Abstract

SUAREZ, Andrés Fernando. Ideology, community leadership and paramilitary governance. The experience of social development promoters in Urabá. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2023, vol.46, n.2, pp.235-264.  Epub May 15, 2024. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v46n2/95769.

This article describes and analyzes the relationship between ideology and paramilitary governance through the experience of the social development promoters (PDS) that operated in the north of the Urabá region between 1999 and 2006. Based on the content analysis of the manuals from the organization and the in-depth interviews with the paramilitary chiefs of the Elmer Cárdenas Front of the AUC, it is established how the paramilitary ideology was reproduced in the discourses and practices of a governance mechanism based on an appropriation and reinterpretation of community leadership. This ideological imprint was revealed in the profile, in the training, in the affiliation, and in the actions of the new community leaders, which are contrasted with experiences of guerrilla governance with a community stamp to verify the differentiation. This analysis fills a gap in the development of the rebel governance approach applied to the paramilitaries, which hardly recognizes the development of community mechanisms to understand their territorial control.

Keywords : community leadership; governance; ideology; paramilitarism; promoters of social development.

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