See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/331790865

Phantasmatic Entities and Identities: Criminals without Guilt in Colombia

Article  in  Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies · March 2019

DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2019.1570915

CITATION READS

1 48

1 author:

Maria Victoria Uribe

Universidad del Rosario
28 PUBLICATIONS   156 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Representacion y autorepresentacion de las FARC. View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Maria Victoria Uribe on 15 March 2019.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies
Travesia

ISSN: 1356-9325 (Print) 1469-9575 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjla20

Phantasmatic Entities and Identities: Criminals

without Guilt in Colombia

María Victoria Uribe

To cite this article: María Victoria Uribe (2019): Phantasmatic Entities and Identities:
Criminals without Guilt in Colombia, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, DOI:
10.1080/13569325.2019.1570915

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1570915

Published online: 15 Mar 2019.

Submit your article to this journal

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cjla20
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2019
Vol. 0, No. 0, 1–12, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2019.1570915

Mar
ıa Victoria Uribe

PHANTASMATIC ENTITIES AND IDENTITIES:

CRIMINALS WITHOUT GUILT IN COLOMBIA

In this article, I examine some experiences drawn from the ethnographic fieldwork I
have done over many years in Colombia – a country that has endured a violent armed
conflict for over 60 years, leaving thousands of dead and disappeared – and discuss
some theoretical propositions around these experiences. Taking as a starting point an
obscure folk metaphor described by a hitman (sicario) in the emerald-mining region of
the country, I refer to the figure of the Phantom as put forward by French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in his Seminar 14 (‘The Logic of the Phantom/
Phantasm’), and to the figure of the masked wrestler of Mexican urban folklore. I
analyse the widespread use by Colombian criminals of performative resources and
alternate names, which allows them to fluctuate between legality and illegality without
assuming the consequences of their actions. Maintaining different phantasms to obscure
the secret pleasure they derive from their actions has been one of their ways of being in
the world. As I intend to show, this procedure enables some criminals to alternate
between different subjective positions in order to camouflage and conceal not only their
criminal acts but also the reality of their desires and their guilt.

Keywords: ethnography; oral history; Colombia; popular culture

Introduction

Colombia is like a huge puzzle, with a number of territories connected to the

national project, and others interspersed with large areas under the influence of
drug traffickers and armed groups fighting for territorial control. In these regions,
for over half a century several guerrilla and paramilitary groups, as well as criminal
enterprises, have contested both the territorial control of the state and its monop-
oly of violence. There, in the ‘underworld of the national space’, modern rational-
ity is a mirage and the darker side of the fundamental ideals of security and social
order comes to the fore (Serje 2005, 3–4). In spite of the deal reached between
the government and the FARC guerrilla in 2016, Colombia is far from having
overcome its structural violence. As is well known, after the defeat of the ‘YES’
campaign in the plebiscite held by the government of President Juan Manuel
Santos in October 2016, the peace agreements have faced many setbacks because a
good portion of the Colombian population does not endorse many of the
# 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

compromises reached with the guerrillas. At the same time, though, just as many
Colombians long for peace, and many efforts are being made to create the condi-
tions for the frequently touted reconciliation. In the midst of this turmoil, the
negotiation process has enabled us to learn more about and see under a new light
what happened during those sixty years of armed conflict.
In this text, I will review some experiences and theoretical propositions that
have defined my ethnographic fieldwork in Colombia. For more than 30 years, I
have conducted interviews with former outlaws, emerald traders, paramilitaries,
murderers, and sicarios, or paid assassins (Uribe 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008,
2004a, 2004b, 1996, 1990). Taking as a point of departure an obscure folk meta-
phor described in an interview by one sicario in the country’s emerald-mining
region (Uribe 1996) and an analysis of popular customs and sayings, in this article
I explore how these assassins manage evil by camouflaging it in the cloak of phan-
tasmatic entities and identities. Killers in Colombia often dream that they are
upstanding people. As a possible way of understanding how the mechanism works,
the words of the renowned lucha libre referee Lomel
ın, once directed at famous
Mexican wrestler ‘El Santo’, come to mind: ‘You have to be yourself and for that
you have to be someone else’. In Mexican lucha libre, the creation of the character
is embodied in the mask he wears, which mobilises a dream machine. When he
wears the mask, the wrestler underlines his singularity and at the same time takes
distance from his personal background and origins. Masks are the product of a
complex process of symbolic construction (Esquivel 2008). Something similar
seems to be at work in the criminal underworld in Colombia: for a criminal to be
himself, and at the same time be someone else, he resorts to aliases and alternate
names. By bringing up the figure of the masked wrestler I am not seeking to
address the question of which of these identities is real and which is not. I am
interested more in the person whose moral character can change so drastically
from one situation to the next, particularly as he battles between good and evil
within himself. It is not a matter of dual personalities, or of unleashing inner
demons. It might be related to the duality of human nature, usually expressed as
an inner struggle between good and evil. As I shall show in the following pages,
this procedure can enable criminals to alternate between different identities in
order to camouflage and hide not only their acts, but even more so the reality of
their desires and their guilt.

