Pedagogies of cruelty’ and the patriarchal order of the nation state: the falsos positivos as a paradigmatic example

Description

This article explores an episode of mass atrocity that took place in Colombia in 2002-2010 under the rule of Álvaro Uribe: the falsos positivos, a subset of extrajudicial killings carried out by state armed forces in exchange for monetary bonuses, holidays and/or promotions whose victims were more than 3000 poor and mostly+ male people. Drawing from Rita Segato’s work, I address this event from a perspective that re-centres patriarchy and coloniality. I argue that the very possibility of the killings’ occurrence, staging, symbolic function and scale, and the nearly zero empathy they generated in the general population, was the result of a historical implementation of ‘pedagogies of cruelty’ that in the context of Colombia have successfully trained the urban classes into what I will denote ‘selective desensitisation’. As an extreme enactment of the ‘mandate of masculinity’, these crimes constitute an event that entrenches the patriarchal order that underlies the moderncolonial nation state. Apart from providing an explanatory framework for an extraordinary example of lack of empathy for certain victims in the context of Colombia, I aim to expand Segato’s concept of ‘pedagogies of cruelty’ so as to demonstrate its immense analytical potential in the current global political landscape.