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Jasmin Hristov , Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism: Violent Systems of Capital Accumulation in Colombia and Beyond (London : Pluto Press , 2014), xviii + 217, £60.00; $85.00, hb.
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Massive violence exerted by paramilitary groups has been a gruesome feature of Colombia's protracted armed conflict. Particularly in the past 30 years, paramilitary atrocities have critically affected small farmers, human rights defenders, community and labour leaders, and leftist intellectuals and politicians. But who and what are the paramilitaries and how did they emerge as key players in the armed conflict? Which sectors of Colombian society are supporting them? Why has the state not confronted them or, worse, has acted in collusion with them? Was the demobilisation of the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) some ten years ago a farce, leading to the transformation of the paramilitary groups but not to their extinction? These and other related questions have exercised and tormented many minds in the past decades, both in Colombia and abroad. But finding cogent and persuasive answers remains work in progress.
In Paramilitarism and Neoliberalism, Jasmin Hristov seeks to contribute to the debate by employing a 'Marxist political economy perspective to explore the role of violence in processes of capital accumulation, dispossession and the exacerbation of social inequalities' (p. 1). Her central claim is that in Colombia (and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean) 'paramilitarism' forms the economic and political foundation for these violent processes. 'While multiple forms of and motives for violence are...