Resisting colonial state crime: The experience of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó

Abstract

This article suggests that the impunity of crimes of the powerful in the Global South must be understood in terms of a continuity of colonial state crime. To arrive at this argument, the article deploys a case study of the experience of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in Colombia: a campesino community that, in the context of institutionalised impunity for the atrocities committed against its members, broke off relations with Colombia’s justice system. By reflecting upon opposing narratives surrounding this rupture, the article seeks to better understand the survivors’ perspective in a context where narratives of the historically marginalised tend to be occluded by legalistic rationalities that normalise the crimes of the powerful. In so doing, however, the article seeks not to merely give a voice to subjugated knowledges but to mount a challenge to the capacity of legality (as embodied in TJ) in bringing about changes that can adequately address histories of violence. On the contrary, to address such dynamics, the article argues, we need to address the crimes of the powerful in their continuity with a colonial social order, wherein the dehumanisation of colonial subjects serves to rationalise the plunder of their territories.