The two hearts

Some years ago, while conducting fieldwork in Colombia’s emerald-mining region,

I had a brief encounter with a young sicario. I wanted to interview him, but before
he even began to answer the questions that I tried to put to him, he took the
opportunity to tell me the following: ‘I’d like to have two hearts, one to deal
with good people and another to deal with filthy people (la gente puerca)’.
Surprised and taken aback by his jarring standpoint, and stalling for a moment
while I tried to take it in, I asked him who those ‘filthy people’ might be. He
responded: ‘People who don’t have any enemies, which makes them treacherous
 P H A N TA S M AT I C E N T I T I E S A N D I D E N T I T I E S 3

and dangerous’. The young sicario lamented that some people lacked a distinction
that is important to those who move in environments rife with illegality: the dif-
ference between loyalty and treachery (Uribe 1996).
In researching massacres carried out in Tolima during La Violencia,1 I analysed
how Liberal outlaws who were persecuted by Conservatives due to their political
affiliation imagined concepts of good and evil (Uribe 1990). Because of the perse-
cution to which they were subjected, Liberals felt stained, dirty, and contaminated,
which led them to construct alterities mediated by intense persecutory delusions.
Unable to verbalise their rage and aggressive outlook or to find a legal avenue
through which to seek justice, some Liberal peasant outlaws like ‘Chispas’, whose
given name was Te
ofilo Rojas, projected their destructive feelings onto an Other
through unconscious mechanisms, and transformed that Other into a depository for
their own hate, aggression, and rage (Boothby 1991). The Other, usually repre-
sented by masculine adversaries, became persecutors embodying pure evil, in a
process by which the Liberals projected their own evil onto them. They them-
selves, on the other hand, were always the good ones. Their leaders were kind
and protective; the booty was always divided up; and they were considered gener-
ous. All the acts of violence for which Liberals were responsible, even the most
atrocious, were seen by them as legitimate (Uribe 2004a).
I later discovered that the concept of the ‘two hearts’ was mentioned in a narco-
corrido,2 which I was unfortunately unable to listen to because the corridos written
by emerald traders (esmeralderos) were not widely distributed and were difficult to
find. But I took note of the metaphor of the two hearts and held it as a conceptual
gem, saving it for future use, firstly because it was so thought-provoking and sec-
ondly because I was sure that it was a valuable explanation for the criminal behav-
iour that so intrigued me. Years later, working on another research project, I
found compelling evidence that the logic of the two hearts is common to people
who live in a world of illegality and corruption: those who live by banditry, para-
militarism, drug trafficking, smuggling, in the underground economy, as hired kill-
ers, and, as a matter of fact, in cutthroat politics. This logic provides a very good
explanation for a phenomenon common to many Latin American societies, includ-
ing Colombia, that are pervaded by crime and poverty. In these societies, criminals
are often imbued with Catholicism, or more recently evangelical Protestantism.
During La Violencia (1948–1964), for example, most of the outlaw-combatants had
been baptised as Catholics and believed in omens and superstitions. To protect
themselves from the forces unleashed by their deeds, they carried images of saints,
often local religious icons such as the Virgen del Carmen or the Cristo Milagroso de
Buga, in addition to wearing scapulars and other miraculous medals in the form of
pendants or ankle bracelets. Some also had religious images tattooed on their
bodies. In more recent times, paramilitaries also used tattoos and religious symbols
to protect themselves from the consequences of their own evil acts.
Many of these criminals had been born into and raised within patriarchal family
structures where they had been taught in one way or another to distinguish, at
least in a rudimentary fashion, between good and evil. The patriarchal family
model imposes certain behavioural codes on boys and young men that demand a
forceful defence of their honour and aggressive behaviour in response to its
4 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

