This chapter discusses the two main counter-frames that challenge the loyalist frame about deserters presented in Chapter 8. The main challenge comes from the deserters themselves, who refused to be labelled as traitors and do not want to be identified as ex-combatants, in addition to fearing being hunted down by both loyalists and FARC dissidents. The secondary challenge arises from the government, which continues to place all ex-combatants into the same category of desmovilizado and whose neglect of the collective economic projects promised in the peace agreement is creating mass abandonment of the protected reincorporation zones – thus dismantling the FARC hierarchy and putting the group’s stated revolution project into further jeopardy.

This chapter introduces the first framing contest under examination in the book: victims versus perpetrators. The chapter starts with the story of Diana, who joined the FARC to escape abusive stepbrothers, only to fall into an abusive relationship with a commander, whom she later fled. Diana never enrolled in a government reintegration program, and after the peace process, she was welcomed back into the FARC reintegration in order to receive benefits. However, she did not stay long, soon leaving to take her chances in Bogotá, where she could be anonymous and not expose her children to what she saw as toxic rhetoric in the FARC camp. This chapter examines three key components that build resonance in the guerrillas’ victimhood frame: the campesino identity, gendered victimhood, and the concept of self-defense. Using supporting quotes and stories from the other 112 interviews, this chapter examines in detail the guerrilla frame of victimhood in Colombia, illustrating how collective victimhood works as a cohesive force to keep members inside the group and is especially effective at convincing women that they have nowhere else to go.

Latin Americans can feel insecure for many different and overlapping reasons. U.S. and Latin American leaders don’t always agree on what these are, what causes them, and what should be done about them. Given all the previous chapters, this shouldn’t surprise us. In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence pointed to threats stemming from economic crisis (exacerbated by Covid-19), crime, narcotics trafficking, corruption, and Venezuela. It also noted the threatening presence of China and Russia. Latin American leaders show widely varying degrees of agreement about these. This chapter highlights U.S. policy dealing with insecurity and Latin American divergence from it. The dynamics of the economy, as well as extrahemispheric actors, are already addressed in other chapters. That leaves a focus on crime, drug trafficking, and corruption, but also considered is climate change, which the Organization of American States keeps front and center.

Focusing on Colombia’s “Democratic Security Taxes,” Chapter 4 is the first of four case studies illustrating causal logic of elite taxation in the adoption of security taxes. Since 2002, the government in that country has adopted a series of taxes on the wealthy to address a deplorable public-safety situation. The revenue from the taxes has played a central role in funding efforts considered successful in reducing violent crime. With a historically difficult conflict and traditional set of elites, Colombia is a least likely case in which elites would have become invested in financing the strengthening of the state. Moreover, with the approval of elite-funded security taxes on multiple occasions across administrations, the Colombian case allows us to study the conditions under which this investment in state building becomes sustained over time.

Since the nineteenth century, Colombia has experienced diverse, complex and mutually reinforcing forms of political and criminal violence. The ubiquity of such egregious violence in Colombia has led scholars to attest to its ‘banal’, ordinary quality. Colombia has further been characterised as a country of ‘permanent’ and endemic ‘warfare’, typified by three stages of war and violence. Firstly, a long and violent nineteenth century, shaped by civil wars between elites throughout the country. Secondly, La Violencia during the mid-twentieth century, a period of mass violence moulded by a combination of anarchy, peasant insurgency and official terror, the most evident motor of which was the viscerally hostile fracture between the Conservative and Liberal parties, which resulted in approximately 300,000 killings. Finally, a third cycle of violence imposed by Colombia’s Cold War armed conflict. The armed conflict between the Colombian state, guerrilla insurgencies and paramilitary organisations, within which cartel violence played an increasingly decisive role, began in the 1960s and is ongoing at the time of writing, boasting a homicide rate akin to La Violencia. The aim of this chapter is to understand the role of terrorism and terrorist violence within the historical context of political violence in Colombia.