Walking Ghost Summary

Steven Dudley in his book, Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerilla Politics in Colombia, seeks to explain the internal political issues of what has been considered to be the earliest and most promising democracy of the Latin American region. In his book, the author delineates the process by which political upheaval has been able to inject itself into the social and political schedules of the country. Unlike many other cases involving genocide, Colombia has been part of what seems to be an eternal political genocide. Based on information provided by the author, one can conclude that the war, which the Colombian government is currently attempting to defeat, was in fact triggered by its own inept decisions of the past. Although very complex, the

In the 1940’s, Colombia faced a civil war called, “La Violencia”, those at war were the two leading political parties, conservatives and liberals, over political eminence. The two parties settled a compromise to share power, yet these two groups saw a potential threat in the communist party whom at the time was very small and not influential. As Dudley notes, “the adversary made violence its strategy, and the communist fell right into its trap responding with the same strategy as the enemy” (Dudley 21). The communist party adopted “la combinacion de todas las formas de lucha” as the strategy to combat the government’s brutal use of force; this strategy was a combination of political campaigns held in the cities and war as a means of defending themselves in the rural areas. Rather than eradicating communism, the government’s actions helped strengthen the party’ capabilities as their popularity and defiance against the government began to grow. From such growth, new guerilla and nongovernmental organizations, that later split from their original intends, were

Dudley, described these people as martyrs or walking ghost. These walking ghosts were former or current members of mainly the Communist party, and the UP, but also of the FARC, and the M19, whom were targets of the government hired paramilitary groups. Having said this, it is evident that the cleansing of people was occurring, not necessarily based on ethnicity, as they all were ethnically identical, but cleansing based on political inclination. Innocent civilians whom were suspected to support any leftist political party or group were executed without formal evidence. Moreover, one can argue that in fact these people were not being moved or contained from an area or the government but exterminated, making this a political genocide. “The goal wasn’t just to kill the enemy but to wipe it from the earth completely, to destroy the idea that it had ever existed” (Dudley, 6). Later citing, “They called it a “cleanup,” and its targets were Communist Party members and suspected FARC collaborators” (Dudley,