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aCta
criminal élites that care for their own interests at the expense of the population. On the con-
trary whole social systems arise whereas any component produces new forms of adaptation
through original forms of social legitimacy. A similar network mechanism introduces, ac-
cording to Duffield, a character of ambivalence because along the organized violence it acti-
vates a complex system of business where informal and illegal trades become very important
for the economy of the daily life: for instance, it is underlined by the function of subsistence
that the various trafficking of drugs, diamonds and other natural resources develop for the
small producers .
27
Consequently, Duffield’s model is here proposed as a valid interpretative model, not only
because it underlines the rational aspect of these new political systems that arise in the coun-
tries of the South, but also because it places current conflicts into the vast global dynamics. The
globalization process has unquestionably produced radical social economic and political trans-
formations, which we must consider in order to understand the dynamics of the “new” wars.

the coLombian confLict
Among analysts one of the most disputed issue of the Colombian conflict deals with the
individualization of its origins. Some of them consider the bloody civil clash of the so-called
Violencia period, approximately 1946 to 1965 , as the first actual manifestation of the con-
28
flict . It was a real civil war that opposed the two main political factions, conservatives
29
and liberals, and caused the death of around 200,000 people from 1946 to 1958 . other
30
researchers, although recognizing in those dramatic years the indisputable origins of the vio-
lent internal clash and the cause of a deep laceration of the whole society, prefer to consider
the years of the birth of the first insurgent formations as the beginning of a conflict in the
wake of the postcastrist revolutions whose fundamental draws have almost been unchanged
up to now . Adopting this last periodization, from 1964 till today, on which most experts
31
agree, it is possible to affirm that the Colombian conflict is one of the longest contemporary
conflicts in the world, after those between Israel and Palestine, Pakistan and India, Myanmar
(Burma) and its internal Shan State .
32
It is such a long conflict that it is “surviving” the deep changes not only at a national
level but above all, the extraordinary international changes like the end of the opposition
between the East-West blocks and the irrevocable development of globalization at political,
economic, social and cultural levels. The long duration of the conflict is really one of the
central elements inside the analysis here proposed, as it helps us to clarify two important

27 Duffield, 2002.
28 There isn’t a concordance among analysts about the exact date and the debate is still open how well it is
shown in Sànchez e Peñaranda eds, Pasado y presente de la violencia en Colombia, Medellìn, La carreta Ed.,
2007.
29 Waldmann P., “Cotidianización de la violencia: el ejemplo de Colombia” in, Análisis Político, n. 32, 1997.
30 Waldmann P., 1997 p. 33.
31 Sànchez G., Guerra y politica en la sociedad colombiana, Bogotà, El Ancora, 1991.
32 The database elaborated by the Peace and Conflict Research Department of Uppsala University is available
on the website http://www.pcr.uu.se/database/index.php