violation. Thus, in order to reconcile the code of legality that was inculcated in
them during their childhood with the illegality of their environment, and to avoid
being consumed by any remorse they may feel as a result of their transgressions,
criminal subjects must avoid any collision between the notions of good and evil
that coexist within themselves. Dealing with guilt in rural Catholic communities
distant from urban centres, where rigid patriarchal structures dominate and high
levels of family violence are common, constitutes a pragmatic problem. In these
communities, it is usual to find violent and authoritarian paternal figures, permis-
sive maternal figures, and male offspring who develop perverse and transgressive
forms of behaviour (Salazar 1990). These are the social figures and beliefs that nur-
ture the parallel existence of ‘two hearts’, a kind of functional schizophrenia that
allows criminals to fluctuate between legality and illegality without assuming the
consequences. Just as the sicario told me when referring to his two hearts, in the
world of organised crime a person who does not have any enemies does not know
to whom he ought to be loyal, while the one who does knows where his loyalties
lie. This guarantees that he does not betray those to whom he is answerable
because he knows the price to pay for doing so.3
In the interviews I conducted with paramilitaries and murderers subsequent to
my interview with the sicario referred to above, I was always aware that a person
can be both religiously devout and a vicious assassin, if the right hand is unaware
of what the left hand is doing. Or in the words of a popular saying often invoked
by criminals, someone can be simultaneously both, as long as one heart prays to
even the score and compensate for the sins of their other heart. Praying while sin-
ning seems to cancel out any moral condemnation in this context.

Resorting to phantasmatic objects

In his Seminar 14, ‘The Logic of the Phantasm’, Jacques Lacan mentions the par-
able of Zhuangzi and the butterfly to refer to the reality of desire, one of the cen-
tral topics of psychoanalysis.4 According to Lacan, subjects have a mechanism that
allows them to construct identities other than the identity that situates them within
the universal symbolic network, i.e. the identity by which they are widely known.
Thus, subjects construct phantasmatic objects that allow them to create alternate
identities to which they can attach themselves. There is a statement in Lacan’s text
that suggests a possible relation between phantasia and the phantasm, yet also
underscores that they are not to be confused. The phantasm differs from phantasia
in that the former has a compulsion to repetition. The problem arises when the
subject does not have a system of interdictions that sets an ethical limit to the act-
ing out of the phantasm. This is the point when, cynically, the individual justifies
violent acts on the grounds of the fundamentalism he inhabits. As Lacan notes,
‘there is no other entry for the subject into the real than the phantasy’ (Lacan
1999, 5).
This lack of an interdiction system could indicate a certain foreclosure of the
symbolic law, and one that would have enabled the violent acts and atrociously
violent crimes committed in Colombia between 1949 and 1964 during La Violencia
 P H A N TA S M AT I C E N T I T I E S A N D I D E N T I T I E S 5

(Uribe 1990, 2004a, 2004b). Richard Boothby brings up the case of La Violencia in
Colombia as a suggestive point of reference for a more general explanation of vio-
lent behaviours:
even more horrifying than the numbers (approximately 200,000 persons killed), was the almost
unimaginable savagery with which these crimes were carried out … bodily dismemberment
was the leitmotif of a litany of atrocities, reminiscent of the aggressive potentiality attributed
by Lacan to the narcissistic organization of the ego. In the failure of adequate symbolic
mediation, the destructive forces of the death drive were unleashed on the level of the
imaginary. (Boothby 1991, 178–180)

