The Paradoxes of Transition: Experiencing Truth and Telling in Former AUC Combatants

Abstract

Between 2003 and 2006, thanks to a peace process carried out by Álvaro Uribe Velez’s government, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) demobilized. The compliance to truth, justice and reparation laws identified a small number of people who were considered as the main agents of the paramilitary committed crimes. However, years later, due to the complexities of the judicial processes thousands of former AUC members remained in a delayed compliance to these agreements. This article approaches these people's  experiences from an ethnographic perspective. It focuses, in particular, on these people's experiences under the established mechanisms to demand their contribution to the truth.