Description
Book SynopsisLesley Gill traces the rise and fall of the strong labor unions and working class of Barrancabermeja, Colombia, showing how the incursion of neoliberalism, the drug trade, and counterinsurgency military campaigns into civil society that began in the 1980s has destabilized everyday life and decimated the city's powerful social institutions.
Trade Review"Gill weaves together the historical development of the city’s power struggles and the devastation and suffering of the city, and boldly looks into the future. She presents a hauntingly honest assessment of past struggles and future opportunities. An invaluable addition to understanding Colombia and its social, political, and class struggles, as well as those of the region and the larger world. . . . Essential. All public and academic levels/libraries." -- A. E. Leykam * Choice *
"Gill’s book will be a fundamental text for anyone interested in violence, politics, and the state in contemporary Latin America and for those seeking a model for doing and writing historical anthropology at its very finest." -- Daniel M. Goldstein * American Ethnologist *
"Lesley Gill never loses sight of her focus on class as her principal analytical category. This is the book’s greatest contribution....She stresses the agency and resistance of trade unionists, activists, and city councilors despite relentless and violent political persecution." -- María Clemencia Ramírez * American Anthropologist *
"Through ethnographic research and oral histories, Gill offers a nuanced portrait of right-wing paramilitary occupation of the city, highlighting divergent experiences and contradictory memories.... As an urban history spanning nearly a hundred years,
A Century of Violence in a Red City thus illustrates how urban space is produced and configured through struggles over resources and power." -- Emma Shaw Crane * NACLA Report on the Americas *
"Gill has made an incredibly complicated story accessible, interesting, and useful to anyone interested in understanding how the violent suppression of class and labour remains central to contemporary projects of rule. The story is as well told as it is tragic." -- Teo Ballvé * Bulletin of Latin American Research *
"Gill’s book contributes importantly to a literature in both English and Spanish, in the United States and in Colombia, that queries the complex nature of the relationships between the legitimate state and the parastate, between the army and the paramilitaries, all in the context of a neoliberal economy in which illicit drug production and trafficking play a central role. She skillfully elaborates a great deal about what is going on all over Colombia through the lens of one particular city." -- Les Field * Journal of Anthropological Research *
"
A Century of Violence in a Red City achieves its historically informed anthropology through Gill’s long-time engagement with the city’s activists and her deep knowledge of Latin American history. . . . Gill’s book helps us understand contemporary Colombia and is essential reading for anyone seeking to comprehend popular struggle in Latin America and its relation to broader patterns of capital accumulation." -- Johanna Pérez Gómez * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
Table of ContentsList of Acronyms ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1. Black Gold, Militant Labor 29
2. Cold War Crucible 61
3. Terror and Impunity 95
4. Unraveling 123
5. Fragmented Sovereignty 152
6. Narrowing Political Options and Human Rights 183
7. The Aftermath of Counterinsurgency 216
Conclusion 237
Notes 249
References 263
Index 275
