The ‘pacification’ and ‘territorial peace’ in Urabá as spatial logics of peace

Abstract

This article analyzes the formation of two spatial logics of peace, based on research results in the Urabá region (Colombia). It begins by reviewing the historical formation of a spatial logic of peace that associated Urabá with a border region that should be subject to pacification to give way to the materialization of the capitalist hegemonic order and inclusion in the territory of the nation state. The article then analyzes some spatial arrangements that underlie the spatial logic of ‘territorial peace’ that emerged with the governmental perspective of implementation of the Peace Agreement, and that overlaps that logic of hegemonic pacification. Based on a methodological strategy that articulates the case study and multilocal ethnography, it is concluded that territorial peace has a state and normative version that does not exceed the logic of pacification. However there is another territorial peace that is configured as an antagonistic political project and enhances the capacities of the actors, but that finds limitations in the face of the deepening of the socio-spatial imbalances derived from the reconfiguration of the armed conflict, the fragmented presence of the State and legal and illegal economic interventions.