Paramilitary politics and corruption talk in Colombia. Issue 4 (2nd October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tate, Winifred
• Is Part Of: Culture, theory and critique. Volume 59:Issue 4(2018)
• Page Start: 419
• Page End: 441
• Publication Date: 2018-10-02
• Subjects: Humanities -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Electronic journals; Civilisation moderne et contemporaine -- Périodiques; Culture -- Périodiques; 306
• DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2018.1522596
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1473-5784

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The complex entanglements of organised crime, drug trafficking, paramilitary groups and clientelism continue to shape the political terrain of Colombia's Atlantic Coast. This article examines how local elite assessments of how to 'do corruption right' were mobilised in the late 1990s by paramilitary commanders to legitimate their state building efforts, and were equally important to their project of territorial control. Here, I examine three registers of corruption talk. I first address anti-corruption claims public declarations made by paramilitary commanders decrying the corruption practices of the traditional political class. These same paramilitary leaders engaged in armed clientelism: using threat of violence, in addition to the delivery of state-funded projects, to gain both electoral loyalty and control of state agencies. The second register of corruption talk I consider are elite assessments of paramilitary. I argue that by approving of paramilitary governance as a means of reigning in excessive corruption, elites in the Monteria region of Colombia's Atlantic Coast not only justified their own support for paramilitarism, but also exonerated themselves for their own ongoing corrupt practices. Finally, I consider how paramilitary links to drug trafficking have been erased in public discourse, in part through media portrayals of paramilitaries in telenovelas, nightly serialised television dramas.