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Political Science Caribbean & Latin American

Blood and Capital

The Paramilitarization of Colombia

by (author) Jasmin Hristov

Publisher
Between the Lines
Initial publish date
May 2009
Category
Caribbean & Latin American, General, South America
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781897071502
    Publish Date
    May 2009
    List Price
    $29.95

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Description

In Blood and Capital: The Paramilitarization of Colombia, Jasmin Hristov examines the complexities, dynamics, and contradictions of present-day armed conflict in Colombia. She conducts an in-depth inquiry into the restructuring of the state’s coercive apparatus and the phenomenon of paramilitarism by looking at its military, political, and legal dimensions.

Documenting the penetration of major state institutions by right-wing armed groups and the persistence of human rights violations against social movements and sectors of the low-income population, Blood and Capital raises crucial questions about the promised dismantling of paramilitarism and the validity of the so-called demobilization of paramilitary groups, both of which have been widely considered by North American and some European governments as proof of current Colombian president Álvaro Uribe’s advances in the wars on terror and drugs.

About the author

 

Jasmin Hristov is an advanced PhD candidate in sociology at York University, Toronto. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, Journal of Peasant Studies, Social Justice, and Latin American Perspectives.

 

Jasmin Hristov's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Hristov presents a disturbing picture of a nation that exercises almost total control over the daily lives of its citizens–a situation that has resulted in one of the world’s highest populations of forcibly displaced people, a 65% poverty rate (with some 10 million homeless), and a police apparatus in which torture is the norm…Copies of Blood and Capital certainly belong on the Prime Minister’s reading list, and would no doubt be helpful to those Canadian business executives who remain clueless about (or willfully blind to) the human costs of high returns on Colombian investment.

Quill & Quire