The phantasm (and phantasmatic functioning) usually operates at the level of the
unconscious, with a certain temporal rigidity, which distinguishes it from a mere dis-
guise or a conscious deception. Subjects are unaware of their phantasms or of what
they have to gain from the phantasmatic function.5 But could the human person be
merely what he or she represents to others? Could their existence only respond to
symbolic determinations and their obligations as members of a particular commu-
nity? Not in the cases that I will analyse below, in which subjects create alternative,
phantasmatic, or spectral identities through which they engage in illegal behaviours.
These alternative identities enable them to believe that the evil acts they commit
will not have consequences for them because they do not recognise themselves in
those alter egos and feel no responsibility for their evil acts. By adopting plural iden-
tities, they exempt themselves from moral dilemmas and place themselves outside of
moral reckoning. The creation of this kind of object is commonly used in the crim-
inal world to hide the identity assigned to the subject by the state and its institutions.
This can be illustrated with several examples. Both the Colombian bandits of the
time of La Violencia and the more recent paramilitaries have used different resources
such as military uniforms to camouflage their identities by declaring themselves rep-
resentatives of the law and ski masks to hide their faces; and most importantly, they
have adopted aliases when entering, leaving, or transiting through crime scenes. This
has been their way of being in the world: maintaining different phantasms to obscure
the secret pleasure they derive from their actions.
Colombia has experienced a violent armed conflict for over 60 years, leaving
thousands of dead and disappeared.6 It is a place where the designations
‘disappeared’ and ‘NN’ are routine markers of spectral aspects in social life.7 This
is what Colombian historian Francisco Ortega (2003, 96) has pointed out by defin-
ing the phantasm as the one who inscribes in an alternate scene what in fact takes
place in the main scene, thus perpetrating an act that permits the fulfilment of an
unconscious desire. There are many modalities of this kind of phantasmatic inscrip-
tion, but I focus here on one of these in particular, one that is both particularly
frequent and little studied: the use of aliases.

The alias as a mimetic resource

The alternate identity performs real desire, locating it in the symbolic domain.
This operation allows criminals to act with impunity, as though they were not
6 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

present and as though they had nothing to do with their acts. By using one or
more aliases with their symbolic overdetermination, criminal subjects locate them-
selves fully in the world of unconscious desires. The use of aliases by Colombians
who operate in the world of illegality has changed over the years. At the time of
La Violencia, for example, the alias was a designation used by bandits operating in
rural areas dressed as members of the military or police, and killing those they
considered their enemies under the cover of darkness. Their alias would replace
the name they were given at their baptism or when they became adults and
received their national ID card. Most members of both Liberal and Conservative
warring groups were illiterate and used one or more nicknames or aliases.
Sometimes these names referred to people they admired or wished to emulate,
and others simply alluded to their personal characteristics. When their alias has
been imposed by members of their gang, it usually referred to an outstanding
physical defect. Common examples include El Cojo, El Enano, and Patizambo (The
Gimp, The Dwarf, Knock-knees). These aliases had mimetic properties that bandits
used to identify themselves with different qualities or skills, whether or not they
could truthfully claim to have them (Uribe 1990).
There seems to have been a close relationship among outlaws between their
level of education and the role that their aliases played. Among illiterates, for
example, aliases were not only used in place of their given names, but supplanted
them entirely, and their former names disappeared. Among those in the com-
mand structure, aliases were self-chosen, not imposed by their fellow combatants.
Some commanders used up to three aliases at a time, allowing them to assume
different subjective positions under different circumstances, just as a chameleon
changes its colours. Pedro Antonio Mar
ın, for example, a campesino who eventu-
ally became the supreme commander of the largest guerrilla organisation in the
country, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC), had two well-known aliases: Manuel
Marulanda V
elez, which he adopted to honour a communist union leader assassi-
nated in Bogot
a in 1951, and Tirofijo (Sure-shot), a name that seems to have
been given to him by the military, alluding to his remarkable marksmanship
(Biograf
ıas y vidas).
In the judicial files and other sources relating to La Violencia, we see a prolifer-
ation of aliases related to names of wild (and some domestic) animals. Other
campesinos who became bandits, however, chose well-known names from folklore,
from the Bible, or from popular Mexican culture learned from the Mexican movies
projected onto small-town walls in the period. Among the aliases referring to
Biblical figures, some personify villainy, such as Judas and Ca
ın. Others used words
related to Bible stories such as Dimas, Calvario, and Milagro (Dimas, Calvary,8 and
Miracle), among others. Many other aliases alluded to perverse or sinister attrib-
utes with which their bearers may have identified: Ave Negra, Sangre Negra, Alma
Negra, Mano Negra, Sombra Negra, Cianuro, Rematador, Desquite, Veneno, Incendio,
Sospecha, Peligro, Venganza, Pu~nalada, Maligno, Diablo, and Hierba Mala (Blackbird,
Black Blood, Black Soul, Black Hand, Black Shadow, Cyanide, Executioner,
Revenge, Poison, Fire, Suspicion, Danger, Vengeance, Stabbing, Pernicious, Devil,
and Weed).
 P H A N TA S M AT I C E N T I T I E S A N D I D E N T I T I E S 7

