Forgotten Peace: Reform, Violence, and the Making of Contemporary Colombia (Violence in Latin American History)

Violence in Latin American History

by Robert A. Karl

Forgotten Peace examines Colombian society’s attempt to move beyond the Western Hemisphere’s worst mid-century conflict and shows how that effort molded notions of belonging and understandings of the past. Robert A. Karl reconstructs encounters between government officials, rural peoples, provincial elites, and urban intellectuals during a crucial conjuncture that saw reformist optimism transform into alienation. In addition to offering a sweeping reinterpretation of Colombian history—including the most detailed account of the origins of the FARC insurgency in any language—Karl provides a Colombian vantage on global processes of democratic transition, development, and memory formation in the 1950s and 1960s. Broad in scope, Forgotten Peace challenges contemporary theories of violence in Latin America.

Genres: History

338 pages, Hardcover

Published March 28, 2017

Reviews

[Richard McColl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Karl's book in preparation for a radio interview with the author, and as someone who lives, works and studies in Colombia I found it to be insightful, in-depth and very digestible. For anyone wishing to really understand contemporary Colombia, this isn't a bad place to start at all. There are fascinating investigations revealed here which go a long way to explaining how the political drama of the Colombian conflict has played out in the way it has.

[Cruz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book on an overlooked period of Colombian history! I'm researching the 2016 Peace Accord and its implementation, there is so much in this book that helps to understand the historical context and how the forgotten peace has shaped Colombia's politics today.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really good book. Karl re-interprets the foundational period of "la Violencia" in Colombia and its role in the creation of the FARC and the civil war of the last 50 years through careful documentary analysis. He focuses on a number of key political and academic figures to frame the story, and manages to make the academic writing much like a story. I was really interested in his argument about the crucial existence of the criollo paz before the National Front and how the prior experience with peace-building implicitly reflects on the peace process today. Highly recommend for anyone interested in Colombia; not sure it's accessible enough for the uninitiated.

[Kelly · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an academic book through-and-through. Not knowing anything about the subject, I was looking forward to learning about the recent history of Colombia. I was disappointed—not because the author isn’t knowledgeable (or capable) of informing general readers, but because he clearly wrote with a different audience in mind: an academic one. It is a well-worn (if snarky) canard that academic writing principally strives to hide ignorance, rather than impart wisdom. In this case, that canard feels true. Time and time again I re-read passages only to conclude that the author had used a great deal of language to say virtually nothing. I did walk away with a hazy sense of what happened in Colombian society in the second half of the twentieth century, but nothing more than that. It’s was a tough slog.

[German Chaparro · Rating 4 out of 5]

La edición en español tiene la introducción a manera de posfacio, entiendo que para mejorar la legibilidad del libro. Sin embargo, pienso que habría sido mejor dejar un trozo de la introducción original a manera de breve introducción para esta edición, dejando los detalles académicos para el posfacio. Como está escrito, tuve que ir develando las principales ideas del libro a medida que lo iba leyendo, para comprobar al final del libro (como en examen) si había acertado o no.

5 estrellas, pero le quito una por tomar la decisión apresurada de mover la introducción al final (en la edición en español)

[Valencia W · Rating 5 out of 5]

To learn about the FARC. This book is all you need.

Comprehensive and well written for both students and professionals alike. This book goes into the details of the history of the FARC