The Recent Context in Colombia in Historical and Territorial Perspective: Armed Conflict, the Havana Agreement and Its Implementation

Abstract

This paper aims to show the evolution of the violence produced by the Colombian armed conflict from a territorial perspective. After decades of profound weakness of the Colombian state, from the end of the nineties and the beginning of the new century, a process of change in the balance of forces began to take shape. The latter, increasingly favourable to the State and not to the guerrillas, was finally consummated in the first decade of the twenty-first century thanks to a process of militarization accompanied by other factors, such as paramilitarism and assistance from the United States. However, even though a Peace Agreement was signed in 2016 with the most important guerrilla organization in the country, the FARC-EP, many of the elements that traditionally supported violence are still in force. Thus, Colombia is a state that has traditionally had more territory than sovereignty, so that the continuity of drug revenues and other illicit economies, added to the persistence of numerous armed groups—from the ELN to post-paramilitary structures—explains how in part of the traditional geography of violence, the Peace Agreement has not served to overcome many elements associated with violence, which are still unresolved in many cases.