Evil Hour in Colombia

Forrest Hylton

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781844675517
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789602616
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Colombia is the least understood of Latin American countries. Its human tragedy, which features terrifying levels of kidnapping, homicide and extortion, is generally ignored or exploited. In this urgent new work Forrest Hylton, who has extensive first-hand experience of living and working in Colombia, explores its history of 150 years of political conflict, characterized by radical-popular mobilization and reactionary repression.

Evil Hour in Colombia shows how patterns of political conflict, from the mid-nineteenth century to today's guerilla narco-traffickers and paramilitaries, explain the wear currently destroying Colombian lives, property, communities and territory. In doing so, it traces how Colombia's "coffee capitalism" gave way to the cattle and cocaine republic of the 1980s, and how land, wealth and power have been steadily accumulated by the light-skinned top of the social pyramid through a brutal combination of terror, expropriation and economic depression.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• Prologue
• Introduction: Remembering Colombia
• 1. Radical-Popular Republicanism, 1848–80
• 2. From Reaction to Rebellion, 1880–1930
• 3. The Liberal Pause, 1930–46
• 4. La Violencia, 1946–57
• 5. The National Front: Political Lockout, 1957–82
• 6. Negotiating the Dirty War, 1982–90
• 7. Fragmented Peace, Parcellized Sovereignty, 1990–98
• 8. Involution, 1998–2002
• 9. The Edge of the Precipice, 2002–5
• 10. War as Peace, 2005–6
• Conclusion: Amnesia by Decree
• Notes
• Index