We also find names of some popular comic book characters such as Tarz
an,
Superman, Sult
an, and Piel Roja (Tarzan, Superman, Sultan, and Redskin); and there
were aliases alluding to Colombia’s founding fathers and renowned historical fig-
ures: Libertador, Nari~no, Santander, C
ordoba, and Ner
on (Liberator, Nari~no,
Santander, C
ordoba, and Nero). Other aliases referred to the pathos of suffering
and desperation, such as Suicida and Mala Suerte (Suicidal, Bad Luck). Others still
referred to power and greatness, such as Gigante, Vencedor, Hurac
an, Triunfo,
Brillante, and Invencible (Giant, Victor, Hurricane, Triumph, Brilliant, and
Invincible). Some names referred to physical defects: Caratejo, Tartamudo, Media
Vida, Arrugado, La Vieja, and Peludo (Vitiligo-face, Stutterer, Half-life, Wrinkles,
Old Lady, and Hairy or Bushy). Some outlaws preferred to use names alluding to
their skill or speed: Espada, Flecha, Machetazo, Punto Fijo, TiroFijo, Pu~nalada,
Zarpazo, Chorro de Humo, Pu~nalito, Metralla, Cartucho, and Gatillo (Sword, Arrow,
Slash, Guard-post, Sure-shot, Knifing, Swipe, Smokestack, Shrapnel, Cartridge,
and Trigger) among others. There were also names that alluded to an outlaw’s
positive or friendly characteristics, aliases such as Campante, Saltar
ın, Tranquilo,
Errante, Sereno, Nobleza, and Prudente (Undaunted, Frolicking, Unruffled, Rover,
Serene, Nobility, and Prudent). These last aliases may have helped outlaws to think
of themselves as good, decent, and harmless people.
During the 1980s and 1990s, paramilitaries also made widespread use of aliases,
but preferred military rather than symbolic references. During training, new
recruits took on the paramilitary identity through the use of camouflage uniforms,
the adoption of aliases and nicknames, scarifying, and by relinquishing all posses-
sions associated with their previous identities, such as photographs, clothing or per-
sonal effects. Aliases were either imposed by instructors or acquired by new
recruits during the training process. In either case, recruits who were not elimi-
nated due to physical or psychological weaknesses, and therefore joined the ranks
of the combatants, had to use aliases that identified them with their new situation.
Paramilitaries, particularly those at middle and higher ranks of the command struc-
ture, preferred aliases that had nothing to do with animals. Instead, they tended to
use aliases based on a system of letters and numbers, such as HH, Double Zero,
JL, R-15, and 5.7, among others (Navarro and Antonio 2016, 57 ff.).

Outlaws transmuting themselves into upstanding people

Another modality that allows people to move across the boundary between legality
and illegality is that of switching between imaginary identities in order to face dif-
ferent circumstances. I would like to refer in particular to the transmutation of
identity by a specific paramilitary — Alias 4.5 — whom I met in the Modelo
Prison in Barranquilla. This was at the time when the demobilisation process
known as Justice and Peace was under way and paramilitaries were making their
first formal declarations (versiones libres) regarding the illegal activities in which they
had participated.9 The outlaw in question, who dreamt of being a good person,
underwent a transformation during his face-to-face jail encounter with the sister of
a disappeared man. Since this woman had no knowledge of her brother’s fate other
8 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

