Abstract
This chapter explores the nonviolent efforts by residents of the Colombian municipality of Samaniego to limit armed actors’ abuses. Civilians in this locality engaged in a process of noncooperation, refusing to collaborate with all warring parties present in their territory. We analyse this process using a typology of three forms of noncooperation—unilateral, pacted and oblique—and argue that, at the macro level, this case can be considered one of pacted noncooperation as it combined civil resistance with negotiation. However, when looking within the case and exploring its evolution, we find that the population complemented and reinforced this strategy with oblique and unilateral tactics. This combination helped civilians to sustain and strengthen their noncooperation efforts. By engaging in careful within-case analysis, this chapter provides a nuanced understanding of the Samaniego campaign and shows that types of noncooperation are not fixed over time and tactics are not mutually exclusive.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
To our best knowledge, the first scholar to use the term “noncooperation” in the context of civil war was Pedro Valenzuela (2001, 2009) in his analysis of neutrality in the context of internal armed conflicts. Ana Arjona (2010) followed suit in her study of social order in civil war. Later, Arjona (2017) and Masullo (2017a) conceptualized the term more carefully. Masullo (2017b) theorized the conditions under which it is more likely to emerge and the forces behind variations in form.
- 2.
Note that civilian responses that negatively affect armed groups by opposing them can also be violent, for example taking the form of vigilante groups. See Masullo (2017a) and Jentzsch et al. (2015). In this case, though, civilians may lose their status of noncombatants or, at least, fall into a grey zone between civilians and combatants.
- 3.
Civilian agency has been recently stressed also in the context of “communal war”, a setting in which it is reasonable to expect civilian collective action to be highly unlikely (Krause 2018). While not necessarily focusing on oppositional forms of civilian noncooperation, Krause shows that organized communities in Nigeria and Indonesia adapted and responded to “communal war” and helped prevent the eruption of violence in some areas.
- 4.
The difference between the two understandings might come from the fact that, while Arjona focuses on resistance against the rule of one armed actor in territories where it has dominant control (e.g., Arjona 2015), Masullo’s work focuses on situations where multiple armed actors are present and none exerts dominant control over the territory (see Masullo 2017). As we will see in the empirical section, the situation of Samaniego resembles more this second scenario.
- 5.
It might seem odd to combine the idea of “refusing to cooperate” with those of “dialoguing”, “negotiating” and “pacting” into one concept. In this regard, it is important to stress that what civilians negotiate with armed groups are mechanisms and procedures to govern their communities in a way that allows them to continue with their lives without providing support to any armed faction. In other words, civilians pact their way out of the armed conflict. These pacts do not involve agreeing on specific forms of civilian support. The dialogues are premised on the non-negotiable decision to refuse to provide any form of support to any warring party. For an illustrative example of pacted mechanisms which do not involve cooperation in another Colombian community, see Kaplan (2013) and Hernández and Roa (in this volume).
- 6.
For a detailed presentation of this typology and discussion of each of the types, see Masullo (2017a).
- 7.
- 8.
See ELN declaration at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-HMjZUEH1s (accessed January 29, 2018). See AUC declaration at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTo9DFC6keI (accessed January 29, 2018).
- 9.
See video of the High Commissioner for Peace’s speech endorsing the local peace pact during his visit to Samaniego on December 27, 2006, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnlW7_5wi9s (accessed January 29, 2018).
- 10.
See video about the release at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvK1IyDqvk (accessed December 18, 2017).
- 11.
The system of cabildos (councils) was established during the colonial period to rule over delimited indigenous territories.
- 12.
Declaration of Samaniego adopted by Nariño communities, municipalities of Samaniego and Santacruz, Sande, Guachavez and Mountain region indigenous reserves, and Minga por la Paz de Nariño on 26 February 2017.
- 13.
See the declaration of the government at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPgAiFlvx8 (accessed January 29, 2018). See the ELN declaration at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkDVZE2cgjU (accessed January 29, 2018).
