Capital punishment: The fragmentation of Colombia and the crisis of the nation-state

The Colombian nation-state is in its worst period of crisis since the infamous Violencia of the late 1940s and 1950s. State power is being contested by a number of groups: paramilitaries, the revolutionary Left, drug cartels and corrupt high-level officials. But these latest challenges must be set in a wider historical context: a 200-year history of failed attempts by the oligarchy to forge a stable modern nation-state without undermining their dominant position in the Colombian polity. The writing of a new constitution in 1991, the first since 1886, was an attempt to address many of the above problems, including the granting of special powers to the executive to deal with civil unrest, the need for a decentralised and pluralised political landscape and constitutional guarantees for minority and indigenous representation and rights. However, constitutional change has also taken place in the context of the consolidation of the globalisation project and the practical effects of the new constitution have been its provision of legal and administrative measures to facilitate the neoliberal restructuring of the economy, a process which, over the past 10 years, has been a devastating form of 'capital punishment' for the Colombian underclasses and has contributed to the further fragmentation of the nation.