Nolan Publishes Article Exploring Colombia’s Truth Commission Report
In a new article in the London Review of Books, Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, explores the final report of Colombia’s Truth Commission.
In her article, Nolan outlines Colombia’s long-running domestic conflict, the political and criminal activities that shaped it, the impact of drugs on accelerating the violence, the contents of the Commission’s report, and the fallout from the report’s release, which details the atrocities committed against various Colombians. While other truth commissions in places like Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador, Nolan argues that Colombia’s is more promising as it contains a full account of the violence perpetrated in the country over the past sixty years; however, there are still forces at work that would undermine this pursuit of truth and acceptance.
An excerpt:
Truth commissions tend to favour individual testimony, and individual redress, rather than dealing with larger issues. As Greg Grandin argued in the American Historical Review in 2005, this approach – with the notable exception of Guatemala – is directly at odds with the collective demands that led the left to take up arms in the first place. The Colombian report is different: it is both a full, if messy, historical account and a real attempt to reckon with the power differentials and societally destructive financial interests at the root of the conflict…The convergence of the Truth Commission report with a leftward swing in the country’s politics, and those of the continent, creates an opening, not just to end the drug war in its current form, but to make more sweeping changes
The full article can be read on the London Review of Books‘ website.
Rachel Nolan is a historian of modern Latin America. Her research focuses on political violence, Central American civil wars, childhood and the family, historical memory, and U.S.-Latin American relations. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of international adoption from Guatemala. Read more about Professor Nolan on her faculty profile.