Abstract

ROMERO LEAL, Karen Lorena. Production Conditions of a kidnapping-testimonial literature boom in Colombia. Rev. colomb. soc. [online]. 2017, vol.40, n.1, pp.161-186. ISSN 0120-159X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcs.v40n1.61957.

In Colombia, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, there was a rise of kidnapping testimonial literature whose authors were politicians, members of the Armed Forces and foreigners involved in the fight against drug trafficking. They constituted a group commonly known as "the exchangeables" since their captivity re sponded to a strategy of the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc) established during the Caguan peace negotiations (1998-2002) to kidnap public figures, soldiers and police in order to press for a humanitarian exchange. The article aims to outline the conditions of production of a boom in kidnapping testimonial litera ture by these "exchangeables" in the political and media context of Colombia between 2002 and 2010, and the close relationship of the global publishing industry with the publication of testimony, widely disseminated internationally. The main analytical as sumption of this work is that the testimonial texts are cultural constructions framed in a specific social and cultural context of production and respond to the way society is symbolically organized. Along with this, it is necessary to understand how the rise of memory induces cultural products turned towards the past that reveal traumatic events in the history of the armed conflict in Colombia. The methodology consisted of a review of written primary and secondary sources and interviews with journalists and experts of the publishing world to establish a production context of testimonial books considered cultural objects.

One of the main findings was that the rise of kidnapping testimonial literature by the "exchangeables" was a response to the ideological climate of the country under President Alvaro Uribe, a period in which the farc became the enemy of the nation; therefore, the testimony denouncing their crimes echoed massively in privately owned media and in general in Colombian public opinion.

Keywords : farc; Alvaro Uribe government; publishing industry; testimonial litera ture; media; kidnapping..

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