Production Conditions of a kidnapping-testimonial literature boom in Colombia

• Published in: Revista colombiana de sociología Vol. 40; no. 1; pp. 161 - 186
• Main Author: Romero Leal, Karen Lorena
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Spanish
• Published: Bogota Universidad Nacional de Colombia 01-01-2017
• Subjects: 21st century; Armed forces; Conflict; Drug trafficking; farc; Gobierno de Álvaro Uribe; Guerrilla forces; Humanitarianism; industria editorial; Journalists; Kidnapping; literatura testimonial; Literature; medios de comunicación; Memory; Military personnel; Noncitizens; Peace; Police; Public opinion; Publishing industry; secuestro; Sociocultural factors; Testimony; Colombia
• ISSN: 0120-159X; 2256-5485
• DOI: 10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61957

In Colombia, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was a rise of kidnapping testimonial literature whose authors were politicians, members of the Armed Forces and foreigners involved in the fight against drug trafficking. Theyconstituted a group commonly known as “the exchangeables” since their captivity responded to a strategy of the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established during the Caguan peace negotiations (1998-2002) to kidnap publicfigures, soldiers and police in order to press for a humanitarian exchange. The article aims to outline the conditions of production of a boom in kidnapping testimonial literature by these “exchangeables” in the political and media context of Colombia between 2002 and 2010, and the close relationship of the global publishing industry with the publication of testimony, widely disseminated internationally. The main analytical assumptionof this work is that the testimonial texts are cultural constructions framed in a specific social and cultural context of production and respond to the way society is symbolically organized. Along with this, it is necessary to understand how the rise of memory induces cultural products turned towards the past that reveal traumaticevents in the history of the armed conflict in Colombia. The methodology consisted of a review of written primary and secondary sources and interviews with journalists and experts of the publishing world to establish a production context of testimonial booksconsidered cultural objects. One of the main findings was that the rise of kidnapping testimonial literature by the “exchangeables” was a response to the ideological climate of the country under PresidentAlvaro Uribe, a period in which the farc became the enemy of the nation; therefore, the testimony denouncing their crimes echoed massively in privately owned media and in general in Colombian public opinion.