than his disappearance, she felt the need to find the person responsible for what-
ever had happened to him and get a response from the perpetrator. She consulted
a lawyer friend, who suggested that she visit a particular paramilitary combatant
— then incarcerated — who had been operating in the area where her disap-
peared brother had lived. The woman described the obstacles she had to overcome
to get to her brother’s presumed killer until guards finally authorised her entry
into the prison. Not knowing what to expect, she was nervous about meeting the
paramilitary and was very surprised when after greeting her, the prisoner immedi-
ately began to tell her about his new life as a Christian and, holding a Bible in his
hand, repeatedly asked her forgiveness for what he had done.
In this previous scene, we see the presumed murderer acting as if he were a
good and decent person because he was now a born-again Christian, has taken up
Bible studies, and asks for forgiveness. In order to participate in, and benefit from,
the Justice and Peace programme, criminals were required to show remorse for
their crimes and to ask for forgiveness from their victims, which all of them did.
Nonetheless the illusory role of the good and decent person dissolves as soon as
the criminal’s real desire takes precedence, which is what happened when the
woman asked ‘Alias 4.5’ where her disappeared brother was buried. He then
offered a detailed description of the supposed place, saying that he remembered it
because there was a palm tree and a gazebo there. The woman concentrated all
her energy on finding this place, but the prisoner had described a place that did
not exist, and that had no referent in real time or space. The palm tree and the
gazebo became so real to the woman, though, that she felt a growing sense of
urgency as the prisoner provided more information. Convinced that she was on
the right trail, the woman travelled to the place described by the prisoner, took
several photographs, and returned to the jail to show him. When he saw the pho-
tographs, the prisoner said ‘These photographs bring back so many memories.
That’s where I had the best times of my life’. The prisoner was referring to the
days when he wore camouflage and committed multiple murders and atrocities in
the company of his paramilitary brothers-in-arms. The reformed and kind-hearted
prisoner came in close contact with the murderer, manifesting the reality of his
secret joy.
Another case illustrating the distancing that these subjects engage in to avoid
moral self-reproach is that of a mid-ranking officer of the paramilitary United Self-
Defence Forces of the Middle Magdalena (Autodefensas Unidas del Magdalena Medio).
The son of a single mother, this man never knew his father and left home when
he was a boy at the age of 12. This story of emotional disengagement from pri-
mary emotional ties is common among both paramilitaries and guerrillas in
Colombia. Unlike most of his fellow paramilitaries, he was not arrogant and did
not make himself out to be a hero. He recounted his criminal acts as though they
were the innocent games of a child. I did not see him for a while, and when I did
encounter him again, he approached me and said ‘You have no idea what happened
to me. All of us in the paramilitary bloc were giving our versi
on libre when an old
lady came up to me, put her arms around my waist, sobbing, and said “You killed
my husband and my children but I forgive you. The only thing I ask is that you
tell me where you buried the little one”’.
 P H A N TA S M AT I C E N T I T I E S A N D I D E N T I T I E S 9

He then told me that after that close encounter he was never the same again.
What was it that so moved him? Did his encounter with the old mother have such
an impact on him that it dissolved the parallel track between good and evil? The
psychoanalyst Miguel Guti
errez offers an illuminating interpretation: one can
imagine this experience as a phantasmatic oscillation. The paramilitary’s encounter
with the benevolent old lady who happened to be the wife and mother of his vic-
tims toppled his phantasmatic identity, cruelly revealing to him the source of his
pleasure, an awareness theretofore suppressed by the presence of the phantasm.10
There are multiple reports of mothers haranguing perpetrators in face-to-face
encounters after their children were murdered or disappeared. These encounters
appear to transform criminals, something that is not always evident in the versiones
libres, or in the instances of reparation, where remorse is part of the script
imposed by the Justice and Peace process in its efforts to convince the paramilita-
ries, who thought of themselves as patriots, that they were in fact criminals. If the
accused wanted access to alternative punishments and the other benefits of the
transitional justice process, they had to deconstruct their identity as heroes, give
up their military language and speak in humanitarian terms. Expressions like ‘killed
in action’ and ‘collateral damage’ were prohibited in court. The paramilitaries
were requested to refer to victims respectfully and never use disparaging terms in
the presence of prosecutors. Encounters such as the one referred to above seem to
represent an imaginary relationship with the figure of the mother, desire for the
mother in the context of an absent father, perhaps an encounter with the maternal,
and, crucially, the maternal gaze that recognises the perpetrator and, upon doing
so, transmutes him into what he always wanted to be: a decent person.
How can we explain the transformations of personal identity that these criminals
must have undergone when they faced their victims after spending several years in
jail? A few words and phrases that I heard from some of these paramilitaries on
different occasions may help us to understand the process. ‘Dar la cara’ (Face up
to it), for example, ‘dar la cara ha sido dur
ısimo’ (It’s been hard as hell to face up
to those crimes). What do they mean when they talk about facing up to what hap-
pened? Are they talking about the sacrifice involved in renouncing their phantas-
matic identities and accepting that they must construct a new subjectivity in order
to rejoin legal environments? Or are they alluding to how hard it is to accept their
guilt and reveal the only face that is recognised by the inter-subjective network
they used to be part of? Another former paramilitary said: ‘we woke from a
dream; we looked around and saw so much damage’. Were they dreaming while
committing their crimes and only after waking up could they recognise the damage
they had caused? The dream narrative is very common among criminals, as though
they were not responsible for their evil deeds, as though they were mere bystand-
ers to the immense pain and suffering left in their wake.
Another phrase that I heard repeatedly was ‘none of us was prepared to face the
victims’. Of course not. Nobody is prepared to face the victim, particularly if the
victim embodies the figure of a mother who spontaneously offers forgiveness.
Nobody can resist the incriminating gaze of that unknown maternal figure who
materialises with her demand that Other to whom one has done so much damage,
particularly if it is the gaze of a disconsolate mother seeking the truth about a
10 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