References
Alcaldía de Samaniego. c2000. Plan Básico de Ordenamiento. Territorial: Samaniego Territorio de Paz.
Arjona, Ana. 2010. Social Order in Civil War. Unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
———. 2015. Civilian Resistance to Rebel Governance. In Rebel Governance, ed. Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir, and Zachariah Cherian Mampilly, 180–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2016. Rebelocracy: Social Order in the Colombian Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2017. Civilian Cooperation and Non-Cooperation with Non-State Armed Groups: The Centrality of Obedience and Resistance. Small Wars and Insurgencies 28 (4–5): 755–778. https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2017.1322328.
Declaración de Samaniego [Declaration of Samaniego]. 2017.
Diario del Sur. 1998a, January 23. Declaran a Samaniego territorio de paz y libertad. Diario del Sur.
———. 1998b, de enero 26. Samaniego cambió rostro de guerra por el de la paz. Diario del Sur.
———. 2006, December 12. Guerrilla anuncia desminado y liberación de dos policías. Diario del Sur.
———. 2017, July 26. Se inicia desminado en Nariño: Los pasos para llegar al desminado humanitario. Diario del Sur.
El Tiempo. 2006, December 12. Eln propone desminado de cuatro veredas en Samaniego (Nariño). El Tiempo.
Finnegan, Amy C., and Susan G. Hackley. 2008. Negotiation and Nonviolent Action: Interacting in the World of Conflict. Negotiation Journal 24 (1): 7–24.
Garrido, María Belén, Cécile Mouly, and Annette Idler. 2016. Jiu jitsu en contexto de conflicto armado: el poder de la resistencia no violenta. Ciudad Paz Ando 9 (2): 155–167. https://doi.org/10.14483/udistrital.jour.cpaz.2016.2.a10.
Hallward, Maia, Juan Masullo, and Cécile Mouly. 2017. Civil Resistance in Armed Conflict: Leveraging Nonviolent Action to Navigate War, Oppose Violence and Confront Oppression. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 12 (3): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2017.1376431.
Jentzsch, Corinna, Stathis N. Kalyvas, and Livia Isabella Schubiger. 2015. Militias in Civil Wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution 59 (5): 755–769. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002715576753.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2003. The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars. Perspectives on Politics 1 (3): 475–494. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592703000355.
———. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, Oliver. 2013. Protecting Civilians in Civil War: The Institution of the ATCC in Colombia. Journal of Peace Research 50 (3): 351–367.
———. 2017. Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krause, Jana. 2018. Resilient Communities: Non-Violence and Civilian Agency in Communal War. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lázaro, Jorge Luis. 2010. Iniciativas locales de paz: el caso del gobierno municipal de Samaniego 2004–2007. In El tránsito hacia la paz: de las herramientas nacionales a las locales, ed. Camila de Gamboa, 241–261. Bogotá: Universidad del Rosario.
Mampilly, Zachariah. 2011. Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life During War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Masullo, Juan. 2015. The Power of Staying Put: Nonviolent Resistance against Armed Groups in Colombia. Washington, DC: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
———. 2017a. Refusing to Cooperate with Armed Groups: Civilian Agency, Noncooperation and Selfprotection in Civil War. Paper presented at the OCV Seminar, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
———. 2017b. A Theory of Civilian Noncooperation with Armed Groups. Civilian Agency and Self-Protection in the Colombian Civil War. Unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute.
Mitchell, Christopher, and Landon Hancock. 2007. Local Zones of Peace and a Theory of Sanctuary. In Zones of Peace, ed. Landon Hancock and Christopher Mitchell, 189–221. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian.
Mitchell, Christopher, and Sara Ramírez. 2009. Local Peace Communities in Colombia: An Initial Comparison of Three Cases. In Colombia: Building Peace in a Time of War, ed. Virginia M. Bouvier, 245–270. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.
