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With a view to developing certain arguments put forward in previous works, my intention in this article is to approach the persistence of violence in Colombia as if it were a symptom. By symptom, I mean a traumatic impossibility, an enduring rupture that resists symbolization, at the intersection of the social and the symbolic. Examples of this symptomatology include the implacable antagonisms between rural supporters of the Liberal and Conservative parties during the period known as La Violencia; between paramilitaries and guerrilla groups, which was a constant for more than 30 years; and, more recently, between those on either side of today's clashes over the peace process that was finally agreed with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in 2016. In each of these three cases, there appears to be an impossible dynamic between two binary terms, each preventing the other from realizing its self-identity. In contrast to my previous work, where I examined the notion of the symptom from a Lacanian perspective, in this article, I will explore it through a series of metaphors or tropes that have been in common usage in Colombia at different times, understanding them as survivors of past events, carrying memory into the present. These tropes bear a heavy symbolic weight, as they serve to encapsulate and articulate emotions, anxieties, and fears in relation to antagonistic groups or political enemies. Although they belong to different periods in history, and as such their meanings are distinct, what they share is a capacity to crystallize the content of a conceptualization of a hated and feared other that must be eliminated. It is in this respect that they can be described as symptoms of a hatred for which the only outlet is violence.

This article describes the complexity of transitional justice in Colombia since the approval of Law 975, known as the "Justice and Peace Law," and the demobilization of the United Autodefenses of Colombia in 2005. In the middle of the open war between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the Colombian government, different victims' organizations have empowered themselves around their struggle to reconstruct memory.

María Victoria Uribe is director of the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia (ICANH) in Bogotá, Colombia. Her current research involves a comparative analysis of political violence in Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Northern Ireland. She is the author of Anthropologie de l'Inhumanité (2004).

La sección colombiana del dossier "Hechos de sangre" terminó por conformarse exclusivamente con trabajos sobre el conflicto armado debido tanto al predominio de este tipo de análisis como al resultado del proceso de selección de una convocatoria abierta a las más diversas posibilidades temáticas. El resultado del ejercicio fue de alguna manera previsible, en tanto que la desmovilización de las farc y el acuerdo de paz han renovado el interés por esclarecer el doloroso proceso histórico que hemos vivido, han abierto posibilidades para conocer más verdades y, por supuesto, para que las víctimas puedan satisfacer sus exigencias de justicia.Los hechos de sangre amplían el horizonte de la violencia e incorporan nuevos objetos, escenarios, imágenes, representaciones y microhistorias que han estado por fuera del estudio clásico de la violentología, oxigenando un campo disciplinar que terminó por agotarse. La descripción y la cuantificación de los hechos violentos han cedido el paso a estudios recientes que buscan huellas, trazos, indicios y síntomas de la violencia en las complejas y contradictorias realidades que caracterizan a Latinoamérica. El dossier que el lector tiene en las manos se inscribe en esta nueva perspectiva, aportando miradas novedosas acerca de temas como la violencia implícita en algunas escenas judiciales y la construcción tanto de delitos como de delincuentes, entre otros.