crime committed against a loved one. The victim is the mirror in which, finally,
the criminal will see the reality of his desire and his phantasm reflected, the pleas-
ure unleashed phantasmatically and the pleasure he obtains in committing violent
acts: this unnameable reality that he had not wanted to see, that he had denied
time and again, hiding behind a benevolent discourse about what a good father he
was, about how much he loved his children. The beseeching mother might be the
only figure able to deconstruct the assemblage that the criminal subject has con-
structed to avoid feelings of guilt. And this is when the murderer who dreams of
being a good, decent, and untroubled subject confronts the sad reality of his
secret pleasure.
Finally, I would like to make some considerations concerning the mentality and
the ways of operating of some criminals as I have described in this article and the
possible transformations that such mentality and procedures could experience
under the peace process that is currently taking place in Colombia. Regarding
FARC, all its combatants used aliases while in arms, and now that they are demo-
bilising, the Colombian State is in the process of changing their aliases to civil
identities, a process enabling them to legalise and re-use their given names, by
issuing citizenship identity cards. This will undoubtedly produce changes in the
identity of demobilised subjects and in the rest of society. For drug traffickers,
sicarios, paramilitaries, and other criminals on the margins of the peace process
things will remain the same. There is no redemption for those who do not seek it,
and as long as Colombian society lets criminals move from illegality and back to
legality without major consequences, they shall continue perpetrating crime with-
out any remorse or guilt.

Notes
1. Tolima is a Colombian department located in the Andean region. La Violencia (The
Violence) is the name given in Colombia to the historical period of widespread and
extremely brutal conflict between partisans of the Liberal and Conservative Parties during
the 1950s and 1960s.
2. Narcocorridos are local adaptations of the popular Mexican corridos (ballad) that
incorporate tales of drug-dealing bravado, exploits, and oftentimes tragic violence. In this
case the genre extends to the heroic perpetrators of other illegal activities.
3. In a personal communication, psychoanalyst Miguel Guti
errez has indicated that it is
possible for a person to have two opposing ideas without necessarily producing a
contradiction at the level of the id. In German this phenomenon has been called
Verleugnung, translated as negation, repudiation, or denial. Freud discussed it in relation
to fetishism, but it is applicable to other perversions and even to psychopathology. See
Guti
errez Pel
aez 2010.
4. Jacques Lacan discusses the topic of the phantasm in his Seminar 14. Lacan formulated a
matheme ‘$< >a’ that described his formula as consisting of a subject incapable of being
named by a natural language, accompanied by the object of his desire. The phantasm
designates the relationship of a split subject (conscious and unconscious, symbolised by a
barred S) irredeemably divided in two by its place in the universe of language, with the
lower-case a representing the object of his unconscious desire. The subject may have one
 P H A N TA S M AT I C E N T I T I E S A N D I D E N T I T I E S 11

or more phantasms enunciated in sentences expressing things that are determinative with
respect to that which is desired. See Lacan 1999, 2010.
5. Personal communication with Miguel Guti
errez.
6. By December 2013, the Colombian Institute of Legal Medicine (Instituto de Medicina Legal
de Colombia) had registered 89,736 cases of disappeared people.
7. NN, short for the Latin phrase nomen nescio (‘I do not know the name’), is the legal
designation for human remains whose identity is unknown. Almost all cemeteries in
Colombia have sections dedicated to ‘NN’ burials, which are differentiated from mass
graves where unidentified people are buried.
8. In colloquial Spanish a person’s calvario or ‘calvary’ refers to his or her personal suffering
or martyrdom.
9. The Peace and Justice Process stems from Law 975 of 2005, designed to investigate and
prosecute the crimes committed by the paramilitaries. They had to confess all their
crimes and in return receive alternative sentences under the terms of transitional justice,
ranging from 5 to 8 years, depending on the crimes committed.
10. Personal communication with Miguel Guti
errez.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Maria del Rosario Acosta (Associate Professor, Philosophy Department at
DePaul University, Chicago) and Dr. Miguel Gutierrez Pelaez (Professor at the School of Medicine,
Universidad del Rosario, Bogot
a) for their valuable comments on this article; I would also want to thank
Erna von der Walde for her accurate revision and precise translation of portions of the text.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References

