Disorder and Everyday Life in Barrancabermeja

This article examines how years of political violence and neoliberal restructuring have disorganized social life in Barrancabermeja. How, it asks, can working people grasp the future without the stability to understand the present and the ways that it both emerges and is different from the past? It explores how an extreme form of neoliberalism fragmented various forms of social solidarity, infused social life with fear, and generated violent, clientelistic networks that flourished in the absence of rights. It argues that unrestrained power and violence deprived people of the coherence needed to take care of themselves and to grasp the connections between the past, present, and future that are necessary “to make history.”