Showing Teeth to the Dragons: State-building by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez 2024-2006 by Harvey Kline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Part of Kline’s ongoing analysis of state-building in Colombia (this being the third in a series of books). This volume focuses on the first Uribe administration (2002-2006). The text provides a very useful and succinct overview of Colombia’s predicament going into the Uribe years. Further, moreso than the previous works in the series, Kline offers a more complete framework for his approach to state-building in the Colombian context.
The book has a great deal of detail on Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policies and the “Law of Justice and Peace.”
There is a great deal of detail on the administration’s dealings with the AUC, FARC and ELN.
This book seems, at first reading at least, to be more substantive than the previous entry in the series (that which dealt with the Pastrana peace initiative with the FARC). However, that may be because there is more to work with in this case. Regardless of one’s position on Uribe’s policies, it is clear that there is a good deal of material there for discussion.
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