Expanding and building the State in regions where its institutional presence is weak or practically non-existent is a problem that has affected Colombia since its foundation, but especially since the mid-twentieth century. The geography’s complexity and the territory’s fragmentation since colonial times led to the surge of local powers that often created their own militias.
In the mid-twentieth century Latin American states had, not without difficulty, reached a certain level of coherence between the State’s presence and territorial control of most of the nation. Colombia, however, remained fractured and became the paradox that it continues to be today.
On the one hand, a constitutional State was created that guaranteed the provision of services, citizen rules, legitimate monopoly of the use of force (a basic principle for any modern State) and formal subjugation of the army to civil power.
