UC Irvine

Incomplete Peace and Strategies of Resilience in Colombia focuses on interactions between the state government, the international community, and local communities as they attempt to once again build peace after the 2016 Peace Accords between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Immediately after the signing of the divisive peace accords, many different communities and populations within Colombia were hopeful as they imagined a new future. Five years after, it has become clear that rather than ending a part of the conflict, the accords and their implementation created a moment of reconfiguration for it. This dissertation examines the realities of how peacebuilding is carried out in Colombia, the ways that the national and international communities have shaped those processes, and how marginalized populations utilize strategies of resilience and self-help in the face of continued everyday violences committed by the state and other armed actors. From the halls of the Colombian and United States’ Congresses to rural communities in the Pacific Coast, this dissertation interrogates the complex and ever-changing relationships which make up how peace “gets done” beyond a state-centered vision of peacebuilding.