Imperfect peace in the context of armed political conflict in Colombia

Abstract

In order to understand the dimension of structural conflict that has generated so much violence in our country, determine and specify the moments and episodes of political obstruction of bipartisanship as a hegemonic model of government, and to determine the moments of construction of a new concept of peace as imperfect peace, it is necessary to explain the political and social dynamics, and the dynamics of production, which have historically made it possible for a dichotomic relationship to be expressed: violence-bipartisanship. This relationship has been a determining factor in the political development of the life in this country and one of the constitutive factors of violent social conflicts and political exclusion. In a special way, this relationship of violence and bipartisanship has become a major obstacle for the advance of the so-called autonomous third-party forces. Additionally, it has contributed to the marginality and elimination of these forces. In this sense, the contribution of this article is to establish that on the basis of the concept of imperfect peace and of the relationship between violence and bipartisanship, it is also possible, from another ontological and epistemological perspective, to establish a new concept of peace which would make it possible, from that point, to propose a new characterization of political third parties based on political pacts and, particularly, on the pact of the National Front in 1958, and of the Constitutional Pact of 1990.