Colombia and the Names of “the Political”. Populism, Violence(s) and Gaitanismo

Abstract

　

The Violence refers to a name that colombian historiography has given to the period after the assassination of a liberal politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán on 9 April 1948. But violence also relates to a concept which involves debates about the colombian historical experience since the mid-forties to the present day. During the seventies and eighties this concept began to be juxtaposed to the question of populism in Colombia. What kind of disputes and articulations occurred in the political and intellectual field between the notion of populism and the "Violence(s)"? Which modalities assumed the representation of the figure of the people? And how the "gaitanismo" was resignified during these years? Those are some of the questions that will guide the following analysis. To do this, we will focus on the approach of three pioneers sociological and historical studies in which the representations of the Violence(s), populism and gaitanismo were imbricated to think forms of constitution of "the political".