Mapping the Colombian Conflict

In the following pages, I present 10 maps that contribute to recent efforts to map the Colombian conflict. They also provide a complement to the articles on Colombia in this special issue of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The first two maps are meant simply to give an overview of Colombia's basic geography. The following seven depict the country's armed conflict, and the last shows areas of coca and poppy cultivation in 2000. The maps on the armed conflict constitute the core of this effort and deserve an explanation. Their purpose is fairly straightforward: to show as accurately as possible the locations of each of the main illegal armed groups over time. But this is a tricky task for many reasons. First of all, precise information of this kind is hard to come by. Few databases exist on this topic, and none is easily accessible. One of them has been compiled by CINEP ( Centro de Investigacion y Educacion Popular) and by Justicia y Paz, a human rights organization. With this database CINEP has generated a number of maps that are the sources of the ones presented here. I would like to thank this institution, and in particular Alejandro Cadena, for the generous help I received

Archaeology · Armed conflict · Coca · Complement (music · Geography · Institution · Latin Americans · Political science · Sociology · Task (project management · Conflict, Peace, and Violence in Colombia · History and Politics in Latin America · Law