FARC’s legal field: an approximation to guerrilla justice practices

Abstract

The relationship between FARC guerrilla and the civil population is commonly expressed in terms of military dominance, and this limits the understanding of the phenomenon concerning other features, as the political and legal connections between both actors. This article proposes a reading on the legal dimension of this guerrilla group’s presence in the South of the country following Pierre Bordieu’s concept of legal field. With this aim, a two-part qualitative approach was followed: a collection of secondary forces to historically reconstruct the phenomenon, and the conduction of semi-structured interviews and field non participant observations to contrast with the collected information. The results point to the monopoly of the legitimate use of force enjoyed by FARC in this peripheral zone of the country and to oral practices in the legal system which allow them to regulate the social life of the population and on the basis of predominantly conservative, military, and economic values.