Mitchell, Christopher, and Catalina Rojas. 2012. Against the Stream: Colombian Zones of Peace under Democratic Security. In Local Peacebuilding and National Peace: Interaction Between Grassroots and Elite Processes, ed. Christopher Mitchell and Landon Hancock, 39–67. London: Continuum.
Montúfar, Harold. 2007. Árbol de la waycosidad 3. Pasto: Districomputo.
Mouly, Cécile, and Jaime Giménez. 2017. Oportunidades y desafíos del uso del patrimonio cultural inmaterial en la construcción de paz en el posconflicto. Implicaciones para Colombia. Estudios Políticos 50: 281–302. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.espo.n50a15.
Mouly, Cécile, Annette Idler, and María Belén Garrido. 2015. Zones of Peace in Colombia’s Borderlands. International Journal of Peace Studies 20 (1): 51–63.
Mouly, Cécile, María Belén Garrido, and Annette Idler. 2016. How Peace Takes Shape Locally: The Experience of Civil Resistance in Samaniego, Colombia. Peace & Change 41 (2): 127–162. https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12184.
Parra, Dison. 1998, January 24. Samaniego pide callar los cañones, El Tiempo. Accessed http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-766813.
Rojas, Catalina. 2007. Islands in the Stream: A Comparative Analysis of Zones of Peace Within Colombia’s Civil War. In Zones of Peace, ed. Hancock Landon and Christopher Mitchell, 71–89. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian.
Rosen, Noah. 2017. Generating Leverage in Tough Cases: Comparing Hong Kong and East Timor. Paper presented at the 58a Convención Anual de la Asociación de Estudios Internacionales (ISA), Baltimore, Estados Unidos.
Salcedo, Mauro. 1998, January 23. Samaniego cambiará su historia, El Espectador.
Schock, Kurt. 2013. The Practice and Study of Civil Resistance. Journal of Peace Research 50 (3): 277–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343313476530.
———. 2015. Civil Resistance Today. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Seidel, Timothy. 2017. ‘We Refuse to Be Enemies’: Political Geographies of Violence and Resistance in Palestine. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 12 (3): 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2017.1356235.
Sharp, Gene. 1973a. The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Part 1): Power and Struggle. Vol. 1. Boston: Porter Sargent.
———. 1973b. The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Part 2): The Methods of Nonviolent Action. Vol. 2. Boston: Porter Sargent.
Stanley, Bruce. 2017. The City-Logic of Resistance: Subverting Urbicide in the Middle East City. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development 12 (3): 10–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/15423166.2017.1348251.
Valenzuela, Pedro. 2001. Conflicto armado, neutralidad y no violencia: Experiencias desde la base. In Colombia ante los retos del Siglo XXI: Desarrollo, democracia y paz, ed. Manuel Alcántara, 239–248. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.
———. 2009. Neutrality in Internal Armed Conflicts: Experiences at the Grassroots Level in Colombia. Uppsala: Uppsala University.
Verdad abierta. 2017, February 25. En Nariño quieren reactivar Pacto Local de Paz. Verdad abierta.
Wanis-St. John, Anthony, and Noah Rosen. 2017. Negotiating Civil Resistance. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace.
Acknowledgements
We thank our interviewees for sharing with us many valuable insights and are grateful for the generous support provided by FLACSO Ecuador for the three research projects that allowed us to collect our data for this chapter. We presented a previous version of this chapter at the 2018 Annual Convention of the International Studies Association (ISA) in San Francisco and the 2018 FLACSO-ISA Conference in Quito. We thank participants and, in particular, our discussants Sebastián Bitar, Oliver Kaplan and Pedro Valenzuela, for useful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Masullo, J., Mouly, C., Garrido, M.B. (2019). Alternative Forms of Civilian Noncooperation with Armed Groups: The Case of Samaniego in Colombia. In: Mouly, C., Hernández Delgado, E. (eds) Civil Resistance and Violent Conflict in Latin America. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05033-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05033-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05032-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05033-7
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)