Colombia: ¿Estado o Paraestado?

Abstract

The article examines Colombia’s state crisis through the rise of paramilitarism and its penetration into public institutions, revealing how the boundary between state authority and private armed power became increasingly blurred throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Ortíz argues that the erosion of the state’s monopoly on legitimate force, the institutional capture by para‑state networks, and the complicity of political and economic elites created a hybrid order in which the state coexists with—and is sometimes subordinated to—illegal armed actors. This para‑state configuration undermines citizenship, deepens structural violence, and poses major challenges for democratic reconstruction and the restoration of the rule of law in Colombia.