horizons of Violence, Peace and Instability Research

Abstract

For understanding the long-term effects of rebel governance, the southern portion of Colombia’s Tolima department presents a puzzle. The whole area was historically a bastion of the Liberal party, out of which the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was born, and the group’s origins in Marquetalia, Planadas municipality are close to the area I study, which I pseudonymize as “Retiro”. From the 1980’s until the 2016 peace agreement, the FARC exercised a high degree of control across large parts of Retiro. The guerrillas were quite ideological in how they governed, using multiple channels to get their message across to civilians and building close ties with local campesino associations. During this entire period, the group faced very little organized civilian resistance. So why is the FARC’s ideology almost entirely absent from civilians’ political beliefs in Retiro today and why is the group so widely despised?

In this paper, I argue that the FARC’s authoritarian governance and relatively weak control over violence, despite some favorable structural conditions, led to the failure of FARC socialization. The FARC’s authoritarian governance derived three main factors. First, the history and geography of the area made it important both symbolically and strategically, and thus the FARC were keen to keep hold of it. Consequently, they adopted a heavy-handed approach toward governing civilians to prevent territorial loss. Second, the personalities and orientations of the individual FARC commanders in Retiro, which were reflective both of internal and external dynamics, shifted the group toward a more authoritarian posture. Finally, the FARC’s lack of control over violence, though somewhat related to their authoritarian governance posture, was largely a result of the group’s decision to rely on untrained milicianos (clandestine operatives, “militants”) as their sources of military information, leading to high levels of violence on false premises.

The main implication of my argument is that the intensity of ideological socialization is far less important than participatory governance in successfully transmitting political ideas. This is somewhat counterintuitive, because rather than “more ideology” or denser organizational ties between an armed group and civilians changing beliefs, it is only through the channel of participatory governance that ideology successfully flows. Without civilians feeling like they have a say in government, they will fail to identify with the group’s vision of society, and consequently not incorporate the group’s ideology into their beliefs. Authoritarian governance, which is both non-participatory and high intensity (in terms of governing many aspects of local life) does not produce sincere ideational change, and is likely to backfire once the coercion is lifted.

Author

• Daniel Raoul Hirschel-Burns, Princeton University