! © 2017 Juan Pablo Vera Lugo ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ! THE HUMANITARIAN STATE: BUREAUCRACY AND SOCIAL POLICY IN COLOMBIA BY JUAN PABLO VERA LUGO A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillments to the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Anthropology Written under the direction of Professor Daniel Goldstein An approved by _________________________ __________________________ __________________________ __________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey MAY 2017 ! ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION THE HUMANITARIAN STATE: SOCIAL POLICY AND BUREAUCRACY IN COLOMBIA By JUAN PABLO VERA LUGO Dissertation Director: Daniel Goldstein The thesis explores the relationship between international human rights law and the formation of public and private bureaucratic systems in Colombia. Through an ethnographic study of the methods, tools, and mechanisms involved in the implementation of public policy related to victim and land reparation, the dissertation accounts for the statatalization of human rights as well as how these gradually become a part of public social policy. Through the study of diverse institutional and non- institutional settings at different levels within Colombian state bureaucracy, the research demonstrates how civil servants, functionaries, experts and policy clients produce and reproduce specific notions of statehood. More specifically, the research reveals how these civil servants, functionaries, experts and policy clients produce and reproduce in their everyday practices, socio-spatial and epistemological hierarchies such as the “nation-territory” divide. Through a description of how the historical ! ii! ! formation of Colombian institutions and systems of bureaucracy are fixed in specific time and spatial configurations (framed within the construction of local administrative and political notions), and how they are produced and reproduced by civil servants, experts and users of the policy, the study explains how global narratives related to humanitarian aid, philanthropy, and development remain trapped in the reproduction of local bureaucratic values, practices, and socio-spatial representations. ! iii! ! Acknowledgments Writing this dissertation and making it through the graduate program would not have been possible without the support and love of many people. In particular, I want to thank my advisor Daniel Goldstein for his support and belief in my research throughout the last few years. I also want to thank the wonderful committee members Ulla Berg, Aldo Civico and Carol Greenhouse. I offer to all of them my infinite gratitude. I would like to thank my dearest friends Tatiana Andia, Julio Arias, Alejandra Azuero, Carlos del Cairo, Alejandro Feged, Denise Ganitsky, Jefferson Jaramillo Everaldo Lamprea, Miguel Millán, Laura Rico, Angela Rivas, and Esteban Rozo. Their intellectual endeavors, as well as their commitment to their disciplines and professions, has been an example to me my entire life. Some of them read and commented on the following pages. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generosity of the people I met in Bogota, Valledupar and other Colombian localities. In particular, I would like to extend my gratitude to Margarita Gonzalez, who introduced me to the humanitarian bureaucracy and shared with me her ideas, hopes and frustrations. I also want to thank the Victims Board representatives and others outside these institutional channels who I had the pleasure to meet during fieldwork throughout Colombia. Their stories are an impressive picture of the innate moral values of late liberal capitalism. I have not attempted to retell their stories, as I simply couldn’t. Instead, I have attempted to tell the story of the institutions that allegedly cares for them. I want to give a special mention to Valentina Herazo, who gave me my first assignment at La Unidad, and led me to wonder what an institutional ethnography ! iv! ! would be like, and to Paula Gaviria who was very generous and open to my research. Others I am deeply grateful to are: Carolina Albornóz, Lina Toro, Carolina Suarez, Maria Eugenia Morales, Betty Monzón, Dolly Mosquera, Elizabeth Páez, Jose Luis Cotes, Margarita Gil, Alejandra Bernal, Alejandra Barrera, Simón Gonzalez and Francisco Vargas. Many of these people became my friends. Also, I extend a special thank you to Nathalie Mendez and Ana Maria Ramirez at the NCHM, to Angela Rivas, Carolina Garzón, Adriana Gómez, Elissa Goucem, Catalina Martinez, Esteban Parada at FIP, and Lina Moreno at MAPP-OEA. I would also like to thank Luis Emil Sanabria and Luis Sandoval at REDEPAZ for their inspiring faith in peace in Colombia –an “emotional cause” as Luis Sandoval usually says. I hope that this moment in