CONFLICT AND TERRITORY: PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME IN COLOMBIA'S POST-CONFLICT

In the context of the implementation of the Peace Accord with Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces ( Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - farc) and peace negotiations with the National Liberation Army (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional - ELN), Colombia faces a tremendous challenge: the territorial consolidation of state power in places where it didn't make any presence before. This challenge is related to the state's capacity to fight crime and build a stable and lasting peace. Criminal phenomena are complex. Moreover, the impossibility of reaching full understanding of crime's real dimensions and dynamics sets up unsurmountable limits in the State's capacity to fight against crime. Therefore, this limitation raises questions about consolidating social peace. In this article, I undertake a spatial analysis of six high impact crimes, from 1991 to 2014 in Colombia. I aim at finding similarities and differences between the current peace implementation process, and previous demobilization and transitional processes. Also, I describe these crimes' behavior over the course of the last two decades, and formulate some hypotheses and recommendations for the analysis of criminal phenomena in a post-conflict context.