Biograf
ıas y vidas: Manuel Marulanda V
elez [Tirofijo]. http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/m/

marulanda.htm
Boothby, Richard. 1991. Death and Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan’s Return to Freud? London:
Routledge Library Editions.
Esquivel, David. 2008. “La lucha libre mexicana, la m
ascara, el rito y el espejo”. http://
chacharasfilosoficas.blogspot.com.co/2008/12/lucha-libre-mexicana-la-mscara-el-rito.html
Guti
errez Pel
aez, Miguel. 2010. “Diferencias entre los conceptos de Splitting en Ferenczi y de Spaltung
en Freud.” Universitas Psychologica 9 (2): 469–483.
Lacan, Jacques. 1999. “Summary of the Seminar of 1966-1967 [The Logic of Phantasy].” Translated by
Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Logic-of-
Phantasy-spring-1999.pdf.
Lacan, Jacques. 2010. Seminar XIV: The Logic of Phantasy: 1966-1967: Begins 16th November 1966.
Translated by Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/
06/14-Logic-of-Phantasy-Complete.pdf
Navarro, Camacho and David Antonio. 2016. “Por ac
a se entra pero no se sale. An
alisis de los Centros
de Entrenamiento Paramilitar”. MA diss., Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
12 L AT I N A M E R I C A N C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S

Ortega, Francisco. 2003. “Crisis Social y Trauma. Perspectivas desde la Historiograf
ıa Cultural Colonial.”
Anuario Colombiano de Historia Social y de la Cultura 30: 45–96.
Salazar, Alonso. 1990. No Nacimos Pa
Semilla. Bogot
a: Editorial Cinep.
Serje, Margarita.2005. El rev
es de la naci
on. Territorios salvajes, fronteras y tierras de nadie. Bogot
a: Facultad
de Ciencias Sociales, CESO, Universidad de los Andes.
Uribe Botero, A
ngela. 2009. Perfiles del mal en la historia de Colombia. Bogot
a: Editorial Universidad
Nacional de Colombia.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2013. “Liquid Tombs of Colombia
s Disappeared.” ReVista, the Harvard Review of
Latin America (Fall) 13 (1): 13–20.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2012. “Reflexiones sobre est
etica y violencia en Colombia.” In Est
etica y violencia:
Necropol
ıtica, militarizaci
on y vidas lloradas, edited by Helena Ch
avez, 66–79. M
exico, DF: University
Museum of Contemporary Art, Universidad Nacional Aut
onoma de M
exico.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2011. “Against Violence and Oblivion. The Case of Colombia’s Disappeared.” In
Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America, edited by Gabriela Polit and Maria Helena Rueda,
37–52. New York: Palgrave-MacMillan.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2009. “Memory in Times of War.” Public Culture 21 (1): 3–7.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2008. “Mata que Dios perdona. Gestos de humanizaci
on en medio de la
Inhumanidad que circunda a Colombia.” In Veena Das: Sujetos de dolor, Agentes De Dignidad, edited by
Francisco Ortega, 171–184. Bogot
a: CES, Universidad Nacional de Colombia and Instituto Pensar,
Universidad Javeriana.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria.2004a. Antropolog
ıa de la inhumanidad. Un ensayo sobre el terror en Colombia. Bogot
a:
Editorial Norma.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 2004b. “Dismembering and Expelling. Semantics of Political Terror in Colombia.”
Public Culture 16 (1): 79–95.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 1996. Limpiar la tierra: Guerra y poder entre Esmeralderos. Bogot
a: CINEP.
Uribe, Mar
ıa Victoria. 1990. Matar, rematar y contramatar: Las masacres de La Violencia en el Tolima,
1948–1964. Bogot
a: Centro de Investigaci
on y Educaci
on Popular, CINEP, Serie Controversia #
159–160.

Maria Victoria Uribe is an anthropologist, an emeritus researcher and associate

. She has a PhD
professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of El Rosario in Bogota
in History and her research interests include political violence in Colombia,
contemporary armed conflicts and anthropology of violence.

View publication stats