history is something similar to what they have dreamed of their entire life. For me, it is still astonishing to watch FARC guerrilla members’ crossing Colombia to leave their arms behind. REDEPAZ and Colombian society will face major challenges in the coming years. I hope this work helps, even if just to a small degree, with encouraging reflection upon the risks of foster social transformation by solely having faith on institutional changes. I also want to thank Ana Guglielmucci, Daniel Chaparro, Paula Rodriguez and Margarita Gonzalez for listening to me and my boring notes about Colombian institutions, as well as for their patience and conversation. I´m grateful to Niamh Harnet, Denise Ganitsky and Laura Rico who helped me with the revision of the text, and Maria Angelica Contreras for helping me to transcribe and classify the long interviews. I extend a special thanks to my professors Ulla Berg, Parvis Ghassem- Fachandi, Daniel Goldstein, David Hughes, Dorothy Hodgson, and Yarimar Bonilla at ! v! ! Rutgers, and Carol Greenhouse and Elizabeth Davis at Princeton, with whom I have had the opportunity to read and discuss amazing pieces of our wonderful discipline. I also want to express my gratitude for the support of my fellow friends at Rutgers: Donna Auston, Siad Darwish, Deniz Daser, Assaf Harel, Enrique Jaramillo, Trsitan Jones, Meghana Joshi, Kartikeya Saboo, Michael Allen, Senem Kaptan, Marlaina Martin and Padmini Iyer. I miss our conversations, your outstanding intelligence, your passion and all the love we shared. It goes without saying that my research would not have been possible without the funding of the following institutions: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana´s funding, Colombian Institute for the Development of Sciences (COLCIENCIAS) “Francisco Jose ́ de Caldas” Grant, the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS) Fund Award, the Special Opportunities Award from the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, and the Bigel Pre-dissertation Fieldwork Award, from Rutgers Anthropology Department. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Rutgers University, where I always truly felt at home. I want to give a special mention to Lisa Tapiero at LASAPU and to S.J Gerardo Remolina, S.J. Jorge Umberto Pelaez, S.J. Luis Alfonso Castellanos, German Mejia, Carlos del Cairo, Concepción Romero and Rosmine Penagos at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. I would like to express my deep love and gratitude to Cata Martinez. She made my years at Highland Park and elsewhere really wonderful. Finally, I would like to thank my family in Bogota, my siblings for their unconditional support, and my parents who didn´t just give me the gift of life but also a passion to pursue. For this I have nothing to offer in return except my love and admiration. ! vi! ! Table of Contents ii Abstract Acknowledgments iv Introduction: Humanitarian Bureaucracy in Colombia 1 Humanitarianism and Development in Colombia 5 The Trans-Local Humanitarian State 11 Approaching Humanitarian Bureaucracy 15 Ethnographic Approach to Colombian Humanitarianism 20 Dissertation Plan 29 Chapter 1: Confronting Humanitarianism 33 Making Sense of Humanitarianism in Colombia 34 Conclusion 60 Chapter 2: The Emergence of the Humanitarian State in Colombia: Armed conflict, Development and Social Policy Since 1982 64 The Consolidation of the Humanitarian State 86 Conclusion 90 Chapter 3: Colombian Humanitarian Bureaucracy 92 From Researcher to Bureaucrat 98 Everyday Work at the Reparation Policy Program 101 Experts, Bureaucrats and the Production of Victimhood 107 Neoliberal Humanitarianism 117 The Micro-Practices of Humanitarian Governance 124 Conclusion 127 Chapter 4: Collective Reparation and Social Policy Experimentation 133 The Emergence of Collective Reparation 134 Collective Reparation Techno-Politics 140 A Day of Experimentation at the CRSD 147 Policy Clients, Technical Knowledge and the Politics of Care 154 Conclusion 167 ! vii! ! Chapter 5: Humanitarian Bureaucracy and the Production of the Nation- Territory Divide 174 A Previous Discussion 177 The Making of the Techno-Nation 183 “Nation-Territory” as Habit and Practice 191 The Ideological Dimensions of the Nation-Territory Divide 204 Conclusion 211 Chapter 6: Delivering Humanitarianism: Transitional Jurisdictions and Moral Sentiments in Colombia 216 The Aesthesis of Transitional Justice 218 The gifts of Reparation 233 Conclusion 246 Chapter 7: Towards an Ethnography of the Possible, Democratic 250 Imagination and Peace Democratic Memory as New History 254 Peace as not-yet 257 The Future as an Ethnographic Problem: Contributions to Transitional Justice People’s Congress and Democratic Experimentation 260 Peace Initiatives, Democracy and Citizenship Building